Trout, Fawns and Dog's Teeth

I first encountered Oregon fawnlilies (Erythronium oregonum) in the yards of older homes in Eugene’s rocky south west hills, where I lived at the time. Sturdy little relics of pre-development days, they still grow there in the thin grass under native oaks and widely spaced Douglas firs. These cream colored, down-facing ‘lilies’ on stems less than a foot high flourish in open woodland throughout the Willamette Valley and elsewhere west of the Cascade mountains, blooming in late March and April.

Erythronium species occur naturally in Asia, Europe and North America. Most of them, around 20 species, are found in Western North America. Dog’s tooth violet, adder’s tongue and troutlily are all common names for various erythroniums, but those in the American west are generally called fawnlilies. The first name refers to the oddly shaped, elongated bulb, while troutlily and fawnlily reflect the brownish spots or mottling on the leaves of some species, including Oregon fawnlily.

Much less common in our area than Oregon fawnlily is the pink coast fawnlily (Erythronium revolutum). It grows in meadows and damp forests close to the coast, from northern California to the Olympics. The leaves sport a network of silvery white or brownish veins. You can see coast fawnlilies in the rhododendron garden at Hendricks Park in Eugene, where it was introduced many years ago. The splendid white-flowered avalanche lily (E. montanum), a species you may run into at higher elevations in the Coast Range and the Cascades, has plain green leaves.

Avalanche lily is reputedly difficult to grow, but some species of erythronium do really well in gardens. Oregon fawnlily spreads by seed and stolons and may form wide-spreading colonies in a well-drained, woodsy area that gets some sun in spring. (All species go dormant after they set seed.) In more conventional flower gardens it may be easier to find a home for the kinds that readily make bulb offsets and form clumps. These include the beautiful European dog’s-tooth violet (Erythronium dens-canis), but I have had difficulty getting this established in my garden.

I’ve been more successful with coast fawnlily and two robust, well-tested garden varieties, Erythronium californicum ‘White Beauty’ and E. ‘Pagoda’, a cross between ‘White Beauty’ and the yellow-flowered, plain green-leafed E. tuolumnense. You can grow these in ordinary good (not too heavy) garden soil between small shrubs and other clump-forming perennials. They will tolerate moderate summer watering as long as the soil is well-drained. It is a good idea to mark the clumps so you won’t disturb them during their long summer dormancy and so that you can keep vigorous, self-sown plants like foxglove and columbine from gobbling them up.

Common Oregon fawn lily can be grown from seed. You can also buy bulbs, from late summer into fall, from Buggy Crazy at the Lane County Farmers’ Market. Sometimes Buggy Crazy has other species, too. Plant sales are another good source: watch for sales, coming up in spring, sponsored by Destination Imagination, Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, Avid Gardeners and the Willamette Valley Hardy Plant Group. Go early.

EW April 2009

Tails of Glory

The British have always had an eye for a good plant, and anything that looks alluring in a gloomy northern winter should be downright irresistible. So it’s not surprising Brits embraced the Oregon native, coast silktassel bush (Garrya elliptica). Scottish explorer and plant hunter David Douglas introduced the plant to cultivation in 1828, along with salal and red-flowering currant, from seed he collected in the Pacific Northwest. Since it is the only member of the genus that is commonly encountered it is usually called silktassel or just garrya.

In London, where I spent this winter, silktassel is almost ubiquitous, yet I rarely see it in Oregon gardens. At the coast, where it grows naturally, it is happy as a clam. Given a little shade from the hottest sun and shelter from wind, it also does fine in the Willamette Valley. Why don’t we plant it more often? One reason may be that it can grow a little thin and gangly, and gardeners seem conditioned to expect evergreens to be dense and rounded. Unfortunately, many of the plants that fill that bill grow too big, too fast. Some, such as cherry laurel and Portugal laurel, are also highly invasive. In the right situation, silktassel may be a good alternative.

What’s so great about silktassel is its catkins. Most of the year it is just an unexceptional evergreen, whose dark green, leathery leaves with wavy margins and palely felted undersides are not quite distinctive enough to get your attention. But from December through February, when it shakes out those beguiling, gray-green tassels, a good specimen will stop you in your tracks. Female plants that have a male companion produce fruit that attract birds, but male plants are most often planted because they have longer, showier catkins. The American cultivar ‘James Roof’ has catkins a foot long.

Garrya grows at a moderate rate to 8-12 feet, in sun or shade. The leaves may burn in hot locations (don’t plant it against an unshaded south-facing wall) while in heavy shade the bush will be quite scrawny. You can minimize this effect by planting several young plants in a group two feet apart, shortening young growth occasionally to help maintain density. I’ve seen this done effectively in London parks. Alternatively, you can train your silktassel on a cool wall or fence. It’s young limbs are flexible, and an espalier is a wonderful way to show off the catkins. In a sunny place you can also train it as a small tree for maximum display.

A word of warning: silktassel does not recover well after transplanting, nor does it like to be cut way back (as in renewal pruning). So you want to get it in the right place early on and prune it, where necessary, lightly and often. Like many Oregon natives, silktassel is tolerant of drought. It also puts up with pollution, and does not appear to be fussy about soil type. It does, however, need good drainage, especially where it grows in heavy soil. Plant it slightly above grade, and be sparing with summer water. If it grows quickly but is slow to flower, the soil may be too fertile.

EW March 2009

World Class Hellebores

Northwest Garden Nursery has long been a favorite destination for savvy gardeners. People have come from all over to view the glorious garden and salivate over the nursery’s inventory of desirable perennials. As word spread that the nursery was phasing out most of that inventory and, except for spring open days, closing to the public, gardeners mourned. But owners Ernie and Marietta O’Byrne now specialize in breeding garden hybrid hellebores (commonly called Lenten rose), and the plants they offer are among the finest in the world.

Marietta says she became hooked on hybrid hellebores when she saw the gorgeous photos in ‘The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hellebores’ by Rice and Strangman (Timber Press, 1993). She was soon making her own crosses between selected plants in the nursery garden. In 2003, the O’Byrnes got serious, traveling to Europe to acquire the best available breeding stock, including their first double-flowered plants and, in Marietta’s words, “some wonderful clean colors, including the best blacks.”

Look at the nursery’s website to see where the O’Byrnes have taken those colors. Marietta now focuses on crosses within selected color groups, continually aiming to improve the clarity of color, the vigor of the plant and foliage quality. She also breeds for subtle traits such as interesting backs to the tepals (the proper name for the petal-like flower parts). That’s what you mostly you see in the garden, since the flowers hang downward.

The breeding process is tedious and a lot of work. I asked Marietta what she likes best about the process. “Pollination,” she answers. “I like taking my time selecting flowers to cross. I enjoy looking inside the flowers, especially now I make crosses with the plants on a table in the greenhouse!” She pollinates each chosen flower before it opens, applying pollen two or three times to ensure good seed production. In April she bags the pollinated flowers to catch the ripened seed.

Every stock plant has a number. Ernie keeps a book of ‘mug shots’ and another with a full description of each plant. Seed from selected groups of plants is pooled and transferred to yogurt containers. The seed must not dry out and has to be sown while fresh. The O’Byrnes try to finish the job by early June. Most seeds germinate by January, and seedlings are transplanted when the first true leaves appear. It takes up to three years from seed to produce a saleable plant in flower.

Hellebores like those you see at Northwest Garden Nursery are not cheap. Double-flowered plants cost even more, both because they produce less seed, and because some offspring will inevitably come out single. But garden hybrid hellebores are long-lived, shade loving, healthy and adaptable. They start to bloom in January and continue until May; they have handsome evergreen leaves and deer don’t eat them. At the nursery, you get to choose between hundreds of unique plants, in bloom. Quite a bargain, I’d say.

Northwest garden Nursery will be open for hellebore sales on Feb 14 and 15, Feb 21 and 22, and Feb 28 and March 1. After that, the nursery will be open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM, each week until April 10th. Check the website for directions (www.northwestgardennursery.com) or phone 541 935 3915.

EW February 2009

Sheds and the Zen of Gardening
Inspirational winter reading
December, 2008

I am not usually attracted to literature from the overtly spiritual side of gardening, but Wendy Johnson’s down-to-earth attitude and beautiful, vigorous writing style completely won me over. Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World is an extraordinary interweaving of philosophy, story-telling and first-hand garden wisdom - a rich, wide-ranging memoir stretching over more than three decades of an admirable life spent working hard and sitting zazen.

Johnson is a lay teacher of Zen meditation. She is also a gardener and activist, a fierce defender of the natural world. “The monastic path is not my way,” she writes, and she followed an unconventional path even within the Zen community in Marin County that became her home and workplace. “From the first moment, Zen practice was a field of action for me, never a safe haven from the world.” Her view of gardening is very much the same.

Johnson’s first and apparently skeptical encounter with meditation occurred in the early 1970s, when she was a young American expatriot living in Israel. The war in Vietnam raged on, and like many people of that age and time she was unhappy, restless and adrift. Meditation offered a lifeline. When she returned to America, she went first to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and later, with the man who was to become her husband, to another branch of the San Francisco Zen Center, Green Gulch Farm, where they helped to establish a productive organic garden.

Throughout the book, Johnson quotes her Zen ‘lead teachers’ and some great, eccentric gardening mentors who helped to shape her. On the practical side, Johnson is her own gardener and a passionate advocate for deep digging, hand watering and persevering with native soil, rather than that “soul-free” stuff you buy. (How right she is!) She is terrific on soil management, composting and pests, and conflicts between Buddhism and the exigencies of gardening are wryly noted. Later chapters tell of other gardens, hunger and harvest, and the importance of real food.

In the East, the dragon represents wisdom and transformation. Another name for Green Gulch Farm is Green Dragon Temple, and the author describes Green Gulch itself as a dragon writhing up out of the sea. The dragon’s gate of the title might be simply a metaphor for the threshold between that garden and the wild world beyond. At the end of the Acknowledgements, however, Johnson brings up global warming. “My fiercest mentors remind me that this is the best and worst time to be alive. Gardening at the dragon’s gate, at the edge of consequential danger and pivotal opportunity, may we acknowledge the truth of our times and work together for the benefit of all beings.”

Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate by Wendy Johnson is published in paperback by Bantam Books, with drawings by Davis Te Selle.

Need a special place to meditate? Another West Coast writer, Debra Prinzing, has published an lovely book entitled Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways. It is a series of studies, in text and photographs, of various interpretations of the garden shed idea. Not all their owners and designers call them sheds, of course: there are pavilions, tea houses, pods and even a chapel. Most are highly functional for their intended job, while a few are pure whimsy.

Some are fancy potting sheds, others are studios for writers and painters, or playhouses, repositories for collections of objects, private meditation zones or spaces for entertaining. All are stylish in one way or another, from cute to futuristic. Some are very grand, way beyond the means of most of us, but presented in all their variety they are an inspiration. Needless to say, the gardens that contain these structures are as different in style as the sheds and their owners, and vignettes of flowers, animals, kids and artifacts increase the pleasure. I challenge you to look at this book without coming up with a few ideas to enhance your outdoor space.

Stylish Sheds by Debra Prinzing is published in hardback by Potter. Lavishly illustrated with excellent photography by William Wright.

Cleaning Up

What a glorious fall we’ve had this year, and I am not just referring to the election. The crap-shoot that is Oregon weather brought not only great wine grapes and an embarrassment of apples and pears to the Willamette Valley but also fall color like we haven’t seen in decades. As November approached and I marveled at the colors in the wider landscape I’ve also appreciated the smaller, subtler effects in my own garden, as perennials, shrubs and grasses prepare for dormancy.

Like many flower gardeners, I've concluded there is too much to lose from cutting down and removing a whole season’s biomass in an October clean-up. Particularly this year. After a brief period of chilly but (at least here in town) frost-free nights, the weather has turned mild. What isn’t arrayed in yellow or scarlet is still fresh. Some ornamental grasses are still green and vibrant, while anemones, fuchsias, dahlias, cannas and the occasional rose providing mementoes of summer glories.

Late color isn’t the only thing we sacrifice in the name of clean-up. Beetles and spiders over-winter in cozy perennial clumps, and birds enjoy foraging for seed; a layer of coarse organic debris prevents compaction from rain. All the same, most of this detritus must go to the compost heap eventually, and there are both horticultural and esthetic reasons for doing it sooner rather than later.

Fallen leaves left lying on evergreen plants can result in bald spots. Diseased foliage on roses and irises and rotting, rain-soaked blooms increase your garden’s bank of fungal spores. A few plants, notably kniphofias and some irises, are easier to cut back before they rot, while others look just plain ugly beyond a certain stage of decomposition.

A bit of clean-up makes it easier to plant bulbs in perennial and shrub borders. It also makes a more attractive setting for emerging bulbs in early spring, and may help keep you out of sensitive beds in February, when the ground is wet and the emerging snouts of bulbs are especially vulnerable.

If you do go in for clean-up and prefer to do it in stages, what should be your priorities? Starting in the areas you see most often, clean up around small evergreen shrubs so you can actually enjoy them. They will also benefit from more light and improved air circulation. Remove seed heads from things that self sow wildly - it will save work later. Clean up diseased foliage and any frosted plant tops. Mulch exposed soil wherever possible.

Care of ornamental grasses can be confusing because they vary so much in their life cycles. Some change color rapidly in autumn and then collapse. Clean these up any time. Some adopt fall colors gradually and remain standing well into the new year. Cutting them down now won’t hurt them, but as long as you like the way they look, let them stand. Just remember that if you leave the clumps uncut much after January new growth will make the job a lot more difficult. By the way, I belatedly tried that trick of tying the tops of taller grasses in a bundle before cutting. It certainly makes for a neater job.

What about grasses that remain green, bronze or gray all winter? Some of these may be damaged by cutting back in fall. Leave them alone until next spring, when you may find you can remove old blades with a combing action or a sharp tug on a few blades at a time. Sedges can be deciduous or evergreen, and the latter resent being cut down in fall. Cut them to the ground in spring, when they already show signs of new growth. Other things to leave alone in fall and winter include New Zealand flax (phormium) and semi-hardy shrubs like lavender, rosemary and plumbago, and almost anything with silver foliage.

The ever-popular Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) is seriously invasive when it escapes into natural areas. If you grow buddleia, you should dead-head it. Since this brittle and often overbearing shrub is best treated like a giant perennial, it would seem simplest to prune it back to a couple of feet in fall, killing two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, buddleia is another of those things that may sulk and even die if it is cut back hard in fall, so I was interested to learn a while back that it does not release its seed until late winter.

Late winter is the usual time to prune buddleia, and the Forest Service official who told me about this, claimed he can trace the popular routes to yard-waste recycling yards by the copious butterfly bushes that grow along the way! He suggested cutting plants back part way in fall, discarding the seed heads before the seed shakes loose. In early spring, complete the pruning job by cutting back to a low framework of major branches.

November 2008

LATINO VEGGIES

October, 2008

I could hardly have chosen a lovelier season to visit the Churchill Community Garden. Sunflowers, tomatoes and towering corn were everywhere. So were tomatillo vines. I have never seen this Latin American staple on the plant before, and I was fascinated with the light green, busy vines sporting bright yellow flowers, and the green fruits concealed by their papery coverings.

I went to the garden to meet Sarah Cantril, executive director of Huerto de la Familia (The Family Garden), an organization that offers low-income Latino families an opportunity to grow their own vegetables and receive some garden-related education. Each family pays half the rental fee for a 600 square foot garden plot and receives donated plants, seeds, and gardening materials. The group rents plots at Churchill Community Garden, Skinner City Farm and the Youth Farm, the majority of them at Churchill. Huerto shares the Churchill site with Food for Lane County, neighborhood gardeners and the school.
Huerto meets twice a month to talk with the families about organic growing, and collaborates with other community based organizations and individuals to offer one-time classes on health related topics such as nutrition, seed saving and canning. There is also a children’s program that includes educational activities and a children’s garden. Huerto accept volunteers, including Master Gardeners. (Huerto gardens are official sites for Master Gardener candidates to put in the qualifying hours that go towards the certificate). Daniel Romero serves as site manager and garden program assistant. Now in his first year with Huerto, he helps families develop their plots and obviously loves his work. He’s a part time employee, but he lives near the Churchill garden and says “I’m always here”! Romero, who is from Puerto Rico, worked with Seeds of Change in New Mexico. He has grown and eaten a great variety of vegetables, and tries to interest the families in trying new things. Most families like to grow corn, peppers, tomatillos and – especially – tomatoes. He told me he would like to provide heirloom varieties next year, so the families can learn about saving seed, but they seem to prefer the familiar red tomatoes! Families may hold their plots from year to year, so he also encourages them to grow more food for year-round consumption.

So far Romero hasn’t found a lot of takers for cold-weather vegetables or winter squash. All the same, a close look at their gardens suggests that many of the families are open to a wide variety of crops. Green beans, onions and melons are popular. They grow epazote, an annual herb that is cooked with beans or eaten raw in tacos (Romero says it “takes away the gas”) and a variety of salad greens. At Skinner City Farm I met Inez, who is from Oaxaca, Mexico. She pointed out tepiche, an unfamiliar and tasty narrow leafed salad herb.The families also eat some familiar weeds: lambs-quarters, purslane and red root pigweed. Inez said that some families have seed sent from their people back home, for instance chilis, jicama and special varieties of corn.
Cantril introduced me to Lorenza, who has been with Huerto for five years and always has the most productive garden. She is a master seeder, and greatly respected by the other families for her skill. Her distinctive plot was divided neatly into small blocks of produce that included strawberries, onions, cucumbers, corn, beans and melons. Lorenza told me she had already put up 120 jars of tomatoes, enough to last most of the year. She reckons she puts in three or four hours a week, coming at 7pm after she finishes work. Lorenza is one of 10 Huerto families who, with other members of the Latino community, are participating in The Small Farmers Project of Lane County, a program of Huerto de la Familia which is partly funded by Heifer International. The families (who come from Mexico, Central America and Peru) are renting 14 acres on two properties off River Road which they will farm organically, raising turkeys for their own use and vegetables, strawberries and black cap raspberries for sale in the community. Carl Berg (of Berg’s Berries) serves as consultant and trainer. Cantril is excited about this enterprise, only the third Heifer project in Oregon and the first outside Portland.
Huerto de la Familia has been in operation since 1999, and received non-profit status in 2004. Huerto accepts donations, of money and in-kind. Volunteers are welcome and can help in a number of ways. For information about ways to donate or volunteer, visit www.huertodelafamilia.org or contact Huerto at: 3575 Donald St. Suite 145 D, Eugene, OR 97405. Phone: 541 255-6120 or 541 687-0819 E-mail: familygarden@efn.org

Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens, a selection of past Eugene Weekly columns. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org

LILIES GALORE
September, 2008

Afternoons may still be warm and pleasant, but lately there’s an undeniable chill in the morning air. It’s time to think about bulbs again, the kind you plant in fall: daffodils, tulips and ornamental onions, for example, as well as crocus and other small spring flowering bulbs. And lilies. True lilies, that is, in the genus Lilium, the aristocrats and glamour girls of the perennial garden.

On a recent Saturday morning at Eugene’s Lane County Farmers Market, Lou Westphal wondered why I didn’t write about lilies in summer, when you could go by the Buggy Crazy stall, look over the amazing flowers he brings to the market and pick out your favorite varieties. Well, I just didn’t. Luckily, you can check out pictures at www.buggycrazy.vstore.ca before visiting the market to buy his freshly dug lily bulbs.

With lilies, the fresher the better. Unlike tulips or daffodils, lily bulbs are never truly dormant and have no tough protective coat. The scaly, somewhat fragile bulbs can dry out easily, so it is best to plant them as soon as you can get them, in early to mid-fall. If you cannot plant them right away, pack them in very slightly moist sawdust in a perforated bag or box in a cool, dark place and plant them as soon as you can.

True lilies grow in temperate places all over the world. Several are native to the Pacific Northwest. While these and many other species are beautiful and rewarding, the easiest, most adaptable lilies for gardens are among the numerous man-made hybrids. The bulk of these fall into three groups: Asiatic, Oriental and Trumpet lilies.

Originally bred for the cut-flower trade in the mid-1900s., most Asiatics were scentless and had up-facing flowers on stems up to four feet. Subsequent breeding efforts have resulted in flowers that face out as well as up, and flowers in the reflexed, ‘Turk’s cap’ style which is common among naturally occurring lilies. Asiatics are the available in an almost unlimited color range (there are no blue lilies) and they are tough, easy and relatively inexpensive, a good choice for novice lily growers.

Oriental hybrids and Trumpet lilies are generally large-flowered, four to six feet tall and later blooming than Asiatics, which follow hard on the heels of late tulips. Orientals have exotic-looking, broadly open flowers in white, pink or rose that are often scented. The very popular ‘Stargazer’, though only about three feet tall, is otherwise typical of Oriental hybrids. Sumptuous Trumpet lilies and Orienpets (Trumpet-Oriental hybrids) provide a range of flower forms with subtle coloring and some heady fragrances.

The bulk of the lilies you’ll find at Buggy Crazy are bred by Westphal and his partner Lisa Hunt at their place in Lebanon. They select for “big, stout stems and a high bud count”. Do they really stand up without staking, even the six footers? “Yep,” as long as they have adequate light. Westphal and Hunt also breed to extend blooming times. They have achieved some later Asiatics and earlier Orientals but not, as yet, lilies that bloom later into fall: their last Orientals bloom about the same time as the latest species, Lilium speciosum var. rubrum.

Lilies require at least half a day of sun or strong indirect light. Trumpet and Asiatic lilies will grow in full sun, but the petals of Orientals are susceptible to sunburn and benefit from afternoon shade. Lilies should be planted in well-drained soil. With the exception of a few species, they need consistent moisture throughout the growing season, but wet, heavy soils can cause root rot. Many lilies send out roots from the stem, so plant the bulbs with at least three or four inches of soil above the bulb. Feed with a balanced fertilizer mix as you would perennials, but don’t let any fertilizer (or manure, unless very well rotted) come in contact with the bulbs. A leafy mulch is great.

I lived for many years where the soil was unsuitable for growing lilies, so I felt intimidated by them. But they have proved easy enough to grow in my Eugene garden – until voles devour the bulbs or I let the stems get shaded out by big perennials and shrubs! If this may happen in your garden, I suggest you grow lilies in large containers, where they will multiply contentedly and perform brilliantly for years. In the garden, interplant lilies with low growing, clumping plants that leave plenty of air and light around the leafy lily stems.

Asiatic hybrid bulbs will be available from Buggy Crazy in September, Orientals and Trumpets in October. A small selection of lilies native to the West Coast, including our local Lilium columbianum, should appear towards the end of September. If you can’t catch Buggy Crazy at the Saturday Farmer’s Market in Eugene, find him at the Mushroom Festival at Mt. Pisgah (Sunday, October 26). You can also buy bulbs on the website above and they will be shipped to you. Another great Pacific Northwest source of unique lilies is The Lily Garden in Vancouver, Washington (www.thelilygarden.com).

Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden consultant and author of All About Gardens, a selection of past Eugene Weekly columns. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org