Passions — a blog

In Defense of Non-conventional Rock Gardens

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A guest entry from Panayoti Kelaidis, originally posted on the Alpine-L discussion list. Visit Panayoti’s Botanic Gardens Blog from the Denver Botanic Gardens.

I possess a classic sort of rock garden, chockablock full of androsaces, primulas, saxifrages, gentians galore and all the other card carrying members of the Bona Fide Alpine Plant club. In fact, I suspect I grow as many of these as just about anyone else. I love them of course. I would not want to be without them. You can find most plants in this garden represented in many of the several hundred rock garden books I have accumulated in the course of my lifetime: it’s pretty conventional really. I still like it.

And yet I have another garden where nary a saxifrage grows, let alone a primula, much less an androsace. Here you will find over 100 kinds of miniature cacti, South African succulents, penstemons, eriogonums, ten species of Talinum, oncocyclus iris, juno iris galore, crocuses, strange cushion plants like Satureja spinescens. These are grown in crevices and among rocks just as they might in nature. Probably half the plants in this garden have never appeared in a single rock garden tome. In my heart of hearts, I love both gardens very much, and would be hard put to choose between them: the dryland rock garden has one stellar quality, however. It is utterly novel and fresh in every way.

Mexican Hat in Blue Gramma Meadow

But what would we make of the blue gramma meadow filled with fritillaria, calochortus and allium? or the twin berms, one filled with tiny carpeting treasures from Western America (the usual steppe rabble) and the other from the Eastern hemisphere: veronicas, acantholimons, tulips and a jillion tiny mints and composites. And hardly a single rock in any of these gardens, which comprise many thousands of square feet? They would hardly qualify as a rock garden technically. They sure as heck ain’t perennial borders.
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Fallen Leaves

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Fallen Cottonwood Leaves

The rainy season has begun and after a glorious and drier than normal October, it’s wet out in the woods. These Black Cottonwood leaves were covering a portion of the trail around Canyon Lake this morning. The Vine Maples lost their leaves nearly a month ago, followed by the Bigleaf Maples. The Red Alders, which aren’t colorful at all, still have a few leaves.

Of course, all the conifers and evergreen ferns are still green. That’s one of the big differences between winter in the northwest and in places that have an almost exclusively deciduous forest. I’ve come to like what we have here and don’t really want to go back to having only shades of brown in the winter forest.

Today’s hike was an easy stroll around Canyon Lake.  It’s about 2 miles and nearly level. There were still a few lingering Tiarella flowers. I saw at least one Large-leaved Geum with its bright yellow flower, and there were several of the non-native Herb Robert flowers around as well. Mostly what we looked at along the trail were the myriad of mosses on rotting logs and tree trunks and the large number of lichens. There were liverworts, too, but they look a lot like mosses or lichens if you don’t know any better.

I only carried my little Canon S70 pocket camera today.  I’d hauled my big camera along the same trail about a month ago, creating a number of nice images that I  haven’t gotten captioned yet.  It’s nice to travel light for a change.

Autumn Larch

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Larch in Autumn GardenOur native Larch is a tree I don’t see in gardens very often. All summer it’s a soft green, but in the autumn it turns brilliant gold for a short period before dropping its needles for the winter.

This larch is in Cynthia Krieble’s Ellensburg, Washington garden. It’s right out front where everyone passing by on the sidewalk or street can see it in a border of mixed conifers, drought-tolerant perennials, and grasses. Other plants visible in the photo include red-twig dogwood, Russian sage, and a juniper. Cynthia is an artist who gardens like she paints, mixing colors and textures in a varied palette. You can see some of her work at Linda Hodges Gallery.

I made the photo this afternoon when the sun peeked out from the thin, high clouds that moved in today. At this time of year the sun never gets very high in the sky, so even mid-afternoon light is low and dramatic. Backlighting enhances the texture and color in the needles. With the sun at my back the larch, while still attractive, was not nearly as exciting.

This was my fourth visit to Cynthia’s garden. Photos from the others are at Inland Northwest Gardening.

Raven Rose

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‘Raven’ RoseLast month I was down in Portland for the annual Garden Writers Association symposium. I took time on the morning afterward to spend a few hours exploring and photographing in the International Rose Test Garden. There are a huge number of roses in the garden, many of them looking very nice in late September. But one stood out to me that day — a shrub rose called ‘Raven’.

What struck me was the pattern of the petals. Neither too full nor a single, I liked the way the individual petals curved around and formed nice patterns in each blossom. The bushes were covered with lots of these very dark red velvety flowers.

I’ve never seen ‘Raven’ in the garden center, but it’s one I’d definitely seek out if I decide there’s room in our garden for a new rose.

Now that we’re almost to the end of October, the roses are about finished. But it’s nice to think back and remember some of the blooms from earlier in the season.

Autumn Color

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Bigleaf Maples among Conifers

The Pacific Northwest isn’t known for fall color the way New England is, but we still get our share of brilliant yellows and oranges. The color here is from Bigleaf Maples (Acer macrophyllum) growing on a steep hillside above the Baker River. I shot from across the river with a 70-200mm lens and worked over the image in Lightroom to improve the contrast and saturation.

It’s getting toward the end of the foliage season, and most of the maples around Baker Lake and along the Baker River trail today had already lost most of their leaves. The Vine Maples were nearlybare, with just a few lingering leaves showing pale color. I’d hoped there would be more interesting foliage when I set out for a hike today, but it was mostly disappointing photographically.

All was not lost, as it was a very pleasant day for a walk in the woods. The clouds lifted mid-day and the sunshine highlighted the moss-covered tree trunks. I found a couple of species of coral fungi and maybe identified one of them in my copy of David Arora’s Mushroom Demystified. There were some other mushrooms along the way, but mostly past their prime or so small as to not be particularly interesting.

At the end of the day I drove up to Baker Hot Springs to see if it had been dug out after being filled in by a winter storm a few years ago.  The pool was back to similar size to what I remembered and I sat and soaked a while before heading home.

Mt. Baker from Bellingham Bay

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Mt. Baker from Bellingham Bay

This afternoon was a glorious blue-sky sunny autumn day with temperatures in the low 50s. Perfect for a bike ride around Lummi Peninsula. I chose to ride counter-clockwise for the first time in many visits to this regular loop, so I came back along Lummi Shore Road. The view from the road is across Bellingham Bay to Mount Baker. I was pedaling briskly, but able to enjoy the spectaular view of the mountain at the same time. The water was nearly totally calm, unusual for the bay, and the sky was a cloudless rich blue.

When I got home I decided I needed to return with my camera for the late afternoon light. I parked at one of the higher points along the road so I could look down on the water as well as across the bay to Bellingham and the mountain. Unfortunately, by 5:45 pm the sky had some high cirrus clouds and light haze over the mountain. The view just wasn’t as dramatic as I had envisioned. Always the optimist, I set up and made a series of exposures as the sun went down. I shot with my 70-200mm lens, coupled with a 2x teleconverter for many frames (including the one here).

I waited a while after the sun left the mountain to see if the sky would get interesting in that time between the sun dropping below the horizon and darkness. The clouds over Lummi Island were OK, but not spectacular. Over Baker there was nothing interesting going on so I headed home.

The frame here has benefitted from some work in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to enhance the color of the sky and improve the contrast of the forested hills and the city buildings. It’s closer to what I envisioned than the raw camera capture.

And the bike ride?  I set a new personal speed record for the year, averaging 18.9 mph over about 32.5 miles. Much of the time I was riding 21-22 mph on the flatter sections of road. There are no big hills, just a few gentle upgrades on the route.

Mt. Baker

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Self Portrait below Mt. BakerMid-October is getting toward the end of the good weather in the North Cascades. I took advantage of a nice day today to head up toward Mt. Baker to photograph the mountain and the rugged crevasses and seracs on the lower portion of the Coleman glacier. I made this self-portrait at the high point of my hike, a bit over 5900 feet elevation. The crevasse I’m stradling wasn’t very deep so I felt comfortable going out on the glacier by myself without an ice axe. However, I didn’t go any farther than where I’m standing.

The weather wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for. The blue sky in the photo was only in evidence for a short time about 3 pm, but it couldn’t have been timed any better. Most of the time the sky was a hazy white with thin, high clouds signaling an approaching front which will probably bring rain on Monday.

The Coleman glacier, which flows north off Mt. Baker and terminates into Glacier Creek, is heavily crevassed and the lower portion has substantial seracs. A climbing class of more than a dozen students was busy practicing their ice climbing on the glacier below me. I tried that once, in about the same place, and decided ice climbing isn’t for me. Maybe I gave up too easily and I should try again.

Several creeks cross the Heliotrope Ridge trail as it winds its way up toward the glacier. The higher elevation crossings were challenging because of ice on the rocks. In mid-summer the challenge is huge water flows from melting snow, but that wasn’t the issue today. In one case I threw a bunch of small stones at the ice to break it off the rocks so I could have a firm place to stand mid-stream. I really didn’t want to get wet or injured.

All told, I hiked about 6 miles with 2300 feet of elevation gain and loss today. If I hadn’t gone to the mountains I could have gone kayaking, bicycling, or worked in the garden.

Toad Lily

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Toad LilyToad Lilies are bulbs that bloom late in the season, adding a little color during that transition period between summer and autumn here in the Northwest. There are several species and varieties, but from the ones I’ve seen, they’re mostly shades of purple, with up-facing blossoms on stems that are about waist high or a little higher.

This blossom was one of many in a lush clump of Candelabra Toad Lilies, Tricyrtis macropoda, along the path at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden this afternoon.

I was on my way back to the car at the end of the day when I saw gentle backlight coming through the blossoms and decided I had time for a few more photos since I was already going to be late for dinner. I made several variations on the theme, horizontal with multiple blossoms, horizontal with just a single blossom, and then verticals with one blossom. I liked this one with a tiny spider crawling across a strand of silk, although I have another variation with neither the spider nor the silk. Fortunately it was a dead calm afternoon as the light was fading, the flowers are on tall stalks, and I was working close with a 100mm macro lens.

Red Chairs

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Red Chairs

I think a little boldness in the garden is a good thing. This pair of old red chairs, from a garden in Eugene, Oregon (that I also found on https://emfurn.com/), establish that bold can be stylish and fun.

I found these chairs along the south side path in a tiny city lot garden jam-packed with plants. The owner told me she has some 250 varieties of roses, but you’d never know it in September when they’re out of bloom. A big eucalpytus stood at the corner of the house by the entrance gate, much taller than she ever expected it to grow when it was planted. This was definitely a personal garden, not one designed and installed by some fancy designer. It grew organically around the whims of the owners over many years. I like that.

The photo is from my Canon S70 pocket camera, hand held on the Garden Writers Association bus tour to Eugene on September 23.

Northwest Moonwort

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Northwest Moonwort

Moonworts are among the more primitive ferns.  They’re sometimes called grape ferns because of the grapelike clusters of spore-producing bodies seen in this photo. This particular species is Botrychium pinnatum, Northwest Moonwort. It was growing along the Perry Creek trail off the Mountain Loop Highway east of Granite Falls in Snohomish County in July a couple of years ago.

Perry Creek is a Research Natural Area, set aside on Forest Service land to protect both plants and wildlife.  In this case, the protection is primarily for the great diversity of ferns found along the first couple of miles of trail. The little moonworts are only a few inches high and easy to miss while hiking. It really takes a trained eye to find them. I was fortunate on this trip to have an experienced moonwort hunter as guide leading a Native Plant Society field trip. We talked about hunting and what the best spotting scopes were, he recommended to me the check out these spotting scopes reviewed.

Access to Perry Creek is going to change in 2009 when the road to the trailhead is closed and a new one-mile connector trail is built from the Mount Dickerman trailhead. Whether this results in more or less use of the trail remains to be seen. The published reason for the change is the lack of parking along the end of the Perry Creek road and the difficulty turning around there.