We’ve had a pretty spectacular autumn — it’s been (mostly) dry, sunny, and warm. Every morning when I wake up, I look out the window and say a little, “Really?! Again?! Thank you!” to the universe. As a result, some annual plants are still putting on a really good show. But it seems that’s about to end as we have much cooler temps and plenty…
Conifers sometimes get a bad rap. I regularly hear them disparaged. People sometimes refer to them as old fashioned, or passé, or worst of all, boring. Maybe you’re one of those people? Well, sit tight, I hope to change your mind. While I acknowledge that plant fads are worth paying attention to, and knowing what’s trendy can be important, at the end of the day, I’m…
We’re closing in on the end of our house foundation project. This is a project that’s been going on for more than a year now, and you can read more about it here & here. This project has taken over our entire lives — all our finances and all our free time. We’ve got our final inspection in just a few days, and that means we…
Before we know it the days will be noticeably shorter, and we’ll be dressing in layers for the nip in the air. Thinking ahead to autumnal plant combinations I’m looking for something that will gracefully slide into cooler weather and take me right up to the holidays (and beyond). This combo (from top-left): Abelia grandiflora ‘Hopleys’, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, Anenoma ‘Wild Swan’, Pennisetum ‘Rubrum’, and…
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we’ve been planning a foundation replacement project on our house for some time. As a gardener, I started last year thinking about what plants I wanted to keep that were in the line of fire, and how I wanted to manage them. I gave away lots of plants, and the ones I wanted to keep went into…
There are so many things happening in the garden in late spring that it can be difficult to narrow down beloved plant combinations to just one or two options that I like best! But here are a couple that I’m particularly fond of right now. As always, I’m looking for the following criteria: The plants look beautiful for as long as possible. Different things happen at…
We’ve had some early hot & dry weather here in Portland, and as a result, lots of things are blooming early & in unplanned combinations. Things are also moving QUICKLY. We seemed to go from late daffodils to tulips to alliums (and beyond) at such a pace that it’s all gone by in a floriferous blur. But what can you do? Trot outside with the…
Recently, our neighbors took down a huge cherry tree at the northeast corner of their property. Huge as in 60+ feet. It was just next to our shared fence and has provided all of our shade since we moved here. It had been ailing for years with branches dying back from the tips, and whole sections of it were dead. In some ways, it was a…
In the first installment in this 3-post series, we visited the wonderful Danger Garden. And in part 2 we visited the beautiful xeric garden of Greg Shepherd, co-owner of Xera Plants. And in this final installment we’re visiting the inspirational garden of Lauren Hall-Behrens of Lillyvilla Gardens. This wasn’t the first time I’d visited Lauren’s garden, which I’d also seen featured in great books such as The…
I was inspired by a plant combination I saw recently at Portland Nursery that combined a dark-leaved euphorbia with a multi-colored, flowering erysimum, and the silver foliage of artemesia. I love a hit of saturated color this time of year — after months of bleak weather, contrasts of burgundy and orange really lift the spirits. So I played around with some plant combinations I could…
In the first installment in this 3-post series, we visited the wonderful Danger Garden. This time, we’re visiting the beautiful garden of Greg Shepherd, co-owner of Xera Plants. I remember first learning of Xera after moving to Portland through their unique and wonderful plants stocked at both Portland Nursery and Garden Fever — they were often plants that were new to me, and they had…
My Dad & Stepmom are part of the annual snowbird migration to Florida, and I can’t think of a better place to get away to in the winter doldrums than South Florida. It’s not exactly easy to get there from here in the Pacific Northwest, but I finally made the journey and it was exactly the right thing to raise my spirits and Vitamin D…
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