Friday, 11 May flashback
Because I was blogging with a headache, I somehow missed Allan’s photos of our nursery visits before touring Steve and John’s. I’ve inserted all of them into that post for late readers, but am adding a few as a flashback here, because…today’s post is rather dull.
Saturday, 12 May 2018
Ilwaco
We worked all afternoon planting up the Ilwaco planters. I had a headache all day and so every photo this time is by Allan.
The planter in the corner by the boatyard had become a snail home among its bulb foliage.
They were removed and carried to a field.
I have been working on getting the planters full of drought tolerant perennials (a lot of them herbs) that will save the city money on annual planting and will get by with only being watered every three days (saving us time and saving the city more money).
Golden oregano is one plant that is fairly showy, although it does spread, and it will wilt badly when parched.
I was not best pleased the other day when a business owner said the planters were drab and that said business owner wanted to put tulips in the one by their business, some sort of tulip that, I was informed, grew “all year”. I would like to have a tulip like that. I said, sure, put anything you like in the planter, and I probably said just be sure to water it if you are putting it plants that are not drought tolerant.
Here it is, a week later as I write this, and I am still not happy and being told the planters are “drab”, even when they are in that awkward stage between bulbs (with dying bulb foliage) and the assorted annuals (mostly tough diascias) that we add each year.
The deer eat the nasturtiums now so the summer’s bright cascading effect of years past ended a couple of years ago.
Deer eat tulips, too. Even ones that “bloom all year”.
I fell down this year on having all blue plants by Azure salon. They ended up with two pink diascias.
We dropped the DVD of Vera, season 2, off at the Ilwaco Community Building where lots of California poppies are blooming.
And some white tulips.
Long Beach
We then went to Long Beach to plant cosmos and white bacopa and yellow bidens in the welcome sign. First, we went to city works for buckets of soil to raise the planter level.
Back at the big welcome sign planter, Allan found a frog in the water works.
We were relieved that the water had been turned on for the year.
Allan wanted to leave this tulip, below, because he found it interesting. I said nope.
Plants lined up:
Years ago, garden writer and designer Lucy Hardiman of Portland said that the color yellow “stops the eye” and makes people look at a mostly driveby public garden. We use yellow in the front, where the sign has a big sun as part of the design, and cool colors on the back, the north side where the sign is blue-lavender in tone (and says “Thank you”.
Normally we would not work in downtown Long Beach on a Saturday. I felt a sense of urgency at getting started on the planters, and we found that it was not too crowded to work around the people. We were pleased to get seven of the thirty six downtown planters planted up with (where there is room to squeeze them in) short cosmos in the middle and assorted trailers along the edges. I used some of a new cosmos called ‘Popsocks’, which supposedly puts out a random center, not all the time, like a pompom. I can’t quite see the point if it only makes the funny center occasionally. Seems you could get a six pack of them with just plain centers (which bees like better anyway). It is an experiment.
The supposed random “popsocks” pattern (from a seed packet, online):
We pulled out this tatty old Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve, all woody and leggy and rocking on its stem. A new and small one went in instead.
On the way home, we stopped at the Shelburne Hotel garden to water the big goatsbeard/giant astilbe thing that we had transplanted the other day. We forgot to check it last night. Good news; it was just a bit wilted.
I fervently hoped that my headache would be gone by the next day.
At bedtime, I digressed from my watching of the 2016 Gardeners World shows. I have gotten to the hour long shows at the end of the season and I was too tired. I found, to my amazement, a very old show featuring beloved long time host Geoff Hamilton, from the late 80s or early 90s.
It was a blurry picture, which did not help my head. I found it I watched it through my iPhone camera, the picture crisped up considerably; I could not figure out how to make the picture small on my iPad and I was too confuzzled to realize I could have just watched it on my phone!
Geoff was saying that Aegepodium podagraria, the variagated ground elder, was a good plant that stayed in its place. In a later episode that I watched the next evening, his opinion had changed.
I wonder how many people planted it on his first recommendation?
Despite this, it was clear why he was such a beloved host. The show also featured a woman whose name is somehow familiar to me.
It was fun to see a much younger Carol Klein, who at around 70 now is still a presenter on the show.
The show had a great lack though. Unlike Monty Don, Geoff was not accompanied through his garden by a delightful dog.
That is quite a group of snails! I mostly see slugs down here, very few snails.
I have golden oregano too, and have seen it wilt easily in summer. That one take a lot of water to keep it going in its planter.
The shop dogs are very sweet! 🙂
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We have so many snails, and unfortunately also have hideous slugs.
Sent from my iPhone
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What a wonderful collection of snails. I hope that your headache did disappear.
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Eventually pretty much feeling better. Thanks, Mr T.
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Pippi Greenwood is a regular on the radio show GWT Gardener’s Question Time. You can download it as a podcast through iTunes.
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Thanks!
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