My biz partner Patricia equates plant propagation with visiting a nursery… “buying plants, that’s propagation right?” Well truth be told that’s pretty much how I do it too. After all it’s a plant lust mission to support our contributing nurseries, a JOB requirement!
My most successful (nonshoping) propagating experience thus far can be attributed to Mother Nature. Those plants that are supposed to be wicked reseeders? I rarely experience that side of their personality, perhaps due to my propensity for tidiness (I really do try to let them linger and go to seed). The exception is Euphorbia rigida, seedlings actually appeared! I’ve moved many of them around the garden, but love how these five plants placed themselves just so along the sidewalk and pathway in front of our house.
Many people break down the plant selling biz along these lines: there are nurseries and there are plant stores, plant stores sell the plants the nurseries grow. However when a plant store becomes a destination for both new and experienced gardeners alike, heck even non gardeners, and manages to alter the conversation about plants…well, that plant store might just have become an icon.
On the short list of ways I enjoy spending my time, and money, traveling comes right after buying plants. Or maybe they should be equal, because while traveling I can buy plants?
Wherever I venture I make a point of visiting neighborhoods. Walking up and down streets and seeing how the residents garden (or don’t) tells me a lot about an area. My most recent explorations took place in the Bay Area of California, a climate that sends me into plant lust overload. Seeing a garden like the one pictured below is escapism at its best!
However it is one thing to lust over something you cannot have, it’s another when you discover a new obsession that just might be in your growing zone. Let me back up a bit…
One of our primary goals at plant lust is to support the fabulous independent and specialty nurseries which grow (as well as discover and then propagate/or breed) the plants we lust after. While you can always peruse their offerings on our website a visit to the actual nursery is a special treat and one we intend to share occasionally here on the blog.
Today we’re visiting Cistus Design Nursery on Sauvie Island, just 15 miles from downtown Portland. The folks at Cistus have been enthusiastic supporters of plant lust since (practically) the very beginning and we certainly feel the same about what they’re up to. Here’s a little background on the nursery: “Cistus is a unique micro-nursery founded in 1996 by Parker Sanderson and Sean Hogan. The nursery has a strong botanical foundation drawn from the pair’s professional backgrounds; Parker having been Horticulturalist at the Arboretum at University of California at Davis and Sean a Curator at University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Their exciting collection of treasures, gathered around the globe with brilliant plantspeople, quickly outgrew a 100-year-old greenhouse in North Portland so the nursery opened to the public on Sauvie Island in 2000, expanding in 2003.”
Recently there was a visitor to my garden who just happened to focus on a pair of particularly fragrant plants, ones that smell like something you’d eat. First up, Melianthus major ‘Antonow’s Blue’. Touch its leaves and you’ll smell peanut butter, well that’s what I smell, some say honey.
Next, Cassia didymobotrya. When lightly bruised the foliage releases the scent of buttered popcorn.
This simple garden was a chance discovery after grabbing lunch one day.
It features an extremely refined plant selection of golden grasses along with trees and shrubs that have peeling bark, and of there are course multiples of each. Along the public sidewalk there’s a row of Arctostaphylos, probably A. densiflora ‘Harmony’ – they are under-planted with Stipa tenuissima. (more…)
If I said I planted a Bird of Paradise in my garden what image would come to mind? The plant shown below, , with the beautiful orange bloom, aka Bird of Paradise?
Or maybe this, Strelitzia Nicolai (aka White Bird of Paradise) with it’s striking black and white flower?
Or maybe this, , commonly called Pride of Barbados, but also referred to as Red Bird of Paradise?
Based on the common names you’d be correct if you thought of any of those options, and more, and that’s why botanical names are so important. Common names can be misleading. On my personal blog, danger garden, I get comments from readers asking me to please refer to plants by their common names. Or as one person said “Eek gads woman, speak English…your cornucopia of flora elicitation is causing my acers to hurt” (Don’t you just love that? I really wish I could meet her in person). Whenever possible I try to include both names, although at times it simply is not possible. Sometimes there’s not a common name, and that’s okay. Botanical names are much more informative. (more…)
My business partner Megan has said, “There is no such thing as a bad plant, just plants used badly.” I’m pretty sure she’s on to something.
Some plants get a bad rap because they’re work-horses, standards used over and over again, often in commercial settings where they’re abused – and thus not looking their best. Some plants become representatives for an entire genus, like the ubiquitous rhododendron foundation plantings seen in front of every third house in my Portland neighborhood. How many casual gardeners have the opportunity to discover unique rhododendron species, those beyond the common? And some plants are disliked simply because familiarity breeds contempt. In my case the conifer I grew up with, Pinus ponderosa – growing everywhere in my native Eastern Washington – was so ever-present and looming, they turned me against conifers in general.
I am a strong believer that when it comes to gardening, rules are made to be broken. Recently my garden was open to 80+ garden bloggers from around the world. The comments I enjoyed the most were ones along the lines of “seeing your garden helped me realize I don’t need to pay attention to the rules, they don’t matter, I needed to start doing what makes me happy.”
