Mary DeNoyer’s garden; as seen in a very different month of May

My fellow NE Portland gardener Mary DeNoyer opened her garden a couple weeks ago. I was sure to visit. 

She opened last May as well (blog post here)—what a different May that was! The preceding winter wasn't nearly as severe and May '22 was—as is typical in these parts—a very wet month, I took photos for that visit holding an umbrella. It's incredible how different the weather has been this year; winter was hell and the rain stopped in early May. 

Mary experienced a lot of death and destruction from last winter's extremes, thus I was prepared to see holes—a garden knocked back—but unless you knew where to look (thanks to a conversation where Mary pointed out a few things gone bad) the garden hid all the bad and was nothing short of stunning.

I love allium. 

I can't deal with the dying foliage, but love the blooms. Mary does allium well.

I was surprised to see her Pseudopanax 'Sabre' looking so good, mine just has a couple of tiny leaves sprouting from the base...

Then I saw that she'd sunk a pot into the border. Well done!

I took nearly this same shot last year. The plant is Arabis ferdinandi-coburgii, last year the soil between the arabis and the lawn was a small moat. This year it's cracked and dry.

Another stunning allium. 

Passing into the back garden...

Cyrtomium fortunei

Calycanthus occidentalis 

Looking backwards...

Paris polyphylla 

There's Mary under the garage overhang which creates a lovely patio area.

How fabulous is that pot!? Mary picked it up from fellow gardener Gail Barnard.

Mary has moved around her many podophyllum since my last visit, some are still in containers, but others have been put in the ground.

I'm backtracking now, to capture images I missed when I went forward to say hello to the garden hostess. A yellow flowered trillium...

Disporum standing tall among the podophyllum.

Close-up of the disporum blooms.

A few more podophyllum shots...

I'm under the garage overhang now, looking backwards.

A different angle.

I love this container!

The raised planting area between the driveway and the back deck/patio.

And finally a couple shots of the border along the driveway.

Thank you for opening your garden again Mary! It was as inspiring as always.

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Changes in the NW corner of the upper back garden

Today a few garden updates from the Northwest corner of the upper back garden...

First of all, I bit the bullet and planted the tall Pseudopanax ferox that I got from my friend Lance Wright when he moved to Eastern Oregon last summer. This plant is borderline hardy here in Portland, and he was moving to a much colder location.

It became mine last June, but I was hesitant to plant it in the ground right away as I was going to be away off and on for a few weeks, and it didn't come with the best root system. By the time I could plant it (and baby it a bit) the weather had turned hot—so I decided to just leave it in the container and not risk it. Thank god I did as I'm pretty sure I would have lost it during last winter's extremes. 

So why did I plant it in the ground if there's a chance I could lose it? Well, it's too tall to fit in the shade pavilion greenhouse during bad weather, unless I lay it on it's side, which would not be easy to do once I plant it in a ceramic pot. Plus I have another, smaller plant that's already in a container (a form of plant insurance) and they are hardier the larger they are. So I decided to be fearless and just do it. I picked this spot because it's protected from our frigid wintertime wind and gets a fair amount of sun. By planting it in May it will have several months to get established before winter comes around again.

Speaking of plants I lost last winter, this astelia was a floppy mushy mess. It looked so bad cut off all the leaves flush with the base, but didn't dig it out—and look at it now! 

There's one other astelia that's also trying to stage a come back—three tiny leaves a couple of inches tall—but all the others I thought were dead definitely are.

This trio of containers is the current featured focal point in the corner of the upper back garden, visible as you enter... 

The Agave 'Blue Glow' looked so good when it came out of the shade pavilion greenhouse this spring that I knew it needed to be here.

I then decided to go with a theme of plants in pots with the yellow/green speckled glaze and this aloe, Aloe maculata, got the nod.

The third pot was an empty I had on hand, planted up with a gifted Leucadendron 'Ebony'. It's small but growing.

Now we're scanning to the left and focusing on the trio of dish planters in front of the palm (Trachycarpus wagnerianus).

These planters were looking pretty rough after winter, so I did an intensive refresh.

I picked up a pot of small agaves labeled as Agave parviflora but most likely Agave × leopoldii and divided them up.

I also replanted (from the previous version of the dish planters) some Agave parryi 'JC Raulston', misc sempervivum and a Maihuenia poeppigii.

But of course what you're really wondering about are those opuntia pads with the INCREDIBLE 4" long spines; meet Opuntia sulpurea... 

I like the mix.

Oh! I forgot to mention the pieces of Portulacaria afra ‘Lilliput’ I cut up and stuck into each of the dishes. They add a nice contrasting texture.

And that's what's new in the NW corner of the upper back garden!

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Dissecting my Hover Dish plant remains; there is life

When things turned cold last December I completely forgot about taking down the Hover Dish planter over the front porch. 

Once I remembered and commented on it Andrew offered to take it down, but by then I could see it was full of ice and figured it was too late anyway. 

Fast forward several months, and last week I finally got around to asking him to take it down so I could replant it. He's tall enough it's not too difficult for him, I'd be risking life and limb to do it myself. I was surprised to see signs of life. This planting has been through extreme heat with no water (broken ankle and I didn't  look up), and then 72 hours below freezing, filled with frozen water. How could anything growing in 5" of soil suspended in the air live through that?

Opuntia polyacantha x cymochila 'Peter Pan' 

I don't know what possessed me to plant these low-growing cactus in this planter, but I did... and they're still alive. Amazing.

Equally amazing, this small Agave bracteosa is still alive.

Ditto for the larger one!

Sempervivum struggling but alive, not so for whatever agave those used to be...

This poor opuntia qualifies as alive, but I'm so tired of looking at its scarred and oddly colored back-side (the view from inside the house) that I'm going to retire it to the great compost pile in the sky. Bye-bye.

A weed blew in and was quite happy, and the purple leaves of the Yucca aloifolia 'Blue Boy' were only pretending to be alive.

Why did I put this agave in the hover dish? It looks to have been a beauty. Of course it fell apart in my hands as I tried to remove it.

Have you ever seen such a black leaf? It looks like charcoal.

I don't know why I needed to share all of these images, who wants to look at dead plants, right? I found it interesting though. Maybe you did too.

Here's what I replanted with, going in a completely different direction! Super tall black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens'), Lonicera nitida 'Lemon Beauty'  (completely inappropriate long term, but I thought it would be fun for awhile), Muehlenbeckia complexa ‘Big Leaf’ and Sedum confusum.

It's nice to see lots of life up there again!

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Whale's tongue agaves that didn't even know winter was a thing, and a couple on their glorious way out...

I learned of this Agave ovatifolia planting via Instagram and photographed it back at the end of March. I don't know what took me so long to post it...

Reports of mushy agaves all around Portland were still rolling in hot and heavy back then, so to learn of agaves that weren't bothered by winter at all was quite remarkable.

Even more so was the fact I hadn't a clue these even existed, in a location I used to drive by every few months. Covid severely adjusted my lifestyle and I haven't managed to reset normal even now.

I didn't notice the blooms on the Phormium in the background in person, only when looking at these photos.

Perfection!

Ha! Nor did I notice the second (third?) agave tucked in behind the first, not until I turned to take this photo.

Twins!

Left...

Right.

Nice work you who planted this spiky trio! 

In other Agave ovatifolia news; thanks to Darcy at eGardenGo who posted on Instagram, I learned of a nearby Agave ovatifolia that's going to bloom...

I've shared images from this garden a few times, although I can't seem to find a post to link to now, darn it! I'll definitely be doing periodic drive-bys to see how this bloom-spike develops...

The man who allowed me to share in his agave pup give-away last June, sent a photo of his second Agave ovatifolia to bloom, the first (a "twin" just across the walkway) sent up it's death-spike in 2021. He didn't get any pups off that first one, I wonder if this plant will produce? 

Just yesterday I received an email from John Kuzma, whose garden I have written about for years. Yes, he also has an Agave ovatifolia, a 'Frosty Blue' that's decided its time is now... 

Has our weather encouraged this behavior? Or is it just the natural cycle of things? I do still plan to do a recap of my agaves that made it thru the remarkably bad winter in my garden... just as soon as I get some photos taken.

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