Musa basjoo to Musa sikkimensis to Musa s. ‘Red Tiger’: Garden Updates, July 1, ’15

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Musa sikkimense with soft back light

Musa sikkimense with soft back light. That’s Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’ with its pin-stripping in the background and Bowle’s Golden Carex low to the right

I suppose there are gardeners out there who are completely satisfied with their gardens and have no plans for changes, expansions or wholesale overhaul, but not me.  Musa basjoo was my first Banana plant.  I grew it for several years.  It is still widely grown in our region.  There’s nothing wrong with it, but I removed mine and replaced it with Musa sikkimensis, the plant pictured above.  In my opinion the foliage, and the way it is carried on the plant, is superior to M. basjoo.  First, is the more vertical angle that it holds its leaves.  This shows off the underside of the leaves and lets morning or afternoon sun light illuminate the leaves causing them to ‘glow’.  The red mid-rib of the leaves really stand out!  In M. basjoo, this doesn’t happen because they’re held in a nearly flat position.  M. basjoo also lacks the red mid-rib.  Next, and this is my opinion from having watched these plants over a period of years, is that M. sikkimensis allows its leaves to ‘flutter in a breeze lettting it ‘spill’ more wind preventing some of the shredding that can afflict Bananas on windy sites, something like the larger Ensete does.  So, why am I preparing to remove it now and swap it out? Continue reading →

The Day After Our Open Garden for the HPSO Study Weekend

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IMG_2905Ultimately it has been rejuvenating and exhilarating, but for the previous several weeks, especially the last two, there has been much anxiety around my garden.  The usual litany of issues came up…failed plants, replacements that were slow, but realistic, in their efforts to establish and grow in, procrastination, a little trepidation, a vacation in March, in April and early June, I know, no tears for this one, and then throw in the freakishly warm dry spring with most of my soil looking like it was later July rather than June (Those of you who don’t know, the maritime Pacific Northwest, has normally dry summers…they just don’t usually start until July!), stressing new and established mesic plants as well as pushing them rapidly, and too often, through their flowering cycle…, and I was more stressed than my plants.  But all was good after hours of fretting and working while Julie prompted and supported me, showing great patience, and joining in by doing much of the necessary mulching, to help hide the worst scars, general clean up, needed painting, errands and the staging that helps everything look ‘finished’.  The response from Study Weekend visitors, were there really over 400?, was over-whelmingly positive.  We can all be overly critical of our own gardens.  We know their scars and faults intimately.  Friday and Sunday I was able to get to most of the other open gardens, Saturday was just too busy here, and like most garden visitors it is wonderful to see what others are doing, beautiful plants, perfect little vignettes, framing and views, things we have forgotten and others we hadn’t yet imagined, each garden unique with its own style, intent and feeling.  I think most of us are more forgiving of others errors, don’t see them or don’t feel them with such depth that the resident gardener might.  Overall, it has been a powerful and positive experience, one that I had been missing for awhile since I retired.  I highly recommend it to any gardener.  Now, we can kick back enjoy our garden and entertain friends as always intended…as long as it doesn’t fry!!! Continue reading →

On Planting in Drought Conditions: the Relationship of Roots, Water and Soil

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I had a novice gardening friend ask me the other day about planting the dry, xeric, part of her yard.  Many of you know how abnormally dry and warm a spring/June it’s been here.  Those of us with gardens requiring routine irrigation started a few weeks ago and we’re expected to be heading into an extended hot/dry period over the next 8 or 9 days with temps over 90 F. (While it is not unusual to experience 80+ deg. days here in June it is unusual when you look at our overall pattern this spring.  Remember that we can also have Junes where it is common not to get out of the 60’s with our famous Portland drizzle day after day while we wait for July and the ‘beginning’ of summer.)  She was anxious to get her new plants in the ground and was asking me about amendments as the soil was baked and hard…. Continue reading →

On Healing the ‘Broken’ Urban Landscape: Portland’s Holgate Overpass & the Brooklyn Yards

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This is the section south and adjacent to the west approach. It was rough mown in early June down slope to the Blackberries and east to the Box Elder in the background. You can see the blue flowers of the Chickory.

This is the section south and adjacent to the west approach. It was rough mown in early June down slope to the Blackberries and east to the Box Elder in the background. You can see the blue flowers of the Chickory and the Fennel.

Walking the Holgate overpass across the Brooklyn Switching Yard, with its adjacent container operation, is anything but pleasant. Trucks, trains, blasting horns and the four lanes of traffic whizzing by next to the 5′ wide sidewalks wipe away the positives of the views across the river and to downtown.  Most people probably don’t think of places like this as ‘landscapes’, but in the broader sense they are. Landscapes, most simply, are the places that we occupy, whether they are artfully designed, narrowly utilitarian, neglected, forgotten or simply dismissed. They become ‘landscapes’ through our occupying them or merely perceiving them. They are places we are in relationship with. Holgate is a traffic corridor for automobiles. Here is where it crosses the north south railroad line and the region’s major container handling yard. Car and truck traffic are heavy, at times, nearly non-stop. This is the only east-west route between Powell Blvd. and Bybee, and Bybee is intended for, and used by, more local traffic. It is loud. Traffic typically is moving a 35-45 mph although it’s posted 30.  The sidewalk is relatively narrow and this zone of unpleasantness is over a third of a mile long, an expanse from which there is no ‘escape’ for the pedestrian beyond enduring it. Since I retired, and weather permitting, I walk it once or twice a week on my way to the gym for a swim. Continue reading →

My Garden: Behind the Scenes

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Photo thanks to Josh McCullough

Photo thanks to Josh McCullough

Overall, mine is a sunny warm garden.  Like any landscape or garden it is defined or described by its: place, design and plant choices. Where these three all come together, you have a garden. Each one presents itself as, what some might view, a daunting array of options or possibilities.

What exactly do I include under ‘place’?  Certainly climate, exposure, aspect, slope, soils and the ‘history’ of gardening and ‘disturbance’ on the site. It also includes the larger surrounding landscape, the context within which it is located and the physical ‘features’ built and natural with which it will be a part.  The story of a place is important.  Place, is the major limiting factor in a garden. Gardens are also defined by the choices we make. Each choice precludes others. In a very real sense gardening is a process of limitation. ‘If this then not that’.  What we need to be aware of is that these, design and plant choices, these limitations, can either work together or compound each other when not made with awareness.  When design and/or plant choices ignore place, the gardener must overcome all of the ‘conflicts’ this choice has put in to play, or face ‘failure’.
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Himalayan Cloud Forest Garden: Update…Plant Pilfering

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Hmmm.  Sadly, someone has decided that, once again, plants planted in public places are available for the taking.  I’ve been informed the a few Arisaema, among other perennials have disappeared after they began to bloom.  Having gardened myself for many years in the public sphere, it is aggrevating, and disturbing, how some people decide they can take plants, because, after all, they pay taxes.  I’ve actually had people tell this to me when they were confronted.  Others, I imagine see it simply as an opportunity to get ‘free’ plants.  The worst times have been when I’ve had plants pulled up that I find elsewhere, broken, dried and dead.  Once, I had a Fejoa sellowiana, now Acca, dragged across the lawn at Waterfront Park, they left a dirt trail, to where they tossed it into the Willamette over the seawall!  Several years back, I came back the next day to finish a planting and all of the Spiarea I had planted the day before was gone, more than 20 plants, so probably by a landscape company, and this was from a utility planting to shield a parking area.  Many public gardens, maybe most, around the world, are protected by fencing and locked gates after hours.  This adds more costs upfront and can often make regular maintenance more difficult for access reasons.  One alternative is to plant ‘unattractive’ plants that no one will want…, but what’s the point of that.  We can’t ‘nail’ every plant down, so in Parks we would just go back and do it again.  Don’t get me started on the just stupid vandalism of broken trees….

Hiking in Phoenix’s South Mountain Preserve

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A Saguaro along the Bajada Trail looking toward the Estrella Mountains in the distance to the west and Ma Ha Tauk Ridge above me to the right.

A Saguaro along the Bajada Trail looking toward the Estrella Mountains in the distance to the west and Ma Ha Tauk Range above me to the right.

(This will be one of several entries describing hikes, botanical gardens and arboretum I visited in southern Arizona this April, 2015.)

Today Julie has work to do (She’s on a buying trip and I tagged along!) so I’m going out, down to the Phoenix South Mountain Preserve to hike a loop on the Bajada (the incline at the base of a mountain formed by the erosion of the mountain) and Alta (or high) trails. The Preserve, at over 16,000 acres is the largest municipal park in the US (Portland’s Forest Park pales at 5,172 acres.) I began my hike going the ‘wrong’ way on the Max Delta Trail having incorrectly read the directions so I added an unnecessary mile by the time I figured it out. The Bajada Trail climbs only 40’ but it constantly wends its way around rocky barriers and down and back up washes filled with tumbled granites…. The hike and region lies within the Sonoran Desert Scrub region, Sonoran, because the majority of the plants are sub-tropical in origin and are associated with the plants of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental and Baja Region, not plants from the Rocky Mountain Plateau. The Salt River, that ‘flows’ south and west through Phoenix, is the northern boundary of this region, where the area becomes transitional as it gains elevation climbing to the Verde River and Mogollon Rim. Okay, too much. Continue reading →

Adaptive Management and the Dynamic Maintenance of Sustainable Landscapes

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The second grassy bay, below the Harborside Restaurant, between the Taxodium clumps from the south end. A sweep of Cistus pulverulentus 'Sunset' at the bottom, Ceanothus cuneatus 'Blue Sierra' at the left and two Arctostaphylos x 'Harmony'. The grasses are Kohleria macrantha, native, Festuca rubra commutatta and a few nasty invaders.

The second grassy bay from the south end, below the Harborside Restaurant at Riverplace, above the marina, between the Taxodium clumps. The ’04 planting included no shrubs or perennial forbs in this area.  It was a monoculture of Koeleria macrantha, a native early season bunch grass that goes dormant by mid-July leaving the entire area vulnerable to invasion by weeds and offering no ‘barrier’ to either people or dogs, which enter frequently. A sweep of Cistus pulverulentus ‘Sunset’ at the bottom, Ceanothus cuneatus ‘Blue Sierra’ at the left and Arctostaphylos x ‘Harmony’ have been added to this site along with Festuca rubra var. commutata a low, fine textured spreader to help fill in the spaces and scattered native perennials.

We, all of us, are part of the landscape.  Just as individual plants belong to a local native plant community, and its place, so do we. That we live in highly disturbed and contrived landscapes does not change the fact that we live in relationship with it, that we are a functioning part of it. Deny this as we may, many of us as a group likely admit to very little connection to our ‘place’. It’s just where we live, for now. Our understanding of it and any involvement with our landscape, other than as a simple stage for our lives, is minimal, a condition which has become pervasive in modern society. Some professionals, who work with children have come to refer to this state as NDD, or Nature Deficit Disorder, a dissociative relationship now that was once basic to human survival. Today this condition is pervasive and our landscapes, as a result, severely disturbed, damaged and compromised, lack the capacity to return to their former state. There is a general ignorance amongst the public and our leaders of the severity of the problem and our necessary role and responsibility to correct it.  We are locked into a strategy that views landscape as incidental, the natural world as backdrop for our activities, not central to our well-being.  Today landscapes, as long as they meet our grossly simplified idea of our needs, a modern minimalist aesthetic, that does not over tax our ‘pocketbook’, are forgettable. From a horticultural viewpoint this is becoming an increasingly deteriorating disaster, something that not only we can do something about, but one that is imperative that we do so.  Adaptive Management describes a responsive relationship between people and the place in which they live. It is centered on a positive and workable strategy we can adopt that addresses this situation and turns it around, reengaging us with our landscape. Continue reading →

A Look into Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the Use of Neonicotinoids: A View from two Extremes, part 2

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A bee working the large inflorescence of a Heptacodium miconoides.

A bee working the large inflorescence of a Heptacodium miconoides.

This is the second and last installment of my look at Jon Entine’s articles and the strategies he employs.  Here is a link to the first of my postings on this.

Part II: Bee Deaths And CCD – Flawed Chensheng Lu Harvard Studies Endanger Bees

By Jon Entine | November 24th 2014

Last week, in Part I of this two part series, “Bee Deaths Mystery Solved? Neonicotinoids (Neonics) May Actually Help Bee Health”, we explored the claims by Harvard School of Public Health researcher Chensheng Lu, heralded by anti-pesticide and anti-GMO advocacy groups, for his research that purportedly proves that the class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids are killing bees and endangering humans. And we saw how many journalists, our of ignorance or for ideological reason,s promote dicey science. 

(Some advocacy groups have latched on to Lu’s work looking for legitimacy and support. There has been a growing community of resistance to much that has been going on in the agro-chem-gentec industry that pre-dates Lu and his research. They have been challenging the multi-billion dollar industry on multiple fronts. On the other hand, it only takes a little checking to discover that Lu is often viewed as a ‘liability’ within the scientific community and a hinderence to their efforts by many in the community who have been advocating for good science in the political process that regulates these industries. They did not choose Lu nor do they now claim him as their champion. Entine, in his previous article strategically chose Lu as a ‘straw dog’ to represent his opposition, the “anti-pesticide and anti-GMO advocacy groups”, a target that he could then ‘tear down’ and then apply to the opposition groups as a whole, as if Lu, with his biases and ‘sloppy science’ were truly representative of them. In these articles, at least, Entine gets to choose. This strategy is becoming increasingly common when ‘industry’ and their front men, under attack, seek to ‘confuse’ the public thus reducing political pressure that might seek to limit them and their ability to conduct ‘business as usual’. Continue reading →

A Look into Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the Use of Neonicotinoids: A View from two Extremes, part 1

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A bee visiting the flowers of an Edgewortia chrysantha in Washington Park.

A bee visiting the flowers of an Edgewortia chrysantha in Washington Park.

The following posting is built around an article written by Jon Entine in response to Chensheng Lu’s claims that Neonicotinoides, synthetic Nicotine, a commonly used ‘group’ of insecticides in modern conventional agriculture, are at the heart of CCD.  There is a link to the original Entine article posted on his site, the Genetic Literacy Project ,it also appears, on the Science 2.0, website.  There is a second Entine article as well addressing more directly Lu’s ‘science and Entine’s conclusions that I will deal with in a later posting.   I began this after reading it several weeks ago on Facebook and was initially, convinced by it that Lu was in fact practicing bad science and that bothered me, because Entine’s article was ‘pushing’ me so hard to get to that conclusion.  Later, the topic kept popping up on my radar as I saw calls for bans of neonics here in the US.  I more recently was puzzled by what I found on the Xerces Society website regarding the issue…so I decided to look a little deeper.  What follows is still a beginning, an attempt to winnow the ‘wheat from the chaff’.  There are many more questions to ask if we are to make a responsible decision on this issue.  Such things are never simple when fallible humans and corporations are involved. Continue reading →