Managing Site Conditions [Mary Robson] Hi I m Mary Robson; I am a retired WSU horticulture agent and have been interested all my life in how do we make our gardens ornamental and beautiful. This is the Master Gardener training lesson on ornamental perennials; we will also touch briefly on annuals and roses. We are doing our filming today in mid-september at the Discovery Garden in the Skagit Valley which is a mighty effort of a lot of Master Gardeners. There s a lot of beautiful things to look at here. For those of you who have been studying to become Master Gardeners you might suddenly say, Finally we're getting around to some real gardening, because what we're going to talk about today is choosing, planting, managing, and enjoying some of the really great flowering garden plants. It s a lot of fun but it brings together all of the other lessons that you've had as Master Gardeners and this we will treat as a kind of a unity. We're going to start out talking about what do you do with the site you have? And to do that we have Julie Powell with us, who is wandering right over here, who has been part of this garden since it started twelve years ago. It covers about three intensive acres, it takes a lot of work and my first question to Julie was, what did you do about soil, what did you find when you got here? [Julie Powel] Well this was research soil from the research facility at Mount Vernon. It wasn't the best of soil; the first spring that we looked at it we had a lake in the middle of it with ducks in it. We had a lake. Does that mean there would have been ducks swimming somewhere down at my feet? OK, so imagine that we re standing in a lake, nothing of a garden, just a lake. Nothing. Nice duck though. So what did you do to get it drained? We waited until it actually naturally drained because it would. We knew it would because this was used as research soil, so we knew that that was going to drain but the problem was; how do we add to it so that we don t have a lake again? And that was the big question out here, was what do we do in the research? We came up with anybody who would give us any compost, and the Anacortes City gave it to us, we had piles that said stringy stuff which was hog fuel, we had the Job Corps kids out here and all they did was move wheelbarrows of stuff, and we filled it in and we amended the soil. Page 1 of 7
So this is essentially a garden that has been raised? Yes. Which is our basic point, and we do have one, is that most ornamental perennials and annuals prefer a well-drained soil. There are some that you can plant in a swamp but they are very much fewer than the ones that we plant that need good drainage, so you guys had to make sure you had a soil that would drain. We did, but we still do have a lot of the natural soil. A lot of it s clay and then it goes down to hardpan and as we re finding issues with areas we are still adding twelve years later. That's what happens with any home garden, once you begin to understand the conditions of your garden you're going to find that you keep dealing with them. It's not, gardening is not a one year let's fix it and move on to the next year, so Julie and her tribe of gardeners here, it s a tribute to patience that they have been able to come from a standing lake to a garden which is able to hold many many, many different kinds of plants. Right. So how did you decide to get this design? The woman who had the inspiration for it had been in an English garden, so she kind of knew what she was doing. She divided it up into small sections, had people interested in different types of gardening, different types of areas; just pick what they wanted, make out their plant list, make out their designs, and as you walk through it you ll go from a cool color boarder to a hot color to a Japanese to a waterwise; as you just wander through the garden. So it s a lot of small gardens attached. And for home gardeners you're going to find that you will have your own personal preferences, there will be things you respond to and when you're choosing ornamental perennials and annuals, you re going to have this big question of what kind of light do I have, what kind of soil do I have, how can I water it; which is another thing I wanted to get to. Now once you got the lake out of the way, you have a huge area here that does not get a lot of summer rain, is that accurate for you? Page 2 of 7
We don't get a lot of, from July on, rain. July to October usually. The soil does hold a lot of moisture, but we do have to irrigate, and in the past we ve gone through so many things; we ve gone through hoses that we have cut up with shovels, right through the hose; sprinklers, hand watering, and this year we have finally gone through and we have about nine gardens that are now attached to drip irrigation. Which is a big project to get that in? That is huge, but once you get it in, put it on timers, you can go away and it just waters itself. Which there are some real basics about ornamental gardening. You will notice, as we have taken pictures, that this garden also contains trees and shrubs. Our particular focus is how you grow the flower and groundcover layer, but the principles of design here are very much like those in a home landscape; you would never have a garden only composed of flowers. So the backbone is the structure of the garden provided by the trees and the shrubs, and those are part of deciding how much water is needed in what area. [Mary} Right. And it s a constant balance, isn t it? We re finding that out. It's very great research; we have gone with a system that has our main hose that is one that irrigates all the time, it s on a one gallon per hour drip system, and then we go off of it with a little feeder hose to things that need more water. We re just watching it this year to see if we re getting the right amount in different places. One of the things that you will find is that, and we'll talk a little bit more about this, keeping plants properly watered in the summertime; either east of the Cascades or west of the Cascades we have relatively little real waterfall from May to about October. I just looked at the weather and there's no real rain projected before at least the last week in September. What this means is that at the time when our plants are growing the most we have the least water. That is probably a characteristic that is, if not peculiar to this area, it certainly is unusual. It is also true in Oregon and California. What is called a modified Mediterranean climate basically means that most of the rain falls in the winter; when the plants are not in active growth. So the challenges that they have faced in putting this garden together have not only been how to get rid of the water in the first place, and then how to get it back when you need it when the plants are growing. Page 3 of 7
Did you have any particular places where you have amended the soil using any agricultural chemicals like lime, or have you brought things in and let it adjust to the plants? We did do a soil analysis when we first started... Which is a very good idea. and that was very interesting. Actually the soil was very good, it was just clay and so we needed to get the humus up so you could actually dig in it and things could grow in it. And we had, this was a bare piece of land, everything you can see, we put in. All the trees, everything were planted. [Mary} And so the oldest tree here would be twelve years old? No, we have some that came from, some of our structure trees are, I'm not sure how old they are; they were bought from nurseries that grew bigger trees. So you started with a little big. We started with about ten trees or so. Now I m told that this garden is amazing. Nurseries send everybody over here because we re about five years ahead of the growth of a normal tree, where they would be. That s interesting. Does that reflect the kind of care they re getting? I m almost thinking that it just reflects the soil that s here. This river bottom soil that we have which has had a very high clay with silt in it, is amazing. Those of you who remember your soil lessons, the clay soil drains badly but holds nutrients and releases nutrients more effectively to the plant, so if you actually have some clay, relax, get compost mixed in with it, let the structure change a little bit, but you ll have a better start for a garden than if you had sand. point. Right. We have a couple of areas that are sandy and that s the hardest That s the hardest to take care of? Page 4 of 7
It s the hardest to take care of. The least amount of plants will grow in there and a lot more watering. This is our shade garden, and when we started we had no shade. It was just a big empty field. Just a big empty field. And we have created the shade by putting the backdrops here and then we put shade cloth on it to create the shade, and as they ve grown up we ve taken the shade cloth down, and now we have a beautiful shade garden that does ferns and hosta You ve used a vine, so this shows people how to use a vine in their garden. Is this an Akebia? Yes. Does it ever produce fruit? I understand that they do fruit. It hasn t yet. Another one of the things I wanted to make sure we talk about with these gardens is that lots of gardeners want to intersperse edibles with their ornamentals and that's getting even more now than it used to be. You have done that in the cottage garden here. We have done it in the cottage garden and we have also done it in the enabling garden; which is wheelchair accessible. In the last, I would say, two years we've zipped back to the tendency to say, What can I go out to my garden and eat? It was a long period there were people didn't seem to mind having a garden which was purely there for the ornament, but we are now at a point where any place we can tuck an edible in we re likely to do it. So that s why I wondered if your pretty Akebia vine here has something to eat on it. People don t think of fall as being a particularly flowery time in the garden, not for trees, and this is a Glory Bower, Harlequin Glory Bower Clerodendrum, starts blooming in what August or so? It's been blooming for about two weeks now. And today is September 17 th for those of you who are really curious. It is beautiful and it has just a spring look to it almost. Is it deciduous, you lose the leaves in the winter time? Page 5 of 7
Yes. That's what I thought. It may not be hardy east of the mountains, I ll have to look that one up, but for those of you in zone seven and higher this is a wonderful plant to add to your flower garden. Julie has told us they've worked very hard on the irrigation in this garden; trying soaker hoses, replacing them with drip systems. If you have a home garden you may find that a soaker hose system works fine for you. You'll discover how it goes as you experiment with it. It is certainly a large commitment to put in a drip system. You have to, in addition to watering, you have to figure out what you're standing on. We are standing at the edge of the cottage garden, here's a brick edge separating a path that is gravel from a path that is, I would say, woodchips and sawdust. Yes, sawdust. Sawdust, that is basically sawdust. How does that work for you? [Julies} It has to be replaced every year, not replaced, but we just refurbish it yearly. Sawdust is getting harder to get so now we re having to rethink through a few things. People are beginning to use sawdust to make more boards, I mean it is becoming a resource in itself right? Yes, and the pellets that go into the pellet stoves are made out of pressed sawdust, so it s getting very hard to find sawdust. So it s a valuable material. It is very valuable and now they re charging for it. And did you have a layer of anything under your gravel and under your sawdust before you laid it down? The sawdust, no. The sawdust, the paths were so compacted because they had the paths worked out and with all of the movement and everything we started putting the sawdust down and we did not put anything underneath it. This is 5/8 minus and it has sawdust, it actually has just been built up over sawdust and we have tamped it in. So eventually you had a surface like this and decided that you would prefer a gravel surface for the feeling of this garden. Page 6 of 7
Right. Do you find the gravel difficult to manage; things grow in it? Things grow in it yes, but also they're easier to pull out. We do get little weeds in there, but we were under some very strict conditions at the beginning and everything we did here we had to be able to pick up and move out again if it didn't stay permanent. So you, essentially when you started this garden, you were a little bit like a person with a rented house. We still are. You didn't know for sure whether the gardens would stay, right? So you have to be prepared to say, Well, change may come. And rocks were one of the things that they didn t like. But twelve years later here we are. If you were making a choice for your own garden would you, if you could chose between a wood path and a gravel path, would you choose one or the other? No, I think I would choose it for the look of the area that you are going to put it in. The other thing that is really true of both of these surfaces is they are permeable to water, and one of the principles of taking care of our groundwater is making sure that rain, when it does fall, can permeate. So this garden represents the obvious and good choice of: let's not have heavily paved areas unless they re absolutely needed and sometimes they are for accessibility, but if you can choose something that is permeable like this, your garden is going to be in general more harmonious with the environment. Page 7 of 7