danger garden

Monday, March 15, 2021

March Bloomday

Many of my fellow Portlanders have been disparaging the month of March. True it can be a fickle month. Cold rain, morning frost, and those sunny days that have you thinking that's all behind us, only to end up back in another stretch of cold and wet with a little hail for good measure. Still... I do love the chance to get outside and spend a day in the garden... made all the sweeter by the fact you know the rain will return so you've got to enjoy it while you can. As I work on this post full of blooms I am completely and utterly exhausted from two solid days spent cleaning up, cutting back, and tearing out. It's a wonderful feeling.

But the flowers! Today it's all about the flowers.

You may recognize this scene from my pruning post. I couldn't bear to toss the spiky poncirus branches so they're stuck in the soil behind the hellebores, which will be planted out in the garden soon. They're here by the back door now, to add a touch of cheer.

Helleborus x hybridus 'Frostkiss Cheryl's Shine'

Helleborus argutifolius, aka Corsican hellebore

And Helleborus x hybridus 'Frostkiss Winter Angels Charmer' (such ridiculous names)

We cannot forget good old Helleborus foetidus...

And one more, Helleborus x hybridus 'Black Diamond'.

On to the arctostaphylos! A. densiflora ‘Harmony’

Arctostaphylos 'Monica'

And last—but certainly not least—A. x 'Austin Griffiths'. Sadly Austin is past his prime, helped by the days of below freezing temps and ice. I'm a little concerned about the fact he's got a lot of leaf burn... we'll see how things progress over the next few weeks.

Daphne x houtteana

And one of the stars of my March garden, Euphorbia rigida.

Such a fabulously acidic color.

The Edgeworthis chrysantha 'Nanjing Gold' blooms weathered the, well, weather, with aplomb.

Everybody is enjoying them.

The Edgeworthia chrysantha ‘Akebono’ blooms waited until after the freeze to start opening.

Aren't they splendid?

Since I am kind of low on flowers in the garden this month I decided to share four images from this shrub.

Hopefully you won't mind.

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae has a reputation as a thug. It hasn't managed a take over in my garden but has slowly marched along the side of the garage, moving a good 10-ft or so in 13 years. Dying out slowly from where it had been and moving to new ground.

The last entry is a newly acquired plant, Pachysandra axillaris 'Windcliff’—it smells as good as it looks.

As always thanks to our Bloomday host and inspirational leader, Carol at May Dreams Gardens!

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Weather Diary, March 14: Hi 52, Low 43/ Precip .16

Friday, March 12, 2021

It's spring, so I prune

The first few sunny, dry days, a bit of warmth—you know, the days that smell like spring—and I'm out there in the garden looking at things with a critical eye. Naturally there's plenty of clean-up to be done. Winter wind has blown leaves in from who knows where (even though I've cleaned them up time and time again), along with fir-tree debris—the ice storm seemed to have rained down not only ice but needles and small branches I'll be picking up for weeks. Then of course there's the cutting back of perennials, grasses, dead fern fronds, overgrown vines, and old sarracenia pitchers, etc, etc, etc...

I removed about 97% of the pitchers from this planting, they were brown and broken. It's so much easier to cut them just before the new ones start to grow.

Ditto here, everything old and broken was removed.

Beyond just cutting back however I find myself reaching for the secateurs and pruning saw. The Sambucus nigra (black lace elderberry)...

...and Cotunis coggygria 'Royal Purple'...

...get cut back every year, that's nothing new. After that I took a few branches off the Fatsia japonica out front.

Then of course there's the Grevillea rivularis removal I wrote about earlier in the week, here with a car in place to see just how little space there is between it and the plants.

It's still shocking to see this bare space.

I cut a couple of branches off the Poncirus trifoliata.

Primarily in recognition of the mailman who passes through that space. Of course I couldn't just throw them away.

So they got a nice spot behind the driveway hellebores.

Since winter refuses to cut down the multi-trunked cordylines (first planted in 2006 but killed to the ground a couple of times, and re-sprouted—thus the multi trunks) we finally took the saw to one clump and thinned them out pretty severely ("we" because the fibrous leaves covering the trunk meant this job required more strength than I have)...

There's still the clump on the far side allowed to stay huge.

Andrew has been prodding me to let him cut the lowest three branches off Clifford, our big leaf magnolia, for years now (he's 6ft 2in, I'm 5ft 4in—we experience the garden differently). I finally acquiesced.

It makes me so sad, but he's happy (Andrew, not Clifford)

The next day I pruned branches (both large and small) from the Metapanax delaveyi.

And then I turned my critical eye to the Callistemon viridiflorus. Before pictures would have helped you to understand just how monumental this..

And this...

Resulting in this...

Is—it really feels quite amazing in person. There's light in the center of that shrub!

As well as opened up space at ground level that's just begging for new plants. Isn't that a shame (ha).

As luck would have it I also learned from a friend that Pseudopanax x 'Sabre' responds well to being pruned. I love those leaves, but three tall leggy branches with no lower leaves just looked silly.

And so I cut it back to just a few inches above this split. Fingers crossed it resprouts.

The last bit of pruning I'll share as part of today's post (because there's definitely still more on the way) is this bit of sadness...

The heavy weight of the snow and ice load split my Stachyurus salicifolius in two places. Damn.

For my own record keeping here are a few other things showing damage from our brief winter event. Interestingly they're evergreens dropping their leaves. I do believe they'll rebound and push out new growth...

Corokia virgata 'Sunsplash'

Acca sellowiana (Pineapple guava)

Sophora prostrata

Also, the clumps of Aspidistra elatior along the patio are showing a lot of foliage damage in patterns I can only assume are from the chunks of ice that fell from the tall fir trees behind us. I've never seen the trees iced as they were during this event, and when they started to thaw it was like thousands of ice blades fell slicing into the aspidistra leaves below.

— — —

Weather Diary, March 11: Hi 61, Low 36/ Precip 0

Thursday, March 11, 2021

If not that, then this...

Last October a Facebook friend shared photos of front garden (perhaps hellstrip) agaves I wanted to check out in person. I got the approximate location and then I dove around looking, looking, looking—and not seeing anything that resembled the photos he'd shared. Not all was lost however, as I discovered this fine garden...

Yucca rostrata I think, although they are starting to stray into Yucca linearifolia territory...

Those green crop circles? Herniaria Glabra. I could not—for the life of me—identify them. So I messaged the garden designers Creative Landscapes Inc via Instagram and asked.