Rhododendron Archives - Oceanside Garden

Gardener’s Log – May 2022

After an awful April, we had high expectations for May. April had record rainfall. May had even more! April was cold. May was only slightly warmer and considerably colder than previous years. While we did have a few dry days, there have not been many. Then for the last weekend of the month, we had the worst Winter storm of the year. All that means that progress has been slow, but not stopped entirely. Now we have June gloom to look forward to.

But not everything is bad. Some plants have been slowed down, but none-the-less are blooming well. Some plants have put on a much better show than they have in the past. This could be because they are a year older, or they had such a warm year last year, or the abundant rainfall this year. Not sure. For example, the Venus Dogwoods, that anchor the streambed garden, have had a couple of dozen flowers in previous years. This year, there are well over a hundred. They are about 2 to 3 weeks behind what we would typically expect. Rhododendrons have liked it.

Birds are an important part of the garden and at this time of year or resident birds are augmented with the migratory ones. I love it when the gold finches, western tanagers and other colorful birds come through. The other day they almost looked like flowers in the bush. Attracting birds requires several things. Along with food (both natural and supplemented with sunflower kernels), we provide water, and natural areas where they can get cover. For those that stay here, nesting boxes and materials.

Garden Progress

How many times have you finished up, after a long day of working in the garden, to be disappointed with the progress you made, even though you have the aches and pains to tell you that you expended serious energy? Of course, sometimes that energy was not perhaps used in the wisest of ways, but we all learn and sometimes have to relearn many times until we realize there must be a better way. But then, when we look back over a period of time, we are amazed at how much we accomplished.

That has certainly been the case with the garden this year, especially now that I can put in a few hours per day before I need the Ibuprofen.

Engine Room

The front continues to have its makeover. This is what many people would call the “engine room” of the garden and it is where all the growing and propagation happens, as well as quarantining plants as the come in, or just the time taken to decide where they are going to live. This transformation only started this year. Before that it was just a sea of gravel, a large, overgrown Escallonia hedge and plants sitting on the ground, making them difficult to care for, and often attempting to root into the gravel.

After installing the path being along the bench area on one side of the house, I decided it would be nice to extend it over to the other side. The frames for the cold frames are in. To help with thermal balancing, they are sunk about 8″ below grade. The path was then extended all the way to the emergency supply dump and eventually will go around the back of that to the compost bins. One bench remains to be built.

Mediterranean Garden

Some progress has also been made on the Mediterranean garden. The central feature is a sundial that has been placed on a pillar. It has been made to look like the greenhouse and then has a piece of slate on top that both softens the structure and also provides a color connection to the paths and rock walls. I hope to be able to get a few more things planted in there as soon as the weather allows.

I will need to cut down some of the Sambuca and Ironwood because they are both casting too much shade into the area at the moment.

What’s in Bloom

May has seen some outstanding Iris and Rhododendron blooms this year. Perhaps the most spectacular display has been from the Venus Dogwood trees. This year the number of flowers has increased dramatically.

Rhododendron 'Coral Mist' — Rhododendron ‘Coral Mist’

Weather Summary

This May has been the coldest and wettest May we have ever had here – by far. I looked back over all the years we have been here, and we have gone from just having an inch of rain to a maximum of 5″. This month, we recorded 13.22″. As for temperature, the average appears to be around 55F and this year we could only manage 50.3F. The highs were also low and infrequent. This year, we only managed to break the 60F mark three times. Last year, even with 10 days where the weather station was not functional, we doubled that number. The year before, 20 days were above 60F.

Calendar

Gardener’s Log – April 2022

While Mark Twain is inaccurately attributed with a statement about the bad weather in San Francisco supposedly saying: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” I can now categorically state that the worst winter we ever had in Oceanside, Oregon, was April 2022. The month has been atrocious in just about every manner. It has been cold and wet, including snow and hail. Hardly a day when it became possible to make much progress in the yard.

While conditions are not tracked here, Portland may have its wettest month for any April. They were in the top ten when barely half-way through the month. Snow has snarled the city and brought hundreds of trees down. The weight of the snow captured by slowly opening buds and blossoms caused havoc. The city is saying will take weeks to clean up.

Garden Progress

Still, a small amount of progress has been made. More land for the Mediterranean garden has been cleared. I had hoped that it would be getting more sun than it actually seems to be getting. The large Douglas Firs next door are blocking most of the sun and it is certainly not getting “full sun”. Perhaps it will have to become a Mediterranean semi-shade garden.

You can get a feel for the steepness of the ground when you see the bare soil here. The height difference here is almost 6 feet across the span of 10 feet. To make matters worse, at the far end, the lower point is even lower while the upper point has risen slightly, making it almost a 1:1 grade

Visits

While not a lot of progress was made outside, we did utilize a dry but grey day to take a visit to Dancing Oaks nursery in Monmouth. This is a nursery that has many unique and hard to find plants. The proprietors make international trips and bring new plants back with them. These are plant rarely found in the U.S. nursery trade. Towards the end of last year, they made a trip to England and brought back a number of plants. They are now trialing and maybe will make available in a few years.

What made this visit even more special was the small number of other people who are yet to venture out to the nursery. With only a few other visitors, we managed to make wonderful use of one of the owners (Thanks Fred). Fred not only helped us find plants on our list, but also imparted his wisdom about plants that would do well under our extreme growing conditions. We came back with many new plants and good feeling about plants that we had shunned because we were concerned about the potential for them escaping into our habitat.

Manzanita and Dicentra at Hunter Arboretum

That visit also resulted in a wander around the Hunter Botanical garden in Dallas, Oregon. There is a write up about that here. A true delight hidden alongside the city park.

On the last day of the month, a plant pop-up in Wheeler and a visit to the Wonder Garden in Manzanita raised the spirits. I shall have to write about the Wonder Garden in the near future. It has much the same climate as we do and a lot of plants in common. Given that they are a volunteer run garden (as is the Hunter Arboretum) I did drop them off a plant that may do well for them – Grevillea juniperina ‘Pink Lady’ This is the plant that got me started collecting Grevillea.

What’s in Bloom

The cold weather has slowed things down this year. But there is a bright side. It means that while some plants have been delayed, others have remained in bloom longer than they would in a more typical year. One Grevillea has been blooming its heart out for most of the month is Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’. It has been loaded with its bright red to magenta flowers that are set off so well against the silvery foliage.

Grevillea lavandulacea 'Penola' — Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’

There is so much to love about Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzen’, the flowering cherry tree. It sits across from the tea house. The coppery color of the new foliage that crowns the double pink blossoms is stunning. This year, not only have the blossoms lasted much longer, but it is the first year that the deer did not tear the tree apart trying to eat them.

Another outstanding plant this month has been Rhododendron x yakushimanum ‘Gold Prinz’. Rhodies do not do well for us. We planted a bunch of them when I first started to create the garden here. But they were one of the plants that told us we were going to have to think differently because they suffer during our dry summer. But this year Gold Prinz has put on quite the show. The buds really do start off an intense red and the final form of the blossom is a pale yellow.

Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Gold Prinz' — Rhododendron yakushimanum ‘Gold Prinz’

Weather Summary

As I said at the beginning, it was a long, cold, wet month. Let’s start with the temperature. While individual days can be really nice in April, not this year. Last year, we had four days over 70 and one over 80. This year, that total would be none. In fact, the average temperature across the whole month was 3.5°F colder. Last year, the average was 49.8 and this year a measly 46.3.

But that is nothing compared to the rainfall comparisons. Last year, we had 1.35″ of rain. This year it was 10.81″. Our last rain event of this year gave us over 2″ of rain. That is more than the whole months total from last year! I hope that makes some of the plants happy, but then again I know that one day after rain, the soil is starting to dry out.

The anemometer remains broken, so please ignore wind speed.

General

Happy Accident

There are times when I would love to say that something was 100% intentional. Perhaps there was some sub-conscious thing going on, but the most probable explanation is I got lucky. The happy accident became quite clear today when three plants started to shine individually, but it was the combination that was quite remarkable – especially since it involved a combination of bract, leaf and flower – all in a somewhat acid yellow. The picture looking down on the scene does not do it justice.

Anchored in the middle is a flowering dogwood ‘Venus’. While the flowers on this finish up white, they initially take on a yellow color and then grow in size until they are in full ‘bloom’. They have really settled in this year and have more than doubled in size and even more in the number of ‘blossoms’ on them. I put bloom in quotes because it is not actually a flower, instead it uses a few leaves that it colors up to look like a huge flower, when the actual flower in small and insignificant in the middle – yup, this tree is a faker! The good news is that bracts last much longer than petals and so we can expect them to continue their display for at least a month.

To the left is Picea pungens ‘Gebelle’s Golden Spring.’ This is a form of Blue Spruce that puts out this amazing new growth color. Eventually it fades to a blue/green. When Jesse and I saw this in a nursery, we knew it had to be one of our Christmas trees. That was 2017. Just like the dogwood bracts, the leaf color on this lasts for about 6 weeks before fading. This is a dwarf and probably will not get much larger than it currently is – perhaps a few inches per year at most.

The third plant in this happy accident is Rhododendron yakushimanum ‘Gold Prinz’. While it did bloom last year, it put on a much better display this year. Many plants in the upper streambed garden have really settled in this year and this Rhody got to be big enough to participate in this triumvirate. In future years it will get to be even more impressive.

The fact that the color match on these three is so close and happens at the same time makes for an amazing sight that just cannot be properly reflected in the picture. This is an accident that I would love to take claim for, but thank you Mother Nature for your inspiration.

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.