Saturday, September 29, 2007

2007 Classes and Celebrations -

Winter Containers - Sunday, September 30

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 30 - Winter Containers
Basic container maintenance and strong design elements are essential for creating interesting and elegant containers for the winter months. Join Ramona Wulzen in creating winter container combinations.

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 lead 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

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Friday, September 21, 2007

2007 Classes and Celebrations -

Low-Water Gardening - Sunday, September 23

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 23 - Low-Water Gardening
Drier, warmer summers. Increasing costs of water. Stubborn Northwest clay. What do they have in common? They are part of the background of experiments conducted in the gardens at Joy Creek Nursery that have resulted in reduced water usage and, ironically, an expanded plant palette. Maurice Horn presents the findings.

Maurice Horn, as co-owner of Joy Creek Nursery, has had the opportunity to trial a vast variety of perennials and shrubs. He is ever eager to find ways to create exciting gardens that use low to no water. Recently he has conducted gravel gardening workshops for Metro, the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon and Heronswood Nursery.

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

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Blooming Bamboo

This spring the Fargesia nitida in our garden began to bloom. Our friend Dain Sansome from Bamboo Valley was doing a workshop at the nursery and agreed to write an article regarding this uncommon phenomena. The accompanying photos show the Fargesia in bloom in our gardens.

My Bamboo is Flowering!
By Dain Sansome, Bamboo Valley © 2007 All Rights Reserved

To many people flowering bamboo means the end of a beloved screen or landscape element since the bamboo may die. However, this is not always the case. There are some things we know about bamboo flowering and some things we do not. Flowering is a rare and spectacular event, sometimes once per century or even more seldom. Flowering has been observed to begin all at once with many types of bamboo of the same species regardless of geographic location. What triggers this is yet unknown and when they will flower is also unknown. An individual culm (cane) of bamboo has a dramatically shorter life span once flowering has begun (usually one season), and generally speaking there are two habits of bamboo flowering behavior: the sporadic and the gregarious type (or local and general). Sporadic flowering is when one single cane or a few canes within a grove or clump suddenly go into flower and the rest of the plant lives on as normal. This could be an indicator of gregarious flowering in the near future, but does not necessarily mean so. Gregarious flowering is when the majority of the culms put out flowers instead of leaves, few or none of the culms put out leaves and grow as normal, and the end of that bamboo grove as is at hand. However, when viable seed is set a new generation is at hand. Also, new varieties can quickly arise as seedlings may look nothing like the parent.


Flowering is unmistakable once underway. In spring as usual, the bamboo puts up what appears to be strong healthy shoots, but instead of putting out leaves it puts out bracts of flowers which resemble those of rice or wheat. This goes on for a few years depending on the size and maturity of the original plant. Some bamboos will last many years once flowering has begun and some may last only a season or two.

It is difficult to make generalizations as to the type of flowering that will occur within bamboo genera (e.g. Phyllostahys, Fargesia, Bambusa) since individual species may have flowering patterns different from one another. For example, in the 1990s Phyllostachys flexuosa and P. aurea ‘Albostriata’ and 20 years earlier P. vivax and P. bambusoides all flowered gregariously, but P. edulis as far as we know has never gregariously yet often sporadically flowers, and P. aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’ and P. praecox ‘Viridisulcata’ have been sporadically flowering during the past few years. The clumping bamboos of the genus Fargesia often gregariously flower and in recent years F. nitida is flowering gregariously. The trend with Fargesia’s gregarious flowering is to die off completely whereas the Phyllostachys usually recover. Unfortunately F. nitida is a very popular landscape bamboo and many of the old generation plants which have been around since the 1880s will pass away. However, the new seeds are being collected and grown by many people, and from them we already have a new generation coming along nicely.

New seedling bamboos, including that of F. nitida, are already on the market and show great potential to replace their parents. If your bamboo is flowering, appreciate it for you may never see anything like it again. You may try to grow the seeds—most germinate quickly when sown in light soil, kept moist and in bright, filtered light. The flowering of a bamboo is exciting since you never know what you may get and any space created gives way for something new.

Photos: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

© 2007 Joy Creek Nursery

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Saturday, September 15, 2007

2007 Classes and Celebrations -

Ornamental Grasses - Sunday, September 16

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 16 - Ornamental Grasses
Ornamental grasses bring movement and texture to the garden. With so many choices and such a range of colors and sizes, it can sometimes be daunting selecting the most suitable grass for your site. Learn about care and maintenance, and take a tour, with Carolyn Jones.

Carolyn Jones is director of the Elizabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Washington. One of her duties as director is to oversee the Great Plant Picks program which is designed to educate the public about plants well-suited to the Pacific Northwest. She has worked in horticulture in the Northwest for 30 years in retail and wholesale sales as well as at botanical gardens.

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

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Saturday, September 8, 2007

2007 Classes and Celebrations -

Fall Wreaths - Sunday, September 9

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 9 - Fall Wreaths
Get ideas about gathering the abundant dried plant material found in the garden in late summer. Nadine Black will demonstrate how to use these materials for autumn decoration.

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. At Joy Creek Nursery, 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.

Photo: Joy Creek Photo Archive © all rights reserved

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