Author: admin

My entire life I have always loved wild roses. I would stumble upon them when hiking around and just be fascinated that such beauty could be growing wild. The smell is like no other–a sweet, unmistakably rose scent that stays with you forever. My obsession was rekindled in recent years on trips to Okanogan County where the wild roses grow all around in the woods and along the roads near our Tonasket cabin. It feels like the whole world is sweeter when all the wild roses are blooming and casting their fragrance out and about.

As a seed starting addict, I constantly grab rose hips and throw them in my pocket to start the seeds the next spring. The plant below is a product of my hip-tomania. My challenge is that I never know what the plants are, exactly, until they bloom and I can start sleuthing on their botanical identity. These are the first flowers I’ve seen on this rose. They are gorgeous. Preliminary identification by the native plant FaceBook group has this pegged as Rosa nootkana. I’ll dig deeper this weekend to identify it for sure. It is probably about five years old from seed.

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One thing that makes me happy about this plant is that the leaves look pretty rough already because they are being eaten! That is the entire point–adding to food webs! So, assuming Seattle native fauna are eating my Seattle native flora, I’m a happy camper!

There is a park in Shoreline called Twin Ponds Park. I took the dog on a walk just to clear my head after a long day at the home office. In an effort to see how plants look in a natural environment, I wandered some of the paths in the park and saw some great plants in some wonderful natural plantings.

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Finding natural places to observe is a great way to spend some pent up stay-at-home energy and see how nature gardens with native plants.

Here are some native bulbs that I have in the memory garden/parking strip. They have come back and are blooming well in their second year. I will add more of these bulbs to the front of the native plant garden.

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It will be fun to plant these among some of the grass plants I’m hoping to have. I planted blue lyme grass and tufted hairgrass seeds.

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Over the last week, I’ve planted about fifty 3-1/2″ pots with seeds! Most of them are natives, with just a few alien ornamentals thrown in because I already had the seeds. I mixed organic potting soil with some grit as a seedling mix. Many types of seed require a stratification period of cold before warm weather will wake them up. I’ve decided to take a hopeful approach of starting them in warm weather first and then if they don’t germinate in a month, I’ll refrigerate them for a few weeks and bring them out again. Some of them may not come up until next year. Honestly, that might be a blessing. If all of them come up right away, that’s going to be a thousand seedlings that need care and potting on all at the same time.

The most interesting seeds I’m trying are of Castilleja miniata, which is a semi-parasitc red paintbrush. I tried planting the seeds in and around some grass plants to see if they will grow there and parasitize the roots. I have lots more of those seeds to try in other scenarios and combinations.

I’m going to refrigerate the leftover seeds (there are still quite a few) and possibly start a second round of germination in early summer. My goal with all this seed starting is to not only add plants to my own garden but to get starts I can share with neighbors and friends.

Leon laid the rest of the bricks today around the border and I went out and raked the bark so it looked a little less bumpy. I started to worry about it not looking just so, but then I realized that in nature, nothing looks just so. Nature’s beauty is chaotic and uncontrolled. So is my bark-spreading. So, I’m calling it good for now.

There is a LOT of barked area with no plants. I’m growing a bunch from seed and cuttings that will eventually fill in this area and may purchase a few more choice items, as well. I plant to put a willow in this area, and I posted an inquiry to the Pacific Northwest Native Plants Facebook group if the have any suggestions on what species might be best for a small-ish front yard.

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Some of the plants from Seattle Native Plants are already flowering, which is a nice touch.

There are also a few natives that I already had in the garden that are about to make statements around the yard.

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I planted seeds of native plants yesterday, as well, and left them out in the weather to get rain and cool and hopefully all they want for germination. The seeds included Solidago, Anemone, Delphinium, Asclepias, Aquilegia, Mimulus, Linum, and Penstemon. I also ordered some new seeds yesterday from Northwest Meadowscapes that included Aquilegia, Collomia, Camassia, Castilleja, Elymus, Deschampsia, Sidalcea, Lupinus, and Lomatium.

The giant bark mountain was mostly distributed around the native plant garden today. Shoveling all that bark was a good workout! I plan to finish spreading it all tomorrow. Leon added a bunch of bricks along the garden’s border, too.

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All the plants that I put in last weekend look really good and healthy. The rains we’ve had have helped them settle in nicely.

Pacific Topsoils arrived this afternoon with six yards of their medium bark. It looks great–just what I needed. Leon and I spread about two yards already when the rain chased us back in the house. The bark will be spread deeply on the bare grass area and less deeply on the areas that already have soil covering the grass. The goal of the bark is to kill the underlying grass and to keep any weeds from growing in the garden before the native plants take hold.

The other good thing about the bark is that it will add some organic matter as it decomposes and start building up a layer of litter for critters to hide and hunt in.

My unbounded enthusiasm for native plant restoration saw me purchasing a bunch of packets of seeds earlier this year. I tried chilling some and not chilling some and to be honest, I haven’t been all that successful so far. I did get many Mimulus guttatus seedlings and a few Polemonium pulcherrimum, about four Asclepias speciosa and a few tiny Chamaenerion angustifolium. I potted the seedlings on and they are slowly growing. Mimulus seedlings are in the top photo and one Polemonium is in the front pot in the photo below.

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Some seedlings not shown here are those of Allium cernuum which are germinating in a pot outdoors. My goal is to build up some real numbers of the simpler native perennials, so I will plant a bunch more seeds this weekend to see if I can get more to germinate and grow on. I’m usually pretty good at this seed game, but the natives are proving trickier. It is possible the seeds aren’t the best, too, since it is tough to find many of the local species. The Trillium ovatum seeds I ordered through Amazon.com arrived and they were rice hulls–not Trillium seeds!

I ordered six yards of a medium bark mulch that is made up of fir and hemlock to be delivered tomorrow from Pacific Topsoil. My intention is to spread it this weekend in between rain showers. We’ll see if I get it done!

The rain stopped falling by around noon today and I headed out to get my native plants into the soil. It only took a couple of hours, which was good news. My process was to dig holes in the new soil with a trowel, put organic fertilizer powder in and mix it with the bottom soil, drop a Jobes organic fertilizer spike in the hole after breaking it in half, setting the plant in and making sure I got soil back around and over the root ball. A few of the plants needed to have their roots broken up, as well. I was happy they all seem vigorous!

Placing them was tricky. Thinking of planting in layers, rather than just in two dimensions is pretty different. knowing that the trees will get tall, so shrubs can be under them and herbaceous perennials can fit right up under the shrubs. I tried to be a bit more random in my groupings and spacing, the way things might look in nature. We’ll see if I succeeded.

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Some significant and much-needed rain hit my north Seattle garden today, so I am holding off on planting all my native plants until it subsides. I’m glad they are getting a good soaking prior to planting, and the soil will be nice and moist and settled.

Smithsonian Magazine has an April article on my hero Doug Tallamy and his efforts to save species through restoration. Find the article HERE.

While I am waiting for the rain to finish freshening up the garden, I’m designing a yard sign to put at the corner of the yard where people pass frequently that briefly describes the native garden project and gives people a link to this blog and to Doug Tallamy’s videos. We have a LOT of traffic going past the house during the stay-at-home order, so now seems the perfect time to pop a sign out there.

Here is where I’ve landed with the sign. We’ll see if it generates any interest.