flashback: early spring 2010-12 – Joy Creek Nursery

I love our yearly trip to Joy Creek and its neighbour down the road, Cistus Nursery.  Because if you are still slogging through all these garden tours, you are probably also a plant nut, here are scenes from three years of spring shopping trips.  I do remember one glorious year that I was there more than once, and once I even got to take a design workshop there with Lucy Hardiman and Ann Lovejoy.  The Joy Creek schedule of classes would be well worth attending every single spring-autumn weekend were it not for the fact that we live two hours way.

3 May 2010

Agave with the house in background; Oddly I have never taken much to Agave...but it looks wonderful here.

Sambucus 'Sutherland Gold' (??)

Alliums by the small circular lawn

the border we worked on in the Ann & Lucy workshop; It's been redone since then.

gravel path

wind resistant English delphiniums in bud

glorious piles of ingredients

Joy Creek is very big on using quarter-ten washed gravel in the garden beds.

Just Google “Joy Creek gravel” and you will find plenty of information.

They even use it under their small lawn near the house.  If you poke your finger at the grass roots you can feel the gravel base which helps the lawn hold up beautifully to lots of foot traffic.

I love the way the gravel sweeps from the paths right in to mulch the beds.

sunny path

mid spring

Dodecathon?

display gardens go on and on...

and have a variety of metal sculptures...

mixed borders...shrubs, trees, perennials

splash of gold

Dianthus

magestic

27 April 2011

Many plants are tagged; if not, you can show the photo on your phone or camera to the helpful staff to get the ID

Gunnera leaves emerging

Rheum...something...ornamental rhubarb. I had one at my old house...wish I had bought one...

Springtime was LATE in 2011.

Euphorbia backed with gold

If that's a Forsythia, and I think it is, I want to prune mine like that.

textural gravel

more gold

tulips and gravel-based lawn

bright tulips

Pulsatilla

must have....

I was completely smitten with this tree that was sitting on the sold table.  Around and around the table I walked taking photos of the tree.   Took photo of tag on tree: Crataegus Laevigata Contorta …contorted ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ Hawthorn.  Turned out it was the only one…and had been sold to Kathy, one of the nursery workers (or Katie, I wrote it down..somewhere). So she let me buy it, because she can get the next one that comes in. I have Googled it and find the uncontorted version gets to 20′, but this tag says 6′. Wondering if that is true.  We planted it in our front garden, and as it went in the ground I heard the trunk make an ominous crack.  But although it was shocky for awhile, it came through winter of 2011-12 and is leafing out nicely in spring 2012.

12 April 2012

Never have we gone on our spring road trip this early….but I had a nagging desire to shop for the coolest plants ever since having found out a couple of weeks before that our garden had been selected as one of the tour gardens for the Music in the Gardens tour for 2012.  And because we were selected as Ilwaco’s business of the year for 2010….but the ceremony was in autumn of 2011….it seems one of our duties is to be grand marshalls of  the early May  Loyalty Day parade in Ilwaco.  (This is ironic because I often grumbled in the past about the McCarthy-esque origins of Loyalty Day, and being a non-patriot who’s fond of the world and who does not like nationalism….well, I could go on, but it might sound unappreciative of the honour, and I do believe it is an honour.)  Along with that, we have to make Long Beach perfect for its parade day (Ilwaco is Saturday, Long Beach is Sunday) and that’s a longwinded way of explaining why we went to Joy Creek so early, before more tender plants were on offer.

The gardens were rather bare. I like this fencing.

another neat fence barrier

early spring pizzazz

tufts of moss atop a stone fence pillar with garden beyond

Look at the way the white petals have drifted down one side of the tree...

rebar art

The sales area had some wonderful rebar trellises including this fan shaped one.  As some of my friends know, my former co-gardener made exceptional rebar garden art.  I wish I had taken up on his offer to teach me to weld with his oxygen and acetylene (??) torch but I was kinda scared of it.  Kaboom!

A ceramic artist had made birdbaths so beautifully mounted on little tree trunk poles.  I had to have the fish one.  Because we are going to be on the garden tour and need beautiful objects to keep up with all those fancy gardens I’ve toured in the cities.

How could I resist?

She had also made clever birdhouses with the holes sized, we were told, just right for the birds.

birdhouses

I resisted the birdhouses because I had not resisted pretty much any plant that caught my fancy….again with the garden tour excuse.  And our next stop at Cistus would assuredly provide more plant temptations.