An afternoon on the island

Oh for f&ͻ%'$ sake, blogger has done it again. I played by their rules and did all the special witchcraft and salt-tossing to upload photos and yet it uploaded them backwards (after several rounds of refusing to upload at all). All righty, I'm playing along and reporting in reverse of what I experienced. Starting at the end. Ain't this fun?

So last Saturday was a terrific planty/gardeny day. I spent the morning visiting a renowned local garden that I'd wanted to see for quite sometime. I took a lot of photos, so many that it will be awhile before I tackle going through them and editing them down for a post. Later in the day Andrew and I set out for an open garden event that we'd been invited to on Sauvie Island, Linda Wisner's garden. I always enjoy wandering her large garden and this time it was made even better because I knew friends would be there, including Tamara who had asked about bringing me plants (all I offered in return was empty pots for her to reuse). My haul included Dorycnium hirsutum (hairy canary-clover), Agave parryi ssp. neomexicana (progeny of the plants at Joy Creek Nursery which I visited every time I was at the nursery), and Mimulus aurantiacus ‘Jeff’s Tangerine’... thanks Tamara!

Now to wander Linda and her husband Chet's garden... 

In addition to fantastic sit spots like the one above, there was also a huge quantity of photographable crops; vegetables and flowers...

And then there was the tree with nails...

I asked Linda for the backstory... "That was my beloved Damson plum tree, which died of some mysterious disease. The nails went in to give the clematis I planted at its base something to grab onto. But then the clematis died. So now there's an ornamental kiwi from Windcliff that's struggling to take hold. I hope it eventually grows to cover the tree."

 Lots of buzzing and pollinating creatures moving about the garden.

Love the arching allium drumsticks...

Such a super tall gunnera, easily 5ft tall, if not more. I should have asked Andrew to stand next to it for scale.

The "old vegetable garden"...

Brassaiopsis hispida, Linda bought this from me last spring when I was selling at the Dirty Diggers plant sale.

It was so nice to see it happy and know it was living it's best life out on Sauvie Island with a real greenhouse where it would spend winter.

Courtyard tables with food and drink under the grapevines. I love this location so much!

Linda has several large potted plants in the courtyard area, this Manihot grahamii...

A couple of interesting coleus with a dwarf nectarine.

Maybe Begonia T REX® ‘First Blush’?...

Now we're out in the very shady front garden, the first area Andrew and wandered though. I think this is maybe Rhododendron sinogrande?

Plums!

Another sit-spot.

Schefflera delavayi

And the first photo I took upon our arrival at the garden.

Before the garden visit, since we were on Sauvie Island, we swung by Cistus Nursery. I missed their big Summer Extravaganza back in July, since I was in Buffalo. Tree fern! Dicksonia antarctica I assume? Everybody's doing it...

Andrew looked up to the ceiling of this corner pavilion and said "that's art"... I don't disagree.

Several large Hedera canariensis 'Sulphur Heart' for sale. I've long appreciated this plant growing out in the Cistus display garden along the driveway, but don't remember ever seeing it for sale in the nursery. 

I'm growing it under the name Hedera colchica 'Sulphur Heart' having been lucky to receive several rooted cuttings from a friend (AI says: "Hedera colchica 'Sulphur Heart' and Hedera canariensis 'Sulphur Heart' refer to the exact same clonal cultivar of large-leaved evergreen ivy. Botanically, it is correctly classified as Hedera colchica 'Sulphur Heart' (Persian ivy), though it has historically been mislabeled in the nursery trade as a form of Algerian ivy (Hedera canariensis)." Take from that what you want...

Love the combo of swirly metal and serrated Melianthus leaves.

Ferns and cactus! It's a winning combination.

And finally to wrap up this backwards post; I was in awe of this multi-headed Yucca rostrata I saw at the south end of the parking lot upon our arrival. Major plant lust...

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My dispersed garden

I do the grocery pick-up once a week. Back in early June Andrew happened to be with me, I warned him that I planned to drive by a couple plants on the way, you know, as one does. I mean, you keep a running map in your head of the distinctive plants in your area, and if you're going to be near them then a detour of a few blocks is warranted, right? Right.

First stop that afternoon was a trunking Yucca rostrata that I'd noticed was sending up a bloom. My timing was perfect to see the flowers all open.

I was a little surprised at the (lack of) height of the bloom, for some reason I thought it would be taller, more clearance between the leaves and the flowers. Maybe because my Yucca filamentosa have such tall bloom stalks?

The blooming yucca is accompanied in the hellstrip planting with a fine Arctostaphylos and another Y. rostrata.

So what seemed perfectly natural to me, became a point of discussion that day. Andrew dubbed this visiting of plants around town my "dispersed garden". In addition to plants that I grow, but were behaving in a way that wanted to track (blooming for instance), there's also a collection of plants I visit that wish I were growing, but for one reason or another I am not. Like this Fremontodendron californicum...

It gets way too big to shoehorn into my garden, but since there's one growing at McMenamins Kennedy School (just 5 blocks from home) I feel like I don't have to grow it here, I can just visit it there.

Another example, I love Rhus typhina, the staghorn sumac and my next door neighbor grows it, so I can enjoy her plant(s) and don't need my own. Or Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica', which I no longer have growing in my garden, but Kennedy School to the rescue again. They have a couple of huge specimens I can admire any time I want to go for a short walk.

Photos from the next stop on my dispersed garden tour span the time frame of May 10th to June 14th. 

I first wrote about this fabulous garden back in 2021.

I was visiting again because I got a text from the garden owner (Scott) letting me know that his Agave ovatifolia in the hellstrip was blooming, and doing so with two bloom spikes. Perhaps it had been damaged (winter?) and had developed two growing points...

So nice with the orange poppies and orange truck...

I stopped back by on June 1st.

It was so hard to photograph only the blooming agave, of course my camera strayed again from focusing on just the star.

June 14th. This was the closest I got to actually seeing it in bloom.

The next time I drove by it was way past its prime so I took no photos that day.

This Agave ovatifolia is part of what once was a trio. The first one bloomed last summer, and now...

Doesn't that photo above look like the spike is coming from the grass? Here's a better shot.

Sadly I didn't make it back by this one to see any more of it's development.

This one however, it's been a regular stop on my drives about town. In fact it started to send up it's spike last fall, and then paused for the winter. Agave parrasana, photo taken June 1st.

And full bloom on July 22nd.

Wrapping up with a stop at what I call the desert on Ainsworth St. This is another hellstrip garden (a very wide hellstrip) that erupts in cactus flower every June.

It's a spectacle of beauty.

Back home I look at my large Agave ovatifolia 'Frosty Blue' and wonder how much longer I've got with them...

So do you have a dispersed garden? If not I highly recommend getting started...

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