Small seedlings of the biennial Dianthus barbatus 'Sooty' were planted out last fall, and I'm happy to report it really lives up to its name.  When the garden was new I used a lot of Dianthus barbatus 'Oeschberg,' a bright magenta, to cover all that bare ground,  so I realized early on with the Oregon garden how invaluable this old-fashioned dianthus can be in late spring.  And this biennial loves the growing conditions here, cool and wet, deep soil, so they bloom for months. There's still a few 'Oeschberg' dianthus in dwindling numbers, so they do seem to act as short-lived perennials here.  Starting fresh from seed mid-summer is the best bet, but cuttings can be taken too.  I might try cuttings with 'Sooty.' 

My seeds came from Chiltern's in the UK.  (A federal Permit to Import Plant Products is required, and I need to reapply.  I think it lasts for five years.)  I also started a white form that's just starting to bloom on the east side, which was newly dug so still lots of bare ground to cover.  Weird that I chose the extreme ends of the spectrum, white and dark. I might use the white mostly as a cut flower.  I'd hate to cut 'Sooty' from the garden.  I saw masses of mixed color Sweet Williams recently at Old Germantown Gardens, including a peachy-pink strain 'Newport Pink,' all of which would be great for cutting.  For the garden I prefer the dark single color strains like 'Oeschberg' and 'Sooty.'

Small seedlings of Verbascum phlomoides were also planted last fall.  It's an intriguing sight as it twists and elongates a flower bud.  This newly planted area, maybe 4x4,' previously grew Persicaria polymorpha which stretches to 5x5 by summer.  After the persicaria's removal and relocation, there was a lot of bare ground in fall for planting.  Biennials are great for such temporary opportunities, because they're something to watch early in spring, whereas annuals won't be a presence until July at the earliest here at coast.

More twistiness from Centaurea macrocephala, the Bighead Knapweed.  Digging Dog Nursery describes it well:  "An overgrown, sun-struck relative of the Bachelor Button, this “big-headed” native of the Caucasus Mountains has so many good qualities you’ll soon be inviting it into your garden. A medium green, rowdy mass of oversized, wavy-edged lanceolate leaves attached to stout stems gives way to intriguing, rust-colored buds as big as a chicken’s egg. Scaled by papery bracts, the bud’s rotund profile opens to offer a large, bright yellow thistle, a cheerful mop of thread-like petals bursting with sunshine and color."   

There's three close to the back fence, which may be two too many because these are large plants, at least 3x3.'  The seedlings were discovered one autumn growing in the thatch of the "basket," the seedhead, and a few were pried free and potted up, now growing in my garden.  I wonder if this is common or done by any other plant? The mother plant is still flourishing in a nearby commercial strip with no signs of other seedlings nearby. 

Along with Dianthus barbatus 'Sooty,' I can't stop adding dark notes to the garden, like dark-leaved penstemon and angelica, Anthriscus 'Ravenswing.' (And a new Astilbe 'Chocolate Shogun.') The earlier they show leaves in spring, the better.  I know too much variegation can get a little hectic, and I use it sparingly, but I haven't found a limit yet to the dark side of planting.

Have a great Sunday! More soon, AGO

I really like this bit of planting, and a lot of that has to do with the contributions of Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash,’ the dark eucomis, and the tawny leaves of the Arctostaphylos pajaroensis hybrid. The flowers of Euphorbia ‘Miner’s Merlot,’ just seen on the left above, carry the same russet tones as the manzanita, as does Carex testacea. ‘Copton Ash’ reminds me of a miniature Euphorbia certatocarpa, seen recently and fawned over at Cistus. There are similar types like ‘Dean’s Hybrid’ and ‘Blue Haze’ which haven’t succeeded for me, and that might be on me. These euphorbias are not rubbery-leaved like characias but more willowy in habit. Billowy even. ‘Copton Ash’ doesn’t self-sow, thank goodness.

As a side note, on the subject of reseeding, I’m getting some light reseeding from supposedly sterile Eryngium ‘Big Blue,’ a cross of alpinum and bourgatii, which is totally fine.

The circular silver drum was some kind of farm feeder, its bottom drilled and handle removed to make a home for an agave. (I’m no stranger to salvage, but in this case finding a large, cheap container was the primary consideration.) A local nursery was carrying gallons of Agave ovatifolia ‘Vanzie,’ a rare offering for the coast. I passed it up a few times but ultimately couldn’t let it go. Such treasures do not normally make their way to the coast. It seemed inevitable, meant to be.  Returning for ‘Vanzie’ I noticed nearby Yucca ‘Silver Anniversary,’ a cross by Plant Delights of filamentosa and pallida. Intriguing! Not really wanting a potentially gigantic whale’s tongue agave in my small garden, I left with the yucca. What were these plants doing at my local hanging-basket-petunia-calibrachoa nursery? I posed that question to its owner, and she laughed, “These are my plants — I’m from Arizona.”

More soon, AGO

When Sally Schmitt sold her ground-breaking, farm-to-table restaurant The French Laundry to Thomas Keller in 1994, she and her husband Don left Yountville and Napa County for an apple farm in Mendocino County.

Sally passed away in 2022, one of those people that used up every bit of energy, intelligence, enthusiasm, curiosity and inspiration that filled her body and soul for 90 years. Her restaurant The French Laundry has found world renown and 3 Michelin stars under its second owner Thomas Keller. The Apple Farm, on the other hand, that Sally helped her daughter operate in Philo, California, flies blissfully under the radar, a peaceful refuge for lovers of heirloom apples and rural simplicity.

Recently, friends and family stayed there over Memorial Day Weekend in the cottages available to rent surrounded by 80 varieties of apple trees, chickens and goats. I begged for some photos to share so we could have a look.

I’m daydreaming about a visit to coincide with the apple harvest.

An HPSO open garden visit on Sunday took me about 20 minutes from Cistus Nursery on Sauvie Island, so I popped in to check on some plants I’ve been eyeing in their catalogue. After parking I wandered into the private area near the residence, where I saw this euphorbia, my personal holy grail, lining a path.

As far as entering the verboten part of the garden, at an exciting destination like Cistus my eyes see only plants and inviting paths, not signage. I truthfully did not mean to trespass and was mortified when I realized I had done so. Later in the visit I confessed my mistake to the owner Sean Hogan, and he was kindly reassuring and said they were getting deliveries so everything was open and not to worry. (He actually sent me back into the private area to check out Carex secta, a New Zealand sedge that hoists itself up on a “trunk” of old growth.).

This euphorbia has been tantalizingly out of reach for decades. Nobody offers it for sale. Seeing it on the path, it was much larger than the spindly specimen I grew decades ago in Los Angeles. I nursed a couple cuttings but lost them and the mother plant ages ago. It is incredibly long blooming, willowy, full of that bright character that only euphorbias bring to a garden. And I just recently discovered it was in Citstus’ catalogue. No plants ready for retail sales yet (and still building size for mail order). And as Sean explained, Cistus is predominantly a mail order nursery, although the retail side is always full of fabulous plants and worth browsing. (Available retail was a chionochloa I’ve been looking for to billow out over the east “boardwalk,” Chionochloa conspicua.)

So close to the prize! I’ve been assured that Euphorbia certatocarpa will be available for mail order very soon. The garden I also visited that day was Old Germantown Gardens, which I knew from a blogger’s Fling visit back in 2014. I didn’t write a single post on that visit. OGG is a lot to digest! I’ll be making a stab at it shortly. Something I’ve been struck by is a lot of garden writing I read naturally focuses on the ground level for small urban gardens, whereas the careful buildup with trees and shrubs in larger gardens remains to my eye mostly anonymous shapes. In LA I could half-ass “read” the skyline; in PNW gardens, not so much. It’s frustrating to know that every tree and shrub at Old Germantown Gardens was carefully considered for inclusion because of its unique and special qualities, but are nonetheless shapes without names to me. No wonder I never posted on it back in 2014! More soon, AGO

A few images from local nurseries and garden tours, courtesy of that incredible team, gardeners and the month of May.

Every May this perfectly proportionate, quietly elegant iroid lures me in for close inspection. The Tasmanian Flag Iris, Diplarrena latifolia, exudes the charm and appeal that makes plants ubiquitous, yet there’s no local source for it. Xera lists it, but not currently available, and I have no doubt this specimen comes from their fine nursery, like many of the plants in the WG. Said to be easy from seed.

Have a great long weekend! More soon, AGO

This lively orange number is Geum ‘Queen of Orange.’ It’s been the earliest geum to bloom, and because the flowers are double it’s not as self-supporting as ‘Totally Tangerine.’ TT has the reputation for the longest period of bloom, and the Queen may not be able to compete in that regard but it is a citrusy blast very early in the season. Chartreuse foam is from Euphorbia ‘Miner’s Merlot,’ so good early in spring that I keeping adding more for a current total of three.

Another really good plant early in spring is Penstemon ‘Dark Towers.’ Nothing eats it, the leaves come through winter flawlessly. It is just now beginning to bloom, but really it’s the early rich dark leaves that make it invaluable. ‘Blackbeard’ is another dark-leaved penstemon added last fall, and between the two varieties there are now five clumps.

Polemoniums are another group of plants like geum that love these conditions and make a strong early appearance. Another plant worthy of multiples for spring here and I’m trying several varieties.

Another plant I’ve spread into three clumps is this thistle that loves the rich deep moisture-retentive soil. Blooms heavy in spring and continues through summer.

Verbascum ‘Letitia’ from High Country Gardens is as charming as the catologue claims. New this spring. It is sterile and I wish it wasn’t. If it doesn’t make it through next winter, that’s the end of it. Vegetative propagation of such a young plant may not be feasible — we’ll see.

Narrow beds against the east side of the house have acted as hodge-podge holding beds. Protected against the house, this Nicotiana mutabilis surprisingly made it through the mild winter and burst into early bloom. It’s a 3×3 arching mass of dainty trumpets and still growing in size.

Bloom Day posts can be deceptive as far as the amount of flowers at one time. There’s a lot of nonflowering evergreens for ballast.

The east side I’ve been referring to is where the “boardwalk” is under construction, temporarily halted due to rain and mud.

Many years ago Carol at May Dreams Gardens devised the idea of Bloom Day to keep track of what’s blooming when all over the world. It is an invaluable record to keep. Have a great weekend! More soon, AGO

Another issue that consumes my research is whether or not it is monocarpic. Reliable sources say it is not monocarpic, but still I worry…It’s bloomed once for me in Los Angeles in 2011, but the plant has always been susceptible to scale infestations in zone 10 and either withers away or is removed in exasperation.

You never know what to expect at plant sales run by the horticulturally obsessed. At last Saturday’s Dirty Diggers plant sale in Portland, Anna of the blog Flutter & Hum was a friendly voice shouting my name when I first wandered in. I’m amazed people can do that after long absences. We chatted over her plants for sale, when she mentioned the riveting news that she had a couple gallons of beschorneria for sale too. As young plants, they are nice looking but give no hint of the pyrotechnics they are capable of producing in bloom. I sputtered and stammered and tried to describe the current spectacle in my garden, but just couldn’t do it. Something vague and unhelpful about parrots was all I could manage. Still worrying about monocarpism, I grabbed one of Anna’s beschornerias for sale as a backup. Thank you, Anna!

How to describe the false agave in bloom. A cherry red stalk as strong and thick as a broom handle reaching up to 4 feet. From side branches that reach their greatest width about mid stalk, then taper up the stem to its zenith, hang red pendulous tubular flowers rimmed in chartreuse green. The flowers do not open into larger trumpets but remain narrow. (Other than the colors, the bloom has nothing to do with parrots.) Another member of the asparagaceae family, Polygonatum kingianum, is slightly reminiscent in bloom, as far as dangling tubular flowers.

Thanks to all the Dirty Diggers for a great sale — Anna, Loree, Tamara, Patricia, Heather, Jerry and all the others who attended or manned tables to discuss in depth the wonderful world of their plants. Keep an eye out for their next sale in the fall — you never know who or what might turn up.

The Wonder Garden is a volunteer-driven, horticultural branch of the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, Oregon. Since I’ve been volunteering the past several years, the Wonder Garden seems to evolve effortlessly from strength to strength. But having participated in an April work party that expanded one of the beds a few feet in circumference, I can attest to the effort required in growing a garden on a former parking lot. Pick axes are involved to break through the substrate to reach…beach sand. (I bet even Beth Chatto’s famous garden made on a former parking lot had soil beneath the rubble.) When not busting up parking lot, routine maintenance includes shoring up the berms, cutting back after winter, and applying mulches every spring to add some organic matter to an incredibly free-draining site that gets no rain all summer. All in addition to the usual division of perennials, weeding, and shuffling of plants as needed.

Of all the WG plants I crush on, Erysimum ‘Apricot Twist’ rates high on the list. It is an electrifyingly acidic tonic in early spring. Last fall it looked like it had finally succumbed to that sparse, woody fate that awaits the short-lived erysimum clan. Except there is no known local source for ‘Apricot Twist,’ and none had been successfully propagated from the mother plant! Volunteers jumped to, and several cuttings were taken in fall and rooted over winter. I have one in my garden, and several others were farmed out for future sources of cuttings of this amazing plant. One other has been planted elsewhere in the WG. I can’t imagine the WG without it. Early and incredibly long blooming all summer. I noted an inferior strain of erysimum seeding around upon moving into my home garden in 2021 — they seem to love life on the rainy coast.

I took a spin around the garden late afternoon last Friday while waiting for a talk by Neil Bell at the Hoffman across the street. Colors come on strong in spring, on a framework that is predominantly evergreen from the range of choices available in this zone 8-9. Eucalyptus pauciflora, Acacia pravissima, cistus, manzanita, callistemon, azara, halimium, hebes, calluna, Ugni molinae, corokia, Fabiana imbricata, ceanothus, leptospermum, luma, Pittosporum ‘Tall & Tuff,’ even a thriving Leucadendron galpinii. Fabulously shrubby and textural with carefully considered seasonal jolts of gorgeous color from herbaceous plants too. I am such a fan of this garden.

The Wonder Garden’s wealth of interesting and diverse evergreens paired with seasonal dynamism makes it worth checking out all season. There’s some seriously good planting happening in the little beach town of Manzanita.

Even as a part-time local, it took me a couple passes to find the tight entrance off 101 to the Cedar Wetlands Nature Preserve just outside Rockaway Beach. (I think there’s a small sign if you’re heading south on 101; northward, the reverse of the sign says Welcome to Rockaway Beach.) I wanted to catch the skunk cabbage in bloom again.

Turns out I was late for the bloom — late March/early April is when the bog lights up with the swamp lanterns. Still I made the mile-long walk down the boardwalk to see the old cedar again.

That narrow entrance off Highway 101 leads to a mighty sight, to this old cedar that has seen it all, from the first sailing ship to anchor in Tillamook Bay in 1788, to the beginning of commercial logging in the 1850s, to the last of the sea otters by 1900.

A champion tree, a witness tree to life on the Oregon coast for maybe the past thousand years or more. Middle-aged in 1700, it shuddered and swayed to the largest earthquake in North American history., a 9.0 that took out many of its compatriots and caused some parts of the coastline to drop several feet, leaving “ghost forests” that can still be seen at low tide.

Total coincidence, but my visit coincided with Earth Day, April 22, so some context is appropriate in the spirit of the occasion. This rare patch of cedar bog is itself part of the rarity that is the Pacific temperate rainforest, the largest temperate rainforest in the world. Temperate rainforests comprise a meager 3% of the earth’s surface. They excel as carbon sinks due to slow decomposition rates.

The main bloom of the skunk cabbage may have been over, but their massive leaves are a sight in their own right. The largest leaves of any native plant in the PNW.

This 50-acre old growth cedar bog was donated by a lumber company. Managed by the Nature Conservancy, it’s now been deeded to the City of Rockaway Beach. It is a hauntingly ancient place, a primordial experience sandwiched between the small towns of this stretch of the Oregon coast. Actually, I kind of like that it’s hard to find.

I first heard of what has come to be known as the Presidio Tunnel Tops in 2015, when visiting landscape architect Rania Reyes mentioned her involvement in a new Presidio Parklands Project in San Francisco. Rania was being given a personal tour of the garden at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles by its landscape architect Mia Lehrer. We were all there for an installment of Shirley Watts’ Natural Discourse symposium “Flora & Fauna,” at which Mia Lehrer was a speaker, and I sort of tagged along for Mia’s after-hours tour of the garden.

As far as what I could discern about the Presidio project, as a tag-along not wanting to be too intrusive with endless questions, I had a vague sense that there was to be some heroic geoengineering involved. And then over the next seven years I completely lost track of the project. In defense of my inattention, this was a long, winding, extremely complicated project with a lot of moving parts and overlapping administrative jurisdictions*.

The year of Rania’s visit to LA’s Natural History Museum, 2015, marked completion of the Presidio Parkway. This new roadway, comprising two tunnels, seven lanes, replaced the earthquake-damaged, bottleneck-prone elevated road (Doyle Drive) that had led motorists in and out of the city to the Golden Gate Bridge since 1937. It would be another seven years before the planting of the tunnels over the parkway would be finished and the mostly privately funded Tunnel Tops opened to the public.

(*Agencies that Built the Presidio Parkway
California Department of Transportation (CalTrans)
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
San Francisco County Transportation Authority
The Presidio Trust
Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District
The National Park Service — from the website)

The Presidio and I go way back, to when this former Spanish military fort dating to 1776 was a quiet, uncrowded destination to walk when I lived in my 20s in the Marina district of SF. After moving away, the Presidio was always a beloved place to revisit on yearly trips north to plant nurseries (e.g. Western Hills). Over the years, I think every family dog has romped through the Presidio. San Francisco’s embarrassment of riches in parks and open space has always been a source of envy to this Angelino. (Yeah, I know, in LA we have the beaches as our parks/open space, but I stubbornly prefer parks/botanical gardens.). And now with completion of Tunnel Tops, a project on a creative, technical par with the High Line, my envy is going to require frequent visits to assuage.

Unlike the High Line, there’s not a lot of media coverage on Tunnel Tops, even though James Corner’s firm Field Operations had a hand in both projects. Tunnel Tops’ salient evolutionary points, to me, are that in the year 1989 the Loma Prieta earthquake made the main conduit to Golden Gate Bridge, Doyle Drive, unsafe. Also in that year, the military gave up the site as a military post. What followed were years of inter-agency debate over use and access. The favored solution was building a freeway to modern standards that would continue the tradition of bisecting the Presidio, sequestering it from a view of the bay and adjacent jewel of the city Crissy Field. Ultimately, a landscape architect’s vision that prioritized this incredible setting of natural beauty as an opportunity for recreational space for people thankfully won the day.

During the long inter-agency period discussing a new roadway, somehow amidst the gravitational pull of conventional traffic solutions, landscape architect Michael Painter’s improbable proposal to build a park atop tunnels slowly gained traction. From SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a nonprofit): “For infrastructure projects like roads, landscape architects are at the bottom of the professional pile. A common attitude is, We’ll build it, then give you a little money to pretty it up. The focus is on objects, while landscape architects focus on spaces.”

“Presidio Tunnel Tops reimagines a once-elevated highway into a vibrant, ecologically rich 14-acres of public space. Built atop 7 lanes of Presidio Parkway tunnels, the new landscape stitches together historic parklands with the San Francisco Bay and transforms infrastructure into an immersive experience, choreographing movement, topography, and ecology to create an open, accessible pedestrian connection across 40 feet of grade change.” American Society of Landscape Architects — read more about the project from ASLA here.

For my first visit, to find the park ablaze with flowering leucospermums was pretty special. (I especially noted the coastal woollybush from Australia, Adenanthos sericeus, because I just planted another one in my SoCal garden.) Leucadendrons and other proteaceae, succulents, California natives, grasses, it’s a gorgeous mix that’s maturing beautifully in the propitious climate of the Bay Area.

This April the current administration fired all the board members of the Presidio Trust, the federal arm that manages the Presidio along with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. For now it’s uncertain how this will affect the park’s future operation. But it’s all the more reason to experience Tunnel Tops now in all its glory.