The Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle is one of the premier garden shows in the world. Every February thousands of gardeners descend on the Washington State Convention Center to find inspiration in the show gardens and purchase plants and other garden stuff from the rows of vendors.

The show is under new management this year, but walking around the exhibit area the feeling is the same as in previous years — a gardener’s delight. If I counted correctly there are 23 show gardens for 2010 and I think they’re all in the video.

Several show gardens used our northwest native Beach Strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis in vertical gardens. There were two gardens with chickens, including a unique “clucker clunker” pickup truck coop. Water, stone, and structural bare trees are always popular garden themes. New this year was a green roof, complete with a couple of solar panels with some spray foam insulation near San Diego added as well. Ever-playful Judith Jones of Fancy Fronds constructed a giant board game you could walk through.

If you’ve never been to the show, it runs through Sunday, February 7. Or plan ahead for 2011.

I’ve been going to the show for enough years that I run into lots of old friends and acquaintances. Of course part of that is the annual northwest Garden Writers Association gathering in the evening, which is always a good time with friends from throughout the region.

I saw lots of people photographing the show. It’s a challenging environment because the lighting is theatrical. That is, the gardens are in pools of light and the background is very dark. Overall light levels are pretty low as well. I shot the photos in the video with my Canon 5D set to ISO 1600 and white balance on tungsten. My lens was a 24-105 IS with the stabilizer turned on. I looked for something to brace the camera on whenever I could and frequently waited for people to get out of my frame. I prefer to work from a tripod, but in the show environment with thousands of people it’s just not possible. These shots aren’t for publication since the show hires a photographer and provides images to the press. Those photos are made in the middle of the night when there’s no one else around.

The Witt Winter Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle is one of my favorite places to visit in late January and February. The plant collection features early-blooming shrubs, many of which are fragrant. On a nice afternoon when the sun is low in the sky the light radiates through the massed Witchhazels and the sweet scent of Sarcococca and Hamamelis fills the air.

Of course, not everything that’s blooming is a shrub. This patch of hardy cyclamen, Cyclamen coum, blooms reliably at the base of a Stewartia monadelpha every winter. I think I’ve been photographing it since 1998. Something about it keeps bringing me back, even though the patch hasn’t changed much over the years, just slowly getting bigger.

This is a great plant for the winter garden. It self-seeds without being invasive. I’ve seen it carpeting a lawn near Medford. In the summer it goes dormant, disappearing completely until the foliage re-emerges in late autumn. Plant it together with the fall-blooming cyclamen, C. hederifolium, for a longer season of bloom and contrasting foliage textures.
Continue reading →

There’s still not a lot blooming, neither native nor cultivated, so I’ll continue on the theme of bark. It’s something I tend to notice more in the winter than the summer, although none of these photos are truly winter images.

The detail of peeling flowering cherry bark with a nice collection of lichens was growing along Azalea Way at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. I don’t know the variety of cherry, nor the names of the lichens. Several of the trees and shrubs harbor lichens and mosses. They thrive in our wet winters.

Some of the most interesting bark peels dramatically, like this river birch (Betula nigra) growing in the garden at Oklahoma State University in Oklahoma City.

River birch is native to most of the eastern United States, including Oklahoma. It thrives in wet habitats in the wild, but in cultivation will tolerate drier conditions. I’ve read at least one report that Native Americans boiled the sap into a syrup, similar to maple syrup, and on occasion used the inner bark as an emergency survival food. I’ve never tried either, and have some difficulty imagining eating bark. But I’ve never been that hungry.

Many of our birches have interesting bark. Probably one of the most recognizable North American trees is paper birch (Betula papyrifera), known in most of its range for bright white bark that peels in horizontal strips. It is native all across the northern United States and almost all of Canada. West of the Cascades where I live you often find it with darker, less dramatic bark that makes it more difficult to recognize.

Trees with interesting bark aren’t just limited to North American natives. This Tasmanian Snowgum (Eucalyptus coccifera), was planted as a dramatic ornamental in the alpine garden at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden.

I photographed the snowgum in color, and this photo has appeared in print in its original form. This version was converted to black and white in Adobe Lightroom, which gives all the control over black and white that a film photographer had with a complete set of filters. Actually, Lightroom gives even more control than we had with filters and film because one can adjust each of the additive and subtractive primary colors individually. Thus, I could render the blue sky dark like a polarizer would, darken the green foliage, and brighten all the reds and yellows.

Photography is a combination of art and craft, creative decisions and science. It helps to know a little of each. The craft and science are the underpinnings that allow creative realization. The best ideas have little value if they can’t be rendered into a sharable form.

Bark is cool. In the middle of winter maybe that’s all you’re going to find that’s interesting in the garden or out in the forest. Look closely. Enjoy the texture. Marvel at the colors. Maybe not quite psychedelic but often far out just the same. OK, maybe I’m showing my age here.

The tree above is the biggest Crape Myrtle I’ve ever seen. It’s a Lagerstroemia fauriei, photographed in late September at the J C Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina. You can see more from this garden, and several other North Carolina gardens at NC Gardens on my website.

Here in the Northwest one of my favorite trees for winter bark is the Madrona, sometimes called Madrone, or Arbutus menziesii. This one was photographed on a rainy day on Pass Island at Deception Pass State Park in early March. The soft light and the rain really enhance the color of the bark and the wood where it’s peeled away.

In our area Madronas only grow on rather dry sites, generally quite close to salt water but above the splash zone. They’re often on rocky bluffs where the soil is thin and well drained. Their roots find cracks where they can get enough moisture during the dry summer months. They’re broadleaf evergreens, but never seem to have a lot of foliage. In the spring they’ll have pendant bunches of white bell-shaped flowers, like their Heather relatives, and clusters of orange berries later on. But it’s in the winter that I like them the best.

Farther south Madronas grow farther inland and can be substantial trees. I photographed one several years ago around Medford that had a trunk at least 18-24 inches in diameter.

Just because the weather is wet and overcast is no reason to put your camera away. Of course, you want to keep it from getting too wet, but an ordinary plastic grocery bag will do the job in a pinch. Or keep you camera covered until you find the right shot and just pull it out to shoot. I try not to change lenses in the rain, especially with digital SLRs, but you could always ask your best friend to hold their umbrella over your camera for you.

Happy New Year! Take power from the mighty beet, symbol of the new agrarian world order.

We dug beets from our garden for both Christmas dinner and a treat to share at a New Year’s party last night. The recipe combines fresh beets, pineapple, a bit of chopped onion and celery with wine vinegar and olive oil. Stir together and chill overnight for a tasty salad. At last night’s party some of us discussed whether the neighborhood-grown beets balanced the Hawaiian pineapple for locavore status. What do you think?

This being the mild Pacific Northwest we gardeners sometimes joke that spring begins on New Year’s Day. We try to have something blooming in our garden year-around and today is no exception. What’s blooming in your garden today?

Our Dawn Viburnum, Viburnum bodnatense, has been blooming since about Thanksgiving and will continue for at least another month. I like the pale pink hue of the blossoms. When the weather turns really cold, like under 20°F then the blossoms freeze and turn black. When it warms up again then fresh buds open and we’re back in the pink. It’s fragrant, but not overpowering.

Today is very windy so the fragrance flew up the street pretty fast, but I stuck my nose in the blossoms to enjoy the scent.

We’ve got a nice patch of Hellebores growing under the Dawn Viburnum. They haven’t started blooming yet, but the flower buds are swelling. Depending on how warm January turns out to be, they could be starting to open before the month is over.

We have three big clumps of these dark red hybrids, an unnamed cultivar of Helleborus x hybridus that we picked up from a plant sale down in Seattle a few years ago as a single stem. They’re obviously happy in our fairly sunny front bed and may need to be divided again this year or next.

Most of the parentage of these hybrid Hellebores is Helleborus orientalis, the Lenten Rose. The common name reflects their habit of being in bloom for Lent. The flowers look a bit like single roses, but they’re actually members of the Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family.

Over on the other side of our front yard garden, nestled close by the Korean Fir that serves as our Christmas tree, is a big clump of Corsican Hellebores, Helleborus argutifolius.

These are big plants with stout foliage that stays strong and green all winter long. I really like the leathery foliage with its spiky edges which almost looks otherworldly. Before long these flower buds will be opening, revealing soft pale green blossoms that will look good for several months in our garden.

Pretty much any kind of Hellebore is happy growing in Northwest gardens. We don’t have as many as some gardeners, just enough to enjoy having a few around. I’ve known gardeners to get obsessed over every sort of coloration, petal doubling, picotee edges and other details. There are worse obsessions.

We have several varieties of Heather scattered around our garden. This one I think is ‘Sherwood’s Early Red.’ Like many other plants we started with just a little start years ago and have divided it as it grew. Now we have it several places in the garden and have shared pieces with Natalie’s mother for her garden, too.

The heather has just started blooming, but like many of the other winter-blooming flowers it has a very long season and will be in bloom until March if not later. On warmer and less windy days the bees will find the blossoms.

All of these photos today were made with my little Canon S70 pocket camera. For most of them I used the close-up mode, setting the lens at its widest zoom and moving in very close. I’ve found that extreme close-ups work a lot better that way than zooming in and trying to focus close. The camera just won’t do it. Focusing on the Viburnum blossoms was a big challenge as the camera wanted to make the house in the background sharp and ignore the flowers. I had to try several times to get what I wanted. I held onto the stem the flowers were on so that they didn’t blow around while trying to focus. The light is from the very soft gray sky, using the cloudy white balance setting. There’s been a little processing of the raw files in Lightroom to finish them.

On my final day in the Raleigh area I had the treat of visiting three more wonderful and unique gardeners. I finished the day in the garden above, created by Phil Hathcock. He’s a stone sculptor and Japanese garden designer on the outskirts of Cary. His is a working garden, really the showroom for his garden design and construction business. In addition to this portion of the zen garden there are meandering paths through a moss garden, a tea house, water features, and good use of both specimen plants and groundcovers.

Charlotte Presley and her husband downsized a few years ago into a suburban house in Carey. They have about an acre with the back yard mostly in woods. This is the view they have from their kitchen and dining room windows. The rock walls are sandstone brought in to the site since there was no native rock on their lot.

This garden is very much a shade garden, receiving only brief and ever-moving patches of dappled sun. It makes for a restful view and the woodland provides ample bird habitat. Their cat, Oreo, likes to sit on a chair by the window looking out at the garden. Charlotte is an artist with plants. Her husband is an artist with stained glass and several paper media.

This woodland gazebo is in the front yard of Jean Mitchell’s home in Carey. They’ve been in their home since the early 1960s and have gardened since their kids grew up. Now nearly 80, Jean still has a playful attitude toward gardening. There’s a trail (one of many) with a sign that says “Diamondback Trail.” Along it Jean has painted some large tree roots to look like colorful snakes.

The Mitchell garden is large, almost entirely wooded, and backs up to Straight Creek, which is anything but straight. Down in the woods Jean was excited to show me a large clump of orange mushrooms that had sprouted on an oak stump.

Jean told me the gazebo is a favorite place to relax with a cold beer at the end of the day. That sounded like a good plan to me, except that I visited first thing in the morning. My end of the day beer was shared with Phil Hathcock looking out over his garden.

It’s been a great week in the Raleigh area. I’ve lost count of how many gardens I’ve visited and photographed. I shot more than 3100 frames, which with bracketing means about 1000 unique photos. Most were made with my trusty 24-105mm lens, a very versatile and sharp piece of glass. I carried a couple of other lenses with me, but didn’t use them much. Each night I downloaded files to my laptop and an external hard drive. The blog images were processed in Adobe Lightroom.

Thursday I get to spend most of the day in airplanes as I fly back to Bellingham. Friday is an office day. Then on Saturday I have a couple of portrait sessions. It’s also the national solar tour and our home is on the tour again this year.

Does timber bamboo count as a tree? When it’s growing in the garden of John Monroe, proprietor of the specialty nursery Architectural Trees, then I think it counts. The bamboo lines the fence along Amed Road leading to the nursery, but it’s most visible from inside the fence. John propagates and sells a huge variety of trees, mostly conifers and Japanese maples. If you’re looking for something interesting, unusual, and architectural then you’ve gotta get out to Bahama and see John.

Architectural Trees is out in the country northwest of Raleigh. The old farmhouse has been on the property for a long time, as have numerous log buildings. The pond provides irrigation water as well as a visual focal point. John writes about his trees on the Architectural Trees blog.

Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest would never think to put the chaise lounge in a shady woodland border. But when you live in hot and humid North Carolina it makes perfect sense to create a hideaway in the shade where you can catch the breezes and relax away from the sun.

This is one small part of Maureen Buck’s garden near Franklinton. She retired here from Pennsylvania about four years ago and started creating the garden. She’s definitely a collector of conifers and Japanese maples. Most of the varieties are dwarfs that she expects to take several years to develop any size. Some are in the full sun in front of her home, but most are placed in the shady woodlands behind her home.

Maureen gardens with the company of four large dogs, which she says creates its own set of challenges. But she’s not giving up either the garden or the dogs. She and her husband also have about 45 acres of farmland and woods several miles from their house where they’re growing more trees. Sounds like a pretty decent retirement to me.

A little of this and a little of that could describe Jeanne Andrus’ generous garden in a gated community in Raleigh. She grew up on the property and said she used to fly kites as a kid in the meadow where her home now stands. It’s changed a lot since then, including an ever-expanding garden that surrounds the house. Jeanne started gardening when her kids grew up and hasn’t stopped since.

The largest part of the garden is a shady woodland where Jeanne is adding choice dwarf conifers and shade-loving perennials under the native loblolly pines. This yucca is in a sunny perennial border on the west side of the house, providing a visual break between a small lawn and the lake below. It’s the newest part of the garden.

After heavy rain last night, today was a bright sunny autumn day with cool temperatures and low humidity. The photographic challenge was working under all that sun. It sure was pleasant to be outside all day but I would have appreciated a few more clouds. While I was out at Maureen Buck’s there were photogenic puffies floating by so I could set up a shot and wait for the next passing cloud before tripping the shutter. Other times I pulled out the polarizing filter and cut the foliage glare and kept working. The sun hadn’t risen over the house when I photographed the yucca. I really like shade with open sky light but it’s a rare commodity.