Dennis’ 7 Dees on Powell

How cool is it that after gardening in Portland for almost 6 years there are still nurseries that I haven’t visited? I think it’s very cool; and in fact it makes me very happy. It’s time to cross another one off the list though as I finally visited Dennis’ 7 Dees on Powell.

I was a little disappointed that the first thing I saw at this nursery was containers. I want to see plants! But as a person with years of retail experience I do get the fact that these things are heavy…why not keep them near the parking lot where they’re easier to get into the customers cars. These bright chunky ones were pretty cool. And they have a 50% off section, which of course I am attracted to as containers can be expensive. Things got off to a good start plant-wise when one of the first plants I saw was this huge Sago Palm…($149 and it could be yours). I like to see a few big treasures at a nursery. But then I started wondering how well they care for their plants when I saw these Genista Lydia! These are not happy plants! No leaves...no new green growth... This is what they should look like: There were 7 or 8 1-gallon plants that looked dead and 2 larger (2-gallon) plants that looked pretty good. I would have picked up one of the small ones if they looked alive.

Finally this is when I realize…”wow” this place is big! Everything I was feeling when I was looking at the Genista was completely forgotten when I set eyes upon these Araucaria araucana (or more easily called Monkey Puzzle Trees)…as they were looking GOOD! Next I came upon this interesting building which looked to be off limits. I really wanted to go in and investigate things but to be honest the sky was threatening and I wanted to check out the rest of the nursery before it started pouring so I resisted the temptation to investigate. Maybe next time. Oh look at this! $5.00 plants! I got a Callistemon pallidus ‘Eleanor’ (from Xera)…”An excellent color form of the cold tolerant Callistemon pallidus. ‘Eleanor’ has 5” long bottle brush flowers of purple in May/June and sporadically there after”…for $5! Romneya coulteri, not on the sale table. I’m already regretting not getting this one. I might go back.

Sedum bowls. And more Sedum… I really don’t get this… The sign reads “There’s no such thing as a depressing garden. No plant species – wild or cultivated – produces a flower or blossom that is absolutely black.” What? Why is black depressing? Don’t people seek out black flowers (or almost black flowers)? Didn’t Paul Bonnie write a book about black plants? I guess they aren’t selling it at this nursery.

Monster Yucca! Love it… And finally on the way to pay for my $5 a Callistemon I passed these adorable succulents. I am such a sucker for succulents! But I was strong and just kept on walking by…

The Front Garden: here’s what I’ve been up to, chapter 2 (the hard-work)

So I’m starting with a “blank-ish” slate and it’s time to plant. Our spring being what it is has not afforded lengthy periods of planting time. I decided I would be attacking this phase in parts (sub-phases?). First the “big plants” (a relative term they weren’t really all that big…but they were the biggest ones I had) and then later the “smalls.”

It was such a relief to haul the plants I’d been accumulating and storing out to the front garden and see that despite my fears I had not bought too many (no that isn't all of them...not by a long shot). I had previously tried laying out the design on the computer, and when that failed I started sketching. But nothing worked. I had to just walk around the garden with the plants and place them where I thought they should be. And then move them, and move again. This is not quick work. Luckily I was doing this on a weekday so most (but not all) of our neighbors were away at work and not able to watch. Oh what they must think of my puttering around the gravel pit, again. “Why can’t she just have a lawn and be happy like the rest of us!?” Honestly though if they do think that they keep it to themselves. Everyone is very supportive, hollering positive feedback from their car or stopping to ask questions and compliment me on our ‘xeriscape’. Once I was happy with the placement the last big obstacle to my just getting on with the planting was the condition of the three 5-gallon Yucca Rostrata I had splurged on. I was swearing and cursing like a sailor. Who thinks that when potting up a plant like this you need to completely bury the base in rich potting soil? If I had actually planted these plants like this #1 you wouldn’t be able to see the cool base of the plant and #2 it would have probably rotted. Keep the crown above the soil people!!! And the same goes for Agaves, these big thick succulent “leaves” don’t grow out of the soil; there is a mass at the center of the plant. You should be able to see it! Ok…so I think I made that point…onward. After a day and a half of planting the “bigs” it was time to bring out the smaller plants. No this didn’t happen all in the same week. In fact I think it was a good two weeks between these phases. Most of these "smalls" were things I bought at 40% off from Garden Fever in late winter, things I already had like Agaves that had been growing in pots, Opuntia from my kind neighbor, or things I dug up elsewhere in the garden. A couple of small agaves were new and when I pulled them out of their plastic pots this is what I found… Roots bursting and pups in the making. With any luck there might be a couple small agave colonies in my future! Here’s where some of you might be thinking “Agaves…in the ground? In Portland? Isn’t it to wet?” well yes, and no. It’s all about good drainage. And it’s all the fault of this one: I planted this one and two others just like it last summer. Then before winter hit I wimped out and dug two of them up, leaving this one as a sacrificial experiment. And it did just fine! It must be the slope of our lot in the front of the house helping to take the rain away. Plus when I planted it I had worked in some Cherry Stone Grit (ground quartzite) for drainage. So I bought a bag to use when I planted these agaves. Utilizing the larger rocks I had bought (see chapter 1) I built the soil up with some of the grit mixed in with regular garden soil, all in the name of better drainage. So it’s time to do it all over again. I walk around arranging the plants, finding their best spot and then planting. It’s a fun way to spend a sunny afternoon! Okay…next up: it’s planted, but what does it look like? (to be continued...)

Garden housekeeping

As I’ve mentioned a time or twelve our spring has been wet and cold, so I’ve been prioritizing the time I actually get to spend outside, only the high impact things were getting done. Finally, last week we finally had a stretch of dry (and sometimes even sunny!) days and it was time to do a few of those mind numbing garden chores. This is definitely not the glamorous side of gardening, yet it must be done. Unless of course you want to be surrounded by a Laurel forest or have your pebble patio moat lost beneath a sea of fir tree needles (no worries, I’ll explain what a pebble patio moat is). Last summer was a good one for Laurel berries, they were dropping in buckets. That was the first round of dealing with the dropping berries but now they’ve become seedlings. Hundreds, wait no…make that thousands of them. They were everywhere, especially (as you can see) growing through the grasses (they are the glossy almond-shaped leaves). Nothing to do but just but on my gloves and get to work.

Next up the “patio moat”… For drainage and wiggle room we left a 5” gap between the retaining wall and the patio, I later filled this area with blue pebbles and so I’ve always thought of it as our moat. The illusion was somewhat compromised by a year’s worth of Fir tree debris. Time to tackle it before I start filling the patio with containers and this area becomes mostly inaccessible.

The strategy? Wear gloves, drag the pebbles (along with the debris) out of the moat and then pick them up individually and toss them back into the moat, leaving the debris behind. Simple! But time consuming. Here it is in process. Done… Yet to do… It’s kind of meditative, really. Finished with both of these chores I looked up and realized Mother Nature had hit repeat… Those blooms on the Laurel promise more berries, and these blooms (?) on the Fir trees mean showers of more crud raining down on the patio. A gardener’s work is never done…