Theo Margelony moved with his fuchsias from Manhattan to Portland in 2019. Knowledgeable, warm and very friendly, I have bumped into Theo and his partner Kevin Gepford  a couple times on garden tours. Knowing there’d be a warm welcome at their open garden in early September, it was that more than an interest in fuchsias that prompted me to attend.

I’ve grown a few hardy fuchsias in my time but otherwise haven’t explored the genus much. But I am completely open to plants with a long season and something to offer hummingbirds. Hummingbirds currently are lured by phygelius and Lobelia tupa in my Oregon garden late September, but some backup would be nice. In the Los Angeles garden grevilleas and aloes handle the job year-round, and it’s in that garden that I became a fan of the equivalent of having your own private troupe of tiny circus acrobats perform multiple times a day. In a small garden, I think it’s fair that where my plant interests and aesthetics converge with supporting wildlife, we can collaborate, whether the needs are shelter, pollen, nectar, seedheads. And surprisingly our interests as far as plant choices converge quite a bit.

As cutback shrubs, and/or spared a hard winter, hardy fuchsias can make great size in summer, with nectar available at least July to frost. And with warmer winters, possibly even longer. Theo’s garden had more examples than seemed possible for a Portland city garden.

With over 200 hardy magellanica cultivars in Theo’s garden, September never looked so fresh, and with plenty of steam left to roll til frost. For a fuchsia devotee, the PNW is the place to be.

The Fuchsietum makes the case that fuchsias can share space with and complement all kinds of plants. Palms, perennials, abutilons, crepe myrtles, daphnes. And even though fuchsias are an obvious favorite, the garden wastes no time waiting for their summer arrival. Theo says it’s bustling with incidents and successive schemes starting with the early bulbs of spring, whose leaves are now buried under the skirts of fuchsias.

The enthusiasm for plants surrounds the house on all sides.

I’m guessing full sun here at the coast, zone 8-9. Some hardy fuchsias are supposedly root-hardy to zone 7 and possibly even zone 6 (‘Riccartonii.’) I should be able to fit in at least one of these exceptionally long-blooming shrubs for my hummingbird friends. Thank you, Theo, for the recommendations! More soon, AGO

San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit “Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal” is closing September 27, 2026. I visited in July and was thrilled to be immersed in a world where an artistic revolution mattered to artists and nonartists alike. Modern art champions Gertrude and Leo Stein’s early 20th century sitting room was recreated, and the galleries were filled with art work influenced by Matisse’s “ugliest painting.” The exhibit chronicles an incredibly exciting pre-WWI cultural moment. It was a bracing, restorative visit even before I found the green wall.

“In 1905, Henri Matisse sent shockwaves through the art world with Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), a portrait of his wife, Amélie, painted in bold color and loose brushstrokes that defied convention. This exhibition traces the painting’s controversial history and explores its lasting impact on modern art.”

Wandering around the galleries we discovered an enormous green wall on one of the terraces. Lush, robustly healthy, and filled with plants I wouldn’t think to associate with green walls. There was repetition of Salvia chiapensis, for example, abutilons. And mahonia!

As I say the exhibit closes September 27, 2026, but Brenner’s green wall is a permanent installation. If you can go, it makes for a fine afternoon.

More soon, AGO

Rumex sanguineous, the bloody dock, which I love saying and writing, has been flawless all summer. Which is gratifying because, as an edible, I assumed my battalions of snails and slugs would have made lacework of it. Apparently not to their taste. Full sun, happy in this heavy soil that’s on the dry side in summer.

If you allow the tall, brushy brown flowers to form, you will have lots of bloody dock. This year I cut the flowers off before they could form seed.

Leaving bloody dock and on to some recent changes. Last Saturday morning I was pruning the Rhodocoma capensis at the Wonder Garden, something I do frequently with mine. Limbing it up into an arching, vase-like shape to give surrounding plants some breathing room. Maybe it was the size of the towering restio at the Wonder Garden that influenced what I did to mine Saturday afternoon when I got home.

I can become unreasonably attached to certain plants, I admit, but on Saturday something snapped and cold practicality won. It was obvious that this heavily trafficked corner closest to the back stairs needed some serious breathing room. (Marty had been saying this for months.)

The potato vine Solanum laxum was requiring such frequent cutting back to keep the walkways passable that I was leaving loppers permanently propped against the stairs. And a ladder was now needed to keep it off the roof. ( I hate it when ladders become part of routine care.)

And once I started to look at this corner critically instead of emotionally, I realized the 6-foot stock tank wasn’t growing anything particularly irreplaceable and should be removed as well. Which left the restio. Without the tank holding it back, I knew I’d have to keep the loppers handy to clear the walkways of the arching restio in perpetuity.

Once the decision was made the work was quick. Marty happily tackled the vine and dug up the restio while I hid in the house. Change is hard. But I love the result (even if the neighbor’s entire two-story house is now visible from the stairs instead of just half of it). We emptied the stock tank of soil and gave the tank and soil to a new home. The original idea for the tank was to grow the native moisture-loving Darmera peltata. Without adding water daily, the tank was impossible to keep moist enough for the darmera, which has been moved to the east under a downspout.

The plants get up to really interesting associations throughout the season. And even though they lean into and on each other, it’s amazing what intricate support systems they devise. Even after an afternoon of heavy wind, the garden moves together like a single organism.

Lastly, a video (sorry about any ads!) with Rosy Hardy visiting Derry Watkins at her home and nursery Special Plants. Wonderful to hear Derry proclaim it’s okay if plants don’t live forever! It’s okay to make changes! Truer words…

More soon, AGO

A couple of the gardens I’ve visited through the HPSO Open Gardens program this summer involved the owners’ experimenting with a naturalistic planting style as they gained more space to garden. Sometimes called the New Naturalism or the New Perennial Movement, sometimes simply “Oudolfian” after the Dutch designer most often associated with this movement in garden design. Generally, and very superficially, it’s a reliance on building hardy herbaceous plant communities. Developed in complex, successive layers, the garden surges through the growing seasons, beginning with bulbs and ending with the skeletal remains of grasses and blooms standing over winter. The style originated in cool, northern latitudes and has influenced gardens and been adapted, with varying success, all over the world. To fully engage the landscape, paths provide the tracks for an immersive and some say pastorally emotional experience.

Dairy Creek Meadows is the dramatic result of the new owners exploring naturalistic-style planting on 30 acres of former dairy land. Craig Quirk and Larry Neill’s previous Portland town garden Floramagoria was an extravagant construct, with both horticulture and hardscape at full throttle. Working with designer Laura Crockett, the garden vibrated with a condensed intensity made up of assertively architectural planting, seating pavilions, intricate container displays, hot-colored furnishings, painted walls, inlaid mosaic rugs. It was a sensual surround of strong color and form that left me reeling — I took very few photos during my visit in 2014. House and garden changed hands in 2023, and Quirk and Neill retired to 30 acres to create Dairy Creek Meadows. (I was told the friends who took over Floramagoria have kept it relatively intact.) Laura Crockett has been involved with Dairy Creek Meadows as well.

And a lot of the design flourishes that made Floramagoria such a unique experience have also been incorporated into Dairy Creek Meadows. The intensity and intimacy of the small jewel-box garden that was Floramagoria has been traded for big gestures, panoramic views and sweeps of planting, all anchored by that fabulous greenhouse and farm buildings, old and new.

If I understood correctly, the first order of business was installing the Hartley Botanic greenhouse. Along with the farm buildings and silos, it is the main structural point of reference for the new garden and takes command of the surrounding meadows beautifully.

Along with the crevice garden, there’s a vegetable and cutting garden, pond, and large containers for bog plants — a carryover feature from Floramagoria. Gardens surround the owners’ private home as well. Guessing from my lack of photos, the private home may have been off limits this tour.

The same strikingly bold taste and confident touch that made Floramagoria special is here at Dairy Creek Meadows, with the experimental planting scaled to suit the vast spaces. Visit if you get the chance. More soon, AGO

Visiting Cistus Nursery over the summer, I was struck how walking its paths was so reminiscent of visiting Western Hills, a Northern California garden and nursery founded by Lester Hawkins and Marshall Olbrich in 1959, and which I visited regularly in the ’80s and ’90s. After the inevitable ownership changes began in the 2000s, Western Hills fortunately weathered the evolution from a beloved private garden and nursery to now a non-profit educational institution of inestimable horticultural value.

And that strong connection I feel between Cistus and Western Hills is not all in my nostalgic imagination. Sean Hogan knew the original Western Hills through his work in Bay Area botanical gardens in the ’80s and ’90s and is currently on Western Hills’ Horticultural Advisory Committee. If you can go, I wouldn’t miss the chance to hear him speak at this garden he knows so well.

There are still some great gardens with nursery operations, and the PNW has a fair share of them, including Cistus. If you have such a destination available to visit, you know what a treasure these places are. Walking the garden, dashing to the plant tables to check availability, chatting with staff about horticultural minutiae and new plant acquisitions. There is no other garden retail experience that can match it.

Perhaps more important than the benefits to personal gardens, these horticultural hubs educate and inspire future gardeners and nursery people. Visiting Western Hills last July it was clear the current owners and board members are making the most of the legacy opportunities the garden offers for building a thriving horticultural community. You can sign up for their monthly newsletter here and apply to their horticulture intern position here.

Western Hills currently offers a few plants for sale, but nothing like the offerings in the heyday of Hawkins and Olbrich. And I’m not clear if that will eventually be part of the vision of the nonprofit foundation. If you go to the talk, ask Sean!

From the first garden visit on Saturday I took home only plants, no photos. The exact inverse result of most garden tours! The owner has been recovering from medical mobility issues that unfortunately began in spring. For decades the garden had absorbed the owner’s horticultural passions, first for penstemons and now with salvias. We both go way back with salvias, so there was lots to discuss.

And then I stumbled on the table in back staged with 4-inch nursery pots. Of course I had to inquire about this small nursery operation. Not for sale, take them, please, he said. I thought he was joking. No joke, he said, you have no idea how hard it is to give away plants. (I’m still trying to process this remarkable assertion that runs completely contrary to my simple world view.) And yet he couldn’t stop propagating. There were some nice salvias, including some Canary Islanders like broussonetii that I was pretty sure would become large, non-blooming shrubs for me in Oregon and then die over winter. I wouldn’t bring it home to the Los Angeles zone 10 garden either, where regular irrigation is uncertain.

But I could definitely use hardy biennial Salvia sclarea, which I had been trying to grow from seed. Now I had two more to add to the one that successfully germinated. Take more, take more, he pleaded. I grabbed a Salvia ‘La Trinidad Pink’ just because its reputation precedes it, and also because I’ve never grown this microphylla found by the Yucca Do nursery near Nueva Leon in Mexico some years ago. I hope next year will be easier for this generous household and keeper of so many salvias.

The garden I visited on Sunday I had seen just a few weeks before, but I really wanted to check out the progress of Mark’s tithonia, which was way ahead of mine. I took a few photos of this garden but not as many as I would if Mark wasn’t also a friend. And Billie was with me roaming the paths too, as if that’s not enough distraction. But you could point a camera anywhere in the Kuestner garden and come out a winner. It’s a mostly shade garden filled with rare evergreen trees like eucryphias that Mark dotes on, with pockets of sun carved out for summer stuff.

More soon, AGO

I checked out the local dahlia grower’s fields yesterday, but it’s still very early for much of a show. In local gardens around town, dahlias left in the ground have been up and blooming for a couple months. The grower doesn’t risk leaving the tubers in the ground over winter, so late August/September is when his fields start showing more than a smattering of blooms. But some varieties were well advanced in growth and bloom over others.

The qualities I look for in a dahlia are rarely mentioned in catalogues. Size, color and shape of flower are included in print descriptions but not the overall habit of growth. Walking the fields really clarifies what makes a good garden dahlia from one grown for a vase.

My feet and sandals were covered in raw sienna-colored dirt by the time I walked the extent of the fields without another soul in sight. Just me and the dahlias.

This morning the downpipes were gurgling from a heavy mist almost veering into a light rain. Probably nothing measurable though. A morning like this is why the boardwalk is much appreciated.

Have a great Sunday. AGO

Here’s the view of the Oregon Coast back garden through the sliding doors, a view I look at a lot. Like both my gardens, it’s small and densely planted. It’s still exciting to throw back the curtains every morning and head outside, just as it was opening the kitchen door onto the LA/Long Beach, CA garden all those years. Everything in Oregon has to survive the winter while I’m gone, without protection, just as the zone 10 garden has to survive the summer while I’m here, with minimal supplemental irrigation. (Marty is in Long Beach right now and watering liberally; the garden is definitely showing the stress. I think the neighbors who promised to water occasionally went camping.)

I think this is pretty much peak summer 2026, with nothing else waiting in the wings to make an appearance. All the early performers are submerged under the growth of mid to late summer.

I’m always mentally toggling back and forth between the two gardens, so some quick context might be helpful. This is my sixth summer here playing in a new garden on the Oregon Coast zone 8-9, after 30-some years in LA’s zone 10 frostless garden. But old habits die hard — I still mostly plant for a dry summer. It’s the cool summers on the coast that make all the difference as far as quality and length of bloom. Even easy stuff like cosmos was a struggle in zone 10 summers.

On the coast I stick to small simple flowers that make a wash of color and avoid more resource-intensive things like roses, peonies, clematis and others whose growth habits and down time I find difficult to handle in a small garden. If there’s one constant between the two gardens, I’ve always been a “community organizer” type of gardener, preferring the overall effect to showcasing a certain plant, even making agaves and aloes share the spotlight with grasses and shrubs down south.

More soon, AGO

At the southern entrance was a searing melange of annuals that was repeated beyond the gates throughout the entrance plaza. Beautifully grown as far as gradation of heights, etc. The bodacious planting had me imagining the staff brain-storming this splashy summer display to knock the socks off visitors, and then the methodical work of ordering seeds and planting out hundreds of annuals. The saturated color impulse was so aggressively retro it felt brand-new. A horticultural middle finger to San Francisco’s typically overcast summer skies.

A standout among the petunias and ageratum was a tall, silver-leaved orange daisy, maybe an arctotis of some kind. Wasn’t there once an annual called Venidium ‘Zulu Prince’ or has it now changed names?

After looking around at seed catalogues, I’m fairly certain this is Venidium ‘Orange Prince.’ Looks like a scorcher, right? From my reading, it actually prefers a cool summer like San Francisco (or my Oregon coast garden, maybe next year).

And that marigold was a nice choice too, a simple tall-stemmed single, color of burning embers, maybe ‘Cinnabar.’ The kind that Christopher Lloyd made acceptable again, along with tall-stemmed ageratum. No dwarf varieties, no Victorian bedding-style blobs allowed.

And don’t panic, the entrance plaza is filled with all the cool plants that thrive here year-round, like cussonia, beschorneria and agave.

The first day we arrived was a hot muggy mess. What had become of my San Francisco, with its unsurpassed weather for long cool city rambles? The next day the city mercifully returned to its baseline overcast conditions.

Now we’re wandering into the garden, through the Mediterranean, South African and Australian sections.

The cactus and succulent garden is not large but the gravitas leant by its age and maturity make up for size.

A couple standouts not frequently seen were the hardy gloxinia Incarvillea arguta and francoa. The latter I grow in the front garden and mine was in bloom in July as well. From Chile. Great stiff evergreen crinkly leaves, loves a cool summer. Makes an incredible container plant too.

Have a great weekend.

Crocosmias bring a freshness to August, particularly in the early bud stages when the whole plant embodies something plump and juicy. Looking at them gives me a craving for nectarines. But we’ve all seen them at their worst, in overgrown, disheveled clumps, so there’s no arguing if you’ve decided to steer clear of them. I will say that growing them hard against a boundary where they can’t overspread and not mid-border has worked well for me. And some varieties like ‘Solfatare’ are much less vigorous than, say, ‘Lucifer.’

Take care, more soon, AGO