Gardenig in county Pacific. Tips & Guides

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Julie Soefer

If you’re a sun-loving gardener, finding yourself presented with a woodland garden or an otherwise shaded area of the landscape can feel a little overwhelming, and maybe even disappointing. But as soon as you discover the multitude of wonderful lush and leafy plants that actually prefer to grow in shade here in the Pacific Northwest, you’re going to start wishing you had a few more sun-deficient areas to plant up.

How to Grow Five Spot Flowers Nemophila maculata

February in our region was a month of waiting for the weather to get better. Warm winds and longer days have finally arrived, and most of us are desperate to get outside and do something. What better place to start than with a patio garden. A simple patio garden doesn’t take much planning, and the plants you want are in the nursery right now.

After the torrential rains of December, it is a wonder that anything is blooming in Pacific Northwest gardens. Thankfully there are great plants that survive the downpours and even flourish when everything else is a soggy mess. Along with the plants surviving, there are insects that winter over in the trees, and they love to see the sunshine just like we do. As soon as the lukewarm sun starts hitting the trees, the groggy bees stumble out looking for some food (kind of reminds me of teenagers). It is essential that we gardeners provide early-blooming plants for these very important members of our planet. Interestingly, some bees are not at all particular about their food supply, while others are. Our goal should be to provide both native food sources and ornamental garden food sources. Nature’s creatures have a way of adapting to what is available, but they also search for specifics. The following are a few of my favorite late-winter-blooming plants for pollinators.

Lately, I have noticed that the mail-order garden supply catalogs are full of Asian-themed garden accessories such as pots, traditional bamboo fences, and stone lanterns. This seems to go along with the trend toward Asian-inspired minimalism in home décor. In California and the Pacific Northwest, traditional Asian and Asian-inspired gardens have been popular for years. Can a national vogue for Chinese and Japanese gardens be far behind?

Henry Mustin popped open the trunk of his electric Volkswagen to reveal his arsenal: Loppers, pruners, saws and trowels, tucked into bags. Taking up the most space was Mustin’s weed wrench, an L-shaped specialty tool branded The Extractigator, which leverages the ground to yank deeply rooted vegetation from the earth.

As we look ahead to 2024, it's important to reflect back on what colors we should leave behind. Since interior designers work with so many different color palettes throughout their projects, we asked a few to share the colors they'd be happy parting ways with and why.

If you know about just 1 Ugly Fish, then you might be in for a surprise! This article covers some of the most Ugliest Fishes in the World!

Today we’re in Portland, Oregon, visiting with Zeah.

Fall brings out my desire to “bring the outdoors in.” Collecting berries, seedpods, and dried flowers is a passion I share with many gardeners. Using these to display in the house helps us to remember the beautiful days of summer. Harvesting these things gives a feeling of satisfaction of what we, as gardeners, have grown over the season. But there are a surprising number of fabulous fall plants that we don’t usually see growing here in the Pacific Northwest. One shrub that I rarely see in gardens here is winterberry (Ilex verticillata and cvs., Zones 3–9).

Header image: Macromitrium microstomum is found throughout New Zealand on the trunks or branches of smooth-barked trees, or on rock. Silvia Pressel, Author provided

I’ve been asked many times, “What’s a great plant for a small space?” As land becomes more expensive and first-time home buyers are starting out, there are lots of properties that consist mainly of small outdoor spaces that need to be filled with size-appropriate plants. People are often discouraged and think they can’t have a beautiful garden because of limited space. But a small space is often the perfect place to start gardening. For those of us with larger overall landscapes, there is often an undersized hole in a bed that needs to be filled but we can’t think of something that will work. The following are a few great choices for those who are looking to start a garden on a limited footprint or to fill a tight spot within a larger framework.

I firmly believe that everyone should have some garlic growing in their garden. The plants take up hardly any space,

A pothos at Patch Plants

I have read that in the Pacific Northwest, ‘Ogon’ (Zones 4-8, sun to part shade) may even keep its leaves, and color—the kind of golden that’s closer to orange than yellow–until Christmas. This form of Spiraea starts its season with an early show of tiny white flowers on its otherwise-bare, arching branches, which pop before the willowy-textured yellow foliage appears.By summer ‘Ogon’ is yellow-green here, so even in its dullest moment not so bad. This is a great plant for the end of an axial view; mine is due west of where I sit and ponder (my current job: fulltime rumination). At 5 by 5 feet, ‘Ogon’ makes quite an impact even in such a long view. The one here is beside a winterberry holly of equal size, and the two have intermingled, together

She is someone I have often heard called a mentor and inspiration by some of my most respected garden friends, especially in the Pacific Northwest. No wonder, because Corvallis, Oregon-based Carol Deppe–also the author of the popular book “The Resilient Gardener”–is pragmatic, but also scientific in her approach, armed not only with precisely the right hoe for the job but also with a PhD in biology from Harvard and a long background in plant breeding.Read along as you listen to the March 30, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here). We talked about choosing vegetables to grow in combination (and when some crops are most productive and easiest grown alone); about strategic steps to avoid late blight

Remember the BirdNote backstory from last week: In 2002, the then-executive director of Seattle Audubon heard a short public-radio show called StarDate. “We could do that with birds,” she thought. In 2005 the idea became a two-minute, seven-day-a-week public-radio “interstitial” (as short programs are called) that recently caught my ear.  I asked BirdNote to help me answer all the recent bird questions you had asked me. (In case you missed it last week, for installment Number 1, we tackled this subject: How do birds make themselves at home—even in winter?)Parts of Ellen’s answers below are in the 2-minute clips you can stream (all in the green links–or you can read the transcripts of each episode at those links if you prefer). Here we go:how do hummingbirds do it?Q. The miracle of hummingbird migration amazes all of us. How do they manage to migrate from the northern United States all the way to Mexico and beyon

Marzluff is a renowned ornithologist and urban ecologist, and professor of wildlife sciences at the University of Washington. He is author most recently of “Welcome to Subirdia”—his fifth book. He has written other titles specifically about his area of particular expertise, the corvids—crows, ravens, jays and their relatives—including one in collaboration with illustrator Tony Angell that I just read called “Gifts of the Crow,” the subject of our discussion.Read along as you listen to the Dec. 21, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my crow and raven q&a with dr. john marzluffQ. It has been raining here today. We haven’t had much rain in the Northeast lately, though I know you’ve been having crazy, crazy rain in the Pacific Northwest.A. It is very, very

Dennis’s recent blog post about pine siskins (top photo) in recent abundance–a favorite species here in my garden some lucky winters-of-plenty, too–detailed the relationship the birds have with red alder trees (Alnus rubra), and how their beaks are perfectly formed to fit into the tight spaces in the alder’s conelike structures and get at the little seeds.(I love such evidence of co-evoilutionary strategies between birds and plants.)Also appearing in greater-than-“normal” numbers this year, at least in the Pacific Northwest: snowy owls. “Voles. look out,” says Dennis (whom I told I have voles to spare should they run short out West; happy to dispatch a truckload from my garden anytime).my calendula feverI’M GROWING CALENDULA again, I reported recently on the blog, and to start off the latest radio show, I

Ellen—part of the BirdNote public-radio show team and my collaborator on a series of bird-related stories—is the person I always tell about new birds or other avian happenings out my window, even though I’m in the Hudson Valley of New York and she’s in Seattle.“Is it starting out there?” I asked as March began, just in from a session of crawling around to cut back hellebore foliage, accompanied by mourning dove (above), chickadee and titmouse songs.“Yes,” was the quick answer, in an email with a photo of Ellen’s own tidied-up hellebores—all in full bloom, way a

It would be easy visiting or even looking at photos of a place where very large, old trees grow, to see nothing else, but Maloof’s book shines a light on all the life in the complex and interconnected community that is such a forest, from lichens to salamanders, snails to beetles, birds and more.Joan Maloof, a professor emeritus at Salisbury University in Maryland, founded the Old-Growth Forest Network to preserve, protect and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old-growth forest. She intr

Linda Beutler is author of three books about clematis, president of the International Clematis Society, and curator of the Rogerson Clematis Garden collection in the Pacific Northwest, just outside Portland, Oregon. Suffice it to say, Linda knows from clematis.In a recent conversation, Linda shared tips on matching the right clematis to the right support, and what to look for (not flowers!) when buying nursery plants, and why following the traditional rules on pruning without applying some common sense as well isn’t the way to go. Plus: Enter to w

Besides wanting to know what’s next there at a place that’s been known for a long time for its influence on American gardeners, Patrick has a personal passion I’m very curious about. It’s what he calls “natural community gardening,” as in taking our cues from habitats or plant communities in nature to guide how we design and care for our gardens.Patrick came to Heronswood last fall from Clemson University in South Carolina, where he ran the South Carolina Botanical Garden and was a professor in the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences. He

The Mission: Replacing an ugly concrete pathway with a unique and intricate stone mosaic pathway. (Yes I have the Mission Impossible theme in my head)

We gardeners are becoming more aware of our changing world, not just the climate but also the habitat reduction for pollinators. Landscape designers are becoming more aware and responding by adding more pollinating plants to designs. How to integrate more pollinating plants into a mature garden is a bigger challenge. Here is a short list of simple but effective ways to help pollinators survive and be useful in our gardens: