About that big bromeliad bowl and the tree crime

There were a couple of things from the "Eight months of Mondays" posts that I wanted to revisit in a little more detail. First up, that big bowl of bromeliads. What's that all about?

Having replanted this chunk of the garden I was now faced with a big flat space where there used to be height; the trio of dish planters that had been in the corner for years, the tall and overgrown Calluna vulgaris, even the height of the airy Lomatia tinctoria, all gone...

Plus there used to be more coverage from above, when the palm fronds hung down, not just reached up towards the sky.

Like on the taller palm in the background.

So one evening I was relaxing after a long day working in the garden, looking at the view, not liking it, and considering putting the dish planters back in place (these, which I loved, but also was done with), and it hit me...

Earlier I'd been playing around with a large "dish" in this part of the garden, but when it came time to plant I decided against it. I wanted the space for plants not a planter.

So why not use that set-up here? The dish is actually a mesh screen cover for a fire pit. Back when I picked up the tabletop I used for the stock tank table planting (free score from a Facebook Buy Nothing group) I also grabbed this screen, which I've been using to cover new plantings of small things like sempervivum, so the squirrels or raccoons don't tear them out. 

I had the metal tube on hand and secured it in place with rebar, then I attached a metal weight to the handle of the screen and dropped it into the tube. Voilà! Then I filled it with bromeliads, tillandsia and a Callisia fragrans.

I like it because it stops the eye and gives that corner height, and because it's temporary. Once the palm fronds grow back and the plants in the ground grow up, I can pull it out.

To my eye it also works with the surrounding garden, the base sort of mirrors the trunks of the three palms, and of course rusty metal and bromeliads are repeated throughout.

Next up, the harsh treatment of the Albizia julibrissin 'Summer Chocolate'. I really expected some negative comments when I revealed what we had done; crimes against horticulture, that kind of thing. Here's a shot as we got started, this was February 3rd. A beautiful day for dangerous work.

I honestly couldn't believe that Andrew was up for tackling the project. I'd asked if I should look for a professional, but he said no. Of course once we were into the project he wasn't so sure he'd made the right decision. 

This section of branch fell before either one of us were ready for it to, a good 4" sunk into the lawn. That was terrifying.

Then this section decided to rest on the roof, and the Hibiscus syriacus. It was so heavy Andrew was going to climb up on the roof to push it off, but he finally agreed that damaging the roof was preferable to damaging him. In the end the hibiscus took most of the weight with minimal damage and the roof (and the husband) was spared.

Here's what the tree looked like last week. Lots of healthy new growth.

If the foliage stays clean (no Albizia psyllid infestation, the reason for this drastic cut back—or at least 80% of the reason) then I think we may start to cut this one back every couple of years, before it gets as big as it was. The canopy was reaching from one side of the property to the other and taller than the house (perhaps a little too much of a good thing).

One more, I wanted to share the new growth on the Pseudopanax ferox, odd plant that it is.

After last winter's destruction I cut the rotting trunk back to the point where it felt solid, and waited to see if anything would happen. I am thrilled that it's started two new growing points. Once things really take off I'll probably remove any remaining "leaves" along the main trunk (see above), because they just look silly with so few of them and that big gap before this new growth starts. That's a wrap on this update!

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It's not looking good for the grassy pineapple (aka Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica')

When I shared my week of posts titled Eight months of Mondays in the garden a couple of commenters noticed just how good the Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica' looked throughout all the winter madness. That's it on the right, photo from January 17th.

Faithful commenter Chavli said "In the first two collections of today's post, there is a plant that stands out for me on the right hand side. I don't know it by name, I'll describe it as grassy pineapple (with apologies...), but it seems unfazed by the catastrophic weather around it. Definitely the winner in my book." tz garden added "the grassy pineapple really looks good ALL THE TIME." 

It definitely did, until all of a sudden it didn't. To give it a moment of glory, here's what it looked like when I did the annual garden tour post last October...

And here it is on July 17th. I took this photo right before I left for the Fling, just to track what I was seeing, a sort of record of how bad it was looking.

This photo dates to July 9th when I first realized the lower leaves were turning brown. I usually do a spring trim of the lower leaves, and I did, back in late May I think. Why were more browning up?

A pulled back shot, another from the 17th, that's more trunk than I've ever seen before.

Once home (this photo from July 24th), there was no denying the new growth was also turning brown. Not good. Not good at all.

So what happened? Was it our extreme winter? Plants can look great after a winter storm, the damage taking months to reveal itself. Or was it something else? This plant dates back to roughly 2010 in my garden. While things have gotten a little shadier around it nothing changed drastically this summer, it's been happy for years. 

The above photo from happier times, when the new growth was green.

There was a part of me that always feared what would happen when my plant grew as large as this one in the McMenamins Kennedy School gardens (in the back on the left). I guess that's not going to be a problem.

So, onward. What is a garden if not constant change? I'm very sad to lose my oldest, largest Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica', but also scheming on what to do with a fairly large (by my garden standards) chunk of real estate...

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Eight months of Mondays in the back garden (Part One)

If you're a regular blog reader you know I hate winter—and since autumn is basically the opening act for winter, I can't help but also lump it into the "dislike" category. It's too bad really, because on it's own autumn can be rather beautiful, even I can admit that. 

So in an attempt to mentally separate autumn from winter I started taking weekly photos of the back garden early last October. I thought maybe I could pinpoint the moment when my feelings about the garden changed, when winter took over and things fell apart. I suspected that moment was much later than I realized. Of course, what I didn't know when I started the project was that we'd have an extremely mild winter, all the way up to January 12th when record cold arrived and winter hit like a sledgehammer. There was no fuzzy hard-to-define moment of change, instead there was a solid—deadly—line. 

So I forged on, thinking maybe I'd call the project complete once we took down the shade pavilion greenhouse walls, or when Clifford (the big-leaf magnolia, M. macrophylla) broke dormancy? Maybe when the patio furniture was back on the patio? 

In the end I went for a full 34 weeks, taking (nearly) weekly photos from 7 different spots in the back garden. I ended up with just over 230 photos. I'm not going to share all 230 of them, but I am going to run this series all week. Today we'll look at two views; the back garden entrance and the orange wall, the north boundary of the upper garden. For each image I'll include the date, and what stood out to me about that particular photo. Here we go!

The back garden entrance on October 16th 2023, a few of Clifford's fallen leaves serve as a reminder of the season.

November 6th, more leaves. Clean up happened at least twice a week for a few weeks.

November 14th, the maple leaves are from the south-side neighbor's tree. The polycarbonate panels are now in place to keep the agaves dry.

December 6th, the cement piece in the far corner is new, a taboret à la David Culp.

January 1st, the New Year! Things are looking much the same. A little more trimmed up and tidy. Winter was proving to be the mild dream we'd been promised with an El Niño winter.

Until it wasn't, January 17th. I missed Monday and took this photo on Wednesday, which was Day 6 of the storm. I couldn't open the gate to get it out of the photo because it was frozen in place. The foliage is frozen at an odd angle because the wind was hammering us at the same time the temperatures dropped and frozen precipitation started to fall.

January 22nd, 11 days after it started and we still had ice/snow on the ground in places. Such is life in NE Portland near the Columbia River Gorge.

February 12th, blue sky! Palm fronds are missing (broke off in the wind) and the Metapanax delavayi foliage (top left of photo) has started to die off.

February 19th, that same foliage (the Metapanax delavayi) is now falling, it would continue for the next 2-3 months. This is an evergreen shrub that was burnt by sub-freezing winds.

March 25th. When I started this photo-essay I was hoping to capture a "this is winter!" moment, and not with an historic storm. However this photo says "this is spring!" to me. Things have flipped and there is life in the garden again, I've taken the winter covers off the in-ground agaves (we won't talk about the fact so many agaves died anyway, 12F and below freezing day and night for 5 days was just too much).

April 15th, blue sky and bright green lawn!

April 29th, So many plants are up and looking good. The Metapanax delavayi is leafing out again.

May 13th, harsh sun and shadows and lawn that needs to be mowed, but you can see the staghorn ferns are starting to emerge from the basement and get a nice hose-down (on the ground in the shadows).

May 27th, my garden is once again a place I want to spend time in, and not just working!

June 4th, the final shot of this view. Things are wet as we just experienced a heavy rainfall in the days prior. 

Here's the second view of the series; the orange wall, the north boundary of the upper garden. Our house on my right, the patio on the left and our garage behind me. October 9th 2023...so very jungly!

November 6th, golden.

December 6th. The Edgeworthia chrysantha 'Akebono' (far right) has almost lost all it's leaves, the Passiflora lutea climbing on the palm trunk has died back, and the hakonechloa (Japanese forest grass) has gone golden.

January 1st, the New Year. There had not yet been a killing frost in the garden. 

January 8th. At this point we knew a change was coming, we just didn't know how bad it was going to be.

January 17th. There's a Pseudopanax ferox under the tall insulated cover next to the palm, and an astelia under the black pot. The edgeworthia is bent under the weight of the ice.

January 22nd. The waiting game begins, damage doesn't show up right away on a lot of things. 

February 5th, the large leaves of the Rhododendron sinogrande (in front and to the right of the palm) are starting to take on an unhealthy hue.

March 5th, by now I'd cut back the volunteer sword ferns and (along with the kill-back of evergreen ground cover) the ground is looking so bare, on a positive note the flower buds on the edgeworthia are starting to open.

March 11th, plants are starting to emerge and I'm starting to play around with ideas for containers and plantings for the spring.

March 25th, another shot that says SPRING! 

April 29th, the Lysimachia nummularia (creeping Jenny, ground cover) is quickly covering the bare soil again (in many winters it stays almost evergreen) and I've been buying plants which are staged in place making the area look much fuller than it is. On the far right the big leaves of Rodgersia podophylla have emerged.

May 6th. The tall palm was trimmed up a few weeks back, and the fronds on the palm out of frame on the left are gone, also trimmed up due to winter damage. The Pseudopanax ferox just to the left of the palm has been dropping leaves for months, I feared it was a goner but I am happy to report that as of June 6th it started to push out new growth towards the top. 

May 13th, I'm feeling behind now as I haven't yet planted the things I bought to go in this area and we just had a couple of 90 degree days!

May 27th, some of the new plants are in the ground here, but not quite all. You might notice the staghorn fern on the far right, hanging from the Albizia julibrissin 'Summer Chocolate' and there's a plant missing on the right of the palm trunk. I moved the Sinopanax formosanus that had been there (scroll up and you'll see light green leaves that are now missing). 

I decided I hated it there and so I moved it to the west side of the patio behind the bamboo tanks. I feared it was probably going to die in the move, but it's actually looking pretty good.

June 4th, THIS is what I'd been working towards... things are as they should be again *sigh* another summer in the garden...

To be continued on Wednesday with more views!

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All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.