Skip to content
Oceanside Garden
  • About
    • About Me
    • About the Garden
    • About this website
  • The Garden
    • Garden Plan
    • Compost Heap
    • Conifer Forest
    • Contemporary Garden
    • Contemplation Garden
    • Cutting Garden
    • Greenhouse
    • Portal
    • Tea House
  • Plants
  • Design and Construction
  • Contact and Legal
    • Contact
    • Affiliate Links
    • Privacy Policy
Grevillea 'Neil Bell' General

Defy the Rules

One of the supposed rules of gardening is to take a look at other gardens and what plants they are having success with, and then emulate them. Sorry – but I call bull s**t. That is what you do if you want to copy them, to create the same garden that everyone else in the neighborhood has. If you are looking for a low maintenance, safe garden, perhaps this is the way to go. Most gardeners do want some reassurance, especially if they think they have brown thumbs – and there is certainly some truth to this.

But don’t think that just because the local grocery store or hardware store or even nursery stocks a plant that it will actually do well in your garden. Most plants are grown by huge national nurseries that are interested in things that will do well across most of the country. Many of those plants are not well suited to our local climate or soil conditions. We live in one of the most “different” climates in the world, one that is drastically different from the majority of this country and is matched only by a few areas in the entire globe!

There are some plants that you will see growing next door – for good reason. Some plants, like Camelia, Rhododendron, Photinia and many others almost grow better here than in their native locations.

The first step I took when I first moved to my Oceanside garden was to plant a few of everything that I have loved and trusted from previous gardens. I agree that this creates a little bit of a mess of a garden – it was not planned to be permanent, it was deigned to learn what does and doesn’t do well here for myself. Some plants may have been suitable for the climate and the soil, but could not handle the grazing of the deer or the winds, others languished because the summer heat was not enough, others wanted more moisture retention than I could provide, or was prepared to provide given that I see water as a precious resource. Sure, some plants just got placed in the wrong places and I have started to move some around, trying to see if they like it better in other places.

But I also want to find out the plants that I can grow that were never possible before. Local nurseries are often not adventurous enough, and who can blame them. They are scratching out a living serving a small community, many of whom want what is growing next door. I do try and support them as much as I can, but I cannot limit myself to what they provide.

Garden tours can be great source of ideas. Of course, many of them are going to be the ones who look like all of the yards next door, but still you may get ideas about grouping, or combinations. In the Tillamook area, Jesse and I went on a tour of gardens put on by the local master gardeners. From one garden, we loved the little stories attached to the major plants they had in the garden – where they rescued it from, the back story of that particular plant. It gave the plants more meaning and showed the thought that went behind them and the history contained within the garden.

Another garden contained a few plants that I had never seen before – now that got the wheels in my mind turning. Interestingly, I think it was the only garden in the tour that was not owned by a master gardener. They had broken all the rules. At first, I wanted to acquire all the plants they had and to emulate the look and feel they had created. But then I stopped and thought about why they were being successful with those plants and what others might be possible given their success.

That led me to consider the plants of Australia and South Africa. I was familiar with some of them from exhibitions in Key Gardens in England and when I found out there was even a slim chance that I could grow some of them I knew I had to try. First step was to find out which ones might be hardy here, and then to quickly find out that almost none of them are available from any nursery in this country. They are still being “discovered” and because they haven’t been heavily hybridized yet, many of them are not considered showy enough or suitable for sufficient numbers of people in this country.

So – I was left with one alternative – find seed abroad and import them. Many of them will take years before they bloom, but I am willing to wait and then to know I will have plants in my yard that will not appear “next door.” But the hunt also shows me that there are some nurseries that really do strive to be different and attempt to bring novel plants to market. I want to give a shout out to Xera nursery in Portland. They have a small retail outlet in SE Portland and do their own growing in Sherwood. They have brought many of their own introductions to the market and have supplied me with several wonderful Grevilleas and Callistemons, as well as other interesting plants. Their online site is also very useful, but do not expect the retail outlet to contain everything they list online – they only bring them in for sale when they are in their prime – meaning they are blooming etc.

Weather for Oceanside Garden - Jan 2020 Calendar

January 2020

After a very dry period from October through December, January became a catch-up month when it comes to rain. With just a few hours left to go, we have recorded a hair over 20 inches of rain for the month and that misses a couple of hours of rain one night when power was lost.

Back at the end of October 2019, the interior of the greenhouse was still coming together, but as soon as the propagation bench was in and operating, I couldn’t resist taking some cuttings. I scoured the garden for anything that looked like reasonable semi-hardware material and prepared some Lavender Silver Anouk, Grevillea Pink Lady and Neil Bell, Callistemon Dark Red, Woodlander’s Hardy Red and Veridis, plus a few other things like some fuchsias that I wanted for baskets next year. With all of the cuttings I used a rooting gel in a peat/perlite mix. Did some wounding on the stems.

While they had bottom heat, the mist system was still not installed, so they got daily misting and a transparent storage box placed over them to keep as much humidity around them as I could.

So far, the Lavenders have rooted with 100% success and are potted up. Yesterday I did the Callistemon Woodlander’s Hardy Red and they were 100% as well. Today I potted up the Pink Lady Grevillea and was very pleased to have 5 out of 7 cuttings rooted. This is plant that the nursery I originally bought it from has had difficulty with over the past year and they didn’t get many of their cuttings to set. It still remains to be seen if I lose any from the transplanting and they will need one more potting up then before they would be planting size, but I love that they have some new growth buds on them already.

There are signs of rooting in the other Grevillea and Callistemon as well, but will leave them a little bit longer before potting those up. To say I am pretty pleased in an understatement.

1/14 Temperatures have dipped to almost freezing (the low was 33.6 at just after 9am this morning). We have had rain, sleet, snow and hail. It has been cloudy and sunny. We have had a rainbow, and a wind gust up to 38 mph. All in all, an interesting day this is certainly not normal for these parts.

I built and installed a mist system in the latter half of this month. While It isn’t really necessary at this time of year, I wanted to get it up and running so that the greenhouse is somewhat self sufficient while we are away for a week in February. I had all of the bits, but needed to connect the water supply up to the greenhouse and get it built. One thing I learned is that with the recirculation fan running, a lot of the mist gets blown away from where it is necessary, so I need to install another relay to turn off the fan while the misters are operating. I think that should do the trick. The relay has arrived, but I have been hobbling around a bit for the past week, so it hasn’t been done yet.

Seeds

There are lots of seeds popping up this month. There are signs of life from Arisaema ciliatum (Cobra Lily), just today, the first Banksia baueri poked through (Possum Banksia), Banksia spinulosa (Birthday Candles), Crassula coccinea, Fuchsia procumbens (Creeping Fuchsia), Grevillea eriostachya – another one showed itself just today (Flame of Orange Grevillea), Grevillea nudiflora, Hakea francisiana (Red Spike Hakea), Leptospermum scoparium (New Zealand Tea Tree), Leucadendron discolor, Leucadendron salignum, Protea scolymocephalon -yet another new one for today, Protea venusta, Watsonia meriana var Bulbillifera (Bugle Lily) and Watsonia borbonica (also know as Bugle Lily).

Plants

One by one the Hellobores have been bursting into bloom this month. It started with Winter’s Song, that actually started to bloom in the last week of December, and now the others are either in bloom, or the buds are opening up. The unknown white heather has been a mass of blossoms all month and Grevillea Neil Bell has been providing sporadic flowers all month. Grevillea Pink Lady is full of buds and that will be a mass of bloom before long. The Camellia (Nuccio’s Pearl) is getting ready to open.

The Weather

High Low Average
Temperature 63.0 F 33.3 F 46.5 F
Dew Point 54.9 F 26.4 F 44.8 F
Humidity 99 % 28 % 94 %
Precipitation 20.02 in — —
Wind Speed 38.3 mph 0.0 mph 3.6 mph
Wind Gust 54.8 mph — 5.3 mph
Wind Direction — — SSE
Pressure 30.27 in 29.19 in —

Recent Posts

  • Sebright Gardens
  • Gardener’s Log – April 2023
  • Gardener’s Log – March 2023
  • California Botanic Garden
  • Gardener’s Log – February 2023

Recent Comments

  • danger garden on California Botanic Garden
  • gardener on Astroloma foliosum
  • christine doud on Astroloma foliosum
  • gardener on Leucadendron ‘Ebony’
  • Robandsuzey@gmail.com on Leucadendron ‘Ebony’

Archives

Categories

Tags

Acer Aeonium Agave Aloe Banksia Bromeliad Cactus Callistemon Camellia Cistus Cornus Correa Cyclamen Dahlia Daylily Dogwood Evergreen Fern Fuchsia Galanthus Gladiolus Grass Grevillea Heather Hellebore Hemerocallis Hosta Iris Japanese Maple Leucadendron Leucospermum Maidenhair Fern Mediterranean Mimulus Narcissus Opuntia Poppy Protea Rhododendron Rose Salvia Sedge Sedum seeds weather

Find a Plant

  • Growth Habit

  • Seasons of Interest

  • Zone

  • Sun Needs

  • Soil Type

  • Height

  • Width

Subscribe and never miss a post

Basic subscribe to new blog posts
Loading

Subscribe to receive updates

Basic subscribe to new blog posts
Loading
This article may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission when you click through and make a purchase. This site is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. No product is shown that I have not used. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. Full details are available here.

All text and images are Copyright - if you want to use anything, please ask.

Theme by Colorlib Powered by WordPress