2007 Classes and Celebrations -The New Western Garden - Sunday, July 29

Joy Creek Nursery offers customers educational classes, workshops and special events throughout the gardening season. Classes are conducted in the outdoor classroom in our gardens, 18 miles north of Portland at 20300 NW Watson Rd in Scappoose. Please follow the signs to our workshop parking when arriving at the nursery.

All Sunday classes begin at 1:00 p.m. and are free to the public except as noted.

July 29 - The New Western Garden

Gardeners in the Northwest are facing all kinds of challenges - smaller urban garden spaces, growing pressures on limited resources like water and the shift to more environmentally friendly practices are but a few. Gardeners are also challenged to find ways to incorporate shrubs, trees, perennials and annuals in ways that mimic and complement our native landscape but still allow the freedom of personal expression. Paul Bonine will educate attendees about some exciting new plants that can meet these challenges.

Paul Bonine is co-owner of the wholesale nursery Xera Plants Inc. with his partner Greg Shepherd. He has worked in the nursery industry since 1992 beginning in Eugene and then moving to Portland. Paul's special interests include plants that are adapted to low water usage, perform well in the Portland area and expand the plant palette for Northwest gardeners. By the way, Paul is a Taurus.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

Kym Pokorny shares 'Going Dry' suggestions

Last week, in The Oregonian's HGNW (Homes & Gardens of the Northwest) section, garden writer Kym Pokorney referenced Joy Creek Nursery co-owner Maurice Horn and other garden experts in her article "Going Dry: The right plants and practices can tame the garden's thirst." The piece, about drought-tolerant plants, can be accessed on the OregonLive.com website.

Pokorny mentioned several related, upcoming Joy Creek classes in the article:

• The new Western garden, Paul Bonine, co-owner, Xera Plants, Sunday, July 29

• Gardening in dry shade, Richie Steffen, coordinator of horticulture for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden and a committee member of Great Plant Picks, Sunday, Aug. 26

• Ground covers for dry shade or hot sun, Ramona Wulzen, Sunday, Sept. 2

• Low-water gardening, Maurice Horn, co-owner, Joy Creek Nursery, Sunday, Sept. 23

For more garden-related news and information, be sure to check out Kym Pokorny's blog Dig in with Kym

(Note: The graphic shown in this blog entry is courtesy of The Oregonian and may be downloaded in PDF form at the OregonLive.com link above.)

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

2007 Classes and Celebrations -Ferns - Sunday, July 22

Joy Creek Nursery offers customers educational classes, workshops and special events throughout the gardening season. Classes are conducted in the outdoor classroom in our gardens, 18 miles north of Portland at 20300 NW Watson Rd in Scappoose. Please follow the signs to our workshop parking when arriving at the nursery.

All Sunday classes begin at 1:00 p.m. and are free to the public except as noted.

July 22 - Ferns

The Fern Lady is back with delightful tales and information about what she calls the most architectural of plants. Learn how to chose ferns for specific sites (including hot, dry ones), how to care for them and grow them well.

Judith Jones' unmistakable laugh belies the joy that she brings to her work as owner of Fancy Fronds Nursery in Gold Bar , Washington. Judith reports that she is an avowed "pteridomaniac." She says, "Ferns just make sense as exquisite architectural living forms - they are incredibly elegant while being eminently grow-able." Any one who has seen one of her 18 display gardens at the NW Flower and Garden Show has experienced her great theatricality. "I don't have any formal botanical training as I studied Children's Theater and 17th and 19th century English literature. Great prep for a person to roll about in peat and horse poop thereafter!" She gleefully adds, "I can sing Shakespearian ballads loudly off-key and dance through the ferns to Mozart or the Muppets."

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

2007 Classes and Celebrations -Advanced Propagation - Sunday, July 15

Joy Creek Nursery offers customers educational classes, workshops and special events throughout the gardening season. Classes are conducted in the outdoor classroom in our gardens, 18 miles north of Portland at 20300 NW Watson Rd in Scappoose. Please follow the signs to our workshop parking when arriving at the nursery.

All Sunday classes begin at 1:00 p.m. and are free to the public except as noted.

July 15 - Advanced Propagation

1:00 p.m. - Backyard Plant Breeding - Diana Reeck
How are new plants made? Discover the secrets of plant sex and get hands-on experience with several genera. (Please bring your own tweezers!)

Diana Reeck, co-owner of Collector's Nursery in Battleground, Washington, is an amateur plant breeder whose passions include erythroniums, small-flowered clematis and epimediums. She is also an avid plant explorer and her adventures have taken her throughout the Pacific Northwest and, indeed, as far as China.

2:15 p.m. - Propagation 102 - Scotty Fairchild
Growing plants from seeds can be tricky for the home gardener. The various techniques for coaxing seeds to life will fascinate you.

Scotty Fairchild has been employed as the Garden Steward at the Leach Botanical Garden since 1990. He is responsible for the development and maintenance of the garden's extensive plant collections and the sustainable stewardship of the 15-acre site. In addition, he has developed the garden's nursery facility which currently has over 2,000 accessioned taxa, the majority grown from seed. His most recent academic studies were at Oregon State University.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

Getting Ready For The Season Ahead

We often hear customers complain that their gardens look like "big green blobs" after the blooms of spring have finished. This always surprises us, given the wealth of plants available to keep the garden exciting throughout the seasons.

One of the ways we keep our own gardens in bloom after the flourishing months of April and May is to chose plants that repeat bloom or continue to bloom for a long time. We combine these with plants of seasonal interest. Here are just a few simple examples from our borders.

Roses and clematis are among the troopers that we have chosen for long-term interest. In the Rose and Clematis Border, Rosa 'Westerland' (at left) blooms on and on throughout the summer. Not only are the vivid apricot-toned flowers beautiful, they are fragrant. Even better, the thick, glossy foliage of this rose is completely disease-free. We grow the dark purple-flowered Clematis 'Negritianka' (at bottom left) on a trellis above 'Westerland.' This is a combination that is visually attractive until the end of summer.

Long-blooming penstemons also help us. We cut back our penstemon hybrids in mid-April. By June, they have grown to modest shrubs and are beginning to bloom, especially those on our south-facing slope. There, Penstemon 'Margarita BOP' (below right) is a real show-stopper with hundreds of tubular blue flowers with magenta highlights. Nearby Penstemon 'Gilchrist' is also in bloom.

The narrow foliage is distinctive, as are the numerous rosey flowers. If spent bloom-spikes are cut back, these and many of the other garden hybrid penstemons will continue to bloom throughout the summer, some until October. Nearby, we have planted a series of shrubby Salvias, including Salvia muelleri and Salvia 'Hot Lips.' Both of these salvias begin to bloom in June and usually stop their show at first frost. This hillside is in bloom for more than six months. Then shrubs with winter berries provide color.

The fuchsias perform a similar service in our gardens. We have grown fuchsias that are hardy to our area near our front porch next to winter and spring blooming Lenten roses (Helleborus orientalis hybirds). The hellebores are evergreen but their flowers begin to lose their impact by early summer. It is then that low-mounding fuchsias begin to show off.. Together, the two plants provide year-round interest.

This is just a tiny sampling of ideas to help those who need help transitioning from good early season bloom to an equally exciting late season display.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

2007 Classes and Celebrations -What Color is Your Garden? - Sunday, July 8

Joy Creek Nursery offers customers educational classes, workshops and special events throughout the gardening season. Classes are conducted in the outdoor classroom in our gardens, 18 miles north of Portland at 20300 NW Watson Rd in Scappoose. Please follow the signs to our workshop parking when arriving at the nursery.

All Sunday classes begin at 1:00 p.m. and are free to the public except as noted.

July 8 - What Color is Your Garden?

Understanding the way that color works can bring out the artist in any gardener and help to personalize a garden. Lucy Hardiman will help you create your own color palette, refine your sense of color, or possibly go wild with varied hues.

Lucy Hardiman, former president of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon, and vice-president of Friends of Rogerson Clematis Collection, is a driving force in the Portland plant world. Through her garden design company Perennial Partners, her lectures and her writing in national publications, she expresses her sophisticated sense of design and color in the garden.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

Clematis Cages

The Joy Creek Nursery hillside collection of Clematis is not the easiest or most preferable environment for the Clematis we grow. The plants there have to hold up to a hot, southern exposure, occasional spring hail storms, overhead watering and summer drought. Despite these obstacles, we have been pleased with the performance of most of the members of the collection.Many of them have performed beyond expectation and taught us valuable lessons about the resilience of this versatile genus.

There is, however, one area on the hillside that has refused to flourish. At first we thought it was the fault of the plants themselves, mostly newer cultivars from Poland. On closer examination, we began to realize that this particular section was repeatedly undermined by moles. Last year, our gardener Manuel decided to build cages to protect the roots of a few of the plants. His efforts paid off. This spring, the plants he protected survived; those that he did not protect, perished. This year he built more cages and now the entire row should give us a good show. The first photo shows the tunnel system of the moles. The second shows the cage itself set into the hole before planting. We will report more on the success or failure of this technique in the coming year.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved