Hardy Plant Society Study Weekend 2018
presented by the Northwest Perennial Alliance
The thoughts refer to all the garden tour days and are at the end of this post.
my well thumbed booklet
Friday, 22 June 2018
After touring gardens all day, we checked into the college building where the lectures would be held and then looked in on the plant sale. I had been disconcerted to find that parking was down a steep slope of grass and across the street; this hampered my purchasing and I bought far fewer plants than I otherwise would have. The venue was not disability friendly. Allan saw a woman with a cane standing at the bottom of the steep sloping lawn above the parking area while her friends tried to figure out how to get her up to the lecture hall.
outside the venue (Allan’s photo)
below the terrace (Allan’s photo)
Allan’s photo
in the plant sale room (Allan’s photo)
Dan Hinkley and his plant sale table
Dan Hinkley, the best garden speaker ever, in my opinion, gave the keynote speech, titled “The Giving”, about garden memories in a way.
We had all been given plastic baggies containing plant material, and he asked us to breathe in the odors and remember times in the past.
In the bag, along with leaves and berries to evoke memories of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other gatherings, were seeds of Erythronium revolutum for us to grow.
As always, his lecture was so moving to me. My notes were brief because it was mostly the emotional side of gardening:
“The Giving Tree” book, Dan fell in love with gardening at age five after seeing a pansy flower (I think it was the same for our friend Todd), “Who was the older person who was your first mentor?”
He suggests…Walking into the garden and asking your plants, are you giving me what I expect from you? “If not, then I ask Robert to dig them out.”
Something about how a red-tailed hawk’s cry was dubbed in for an eagle in a car ad because the eagle’s cry was not what they wanted.
He quoted from a poem by Wendell Berry: do read it.
Saturday, 23 June 2018
We were up at 7 AM for the plant sale (again) and lectures. Again, I found negotiating the hill to the lecture hall difficult and had a little talk with the folks at the check-in table about testing a venue out with the idea of disabled people being able to use it well. I bought just two plants because of the difficulty of carrying them down that hill.
The Bellevue Botanical Garden director, Nancy Kartes, in introducing the talks, said something so true about public gardening: “When we make mistakes, we make them in front of everyone.”
The morning lectures began.
Claudia West: Planting in a Post Wild World
I had heard her co-author lecture about this book at a previous study weekend.
Claudia’s talk was transformative and had me in tears at the end when she showed a slide of a devastated Germany after WWII, described how the people could not hang their laundry out without it turning black from soot, and then showed the same area now turned into a beautiful green landscape of lakes and trees: a new Lake District in Central Germany.
My notes: Less than 5% of the world is left in dark spaces. (And some of those that show up as dark are actually industrial like commercial farming and mining).
Design rules where plants do not touch are bad for the environment, she hates to see “rain gardens” designed with space in between the plants.
We must use small spaces to 100% of their potential; plants want to cover ground. (Yes! I am vindicated against clients who don’t want plants to touch!)
She strongly recommended the book The Hidden Life of Trees (Melissa gave it to me for my birthday!)
Ground covers are the best mulch.
She recommends Hansen/Stahl’s book Perennials and Their Garden Habitats.
After talking about the healing of the land in Central Germany (the part that made me weep), she said “We are in a global emergency. We are losing the foundation of life.”
It was odd indeed that this study weekend did not include a book sales table. I must read this book soon.
Jimi Blake: Salvias
Jimi Blake gave a talk on salvias. My notes said to acquire Salvia fulgens (5′) and Salvia Amistad (“dies well”). He suggested taking cuttings, growing them in perlite, and taking cuttings of the cuttings. He recommended these websites: salvias.com.ar and fbts.com (flowers by the sea) and world of salvias.com.
His talk was followed by his sister’s.
June Blake: Discovering the Home Place: Making Sense with Plants, Buildings, and Landscape
Her talk was lovely but my notes are brief.
skybox (a structure with big walls like a box open to the sky that you sit in).
When parents let their children run through her meadow, she gets very cross and the parents walk out of the garden in a big huff.
She used a famine pot as a garden feature. Read about famine pots here.
She provided a useful plant list with her slide show of 68 favourite plants.
Sunday 24 June 2018
Again, we were up by 7 AM. This was near the parking garage (which continued to be a difficult uphill walk to the lecture hall for a cane user):
Along the water’s edge, the air is damp yet sweet.
hoop houses and veg beds
The land around us is wet Saturated with life
Dense thickets conceal a universe beneath
Seasons cycle through Balance emerges essential
I bought four more plants at the plant sale, judging them by their weight as to whether we could get them down the hill. In a great (small) tragedy, I did not get back to the lecture hall in time for door prizes and I actually had won a plant for once! but was not in my seat so I lost out on it. DANG it all to bits.
Sunday morning offered two lectures.
Janice Currie: My Recipe for a Lifetime of Gardening Pleasure.
The talk was about her world travels in gardens and did not offer up many plant names or information so did not teach me much. I did not quite realize it until another attendee pointed that out.
My notes, mostly about her useful information about rock gardens (as she has made an impressive one with tons of rock at her home garden):
use sand in scree beds
a rock garden of rock piled on a cement slab with little rocks in between
“Czech alpine gardens and gardeners” must refer to this.
make trough crevice garden
Jimi Blake: A Beautiful Obsession
Jimi’s second talk was about his garden, which is on the same huge estate as his sister June’s. He provided a slide list with 71 plants which I will be looking into. The ones I gave multiple “must have” stars to are Erythronium ‘Joanne’, Corydalis calycos (the best, 1.5 feet high (??), Impatiens omeiana ‘Sango’ (pink stripe in leaf) Epimidium ‘Wildside Amber’, Linaria vulgaris f. peloria, Linaria ‘Peachy’ (sterile), Linaria ‘Oslow Pink’, Geranium wallichianum ‘Havana Blues’, Sanguisorba ‘Black Thorn’ (6-7 feet, no staking), Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Martin’s Mulberry’, Cosmos peucedanifolius, Rudbeckia triloba ‘Prairie Glow’, Musa sikkemensis ‘Bengal Tiger’, Veronicastrum ‘Mammy Blake’ (named for his mum, can probably never get it here), Allium ‘Purple Rain’, Schefflera delavayi, Schefflera koranasii BSWJ1138. And more.
He will have a book out for Christmas 2018.
You can follow him and his sister on Facebook.
the view from our lunchtime seating on the terrace
brief thoughts on garden tour kindness
Much has been written about the proper etiquette for touring gardens, but not much about how tour goers and garden hosts should treat others.
Let me just say that if I were hosting a tour of people that had paid to be in a horticultural group and had paid handsomely to attend a big event like the Hardy Plant weekend, I might very well, if my house were halfway through the tour and situated so people could easily access a bathroom, offer up its use. I have seen this done on many other tours and it does make the day more comfortable for older people. I would have no problem allowing members of a garden group like the Hardy Plant society to use mine, although I would feel differently about a regular garden tour where anyone could pay $10-20 and get in. I got through the day ok, but Allan saw a woman having to implore being allowed to use a bathroom. Surely the budget could run to having a sanican on one of the larger estates halfway through.
And if I saw a disabled person who could not access my view deck because of stairs, I would offer him or her a quick way through the house to the deck. I have seen this done on other garden tours that are for people in a big garden club (not a public $10-20 garden tour, although I would offer up such access to a person with a cane on any tour!) JUST SAYING. Members of the study weekend are not going to rob your house.
As for how garden tour guests should treat each other:
If someone is going against the flow, it is probably for a good reason, especially if you see that the person has a cane or other sign of disability. I did not enjoy the experience of the snobbish man who said to his companion when I passed them, “I see someone is making up her own rules.” I almost turned back even though I could not do the stairs going the other way. Nor did I enjoy the woman older than I who cast her eyes to heaven when I passed her going “the wrong way”. I can tell you for sure that these appeared to be moneyed upper class people. Rude people. It’s enough to make a lowly hobbling person give up garden touring for good, were it not that only in Seattle area tours (my home town!) have I run into this, never in Portland or Eugene and certainly not around here. I am only a Northwest garden tour-er so I cannot speak for other places.
It wore me out. Upon arriving home, I walked through my garden and I said to it, “I like YOU the very best of all.”
Sunday evening, 8:45 PM: back home:
Getting out of the passenger side of our van: HOME.
the front path
sweet smelling Nicotiana ‘Fragrant Cloud’
SKOOTER!
(Thank you so much to Devery, Jenna (Queen La De Da), and Our Kathleen, who had visited Skooter and Frosty over the five days we were gone.) Devery watered, Jenna unscrewed a scary hot light bulb on a timer, and Kathleen found the missing Skooter and gave Frosty belly rubs.
Allan’s garden
our new plants
more new plants
paradise
back home to campfires
Frosty and Skooter
looking forward to sifting compost
front garden again
I’m going to repaint my poles next weekend!
driveway again
front porch view
a sweet welcome home from Jenna
There is no place like home, when you are lucky enough to have a home like ours.
A garden tour of the near future that is not to be missed:
