sprig to twig

In honor of the HPSO Fall Plant Sale coming up this weekend, I will post about a marvelous garden. Last year, when I visited the Quirk & Neill garden (a collector’s garden with many unusual plants), they generously directed me to the Westwind Farm Studio as an example of a completely different approach to gardening. Here, the plant material is familiar, but used in great sweeping swathes that eventually melt into the surrounding 40 acres of natural landscape. So as not to overdo a good thing, I will break this down into three consecutive posts.

From the parking area, a path winds up the hill. In most cases, dried seedheads and flowers have been left in place, as on this crocosmia.

Tons of massive stone were brought in. We are introduced to the idea of stonework amidst plantings with these stone steps taking us over the brow of the hill to the level where the house reveals itself. It was designed by the late, great Pietro Belluschi.

The back deck of the house overlooks this bed, where a large stand of Solidago ‘Fireworks’ rises above muhly grass and Perovskia, establishing a theme of repetition that holds throughout the property.

The next bed picks up the theme and riffs on it.

Rivers of lambs’ ears define many of the borders, this one overlooking the view of the valley.

The muhly grass reappears as a border plant. Earlier in the season, the Echinacea, grown in abundance, set the hillside aflame. Now the seedheads have been left standing. There are birds everywhere.

Grass is used sparingly, providing a nice cushy walking surface.

Huge stones are worked into the plantings masterfully, and even jut out from paved surfaces here and there, making it look as if they were native to the site. The building on the left is a yoga studio overlooking the pool.

Not too many places on my radar could provide the perfect setting for a monumental sculpture.

Ah, the good life.

There’s that muhly grass again, this time surrounding a pond with waterfall.

Leaving the house level, another path takes us up the back hill. The bright noonday sun fades the color, but the birds and the bees were working over this hillside like nobody’s business.

Dried flower heads of Achillea make for an autumnal composition. And that’s it for today’s installation of this three-part series. I must warn you: tomorrow we will visit the greenhouse, so if eliminating envy is high on your list of resolutions, you might want to steer clear.

Jason Stoller Smith, chef at Timberline Lodge, put on quite a show with a Native American style salmon bake on the South Lawn of the White House. The Oregonian published recipes for the salads served as side dishes. The combination of ingredients for the strawberry and arugula salad sounded peculiar, but I decided to give it a go. Man, was it ever good. I will be making this often, as long as fresh Oregon strawberries are available at farmers’ markets. It is useless to use substitutes once you have tasted an Oregon-grown specimen.

I will give you the original recipe, with adaptations I made in parentheses.

.25 C red wine vinegar
.25 C granulated sugar (I used half as much and substituted Agave nectar)
.50 C thinly sliced red onion
4 T olive oil
.25 C toasted, chopped hazelnuts (I used raw)
.25 t sea salt
3 oz arugula (I just filled up a salad bowl…no measuring)
1 oz raw sheep milk cheese, shaved (shaved parmesan/romano)
2 C sliced fresh strawberries
freshly ground black pepper (mixed peppercorns)

Warm vinegar & sugar in small saucepan, med heat, until sugar is dissolved.
Place onion slices in small bowl, toss with vinegar mixture & set aside 2 hrs to pickle. (only as long as prep time for rest of salad)
Heat 1 T oil in small saute pan, stir in nuts, sprinkle with sea salt & saute until toasty brown.
Combine arugula, cheese, nuts, drained onions and strawberries.
Lightly toss with the pickling liquid and remaining oil.
Finish with fresh ground pepper to taste.

Find more recipes using fresh produce from the garden by visiting Wendy at greenish thumb and clicking on other contributors. This blogging community has many great cooks ready to share their expertise.

This is representative of the time-honored approach to plantings in the South Park Blocks between the art museum (glimpsed in the back of the picture) and the Historical society, here in “the rose city”. This bed is ringed with hybrid teas in various shades of red, with three taller shrubs pruned as standards in the middle.

On the other side of the central walkway is a bed with the same theme in yellow

But lo and behold, one of the built-in concrete raised beds breaks with tradition.

Several varieties of grasses combine with the strappy and spiky plants, for a more modern look.

They even mulched with gravel. How forward-thinking of them.

A little further north, where the tree canopy creates dappled to deep shade, they have crammed the planters with hostas, hellebores, rhododendrons and other shade-lovers. I have always loved strolling through the park blocks. Can you see why?

Above is how the lavender walk looked back when it was in full bloom. I think it was a photo in an architecture magazine that put this bee in my bonnet. It showed a sloping field of row upon row of lavender, each individual plant forming a perfect mound. Now, if one were to ask me about my own style of gardening, I would have to say blowsy and undisciplined, as much as I admire controlled minimalism. Oh, well, I guess that is how garden rooms got started: gardeners loathe to commit to one style of gardening figuring out a way to have it all. At the last YGP Show, a respected speaker warned that lavender would eventually turn woody and die, but back when I was contemplating this project, the advice I had seen, and have followed with success for 6 years, was to cut it back by about one third each year after blooming.

Last year, for the first time, I left this chore until spring. It did not seem to make a difference at blooming, but the plants did seem a little bit woodier at this pruning. The last two days were ideal to the task: sunlight played with the clouds, a light breeze was blowing and this chore could easily pass for aromatherapy. It did take the better part of two days to accomplish, with only sixteen plants involved. That field in France that got me started must have a better method, or a slew of workers. Anyway, I usually start from the bottom, cutting out dead wood (but be careful, not all wood is as dead as it looks), sculpting as I go to form each plant into a rounded tuffet, with the top getting that third removed. The new growth coming along will be a sagey gray-green, while the old stuff will be regular old medium green. Along with the flowering stalks, I take off the first two or three little tufts of new. This is a sitting down job. The perspective is better that way, and my back says “thank you”.

The bed is 30″ wide and the plants are planted 30″ apart on center. In the above view, we are looking towards the SE. From this angle they look like shocked Marine recruits.

But from the other side the view is just as I envisioned it. Guess the moral to that story is to site such a feature accordingly (not what I did). The brown lawn is a Portland signature. Around here, being green means seeing brown for a good part of the summer.

I fully intended the plants to be all of a kind. Purely by accident, three oddballs snuck in. Luckily, they wound up at the end of the line. As you can see, the plant in the foreground is better suited to my purposes. It is Lavenda ‘Melissa’. The others, due to their undercover stealth, are anybody’s guess. I will be on the lookout for two more Melissa’s to replace them. Why only two? Because the gap for people and wheelbarrows to pass through has become overgrown.

Speaking of overgrown, here’s a lavender more characteristic of the approach in this garden. It is still throwing up fresh wands, and the bees love it. It is a different variety, with longer wands, planted before I paid much attention to nomenclature. Hard for me to say which style I prefer. What do you think?

Remember Janet’s plant sale? I got a message from her the other day with photos of a magnificent stand of 8′ tall yellow, daisy-like flowers on sturdy stems that need no staking. I bought one of these unidentified plants at the sale, and while it tops out at 6′, I thought photos of my single plant would be easier to see plant structure as I send out my plea to all the ace plant-identifiers out there.

Here is a shot of the leaf structure.

And the first blossom, with a few of the buds waiting in the wings.

If you look carefully, you can see the overall architecture of the plant in this not-so-hot photo on a hot day. I expressed my desire to have more of these to Janet, and she said not to throw any more money her way, as they multiply quickly. How’s that for truth in advertising? I intend to buy more next spring anyway, as I am impatient to smother this fence in plant life. If you can enlighten us with a name, Janet and I will both be eternally grateful.

The two sitting at the back, smiling at the camera, are most excellent emergency room doctors. They came to Portland for a few days to try to line up work once their residencies are completed. If you happen to have any useful information along those lines, please get in touch. We had hoped to eat our dinner out under the cherry trees, but wouldn’t you know that the first raindrops to fall since early July would choose this time to put in an appearance. The front deck was a pleasant enough back-up. We just handed out sweaters and fired up the grill…and Noami and Ian are still hot to move to Portland. Woohoo.