2007 Classes and Celebrations -Ground Covers - Sunday, September 2

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.

September 2 - Ground Covers
Ramona Wulzen will recommend plants to enhance problem areas in your garden and offer suggestions on how to keep them looking good, whether in dry shade under evergreens or in a sunny hot spot that gets little water.

Ramona Wulzen received her love of all things wild from her mother. She has gardened both on a city lot and on three acres in the woods. She has also listened long and hard to the problems and solutions that other gardeners have experienced. The nature of her current garden has led to her passion for ground covers and container gardening. Ramona is a veteran of our retail department and now works in our landscape department.

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

Joy Creek Plant Introductions from 2005

In 2005 we released our only patented plant. Eight years earlier, we had discovered three seedling Miscanthus in our garden and planted them in our stock field for evaluation. All of them were distinctly barred in gold, but of different heights. One of them, which stood between 3 and 4 feet, seemed ideal for a home garden. Its leaf blades were dense with horizontal gold stripes - up to seven of them per inch. It was very tightly clumping at its base and its blades were very stiff, revealing its parentage in Miscanthus sinensis 'Strictus.' We counted the fact that its inflorescences did not emerge until late October as an asset because it suggested that it might never have the chance to produce viable seed in places where Maiden grass has become a problem.

At our nursery, visiting nurserymen and customers alike were attracted to its luminous quality. We were even offered money for it. Dan Heims, from Terra Nova Nursery, advised us that we should patent the plant. We realized that we could not profitably produce it at our small mail order nursery. It was through the graces of our friend David Culp that we were introduced to Sunny Border Nursery where the grass was trialed for a year. Sunny Border liked it and agreed to help us go through the complex patenting process with the help of patent writer Penny Aguirre. In 2004 we received the patent number PP15193 for Miscanthus'Gold Bar' and released the grass from the nursery the following year.

In 2005, we also introduced a new penstemon. The history of this particular seedling is somewhat humorous. It was originally scheduled to be removed from our garden with a crop of other seedlings because its color was too similar to others. Fortunately, our propagator, thinking it was the same as its neighboring plant, made cuttings of it while it was not in bloom. Eventually three of those cuttings were replanted in the stock field with the wrong name and only after they bloomed did we realize the mistake. By then, the more mature plants revealed some interesting characteristics. The flowers were immense, wider than any others in our collection. Interestingly, the flowers formed a one-sided raceme that was pleasingly deltoid in shape, giving the raceme dramatic impact. We later traced the parents back to Penstemon 'Raspberry Flair' and P. 'Wine Kissed' although we do not know which was the seed parent. Soon after, we wedded those two names together and called it Penstemon 'Raspberry Wine.'

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

2007 Classes and Celebrations -Dry Shade - Sunday, August 26

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.

August 26 - Dry Shade
Northwest summers are notoriously dry and many common shade plants cannot survive the competition for water from larger shrubs and trees. Yet, there are a surprising number of plants that are up to these difficult circumstances and Richie Steffen will provide suggestions.

Richie Steffen is the Coordinator of Horticulture for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden where he manages the rare plant collections and heads acquisitions of new plants for the garden. He currently serves as a selection committee member of the Great Plant Picks program and is always ready to share his enthusiasm for this excellent regional resource.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

2007 Classes and Celebrations -Small Water Features - Sunday, August 19

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.

August 19 - Small Water Features

It is not as hard as you think to have water in the garden. Nadine Black will provide ideas for water features that are easy to install and maintain. We will examine everything from water rocks to small fountains.

Nadine Black tried on many hats in our industry - from private gardener to wholesale plant sales - before she discovered that her real passion was helping retail customers create gardens. Here, she has found a new set of hats, managing retail sales, conducting on-site garden consultations, and teaching workshops. In addition, she has acquired the Lifetime Certified Oregon Nursery Professional certificate from the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

2007 Classes and Celebrations -The Inside Story: Garden ToursSunday, August 12

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.

Please note special times for the tours this week.

August 12 - The Inside Story: Garden Tours

Take this opportunity to look behind the scenes and get the details on how we design and maintain our nursery borders. Tour content will be full of humor and insight. Tours will leave at 10:00 a.m., noon, and 2:00 p.m. Join the nursery owners, Mike Smith and Maurice Horn for a tour.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

2007 Classes and Celebrations -Paths & Circulation - Sunday, August 5

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.

August 5 - Paths & Circulation

John Caine leads a discussion about how moving through your garden is elemental to your enjoyment of that space. Paths also help define your planting areas. In a sense, paths are the lungs and arteries of the garden, facilitating all kinds of circulation.

John Caine comes to his job as landscape garden designer for Joy Creek Nursery not only with a degree from Michigan State University but also with thirty years of practical experience as an estate gardener. He gave Joy Creek Nursery its master plan and continues to help us refine our gardens.

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

Joy Creek Plant Introductions from 2005

The year 2005 brought five introductions to our catalogue. We will describe only two of them in this issue.

Over the years, we have been frustrated by seed crops of yarrow which have produced inconsistent plants. We have long looked for a seedling Achillea that had good flower color that held up for a long time in the summer garden. We eventually found such a plant in a seedling from Achillea ‘Paprika’ which we gave the working name Achillea ‘Paprika Joy Creek Select.' The name, although it is not very fanciful, represents our selection process. The rich red flowers with yellow eyes are gathered into flattened heads. If bloom spikes are cut back, it will continue to bloom all summer. As with other yarrows, the flowers do fade but not quickly and not unattractively.

In our gardens, we have towering Euphorbia characias var. wulfenii that make a glorious display from spring to early autumn. They are so large that they sometimes lean on their neighbors and we have had to cage them to keep them upright. Not every garden can handle such large plants and so we set to work to find a seedling that was shorter and more compact but offered the same bold, bracted flower-heads in spring. Once again, we chose a not too imaginative working name, ‘Joy Creek Dwarf’, and that name has stuck as a description. At three feet tall and three feet wide, our selection can easily be accommodated in almost any garden. In habit, it is upright and does not flop. In addition, it has mid-sized, somewhat rounded floral-heads.

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery