Bringing Some of the Beauty Home

~

I’m always inspired by the rich diversity of botanical wonders casually growing from every crevice and bit of soil along the Oregon coast.  After a week of wandering around admiring moss covered trees, richly colored flowers, towering conifers, intricately textured ferns, and thick berry brambles, I’m left (almost) speechless at the sheer beauty and abundance of gardening pleasures for anyone inclined to cultivate a spot in this rain-forested beach town.

~

Linaria purpurea grows from a hillside at the Bear Valley Nursery in Lincoln City, Oregon.

~

I’m intrigued by everything.  Even in mid-October, as nights grow cold and days grow shorter, the landscape remains lush.

~

The view from the patio behind my hotel room.

~

There was frost on my windshield last Thursday morning.  I had to study the controls of my rented Chevy to clear the windows and mirrors before I could set off into the foggy, frost kissed morning to pick up my daughter for our morning breakfast.  By 10:00, when Bear Valley nursery opened, the frost was forgotten and sunshine gilded the day.

~

~

My daughter has grown into her gardening heritage.  She proudly showed me the pumpkins she is growing for her family this fall, her beautiful Hubbard squash, vines dripping with beans and huge heads of elephant garlic.  She knows that our wanderings will take us to the beautiful family run nursery just up the road from where I love to stay while visiting her and her family, and that she will leave with a tray of plants to add to her garden.

~

Bear Valley Nursery

~

In past years,  I’ve bought plants for her, and then waited patiently for photos of them growing.  I just accepted that I couldn’t bring plants home cross-country.  Sure, I mail cuttings and bulbs to her from time to time, but I haven’t tried to bring horticultural finds home…. until this year!

~

The Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy supports itself with donations and plant sales. Oh, such sweet temptation….

~

I guess I was giddy by the time I impulsively bought a cute little fern, one I’ve never seen in a Virginia nursery, and an unnamed Iris.  I have a real weakness for interesting ferns and Iris, and I decided to give my best effort to getting them home again to our Virginia garden.

~

~

Daughter cared for them until packing up day, Tuesday, when I was elbow deep into preparations for my flight home from Oregon.  As we waited for granddaughter’s school bus to deliver her back home, we worked together in the garden.  We split the pot of Iris (maybe a Siberian cultivar?) and I slipped part of the clump into a gallon zip-lock bag as daughter dug a hole in her rich, black soil and planted the other half of the clump.  Whose will bloom first, I wonder?

~

My portion of the Iris, now safely home.

~

I’d saved a take-away food container, and decided that it would bring my fern home safely.  After knocking the roots out of the nursery pot, I carefully laid the plant on its side, bent the fronds to fit the space, and snapped the lid back on securely.  But then daughter was at my elbow with her offering of plump elephant garlic cloves.  How could I resist?

I nestled a few around the fern, and slipped the rest into another plastic bag.

~

~

My pile of horticultural treasures had been growing all week, actually.  One of the owners of Bear Valley Nursery very generously snipped a few seed stalks off of her beautiful Linaria purpurea, that I had been admiring.  They were cropping up throughout the display gardens, through her gravel mulch.

I’d already been admiring them at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy and wondering what to call them.  The common name, toadflax, somehow seems insufficient for their graceful beauty.

~

Linaria growing at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy

~

I had also been admiring the Crocosmia, which naturalize so easily both in gardens and on hillsides, and along roadsides throughout the area.  Any spot with a bit of sun seems a good place for a clump to take hold and expand.  I nicked a few seed covered stems one day while walking down the lane from my hotel to the beach below.

~

~

They weren’t growing in anyone’s yard, mind you, just volunteering among the blackberry brambles, ferns, and grasses growing on the shoulder of the road.  I dropped the stems into my bag with sea stones and shells, hoping for similar stands a few years on.

~

Crocosmia bloom beside a water feature at the Connie Hansen Garden in Lincoln City, Oregon.

~

Both of these perennials are hardy in our Zone 7b climate.  A Master Gardener friend grows Crocosmia in her Williamsburg garden, and gave me a few bulbs.  My Crocosmia are far from these lush stands I’ve admired in Oregon, though.

I am not familiar with the Linaria, though see no reason it shouldn’t thrive in my garden at home.  Native to Italy, it should grow well among Mediterranean herbs like rosemary and lavender.

~

I found Linaria growing in white, pink, purple and blue in various gardens around Lincoln City.  A clump grows beside a stream, mixed with Verbena bonariensis, ferns and grasses at the Connie Hansen garden.

~

I packed all of these parcels into a heavy plastic shopping bag, and tucked them into my carry on bag.  Nothing on the airline’s website raised any alarms, and so I confidently put my bag on the conveyor at security on the way to my departure gate.   But when it comes to plants and planting, I’m sometimes a bit over-confident…

When my bag didn’t reappear among the plastic bins of my shoes, coat, and tablets, I knew there might be a question or two to answer.

And sure enough, my bag was opened and searched.  But once I explained what plants I was bringing home, and the friendly agent saw there was nothing dangerous involved, we repacked it all and I was on my way.

~

Fern and garlic fresh from my carry-on bag.

~

I’m happy to tell you that the seeds and plants all made it home in great shape.  As I was unpacking my bags in the wee early morning hours, I happily set my new Oregon plants in a safe spot until I could get to them today.

And so it is that I now have a fresh pot of Cheilanthes argentea, silver cloak fern, and a pot of Iris, species and cultivar yet a mystery. I am hoping that perhaps the Iris will turn out to be one of the beautiful Pacific coast native varieties.

~

Silver Cloak fern, Cheilanthes argentea, is a new fern that I’ve not grown before. It is tucked into a new pot and topdressed with a little lime and some gravel.

~

Learning that this particular fern loves to grow in the crevices of rocks, and prefers slightly alkaline soil, I’ve top dressed it with a bit of dolomitic lime and given it a gravel mulch.  It likes to grow on the dry side, unusual for a fern, and can take a bit of sun.  Since it is rated for Zones 5-7, I’m thinking that I should give it more shade than it might need if growing in the Pacific Northwest.

~

The silvery underside of each frond is this fern’s distinguishing feature. It is a low grower, but spreads.

~

Native in Asia, it is able to dry out, curling up its fronds, and then re-hydrate when water comes available again.  Once established, it will spread.  I will give it the pot this winter, and then perhaps plant it out into an appropriate spot in the garden next spring.

Tomorrow I expect to sow the seeds into flats and set them into a safe spot to overwinter, and hopefully sprout in the spring.

~

We enjoyed this view during breakfast on the porch of the Wildflower Grill.

~

Looking through my hundreds of photos reminds me of the beautiful plants and associations I enjoyed in Oregon.  I will share some with you over the next several days, and perhaps you’ll pick up a fresh gardening idea, or two, as well.

~

The Connie Hansen Garden

~

While I was away, we finally had abundant rain here in Williamsburg.  But we’ve also had wind and cold.  I can feel the turn of seasons in the breeze, and my thoughts are turning to digging up our Caladiums and moving plants indoors, even while planting out spring bulbs and winter Violas.

~

My new Iris can grow on through winter in a pot in my sunny holding area.  I’ll look for lush new growth in spring.  I want to try to identify the Iris before planting it out into the garden.

~

I’m happy to be home, back to our beloved Forest Garden.  Even as the seasons shift towards winter, there is beauty everywhere here, too.  My travels have me still buzzing with new ideas, associations to try, and fresh inspiration to carry me through the weeks ahead.

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2019

~