Wendy’s Top Ten: Gold Winner 2008 Garden Writer's Assoc.
By Wendy Tweten
As published on Rainy Side Gardener website
Ten, I told them. I’m sorry, but I can pick only ten of you.
My leafy beauties winked and waved, each one vying for my
attention. The miscanthus tossed its blond-streaked tresses
and rustled its skirts. The tree fern showed a bit of leg. The
roses gave an aristocratic little “ahem” and the Arizona
cypress struck a casual pose. The Rudbeckia ‘Herbstsonne’,
bursting its stays again, simply lay there and giggled.
How to choose? There was only one way: I’d set categories and
select my favorite in each. It would be a beauty pageant for the
photosynthesizing set. No…it would be more. On this stage, talent and good character would earn at least as many points as the swimsuit competition. After all, it’s embarrassing when Miss Perennial turns out to be a bit of a tramp or if, by summer’s end, Miss Container Plant has just plain gone to pot.
And the winners are…
1) Annual
Mirabilis jalapa ‘Limelight’
This sunny little honey is loud and flashy and completely unapologetic. Its shocking pink flowers are eye-popping against chartreuse leaves marbled with green. Limelight is no shrinking violet when it comes to endurance, either. The plants have been in cultivation for well over a hundred years. They reseed (politely), and sometimes perennialize.
2) Perennial
Dicentra spectabilis ‘Gold Heart’
Out of a field that included Euphorbia ‘Tasmanian Tiger’, Helleborus lividus ‘Crug’s form,’ and the Potentilla sp.aff. gelida I bought years ago at Heronswood, the golden bleeding heart won out for shining like a beacon in the dark corners of my garden.
3) Grass
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gilt’
Or perhaps “Guilt” might be a better name, when you realize you’ve spent the children’s milk money to acquire a whole chorus line of these long-legged, big-haired show girls. Ornamental Amazons, these grasses can grow nine feet tall with broad leaves heavily highlighted in gold and white.
4) Shrub
Drimys lanceolata ‘Suzette’
The other contestants in this group, Cornus serecia ‘Midwinter Fire’, Cotinus ‘Grace’, and Rhamnus frangula ‘Fine Line’ are inferior to Suzette in only one regard: they’re easier to acquire. Suzette is a rare beauty with a cherries-and-cream complexion of cerise-colored stems and great dollops of variegation in her evergreen leaves. Reportedly growing to six feet high and four feet wide in five years, Suzette, that roly-poly coquette, is listed hardy to Zone 7. In my fairly mild Zone 8 garden, Suzette-in-the-ground sails through winter. Suzette-in-a-pot did not. Pauvre potted Suzette.
5) Conifer
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Blue Surprise’
The surprise is that one of my 4” impulse purchases at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show turned out to be such a great plant. Neat, tidy, and a bit of a romantic, Blue Surprise has a tight, upright form that doesn’t succumb to snow damage. The soft juvenile foliage is powder blue with a purple overcast in the winter and on new stems. To six feet, they say, though mine has already exceeded that. Surprise!
6) Vine
Clematis ‘Ken Donson’
I have crowned this clematis Queen of the Vines for one very good reason: it’s been blooming all summer in a witch hazel outside my front door with flowers that are impossible to ignore. As big as my hand and a rich lilac blue, the blossoms progress to seedheads that start off spiraling like miniature galaxies in the making, and end up as striking, feathery fluff balls.
7) Bulb
Allium ‘Globemaster’
The other contender for the title, Allium karataviense, was a close second. But no one wants to go around trying to say karataviense (much less spell it), so Globemaster won out. This ornamental onion is a real head-turner when well grown (full sun, spring fertilizer, summer drought, perfect winter drainage, and dig, divide and replant every year or two). A sterile hybrid, she has it over her fertile sisters in that her 9” purple flower heads hold their color for nearly a month, and after turning to tan they are long-lasting in dried arrangements. No wonder Globemaster has such a big head.
8) Container plant
Cupressus macrocarpa ‘Wilma Goldcrest’
Voted Miss Congeniality. I have two Wilmas in pots flanking a doorway. These are actually second generation Wilmas, as the originals were swapped out for smaller Wilmas when they got too big – like runway models who’ve been hitting the casino buffet. My Wilmas have taken drought, heat, snow, freezing temperatures, sun and shade, and remained the picture of health. A five minute trim and occasional Miracle Gro is the only beauty treatment they get. Oh, yes, and they smell like Lemon Pledge, as is appropriate for anything or anyone named Wilma.
9) Rhododendron
‘Hallelujah’
Handel himself would sing the praises of this paragon of rhodie-dom. Though rhododendrons in general are received with a chorus of yawns by the landscape snobs, Hallelujah will appeal even to gardeners with the most catholic of tastes. Here is a rhodie you really can grow for the foliage alone: robust deep green leaves which arc gracefully downward. The plant is likely a tetraploid, with heavy substance in both the leaves and the heavenly, electric pink trusses. How many plants earn the Rhododendron Society’s perfect 5/5 rating? OK, I don’t know either, but not very many.
10) Tree
Arbutus menziesii
Let’s hand the tiara to Miss Pacific Northwest herself, the lovely, conflicted Pacific madrone. Yes, her wood is bowling ball hard, but these native trees are surprisingly delicate and do not thrive in captivity. A healthy tree is a sculptural, distinctive symbol of the Pacific coast. They are also messy, prone to decline, difficult to pot out and practically impossible to transplant. Spring’s smooth red bark dries to cinnamon strips by summer's end. In the fall, bright persimmon red berries attract a variety of birds. If you're lucky enough to have a healthy madrone on your property, cherish it, and leave it alone.
Transcendental Inspiration (opening only)
By Wendy Tweten
As published in Home by Design magazine
As a child, Cameron Bahnson rubbed shoulders with European royalty and heads of state. As a young woman, she traveled to the Far East to study transcendental meditation. In a little over two decades, Bahnson – the daughter of a U.S. admiral stationed in Italy – made the acquaintance of Princess Grace of Monaco and became a protégée of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the onetime spiritual guide of the Beatles. Finally, after traveling the globe, Bahnson came to Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound and made a garden.
With such a broad life experience, it comes as no surprise that Bahnson brought the world to her backyard. Throughout the formal parterre garden that she created there runs a European etiquette with borders as straight as a duchess’s spine and lines that undulate like waves on a warm sea. Leaves shimmer in Mediterranean green and silver. All is contained within a Vastu fence, an outdoor extension of the 4000-year-old Eastern Indian architectural philosophy of Sthapatya Veda used by Bahnson to design her house. The fence serves as a buffer, both literally and symbolically, between the outside world and the harmony of the home. When viewed from an upper floor balcony, the front garden unfolds like an open book.
Confessions of a Hort-head
By Wendy Tweten
As published in the Kingston Community News
I remember the early, innocent days: picking up a cheap six-pack of pansies at the grocery, the occasional score of prime Mexican pots, sharing a pack of tobacco plants with friends. I was sure I could quit whenever I wanted to.
“Gardening,” I thought. “I can take it or leave it.”
Then I became a homeowner and the cravings intensified. My husband became concerned when I’d stumble into the house packing the hedge shears and reeking of manure. If I couldn’t work outside in the garden, I’d find myself propagating a few African violets or pollinating the Christmas cactus. If I was on the road, there was always a nursery along the way and I’d stop by for a “quick one.” Within minutes I'd be staggering, glassy-eyed, between the rows, passing fellow hortaholics who looked back at me with equally chlorophyll-addled brains. Soon I couldn’t leave the house without slipping a seed catalog into my purse.
That’s how it is. One day you’re planting a few bulbs on a weekend afternoon, the next you’re calling nurseries in North Carolina frantically seeking a Daphne bholua. I showed more single-mindedness tracking down a Franklinia alatamaha than I did helping my son get into college. Soon my whole paycheck was going for compost and weekend-long nursery binges. Any part of the property without a building was in danger of being tilled. When all the nurseryfolk in the county know you by name, it’s time to admit you have a problem.
But that was only the beginning. Before long I was hanging out with other plant addicts. In this herbaceous underworld, we not only use Schizostylis – we can pronounce it.
Perhaps what came next was inevitable. That’s right: weeding parties. You know you’ve got it bad when you find yourself weeding someone else’s garden, and you like it. In the depths of our horticultural mania, we practiced plant swapping. Sometimes we just sat around saying “quercus” and “omphalodes,” and giggling. We found euphoria in euphorbia. Forget Valium, we had allium. Who needs Prozac when you’ve got sumac?
To support my habit, I turned to dealing. “Hey, mister,” I’d hiss. “How about a nice home-grown hellebore?”
Before long my back began to go and my fingernails would no longer come clean, the price of chronic chlorophyll use. Now even my memory is going. “What the heck is that?” I often mutter, digging into some dormant plant I’ve forgotten. Plants I don’t recognize appear in the strangest places. What crazy person planted a Dracunculus vulgaris by the front door? Every June I spend half an hour looking for a dead mouse.
There is no twelve-step program for gardening, no clinic, no counseling. There is no cure. But I comfort myself with one thought: while I may be a plant addict, one look at my lawn makes it plain, at least I’m not into grass.
An Incursion of Cucurbits: take them to your leader (opening only)
By Wendy Tweten
As published in WestSound Home & Garden
The aliens have landed! Oddly-colored little spaceships with knobbly legs. Amorphous white blobs dripping ectoplasm. Otherworldly eggs, gaggles of long-necked Martians, and ghostly pale vegetable orbs that seem to glow from within. Autumn has arrived and with it comes the cucurbit invasion.
Fortunately, these terrestrials are extra friendly. In fact, they come to serve mankind as some of the most appropriate and uncomplicated decorations ever to celebrate a season. Decorating with gourds, pumpkins, and winter squash is foolproof – simply pile them onto any counter, tabletop or pedestal with or without a basket, bowl, or tray. And growing these versatile vegetables is equally undemanding: build a sunny garden, plant a seed, and they will come.
Spiders and Snakes: wizards at pest control
By Wendy Tweten
As published in NorthWest Garden News
“Why spiders?” groans Harry Potter’s friend, Ron Weasley. “Why couldn’t it be ‘follow the butterflies’?” Then, as if giant steroidal spiders weren’t enough, snakes and snake-like creatures threaten Harry and friends at every turn. Indiana Jones would have been a nervous wreck.
Why spiders indeed? Why snakes? Why do we chase them from our gardens – or worse?
What is it about a slithering or skittering creature that makes our reptilian brain recoil? Even those of us who welcome snakes into our yards give an involuntary shudder when we lift the compost cover and a dozen of them squiggle off in all directions, including across our feet.
Snakes
Here’s the important bit: West of the Cascades, the only serpent you’ll find lurking in your lupines is the beneficial and non-venomous garter snake (the exception being a rare sighting of the equally harmless rubber boa). The most wide-ranging reptile in North America, garter snakes can grow to three feet, though finding one of that size is a tale worth telling. In the Pacific Northwest these inoffensive little snakes are present in three distinct species and a wide range of colors and markings.
The success of garters is due, in part, to their bearing live young rather than laying vulnerable eggs. Birth occurs in August and September and broods average 10 to 30 snakelings. In the winter, garter snakes hibernate underground, under logs and in lumber or rock piles, either singly or in a group hibernaculum.
If trapped, a garter snake may strike out in desperation, but don’t let it fool you: a bite is uncommon and rarely breaks the skin. In fact, their musk is worse than their bite; when handled many garter snakes will defend themselves by exuding anal secretions with a gag-inducing stench that persists through repeated hand-scrubbings.
In our gardens these agile hunters dine on insects, earthworms, slugs, snails and small rodents. In ponds the menu extends to tadpoles and amphibians. Prowling cats and habitat destruction have had the greatest impact on garter snake populations, though lawn mowers, weedwhackers, and cars cause their share of snake carnage. To help save these ecologically valuable creatures, check before you mow and do a quick “St. Patrick” (drive out the snakes). Then welcome them back in with favorable habitat such as non-mortared rock walls, tarp-covered compost heaps and plywood “snake boards” painted black on top and propped up three inches at the north end. If you’re still squeamish, think of it this way: more snakes equal fewer slugs.
Spiders
Let’s face facts: they are the most numerous of all land predators on Earth and they are in your house, though not in your bed. We’re speaking of spiders, nature’s most formidable enemy of insect pests. One of the most underappreciated – if not downright despised – denizen of the natural world, these eight-legged exterminators seem to spin urban legend faster than web silk.
To set the record straight, arachnologist and Curator of Arachnids at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, Rod Crawford, clears up the most common spider misconceptions on his website, www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth. This eye-opening site explains that you do NOT swallow an average of four live spiders in your sleep each year, the spiders in your house choose to be there, true spider bites are rare, and spiders in general are not a danger to children and pets.
Orb weavers are one of the great artists of the animal kingdom. Their webs are feats of engineering skill that begin with the spider riding a floating line on the wind to an appropriate anchor site. Many orb weavers spin a new web each night after first eating the old one. The spiral silk is the sticky part of an orb web; the spider moves about on the straight, non-sticky scaffolding lines.
While web-builders get all the attention, the most valuable spiders to the gardener are the ground-hunters such as crab, wolf and jumping spiders with an appetite for the insects that prey upon our precious plants. Tempt these spiders into your garden with organic mulch and plant growth that shades the ground. The need for shelter becomes clear when you consider that, to the average spider, even a single raindrop can inflict considerable damage, and a patch of open ground resembles the Sahara. Think of spiders as the junkyard dogs of the garden, keeping insect pests at bay. And relax, none of the spiders commonly found in Northwest gardens poses any danger to humans.
So, to paraphrase a proverb: To make your garden grow and thrive, let the spiders run alive. It’s yet another good reason to stop the squishing and eschew broad-spectrum pesticides. It turns out that spiders and snakes are, in fact, the good guys, ridding our gardens of slugs and bugs. Let’s see your butterflies do that, Ron.
2008 Northwest Flower & Garden Show preview
Small Worlds: Grand visions, backyard vignettes, and pure fantasy take center stage in the display gardens of Seattle’s NW Flower & Garden Show
By Wendy Tweten
As published on Rainy Side Gardener website
Ever wonder why there are no garden tours in February? Of course you haven’t. The answer is painfully obvious: at this time of year the average Northwest garden is bleak, disheveled and damp. If your garden is anything like mine, the perennials are moldering mush-heaps, the roses are prickly sticks, and the ornamental grasses are having nothing but bad hair days. Except for a few hardy blossoms, my herbaceous borders are florally bankrupt.
Northwest Flower & Garden Show, take me away! Take me to a horticultural wonderland where the clematis bloom in February, water features never freeze, and the tulip bulbs are never devoured by marauding rodents. While some gardeners may be content to wait for paradise, I’ll seek it out in the 26 full-scale display gardens of Seattle’s granddaddy garden show, February 20-24 at the Washington State Convention Center. For a sampling of this year’s display gardens, read on.
A Spring Day: Pamela Richards Garden Design
Obviously, I’m a sucker for spring. So when I saw a display garden entitled “A Spring Day,” visions of daffodils danced in my head. I think I speak for the greater part of garden show attendees when I say, give me vernal rapture and plenty of it. And that’s just what Pamela Richards, the garden’s Seattle-based designer has done. Her vision is a coup de rouge in lipstick-red tulips and primroses and pots from Aw Pottery that extend the crimson tide. Dramatic red metal trellises, crafted by Jim Honold of Home and Garden Art in Ballard, WA, provide demarcation between the garden and a driveway that holds a Subaru Forester.
Here’s the story: It’s a glorious, early spring Saturday morn – the lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn. The homeowner, let’s call her Mindy, has just arrived home from a shopping trip, and the SUV is filled with books and nursery stock. She’ll finish unloading later; right now it’s time for lunch. Mindy loves her garden. She also loves old watering cans, and her collection is scattered throughout the garden. The red pots are joined by a variety of recycled galvanized buckets and washtubs, all holding bright branches, daffodils, foliage plants, grasses, and perhaps a sunny yellow forsythia or winter hazel (Corylopsis pauciflora). In the garden she's planted color-stemmed willows and dogwood, clematis and quince, coral bells (Heuchera hybrids) and lots of daffodils. The large path and patio are composed of green and white India sandstone from Lakeview Stone and Garden in Seattle. Mindy, however, has a life beyond the office and the garden. She has taken time out this idyllic spring day to hang a dress (guess what color) outside to freshen in the breeze. Tonight, Mindy will paint the town red.
Minding Your Peas and Cucs: Tips and techniques from fourteen years in a Northwest vegetable garden
By Wendy Tweten
As published in Master Gardener magazine
At some point you come to like the smell of fish fertilizer. Goodness knows it takes time, at least it did for me. One day, instead of recoiling from the familiar heady essence of liquefied sea creatures fermenting in my vegetable beds, I found the bilious brown stuff I’d been mixing and pouring for the better part of an hour suddenly began to smell like sweet success. At moments such as this, I believe, gardeners earn their green thumb.
Vegetable gardening is like that: we toil and fret, succeed and fail, and eventually realize we enjoy it all – even the parts that stink. Our efforts are repaid in full by baskets of sun-warmed tomatoes that taste like – well, tomatoes, and tender ears of corn the likes of which no supermarket has ever seen. There’s a primal satisfaction in not only feeding your family with the fruits of your labors, but of putting those “fruits” in the freezer for a winter’s worth of homegrown corn chowder and vegetable soup.
Of course, there’s no point in toiling and fretting more than we have to. The tool of greatest value to the aspiring vegetable gardener is the second-hand experience of other gardeners in your region. After fourteen years tending my 50-by-75-foot kitchen garden in the Puget Sound area, I am in the midst of making every mistake, trying every trick, and facing every dilemma to which the potager is prone. I am a woman in the trenches.
Washed and Worn
By Wendy Tweten
Unpublished
By the first day of summer my garden shed has accumulated so much dirt that I can skip the extra steps and grow the plants directly on the floor. So every June, out go the plants, up go my sleeves, and away goes a year’s worth of spilled potting soil, dead leaves, live spiders, and things best not examined too closely. I can’t wait.
Cleaning the house may be drudgery, but cleaning the garden shed is rare fun. Part of the appeal is that my potting shed/greenhouse – unlike toilets and laundry – gets cleaned but once a year. However, the best part of this annual rite of spring is the opportunity to caress and contemplate all the rusty garden tools, cracked crocks, and other wonderful old miscellany now spending its golden years in my care. Bliss, sheer bliss.
I do not labor alone. Joining me is my Sheltie pup Dobby, who will spend twenty minutes bullying the shop vac and the rest of the time curled up in the cool Kenilworth ivy just outside the door. Also on duty is a bossy junco that has been desperate to build her nest in the shed for the past three years. So obsessed is this batty bird that I recently caught her sneaking in through the ventilation shutter whenever it popped open (a trick which – until it’s solution – had me amazed at her powers of teleportation). Now she’s perched on a wrought iron plant hanger beneath the eaves irritably ticking at us, a black-bonneted virago clicking her tongue at a couple of squatters. How selfish of Dobby and me, she feels, to deny her children a roof over their heads.
One can hardly blame the little bird for wanting in. The shed is redolent of lemon blossoms in winter. In spring it amplifies the softest shower, and summer brings a tessellation of shadows through a deciduous magnolia. The elderly furniture and fixtures are the plunder of a thousand yard sales and would make my dear-departed, depression-era grandmother feel right at home. The ancient wooden hat box is stocked with perlite, and a peeling, painted sugar tin with dapper red Bakelite knob now dispenses grit for the tops of seed trays. Vestal white plant labels in a brown enamel pan carry the promise of gifts for friends – if the cuttings strike. Beneath the potting bench reside a variety of shallow crates imprinted with such happy thoughts as “Mrs. Fay’s Pies,” and “Drink 7Up Daily.” A small wooden cabinet, doubtless the product of a long-forgotten shop class, is signed “Made by Kurt Dec. 1975 Merry Christmas.” I wonder if Kurt ever inquires after his lovingly-crafted Christmas present.
Time now for some serious scrubbing. The back wall of the shed is paneled in crackle-painted pegboard from which hang dozens of shovels, spading forks, and other tools that once tended the victory gardens of America. Many of these timeworn veterans sport old-fashioned wooden D-handles, worn smooth by the hands of the greatest generation. On the floor below, a milk crate holds a contingent of venerable loppers, hedge shears, and pruning saws. There’s even a collection of old copper nozzles and sprinklers. Yet, I run no rest home: nearly everything in my shed earns its keep, and does so regularly.
I’m sure the use of such experienced tools benefits my gardening. Surely they possess an animistic memory of holes dug and rows hoed, like a stable of well-trained farm horses that need a driver only to hold up the reins. Soon they’ll join the red and white, spindle-legged table and faded McCoy cookie jar in being relatively grime free. Perhaps Dobby, the junco, and I should turn out the garden shed more often. But then, we wouldn’t want to have too much fun.
GARDEN WRITING
Flowery prose
Words by Wendy
