WOODLAND, ENRICHED

Mother’s Day, 2009 saw Eugene’s first formal tour of local gardens that feature native plants. The tour was organized by the Native Gardening Awareness Program (NGAP), a committee of the Emerald Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon. It was very well attended. NGAP member and tour organizer Mieko Aoki estimated that many of the gardens received well over 500 visitors. On May 9 we will be treated to a second Mother’s Day Native Garden Tour covering nine gardens and featuring a variety of Willamette Valley habitat types. Two gardens, one public, one private, are making a return appearance. The other seven are new.

One of those new gardens sits on a steep, wooded hillside of native oaks and Douglas fir on Shasta View, in Eugene’s south hills. It belongs to Clay Gautier and Gail Baker, who have lived there since 1995. At first glance, the place looks like native woodland, until you realize that no natural woodland could be so rich in species in such a small area. Aside from a raised bed bordering the driveway, it is largely native. The owners have incorporated a number of non-native rhododendrons (which are on a drip irrigation system) and there are places where vigorous native geum is fighting it out with patches of non-native geranium. But as Clay like to say, “on the genus level we are very native!”

Although Gautier and Baker describe the yard as pretty much a weed patch when they acquired it, there were some natives present besides the trees, particularly herbaceous ones: camas, Oregon iris, fawn lily and spring beauty. There was little in the way of native shrubs, except for some baldhip rose, snowberry, madrone and honeysuckle (Lonicera hispida), which is trimmed close to the ground to prevent it climbing the trees. There was also poison oak, which the owners suppressed by repeated manual clipping. They’ve added quantities of evergreen huckleberry, salal, Oregon grape, and vine maple, as well as ocean spray, red flowering currant and two Pacific dogwoods.

There are also several shrubs you encounter less often, among them Viburnum edule; white flowered Ceonothus cuneatus, a species you can see growing on Mt Pisgah; and manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana), a little leggy from the shade. The owners have introduced many herbaceous plants, as well. Besides such stars as trillium (both species that are locally native) and houndstongue, there are less conspicuous things like star flower, miners lettuce and pathfinder, and two good groundcovers: strawberry (probably Fragaria vesca) and false lily of the valley (Maianthemum dilatatum).

Camas was blooming when I visited. Since the deer fence was built, it blooms well and has spread. Baker said Gautier (who does most of the gardening) helps it along by shaking the seed pods around. Gautier is no longer adding much, he says, and describes the gardening routine as “mostly a removal process.” Maintenance consists of trimming back plants that get out of scale, and lots of weeding, which he does mostly in early spring. A big component of that is keeping out woody invasives such as English laurel, English hawthorn and blackberry. When I asked if they did any leaf removal, Gautier said that on the contrary, he brings in more leaves! Nothing is fertilized except the rhododendrons.

Not surprisingly, the garden attracts wildlife: newts and frogs, garter snakes and alligator lizards, foxes, moles and squirrels. Gautier has even seen a bobcat. Bird visitors include: woodpeckers (downy and pileated,) juncos, nuthatches, grossbeaks, hummingbirds and the occasional tanager.

Not far from the garden on Shasta View, just off Spring Boulevard, is a novel addition for a garden tour: Crescent Ridge is a compact planned development of ten houses clustered near the top of a 2.27 acre site, 50 percent of which is left undisturbed in native vegetation and existing trees. Runoffs from storm drains are designed to flow through the common area in a way to prevent erosion and minimize impact on the city storm water system. Individual home sites are landscaped with native plants.

Dogwood Time

So many dogwoods, so little space. There are about 45 species of cornus, the botanical name for dogwoods. Almost all of them shrubs or trees, ranging in height from a few inches to 75 feet. Many are native to North America; both the smallest and the tallest are native to Pacific Northwest forests. Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) keeps its woody parts below ground, while Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) grows into a soaring tree. Both of them have large white bracts that look like petals. The true flowers are small, and bunched together in a central disc between the bracts. A number of other dogwood species share this feature. Many other dogwoods are well worth growing, but deciduous species with showy bracts are the subject of this column.

Eastern, or flowering, dogwood (Cornus florida) is a slow-growing tree that usually grows 20-25 feet, forming a rounded, low-branching crown. Gardeners love this tree for its modest size, long spring display and a beguiling twiggy, layered. Bracts are normally white, but cultivars with pink or reddish bracts are very popular. This should be the perfect tree for small gardens, and sometimes it is. Unfortunately it is prone to anthracnose, a serious fungal disease that demands regular applications of chemicals for effective control. Adequate water, feeding and good air circulation may help protect it against anthracnose.

The same disease afflicts our Pacific dogwood unless it grows in perfect conditions. It is a taller, narrower tree than Eastern dogwood and less densely twiggy and floriferous. But the bracts are larger, and the tree is very beautiful in bloom. The vigorous selection ‘Colrigo Giant’ has 6 - 8 inch flower heads. Pacific dogwood frequently reblooms in late summer and has red fall color. For some reason, it is more common in and near Portland than in the southern Willamette Valley. We see it at its best at higher elevations, as along the Mckenzie highway.

Unlike the Eastern dogwood, Pacific dogwood dislikes conventional garden conditions with summer irrigation, fertilizer and pruning, and the bark is easily damaged. It prefers very good drainage and minimal summer watering, and should certainly be tried in native gardens. Since it can be difficult to transplant successfully, many professionals suggest establishing very young plants. If at all possible, choose a location for either dogwood that is not too hot but has excellent air circulation. Both are understory trees in nature, but being crowded in by larger trees exacerbates disease.

Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’, a hybrid between Eastern and Pacific dogwoods, is intermediate in overall shape, has large bracts and blooms more or less with C. nuttallii. It is better adapted to garden conditions than Pacific dogwood, and is said to be somewhat resistant to anthracnose. For dependable disease resistance, though, gardeners turn to Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa). This one blooms in early summer after the leaves have expanded, and therefore lacks the particular beauty of trees that flower on leafless branches; but Chinese dogwood is lovely in its own way, and has attractive, clean looking foliage. It naturally makes a big, multistemmed shrub, but can be trained to a single trunk.

Although not entirely immune to anthracnose, Chinese dogwood is much more resistant than American ‘flowering’ dogwoods. This resistance apparently carries through in hybrids between Cornus kousa and C. florida. ‘Stella Aurora’ (white ‘flowers’) and ‘Stellar Pink’ are the result of a breeding program at Rutgers University. They grow with a single trunk to 20 feet tall and wide. Bloom is heavy and intermediate in time between the parents. Fall color is said to be brilliant, as is C. kousa.
Cornus ‘Starlight’ is a new Rutgers cross between C. kousa and C. nuttallii. I look forward to seeing this one.

If you don’t have room for any of these trees, there is always tiny, creeping bunchberry (Cornus canadensis). Give it a cool, spongy soil in light shade, and it makes the world’s most elegant ground cover.

Seed, Save, Share

Those peas I planted in a raised bed a few weeks ago were up in less than two weeks, preceded first by radishes, then arugula. Who knows what the weather may do now, and whether they will flourish. At least I had the pleasure of watching the seeds sprout. Seeds I deliberately planted, that is. Germination has always been part of my gardening life, because I appreciate the volunteers (usually decorative, but occasionally edible) that crop up in my gardens. From time to time I have even scattered seed of love-in-a-mist, a poppy or my favorite white foxglove directly from the pod, but somehow that wasn’t quite the same.

The satisfaction in watching veggie seeds germinate got me meditating on the state of the seed industry. A handful of corporations now own the production of half the world’s seed, perhaps more. A few years ago one of those companies, Monsanto, notorious for its ruthless promotion of GMO crops and weed killer, bought up Seminis Vegetable Seeds Inc., the world's largest seed producer. Almost all seed retailers handle Seminis seeds, which include many varieties purchased by organic growers.

This concentration of seed production has had the effect of reducing the range of seed varieties available, squeezing out many of lesser commercial value. Some people say this trend has slowed with the growing enthusiasm for home vegetable gardening. Let’s hope so. There is also the issue of contamination by GMOs. Pollen travels, and organic seed producers and breeders see their businesses threatened by the cultivation of GM alfalfa, beets or kale too close to their land. The USDA argues that contamination by GM genes doesn’t matter, but the current definition of Organic includes freedom from GMOs, and that’s the way most of us want it.

One way to thumb your nose at Monsanto and company is to save your own seeds. Saving and sowing your own is no longer simply a pleasure or a necessity, depending on your circumstances; it has come to feel like a revolutionary act. In reality, not every vegetable gardener is going to save seed. It takes extra ground, extra work, and attention to detail. Except for the easiest, self-pollinating crops, successful seed saving requires isolating crops from one another and, in some cases, from their wild relatives. For the most part you’ll need to stick with open pollinated (OP) seed sources, and you may lose out on some of the vigor and productivity associated with hybrid seed.

There are several practical arguments for saving seed, however, besides economy and subversion. One of the things that gets lost with mega-ownership of seed production is a wealth of varieties naturally selected to succeed in the place where they grow. Then there is taste preference. If you grow your own tomatoes, you’ll favor one that tastes the way you like it. It won’t matter very much to you what it’s shelf life is or whether the skin is tough enough to survive a trip to market. In growing and saving seed from a particularly tasty variety you are helping to perpetuate the line.

For a comprehensive account of seed saving and plant breeding in all its aspects, see Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving by Corvallis author Carol Deppe. (An older, smaller and less ambitious book by Marc Rogers, Saving Seeds, is still a useful introduction to the topic.)

Many people in the Willamette Valley community of gardeners and farmers are deeply concerned about threats to seed and crop diversity and are doing something about it.
The 2010 Spring Propagation Fair will be held March 13, 2010 at Lane Community College Cafeteria, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. This event is a free exchange of vegetable seed and fruit-tree cuttings, called ‘scions’. Grafting help (free) and rootstock (for a small charge) will be available. There will also be workshops. If you can, bring your own seeds, plants, or fruit cuttings to share. Sponsoring organizations include the Eugene Permaculture Guild, the Seed Ambassadors Project, the National Clonal Germplasm Repository and Food Not Lawns.

Head Start

I’m fond of saying that gardening in January is optional. Do it if you feel like it, and if you don’t, there is not much harm done. By February, on the other hand, it’s time to get busy. I like to get a head start on weeding by the middle of the month. I also cut down the brown tops of ornamental grasses, perennials and summer-blooming clematis and tackle a few shrubs that are routinely pruned to stubs in winter, such as red twig dogwoods and summer-flowering spiraea. I leave more tender items until spring is well underway. Especially If it is gray or silver or has aromatic leaves, severe pruning now may discourage it!

February is also a good time to plant bare-root roses, fruit trees and bush fruits. Any woody plant you get in the soil now will benefit from months of root growth in a moist and warming soil. But the condition of your soil, its workability, will really determine how much you can get done this month. Some parts of my new yard are workable after one or two days without rain. Other areas, including some that were in perfect tilth last summer, are saturated with running water and turn to mud when disturbed. Then there are areas of nearly unadulterated clay that will need serious remedial action before they can be worked at all. Only the raised beds in the food garden are completely tractable.

Kale and sprouting broccoli starts I planted late last fall have displayed a little growth spurt in every spell of milder weather, and corn salad seeded in about the same time has grown to the size of a quarter. Clearly these beds will warm up faster than any soil at grade. This raises the question, how early is it worth seeding cool-weather crops like peas and radishes? Nick Routledge, caretaker for FOOD for Lane County Youth Farm and erstwhile nurseryman for the Springfield Transitions Garden, takes a serious interest in extending the gardening season. He points out that Asian greens, mustards and arugula are all strong germinators in cool soils.

Routledge warned that February is the month when inexperienced gardeners tend to seed too early. Hold off on seeding those warmer season crops until March or April. But If a warm spell in February or early March makes you feel like sowing pea seeds directly in the soil, he said, “Do it! You might not get another window for two or three months.” As far as peas go, he added, “when I am pushing the envelope I not only seed directly in the ground when weather and ground allow but also earlier, into cells in the greenhouse. That way we get a jump on the season even if the ground is too cold or wet to seed directly and/or slug pressure in the garden is too intense.” Peas hate bottom heat, according to Routledge, and will germinate just fine in an unheated space.

Here’s the risk you run with early direct seeding: If the weather turns seriously wet and chilly, seeds may rot in the ground before they germinate, good drainage not withstanding. A cloche or cold frame will raise the odds in your favor, both by protecting the soil in a raised bed from excess rain and by trapping some extra warmth. I’m trying the low-cost solution I photographed in Tom and Victoria Schneider’s garden. Plastic, Reemay or shade cloth, depending on seasonal micro-climate needs, is attached with clothes pegs to hoops made of welded wire fencing. The ends are usually left open, but can be covered for extra protection during cold spells. Hoops need to be secured against the wind in winter. The Schneiders tie theirs to stakes set firmly in the ground around the raised bed. The hoops hang flat on a nearby garden fence when not in use.
There will be a free Spring Seeding and Greenhouse Management Workshop at the Youth Farm (705 Flamingo, Springfield) 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Saturday February 13. An opportunity to meet gardeners and farmers with a great deal of experience to share. For example, here’s more from Routledge: “Some seeds require higher temperatures to germinate than plants need to grow. Most don’t need light to germinate, so stack seed trays next to your woodstove, and move them outside once the seedlings are up.”

EW February 11, 2010

Winter Winners

That cold snap in early December, the harshest since 1991, was tough on many ornamental plants that usually look pretty good all winter here in the southern Willamette Valley. Some evergreen plants we have come to view as hardy, such as camellias and Mexican orange blossom, especially where exposed to morning sun, were quite badly scorched. So it was heartening to discover, on an early January visit to Gossler Farms Nursery (a garden well known for all-season interest) that most staples of the winter garden were looking fine.

In the Gosslers’ cozy office, I asked Roger Gossler the obvious question: If you could choose just one plant to add pep to the winter landsacpe, what would it be? Roger didn’t have to think long before responding, though he picked not one but two: hybrid hamamelis (witch hazel) and Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’. For much of the year, witch hazels don’t look all that exciting, as Roger pointed out. “But when you see one in full bloom in January you just want it so bad.” Fall color is excellent, too.

Many of the 50-odd witch hazels at Gosslers (mostly the Chinese Hamamelis mollis or Asian hybrids (H. x intermedia) were indeed blooming the first week in January, unfurling their skinny but abundant petals in bright yellow, light yellow, coppery orange or crimson, but they don’t all bloom at once. ‘Early Bright’ is perhaps 2 weeks ahead of the main season, Roger says, while the newer introduction ‘Angelly’ is in flower “clear into March.” Different colors are scattered through the planting that lines the main driveway, and Roger loves the way they carry the eye through the garden.

Most hamamelis varieties grow moderately slowly, to 12-15 feet tall in 30 years and about as wide, although the justly popular ‘Arnold Promise’, an upright grower with lots of bright yellow, fragrant flowers and magnificent fall color, may limit itself to 10 feet in width in sun. Witch hazels need very little pruning until they approach maturity, when the Gosslers recommend frequent, light thinning to keep them open and vigorous. If space is at a premium, Roger suggests you cut stems for the house when the shrub is in bloom, to keep a plant about 8 to 10 feet tall.

Roger’s other choice, Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’, is one of those shrubby dogwoods with colorful stems, sporting a vivid blend of yellow, orange and red. Young wood shows the brightest color, so Roger cuts the plants right down to about 8 inches in mid-March, “when the magnolias are blooming.” Even very small gardens can accommodate ‘Midwinter Fire’ when it is pruned this way. Golden fall foliage is the icing on the cake.

After some lengthy chat about witch hazels, I asked what else stands out. What about that pine that turns yellow in winter? (I had noticed a nine or ten foot specimen as I drove to the office.) This lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia ‘Chief Joseph’), discovered in the Wallowa Mountains by a hunter, looks much like any other lodgepole in the summer. About mid-October, depending on the weather, it turns bright yellow in the space of a week, then stays that way until March, when warmer temperatures cause it to green up again.

When I asked Roger’s mother, Marj, if she would contribute a favorite, she indicated a hybrid Asian mahonia (Mahonia x media) just outside the window. Most of the specimens at the nursery had lost their flowers and even showed some foliage burn from the cold, but this one, sheltered from morning sun, was more or less intact and blooming. Many gardeners avoid these magnificent Oregon grape relatives because they look so spiny, but Roger says that they are no problem once you get them in the ground! Their structural drama and fragrant winter bloom (much earlier than Oregon Grape) makes them worth the trouble. Annas hummingbirds love them, too.

You can see all these shrubs and many more outstanding garden plants at the Gosslers’ family run nursery, 1200 Weaver Road, Springfield. It is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday throughout the year. To visit at another time, call ahead (541-746-3922).
A fine book by Roger, Marj and Roger’s brother, Eric Gossler, was published recently by Timber Press. The Gossler Guide to the Best Hardy Shrubs is the culmination of many decades of experience, research and observation, discriminating plant selection and sheer love of plants. It is informative and entertaining and I heartily recommend it.

EW

PERENNIAL VEGGIES

I’ve been reading Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier (published by Chelsea Green). Did you know scarlet runner beans are perennial? I didn’t, even though I grew up eating runner beans and still consider the flat, rough textured pods more delicious than regular green beans. They are evidently useable as shell beans and dry beans as well. The Willamette Valley climate is probably marginal for over-wintering runner beans, but they might survive some of our winters in raised beds. I think I’ll try it, but people who live at the relatively frost-free coast may have more luck.

When Randy and I moved to a new house in September, we were partly escaping an arduously steep and sometimes icy driveway. But we also hope to become less car dependent and a little ‘greener’ in other ways as well: line dry the laundry when practical, generate some solar power, grow a little food, and take advantage of a fresh start to plant more natives, both for the benefit of bugs and birds and to cut down on summer watering.
There are other ways I can be a more responsible gardener. Trucking out yard debris and trucking in compost will be phased out to reduce fossil fuel consumption. That requires making room for a generous utility area for debris storage and composting.

Another way I can save on energy and materials is to stick with existing grades and hardscape features. The east side of our yard, where I am planning to plant natives, includes a formal rectangle of level grass bounded on three sides with concrete. I first considered removing some concrete in order to restore a more natural looking grade, but then it occurred to me this flat area is just the right size for a second food garden. It happens to contain our only outdoor water source and a fig tree that bears really good figs; building garden beds in there would justify leaving both in place.

I have a growing fascination with perennial vegetables. The concept may be novel to many people, since most of our food comes from annual crops. Perennial food plants are, however, mainstays of permaculture gardens, where one goal is to grow as much food as possible with a minimum of inputs, work and soil disturbance. And when you stop and think about it, most of us already eat a few perennials. Think asparagus, rhubarb, and artichokes. Sunchokes, watercress and walking onions are relatively familiar, too, but the bulk of Toensmeyer’s very long list of perennial veggies lie well beyond the average gardener’s consciousness (Atriplex, anyone? Good King Henry?).

Many of those plants originate in the tropics, so they are frost tender. Among the hardier sort, some are unacceptably invasive and some seem to be too much trouble to prepare. Others are just not that good to eat, or may take a lot of getting used to. After winnowing out the ones with significant negatives, we are left with respectable list that’s growable west of the Cascades. Personally, I am most interested in sea-kale, a cabbage relative that I picked on the south coast of England as a child; and in Good King Henry, which produces edible shoots early in the year. Climbing Malabar spinach and New Zealand spinach are probably too tender to over winter in the Valley. No such problem with French sorrel or celery-flavored lovage, though.

Perennial vegetables are a bit more self-sufficient than annual crops because they have larger root systems that go deep in the ground and forage for water and nutrients. And, of course, they entail less annual digging and tilling. Because of that, and because they do need scrupulous weeding, it makes sense to grow them in a seperate garden space from annual vegetables. Perennial herbs like fennel and chives can share the space, along with plants that draw beneficial insects. I’d like to try ‘forcing’ or blanching rhubarb, chicory and sea-kale under black plant pots with a brick on top. Forcing makes shoots a little earlier, more tender and milder tasting . Alas, I don’t own lovely terra cotta forcing pots like those in the picture.

Finding starts or seed of the less familiar perennial vegetables may be a challenge. Sea-kale seems to be available as plants from ForestFarm and as seed from JL Hudson. It is also grown as an ornamental for its cloud of little white flowers, so I can try flower seed sources as well. Good King Henry seeds, unless available at local seed swaps, may require an internet search or even a trip to Europe.

EW December 2009

Necessary Natives

My husband and I recently moved to a new house, and one goal I have for our new garden is to plant a sizable chunk of it with native shrubs and grasses. I look forward to planting vine maple, red flowering currant and mock orange, and perhaps ocean spray or Pacific ninebark. But all these shrubs are deciduous, and I would like some smallish evergreens as well, to keep things interesting in winter. Oregon grape is an obvious candidate, for wildlife value and its assertive leaves. There are already one or two plants of tall Oregon grape (Berberis aquifolium), and a little bit of shade where I can plant long leaf Oregon grape (Berberis nervosa). I’ve just planted my favorite, compact form of tall Oregon grape on a sunny corner, where it will develop great winter color. What else?

At first glance it may seems that, conifers aside, native evergreen shrubs are a little thin on the ground. But I am not going to be a purist about this native business, if that means limiting myself to species found right here in the Southern Willamette Valley. That’s just too strict for my gardener’s heart to contemplate. But if you interpret ‘native’ as indigenous not only to the Willamette Valley but to all of Western Oregon the list of plausible evergreens grows quite long and various. Local nurseries have long sold Oregon wax myrtle and kinnickinnick, which are not valley natives. Including other species from the coast and from the mountains provides the wonderful evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), native rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum), coast silk tassel (Garrya elliptica) and even, for those of us with some very free draining soil, manzanita.

Hairy Manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana) does belong in the valley, according to my references, but we don’t see it often. There are other less familiar valley and foothill natives, such as buckbrush (Ceonothus cuneatus), an evergreen ceonothus that can grow to 8 feet. Two smaller plants in this category that particularly interest me are coyote brush and Oregon boxwood. Sun-loving coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) has small, silvery green leaves and fall flowers that are attractive to insects. Deer do not seem to eat it. At four to eight feet this is not always a small shrub, but it seems to tolerate considerable pruning, and the leaf color is appealing. It’s not a common plant in nurseries, but Fern Hill Nursery in Cottage Grove sells it. I’m thinking of making a coyote brush hedge.

Oregon boxwood (Pachistima myrsinites), also called mountain lover (and sometimes spelled paxistima), is common in the mountains and occasional in the foothills. It has little dark green leaves and a dainty way of growing. Last spring I noticed it teaming up with beargrass, right at the edge of the cliff above Tamolitch Pool on the McKenzie River. They made a lively combination that I hope to reproduce just as soon as I can provide a gritty slope in light shade. Oregon box is not always easy to please, but it is well worth trying if you want a native, shade-loving low-growing evergreen (1 to 3 feet). Unfortunately it is difficult to find. ForestFarm in Williams, Oregon lists it but is currently out of stock.

EW November 2009