Tag: Puget Sound

A Blank Slate

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The first place I decided to strike my shovel with was a rectangular plot of land at the back end of my property. It was an area 75′ wide by about 40′ deep and sat about 3′ higher than the rest of my backyard. It was a blank slate- all grass and a handful of old raspberry shrubs. I wasn’t 100% sure but it seemed like the area got plenty of sun. I spent the winter and spring doing some of the things I outlined in my previous post and began sketching out a landscape plan for what I wanted to see. You can check out the sketch below. If it’s not clear, what you see is a planted “island” surrounded by a grass walking path with additional plantings towards the fencelines. I wanted to add a pond with a stream as well so you’ll see the start of the stream in the upper center and then it flowers in a counter-clockwise arc before it spills down into a pond at the base of the cinderblock retaining wall.

My first landscape plan
My first landscape plan

The various abbreviations on the sketch represent plants I intended to plant at that location. For example, “SF” stands for Sword Fern; “S” stands for Salal and so on and so on. I not really a great at drawing so this little method of letter abbreviations worked for me. After some additional time making some more tweaks to the sketch, I duplicated the sketch digitally and ended up with the following plan. The second page in the PDF lists out the various abbreviations and what plant it represents.

gardenDesign

I’ll admit that it was a pretty ambitious design but I didn’t know any better at the time. Now that I had some sort of plan, it was time to get digging. I decided to start work with the center island planting. Here’s one of the first photos which shows my initial plant layout:

Initial Plant Layout - Island Planting
Initial Plant Layout – Island Planting

I used the orange flagging to represent the perimeter of the island planting area and the green flags was the location of each major shrub/tree. You’re mostly looking at Shore Pines (Pinus contorta) and Tall Oregon Grape (Mahonia Aquifolium). There’s also a few 1 gallon Salal (Gaultheria shallon) at right center. The last thing I’d like to point out is that the post sizes vary from 1 gallon, 2 gallon, and 5 gallon pots. This is something to keep in mind as we review progress over time. In my next post, I’ll talk about the actual work of clearing, prepping and planting the island. Thanks for looking!

-Steve

Getting Started with Natives

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Forest Scene along the Lower Salmon River Trail, Mount Hood National Forest
Forest Scene along the Lower Salmon River Trail, Mount Hood National Forest

Getting started with native plants could be daunting, especially if you’re new at gardening. It really comes down to what you like, and do you have environmental conditions that will support its habitat. If you’re a more experienced gardener, all you may need is a good reference book to learn about growth heights and environmental characteristics such as sun/shade, dry/moist, etc. Since my experience is more like the former, that’s the perspective I’ll be writing from. I started wanting to emulate the nature I saw but I didn’t know how to accomplish it.

One of the first things I picked up was a nature guidebook. For the Pacific Northwest, the “bible” of guidebooks is Jim Pojar’s “Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast.” This guide explains the essentials about what is native, where you find it, and growth characteristics. I highly, highly recommend this book. The second book I would recommend is Arthur Kruckeberg’s “Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest.” This second book bridges the gap between a guidebook for the native environment and  how well (or poorly) a given plant may do in a garden setting. There are some additional books that have come onto the scene in more recent years and I’ve included links to all these books on Amazon over on my Resources page.

These books will help you ID a plant and decide which ones you like but how should you use it in the garden? The simplest suggestion I can give is just go on a hike. Nature will show you which plants work well together if you just pay attention. By no means is this a complete list but here are some suggestions:

Washington:

Oregon:

Obviously, some of this will be dictated by the range of any given plant you’re interested in. For example, Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) and Vanilla Leaf (Achlys triphylla) both reach their northern limits in Washington by around Mount Rainier National Park. If I wanted to incorporate these plants, I would need to find a hike in the southern Cascade mountains if I want to see how these plants naturally fit into the landscape. I really believe that studying nature’s design will ultimately help your own designs.

Armed with inspiration, the next step is also critical- understanding your own site conditions. If you’ve owned your property for more than one growing season, this won’t be as big of an issue as if you had just bought your property. In this exercise, you’re trying to learn what areas remain shaded or sunny, what areas are dry and wet, and what areas have variations of these properties. You won’t have much success planting something in full sun that likes moist conditions (well- without a lot of watering). Basically, you’re trying to match your local conditions with the plant’s endemic conditions to give them the best chances for success.

In my next post, I’ll start discussing my initial efforts..

-Steve

Beginnings

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Garden Scene - © On the Native Path
Garden Scene

People have lots of reasons for finally making that decision to buy a home. For me. that decision came back in 2001, and it was largely based on my desire to have a garden full of native plants. It’s not a feeling that just happened overnight. I moved to Washington State in 1999 to get much closer to the outdoors that I fell in love with on my first visit back in the early 90s. Once I had moved here, I began to explore the mountains on various hikes. One of the first hikes that left an impression on me was the hike to the Green Mountain Lookout located in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, outside of the town of Darrington. If you’re not familiar with that hike, it makes its way up to a fire lookout that has a tremendous view in the heart of the North Central Cascades. The highlight of the hike for me was the traverse through a lush, diverse alpine meadow.

I loved being up there, but it was still a 2 hour drive away. I wanted to have those same sights and smells but without the drive. And that’s when I became really interested in having native plants in a garden. Coincidentally, I started home shopping in mid 2001 and my highest priority in a house became a good sized yard. I eventually found my home and began making my plans for what I wanted to do. From 2002-2007, I worked my butt off and transformed a good portion of my backyard from a simple lawn to garden that had over 80 different species of Northwest native plants. I accomplished all this without any real training or previous experience.

As you’ll see over future posts, it was a LOT of work, and I eventually hit the proverbial wall. I hadn’t quite finished my original design but I took some time off from heavy, active work to just enjoy the fruits of my labor. In 2008, I entered a serious relationship and my priorities changed. My girlfriend lived about 20 minutes away and I eventually spent all my time with her, at her place. The flip side of this is that I spent less and less time at my house, and even less time working in my garden.

Years go by and now it’s 2016. As fate would have it, my girlfriend moves in with me into my home and, as the saying goes, home is where your honey is at. Today, I find myself almost starting over with my garden. I’m beginning the lengthy process of clearing out the years of neglect by pruning and weeding. I’m looking to finish what I originally started, and re-work what has gone wrong. This blog serve as a “progress report” as I continue my efforts. Before I get too much into the work I’m currently doing, I’m going to step back in time and go over what I did over those initial five years. Hopefully there’s a few useful tips or ideas buried in there.

In my next post, I’ll start out by going over the resources I used to help me get started.