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Pruning the smallest arctostaphylos in the front garden
I sort of backed into this project. Do you ever do that? Not plan to tackle something, but find yourself doing it anyway?When I shared last summer's photos of the garden I mentioned needing to prune...
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The Hamling, Funk and Seaborn gardens; from the Denver GB Fling...
I'm down to the final two posts from last June's Garden Bloggers Fling in the Denver, Colorado, area. This post is a combo of three gardens we visited, the first belongs to the Hamlings...The large...
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A walk around my garden at the end of April
Walking through the garden it occurred to me how little spring beauty I've shared here on the blog, most of my "wow,...it's spring!" photos have ended up on Instagram. Here's an attempt to spread the...
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The Shinn Garden, 2019 Garden Bloggers Fling Finale
This is my last blog post on the gardens we visited during the 2019 Garden Bloggers Fling in the Denver area. I didn't quite stretch my Fling coverage to last a year—like I have in the past—but I came...
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Wednesday Vignette: put an agave there!
Growing out of that patch of black mondo grass a less than vigorous dwarf abutilon was putting up a brave front. Trying to carry the space, trying to look like it belonged there, even as it's bare...
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Eavesdropping and laughing
Walking a garden, or nursery, I try to be conscious of of the dialogue happening around me. Some might call it eavesdropping, I call it being aware of my surroundings. I love the little bits of...
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Xera Plants open for business! And the danger garden pop-up will be happening...
Thankfully, for us plant lovers, many nurseries are still open and selling plants during these bizarre times. Of course that doesn't mean business as usual—no casually browsing for that new "must have"...
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Lance Wright's Portland garden...
Early last September I visited the Portland garden of Lance Wright. Lance is a friend, a fellow garden blogger (at Garden Riots) and a talented plantsman. He also worked as a gardener for the City of...
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Monte, the making of a local agave celebrity
Picking back up where I left off yesterday, this is Monte, Lance Wright's Agave montana. I took this photo on September 7th, 2019.I took this one on October 23rd, 2019. Crazy right? Just 6 weeks later...
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Wednesday Vignette, get off my agave!
I caught this vignette out of the corner of my eye and I wasn't sure I was seeing it correctly. Surely that was just a leaf bent around the agave tip? Or maybe a stick? But no, a worm it was. An...
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I tore out some perfectly good plants...
You know those weight-loss/makeover ads where for the first set of images the person who was made-over is wearing an unflattering outfit in horrible lighting? Well, that's what's happening here...
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An April visit to the Hummingbird Garden (formerly known as the Kuzma-Halme...
I usually post a tour of this garden late each year, or occasionally I run over into the next, like I did for 2019—see those photos here. Last month I got an email offering trimmings from a couple of...
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Blooms only a mother could love...
While spreading mulch the other day I noticed that one of my astelia is blooming, as far as I know this is only the second time such a thing has happened here, the first was back in 2011. That's the...
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Doing your thing, a garden as a work of individual art
It was December 21st and I was zipping down the avenue—on my way to the Huntington Gardens—as I caught a glimpse of something strange. I pulled over to get a closer look.This is one of those extra wide...
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Wednesday Vignette, well that's odd!
Last week we had a streak of very windy days here in Portland. Branches, leaves, blooms, needles, cones...they all came blowing into the garden. Cleaning up afterwards, I reached for this leaf and...
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Growing Echium wildpretii in my Portland garden
I first grew Echium wildpretii—a tender biennial from the Canary Islands—in 2010. That experiment ended poorly. The beautiful silver foliage rosette became a pile of mushy goo after a hard winter...
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Bloomday, May 2020
It's Garden Blogger's Bloomday! And not just any Bloomday, but the one that falls in May. May is the namesake month for Carol and her blog May Dreams Gardens, our hostess for the monthly "show and...
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danger garden upcycle and plant: things for sale...
I got creative and put together some planters. However, since my garden is full, they're now up for sale, so they can go live your garden! As I've written before, this was supposed to be a pop-up event...
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Visiting Monte after a close encounter with his kin...
Last weekend I had an early morning appointment at Rare Plant Research (more on that with Thursday's post). Knowing I was headed out that way Lance, owner of Monte—the blooming Agave montana—asked me...
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The world may be falling apart, but my bougainvillea fairy-godfather still...
Peter Herpst—aka the Outlaw Gardener—and I have a late May tradition of meeting up at my place and then heading to the Rare Plant Research open house. We make a day of it, hitting other nurseries in...
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