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Trying new plants, just because you can
I think for a lot of people, their gardening trajectory starts with houseplants, then moves to edibles when you finally get a yard or a balcony, then outdoor ornamental plants, and finally overwintering tender plants in your living room and trying to convince your spouse to turn the garage into a greenhouse.
That pothos from the grocery store is a slippery slope is what I’m saying.
I’ve had that Philodendron ‘Goldinia’ for 20 years?
One of the things I love most about gardening is how you can move between interests and it all ultimately makes sense because it’s the same end goal: you want to grow things and maybe learn something new in the process. Maybe the things are indoors, maybe they are edible. Maybe they save you money or maybe they scratch the itch to do hard things. Maybe you can’t help yourself. They’re all viable reasons to send money to a stranger so you can get something that might not survive in return.As our garden has evolved I’ve prioritized ornamental plants over edible ones, though I still grow a lot of herbs in pots, because I like to cook. I picked up Crocus sativus last year from Illahe Rare Plants, after listening to Mark Akimoff talk at the HPSO Fall Plantfest. He’s a great speaker.
Crocus sativus in my sage pot. I didn’t do anything with the stigmas last year, mostly because you have to act fast when you see them out, and I move slowly when I’m sad about the state of the world. I wanted to harvest them this year, and luckily this handy guide appeared in my inbox from Mark’s mailing list:
Drying is tricky and I’m sure some scientific method of exacting standards is laid out somewhere in google land. I do what I can with what I have and here is my method: open the oven so that the door is set ajar by several inches, the temp is raised to the lowest setting possible which on my oven is 170′ deg F. the stigmas spread on the parchment lined cookie sheet to not touch each other as much as possible are occasionally shifted through shaking the sheet and the whole process usually takes less than 20 minutes until they are dry to the touch and almost crispy.
It’s been sort of a silly affair, sometimes harvesting two or three blooms at a time, but it takes very little time to pop them in a warmish oven and dry them. It’s been sort of a fun distraction, and it makes me feel responsible, especially when grocery prices are all over the place. What if we called today a success because we harvested nine stigmas of saffron? Mediocre men are frankly doing less.
Now I have a tiny supply of saffron! I think the technical amount would be a “goodly pinch.”
That’s like, $20 worth of saffron, right?
As far as growing notes, I have them in a wine barrel planter with my sage and they get watered maybe once a month during the summer. As soon as the rain starts again they break dormancy and everything moves very quickly. Mark advises planting them 6-8″ deep in well draining soil. He doesn’t give his any summer water. Harvesting can start as early as September or end as late as December. I harvested this goodly pinch over a two-week period.Illahe grows an impressive array of tough little alpine plants that survive harsh conditions, should you find yourself in need of horticultural inspiration.
If you have any recommended recipes using saffron, drop them in the comments!
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Overwintering bromeliads when you’re quite tired
I am always an optimist in the spring. Things like bromeliads get purchased and I swear that I’m gonna do right by them, come winter. But then they get brought inside where they are slowly starved of water and light. I have yet to make it through a winter without losses because that is a time when I am not at my best. I could just chuck them in the compost in the fall and save everyone a lot of trouble, but then I wouldn’t have the fun story of getting up to pee in the middle of the night and stepping on a slug that had hitchhiked inside on a plant I was overwintering in the bathroom. That plant died, by the way.
I’ve been on a journey to get better at this, but it’s hard when you’re lazy and prone to clinical depression. I seem to both under and overwater them. In an effort to kill fewer plants, or at least make the midnight foot goo worth it, I’m trying a new setup.
The bromeliads get dug up from their outside locations and sprayed out to minimize spider and slug hitchhikers. Then they get snugged together in orchid pots with chunky soil. I’ve been using Sol Soils since the Tacoma Fling where I picked up a sample. I absolutely love them.
The orchid pots can be sprayed indiscriminately, making sure that the bromeliad cups have sufficient water but their roots won’t rot. I’m hoping this combo keeps them happier than in winters past.
Then I stuffed them in a metal bucket and put them under some grow lights in the living room, which is how you let visitors know that you’re a responsible adult.
A funny thing is that my brain has always associated grow lights with seed starting and not a thing that you could provide to make your houseplants happier. It took seeing my niece’s houseplant setup to retool my brain. Life is full of wonderful surprises when you go through it not really paying attention.I might even buy a humidifier but I don’t want to get too good at this. Bromeliad growers are expecting me to keep them in business. Happy fall, y’all. -
Not that we’re counting
Last week Loree inventoried her mahonia collection. Mahonia
is my favorite genus of plants (I wouldn’t kick most of Berberidaceae out of
bed) so I was very excited. As I read on I realized that Loree probably has
more mahonia than me and how could that be? I love mahonia so much that I made
up a hashtag to mock one of our friends who doesn’t care for it (#graceiswrongaboutmahonia).
Let’s take a look at what I have.The first mahonia I ever bought was ‘Dan Hinkley.’ It grew
slowly, it was leggy . . . I moved it twice and then ultimately composted it. I
am now trying it again in the front garden but if it doesn’t perform well it
will get the green bin.
The next one I purchased was Mahonia x media ‘Arthur
Menzies.’ I grow this in full south-facing sun in lean soil with not a lot of
supplemental water. As a result it’s shorter and chonkier than it would be
normally. Arthur is my earliest Chinese hybrid to bloom, starting in November and
lasting through February. It’s a bright shining beacon in winter. Sadly,
because it’s grown in so much sun, it drops far more leaves . . . right into my
agaves. For that reason I think I may remove it soon and replace it with a palm
tree (my second favorite group of plants). But it’s still a good one.
I have Mahonia nervosa smattered everywhere throughout my
garden because it spreads by runners and it takes almost any conditions. I have
it in my front rain garden where it gets cooked in the summer and in the driest,
deepest shade. It has fabulous winter color and needs almost no care. No notes.
Mahonia nervosa var. mendocinoensis. I got this from Xera, who promises it could be 9 feet tall if I keep it happy. This one is native so I can be smug at dinner parties.
Kate Bryant introduced me to Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun.’
It apparently has a bluer cast when grown in deep shade. This one has stayed on the petite side for me.
Good old ‘Charity.’ This one is probably leggy because I grow it
too lean, too dry, and too shady. Literally every one I’ve seen growing looks
better than mine.
Mahonia x media ‘Underway.’ Maybe my favorite of the Chinese crosses? It grows tall and narrow, it’s
very tidy and has berries that ripen unequally. Like I like my men.
Mahonia confusa ‘Narihira’. This has been smashed multiple times by gigantic fallen
branches off of our neighbors’ doug fir. We’ll forgive it for looking a little
worse for the wear, it should grow out of it.
Mahonia gracilipes. This got regularly leaned on by my Datisca
cannabina, so it had posture issues from the jump (in this photo it’s being held up by that large stone). Then our late wet snow storm
in April completely put it on the ground. I pruned it rather harshly and moved
it to another spot in the bed. I think it’s time to admit that it just needs to
be replaced. Otherwise a perfect plant.
Mahonia ‘Cabaret.’ I got this from Far Reaches. It notably has pink to
purple blooms like you’d find in Mahonia gracilipes (one of its parents). It
has been eaten within an inch of its life by some critter and I’ve been too
forgetful/lazy to figure out how to treat it. It looks awful through no fault
of its own.
Mahonia x savilliana. I saw this at The Elisabeth Miller Garden and dreamed about it for years. I finally wrote Richie Steffens and was
like, “How do I get one?” He said to check with Far Reaches because they took
cuttings years back. I contacted them and sure enough, they had some tucked in
the back of a hoophouse. It’s one of my favorites.
Mahonia confusa ‘Cistus Silvers.’ Another favorite, I think
this one looks dramatically better when grown in quite a bit of sun. I have two
of these, one grown in morning sun (leggy and anemic) and one grown in almost
full sun (lush and full, seen below).
Mahonia x media ‘JC.’ This was a cultivar grown in JC
Raulston’s mad laboratory that Sean Hogan took home and planted in his garden.
In my memory it was taller than his two-story house. I asked him if he’d ever
consider propagating it and HE DID. Maybe he was already planning on it, but I
felt like he did this just for me and I appreciated it so much. Plant people
are the best people. Mine is only 6′ thus far, and it has stubbier flower
spikes than the other Chinese crosses. It’s great.
I should mention that I planted Mahonia haematocarpus ‘Santa Fe Landscape,’
a diminutive form. It was so small and in such an overplanted area that it was trampled
or pulled up by accident. I would buy this one again and be more careful.
Photo from plantlust.com I’d never purchased ‘Soft Caress,’ I think because I equated
it with the poor performance of ‘Dan Hinkley’ even though I’ve seen it
countless times in other gardens looking great. Reading Loree’s post it became
imperative that I get one right away. I started texting her and calling around
and she pointed me to Cornell Farm. Within the hour I had called them, sped
over there, and purchased two. Greg immediately declared them “super cool” and
asked why I didn’t buy more. I’ll probably buy more.
Sean and the Cistus team have been experimenting with
seedlings and posting teasers on Instagram. I look forward to buying many more from them. Am I missing any great cultivars or seed strains? And please, feel free to harass Grace and let her know that she’s wrong about mahonia. It’s a great genus of plants. -
Have you heard the good word?
Hey guys, did I miss anything while I was off, not blogging?
Hoo, everything is terrible, no? I’m a weird one in that I don’t always find
solace in my garden when times are tough. For a lot of reasons (terrible
neighbors, forest fire smoke, an inexplicably bad ant year) I didn’t do much in
the garden in 2020. I didn’t buy any plants or complete any big projects. I hid in the house and watched RuPaul’s Drag Race like the bible
tells us to do in difficult times. It made me feel better, even if Greg wishes I’d
stop calling him “hunty.”By the time 2021 and vaccines rolled around I was ready for
Hot Garden Summer. But jesus, NOT LIKE THAT. The heat dome hit at the end of
June and really crisped the shit out of the garden. Our back garden measured a top
temperature of 115.5. It was terrible.
Good thing we’ve introduced a never-ending source of joy
into our lives: palm trees. Much like coconut oil in 2015, they work in any application and cure any ailment. I grew up in an area where they are ubiquitous in Safeway parking lots and gas
stations, so I took them for granted for many years. At some point I came around and in 2018 we bought some 1 gallon
Trachycarpus wagnerianus from Rare Plant Research. By 2021 they were still
pretty small and I decided that I was willing to shell out a lot of money for
some instant impact.
Still quite small after three yearsAt the end of 2018 we had the Home Depot yellow bamboo removed from our back garden. They came with the house and had become increasingly problematic. While it was a relief to have them gone, I had never appreciated the privacy those two clumps provided or how they anchored the back. I picked up Chusqea culeou from Bamboo Garden but it’s going to be many years before they have the visual heft we want.
Before removal 
After removal 
The replacement bamboo is . . . sparse Enter palm trees. I visited Oregon Palm Nursery and bought three palms ranging from 5-7’. As
soon as I got them in the ground, I wanted more.
Luckily disaster struck and a wind storm took out the Ceanothus thyrsiflorus that framed the entrance to the back garden.
A lot of people made excellent replacement suggestions but I
ignored them and planted yet another Trachycarpus wagnerianus. And another and
another because nature loves odd numbers and palms really can be squeezed in
anywhere. And if you’re paying a flat delivery fee, you might as well make it
worth the driver’s effort. In a fun twist, the trees were delivered one
day prior to the heat dome hitting, which meant I had to hustle after work to
get three 6’ trachys unboxed, put in the ground, and watered in. I’m not sure I’ve ever been that sweaty, muddy, and tired.Did I mention I was opening my garden in a few weeks, so that Ceanothus absolutely had to be replaced as soon as humanly possible?
I LIVE ON A PALM FARM Scott Weber kindly photographed my garden this summer so I would have a few non-blurry iPhone shots of my garden.
Photo by Scott Weber 
Photo by Scott Weber 
Photo by Scott Weber I’m not saying palms will cure your cancer but I’m not saying they won’t not cure it, either. At the very least you might feel better and it’s a less stupid trend than oil pulling. These palms make me SO HAPPY. I tend to treat them like I treat Bee, which involves a lot of staring and whispering “You’re so good.”
The look when you’re not giving her snacks fast enough Stay tuned for my next trend talk: Fuchsias – I’m Suddenly Extremely Into These, Possibly Because They Look Great With Trachys?
I only know how to take blurry iPhone shots I’m sadly very late to the game acknowledging that two friends wrote exceedingly nice things about my garden in the last two years: Loree Bohl at Danger Garden and Alyse Lansing at Lansing Garden Design. You both make me feel extra #blessed.
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Book giveaway winner!
Congrats to Laurie G! I used a random number generator and you were selected to win Loree’s book. Please email me at heather [at] justagirlwithahammer.com with your address and I’ll get it shipped to you.
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Book giveaway! Fearless Gardening by Loree Bohl
I started blogging and gardening in 2009, during the heyday of longform content. I quickly found Loree’s blog Danger Garden. She introduced me to so many plants I didn’t know and that I didn’t know could grow in our zone. She also reframed a lot of plants that I had grown up with in California, which I thought I disliked. Her blog had a huge effect on my emerging gardening style and opened my eyes to so many new ideas.
In 2012 a reader wrote me and offered to swap some plants. She had a number of agaves and a toddler, a bad combination. Would I want to trade them for something in my garden?
Agaves in their original location I had never grown agaves before but Loree gave me permission to try them out in my garden. And I mean that literally: I emailed Loree and asked if she knew what kind of agaves they were and should I put them in the ground? She told me she didn’t know but that I should plant them anyway and then she walked me through how to prep my soil. Nine years later they are the anchors of my front garden.
If you haven’t yet purchased your copy of Fearless Gardening: Be Bold, Break the Rules, Grow What You Love, I am here to tell you that it’s great. It’s that magical unicorn of a book: equal parts inspiring and practical.
In a time when our gardens are more important than ever, she gives you permission to break the rules and grow what you want. And then she gives you great tips for how to work with any limitations you might have.
I should mention that I am a librarian and, after working in an academic library for years, I stopped buying books. I made an exception to my usual rule of “just borrow it from the public library,” and I’m really glad I did. I know I’m going to return to it whenever I need a creative shot in the arm.
I am giving away a copy of Loree’s book. Just leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. If you’re having issues with commenting shoot me an email.
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Diary of a wimpy gardener
I’ve just returned from another successful Garden Bloggers’ Fling, this time in Denver, CO. I had so much fun (or possibly lost so much blood to mosquitoes) that I’m still trying to recover. One of my favorite things about the Fling is that I get to explore another gardening environment and it always makes me realize that I garden exactly where I should.
Because guys, I am a wimp.
I’d never been to Colorado and I was unprepared for how much tougher it is, being at a higher elevation and in such a dry environment. I felt perpetually thirsty, tired, and unmoisturized. They only average 17 inches of precipitation per year! It often snows in MAY. The bees are absolutely enormous and their mosquitoes are blood-thirsty. YOU CAN’T BUY WINE IN A GROCERY STORE, WHAT THE FUCK COLORADO, YOUR PEOPLE ALREADY ENDURE SO MUCH.
But in that pioneer spirit, they make do. They manage to create stunning gardens even though they have a much shorter growing season than most of the country. They create fascinating topography using rock, which I suspect looks great even covered in snow.
They create beautiful vignettes in pots.
They create visual interest using unusual materials.
They seemingly spend entire paychecks on annuals.
Their porches go up to 11.
They hunt down liquor stores for a measly bottle of chardonnay, apparently. People drink wine IN CHURCH, Colorado. This feels punitive.
They plant poppies galore.
And penstemon, so many penstemon!
And the most beautiful flax I’ve ever seen.
Bonus Jean color echo! They embrace color amongst the evergreens and really squeeze every opportunity out of their growing season.
The gardeners in Colorado are exceedingly warm and generous, allowing us not only into their gardens but also their homes. Many of them provided snacks and let us use their bathrooms.
I really enjoyed myself, in spite of my Pacific Northwesterner wimpery (and I’m an especially tender example). Huge thanks are owed to the organizers, who did such a fantastic job. I left inspired to up my container game and to appreciate that I can buy wine at Safeway, the way god intended.
Coloradans are creative, friendly, and far tougher than me. They make spectacular gardens.
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Just a girl with a nail gun
This spring I actually experienced spring fever for the first time in many years. I felt itchy to get in the garden and I purchased prolific amounts of plants via mail order and local nurseries. Our dog and her friends ran roughshod over the garden and I didn’t even care because the seal was broken and I! was! buying! everything!
I grew sweet peas (‘April in Paris’) for the first time and, holy shit, people, those smell as good as everyone says they do. I got my new plant babies in the ground in a timely fashion! I kept thinking, “This is my year. I’m going to stay on top of weeds and for once I won’t be embarrassed to have people over.”Then I had to travel to California a bunch of times and then the weather turned hot and my brain and body lost all of their go-go. Oxalis covered everything and Greg would helpfully ask, “Do you think you should do something about that?” and I would glare at him and return to melting in front of the garden mister.
This was not my year. I didn’t stay up on weeding. That said, I did achieve a couple of things. I replaced the rotting fence between us and our newest neighbors. They are delightful but they smoke constantly and they have a clear view of our yard from the raised deck off the back of their house. So we asked if we could replace the fence and foot the bill. I disassembled the old fence and built the new one in three hours one Sunday morning while Greg was gone because NAIL GUNS ARE AWESOME.
Before 
After
Weirdos from Craigslist took the old boards for reuse and I drank two cocktails at a tiki bar and took an epic four hour nap. The fence is now seven feet tall, which should also help block the view of our backyard from the three-story condos that were recently built at the end of our block.I also reorganized our garage, which looked like the touchdown site of a tornado. Our garage is long and skinny and full of junk. It looks like the inside of my purse but dirtier and with more things that draw blood. The previous owner, a paranoid mess who wrapped every heat register in the house in tin foil (so the government can’t listen in on you), installed a useless shelf with a gigantic mirror tilted back.
See, I don’t need safety measures like mirrors to know if someone is sneaking up on me because I left 900 nursery pots at the entrance of the garage. There’s a pile of styrofoam you can fall on, too.
We finally took the mirror down, demoed the shelf, and removed a weird cabinet in the corner that we used to store spiders.We moved our metal shelves to the back and I built a potting table, modified from this video I found on YouTube. Men have largely convinced women that we’ll kill ourselves if we use power tools but it turns out building stuff isn’t that hard and its super fun.
Then I added hanging storage to the walls and now sometimes I just stand in my garage and coo in this general direction. As my mother always says, “Simple minds = simple pleasures.”
Next up we’re having the yellow bamboo that came with the house removed. It has been terribly behaved, sending rhizomes through the root balls of neighboring plants, at a shocking speed. It leaves culm litter everywhere and it sucks. WHY IS THIS THE BAMBOO HOME DEPOT SELLS EVERYONE? In its place I’m planting Chusqea culeou, which is a true clumper that shouldn’t be quite so messy.
Next year is going to be my year, I can just feel it. I’m going to stay on top of weeds and for once I won’t be embarrassed to have people over. And I will buy a lot of plants, that I know is true.
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Happy accidents when you don’t know what you’re doing
Lately I’ve been appreciating a bit of seredipity in the entrance to the backyard. Back in 2011 I posted about how I wanted the entrance to the back garden to envelop you, so you’d get a slow reveal to the rest of the yard.
After a couple of unsuccessful plantings (mock orange, flowering currant, some other stuff) I planted a Ceanothus thyrsiflorus in 2012 and it grew quickly.
My neighbors had a gorgeous ceanothus that spilled into our side yard and it had been trained as a tree:
When the next door house was flipped and sold they removed this ceanothus and I lost all the shade in my side yard. I’d never really seen another Ceanothus because I was new to gardening so I didn’t realize most people let them grow as shrubs. I limbed up mine too and now it provides a nice canopy along the pathway. Most visitors don’t recognize what it is because, you know, it should be a shrub. Or maybe the straight species is always a tree but everyone grows more exciting cultivars like ‘Dark Star‘.
Tree sized in six years! I don’t always love this ceanothus because its bloom time is short and the flowers aren’t as intensely colored as some of the named cultivars. It’s also messy once the blooms die. The good news is they don’t live very long so I’ll probably be shopping for a new tree/shrub in the next ten years.
Please also admire the color echo between the hosta and the hose junking up the photo. Based on every photo I have ever taken it looks like I live in a hose-testing facility.
And since we’re looking at that old post, let’s do a before and after!
Before 
After Looking back at the entrance, you can see that my wine barrel has since been planted with bamboo, the rain garden was installed, and everything grew like crazy. That old bit of fence on the left was removed as well.
Before 
After Standing in the middle of the yard and looking at the back of the house you can see that we were, in 2011, considering building a huge deck off the back of the house. It’s not all happy accidents when you don’t know what you’re doing! What the fuck were we thinking?
Before 
After Another gigantic whatthefuck was forming here with that goofy shaped bed (hinted at here with stones on the lawn). Circles and squares, damn it! None of this freestyle nonsense!
Before 
After So the moral of the story is that you can limb up your ceanothus but you shouldn’t hire Greg or I to design decks or raised beds for you. We suck at it.
