Foliage Followup -- May 2013

The day after Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is Foliage Followup, hosted by Pam Penick of the blog Digging. Every month on the day following GBBD, bloggers showcase the interesting foliage in their gardens.

I'm a recent advocate of foliage in the garden, having spent a large part of my gardening life pursuing the blowsy, full-of-flowers cottage garden ideal in my garden. I gardened almost exclusively with perennials back in Massachusetts. But after the flowers are gone, what's left? Using shrubs for structure and natives for their hardiness and basing plant combos on foliage are all fairly new concepts to me, so I've kind of been going crazy with that in the last few years since we moved here. There are so many interesting combinations you can make with plants based on their foliage. Of course, it would be just my luck now to pair plants for their foliage, and then end up with clashing flowers. I can always cut them off, right?

Artichoke and Lambs Ear

Ferns and Heucherella, with a few spikes from a nearby Deschampsia

'Gold Heart' Bleeding Heart and variegated Petasites

Ornamental Rhubarb, Japanese painted fern and Filipendula

Cimicifuga, Japanese painted fern 'Ghost' and Rodgersia

Bronzy, quilted Rodgersia and fuzzy blue Cardoon

Ostrich fern and Anthriscus flowers

Cimicifuga, painted fern and Columbine

Water droplets pooling on Lady's Mantle (can't resist taking pictures of this whenever I see it)

Lady fern and Fritillaria meleagris seedpods

White-striped foliage of my white Camassia

Sword fern and Cow Parsnip

Cow Parsnip and Ocean Spray (the dirty marks on the fence boards are from raccoons climbing it)

Dicentra formosa and Asarum caudatum

Newly emerging Jack in the pulpit foliage

Sinopodophyllum hexandrum (bought last year from Far Reaches Farm)

The one photographed on their website shows lots of gorgeous mottling, here...not so much

Epimedium wushanense, Saxifrage and fern

Hepatica acutiloba and tiny fern

Baby Nasturtium 'Alaska'

I really should clean up the old Crocus foliage. There's always some chore left undone.

Well, that's probably enough for this month. I hope you pop over to Pam's blog and check out all the other wonderful foliage posts, including hers.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day -- May 2013

It's May 15 which means it's time to celebrate Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. With our recent 3-week stretch of warm, sunny weather, followed by drenching rain, things are really popping in my garden (including the weeds, better get on that).

The bed in the front garden, under the Forest Pansy redbud and the paperbark maple, got lots of divisions of hardy Geranium, Armeria and Dianthus last fall after the trees went in. They're blooming all along the wall that separates my garden from the neighbor's gravel driveway.

A pink Pink

I planted some tall Alliums in that bed last fall too, close to the front, about which now I'm saying "What was I thinking?" I must not have realized quite how tall they would get.

There are some pretty flowers in the gravel garden too.

Tiarella

Silene

Hardy Geranium 'Margaret Wilson'

Spanish lavender and Carex testacea

There are Alliums in the tall culvert planters too, here with a backdrop of lilacs

Echium russicum is preparing to flower, disguised as a Nepeta flower spike. I hope the Echium will eventually turn red.

The back garden is full of flowers too.

Red Oriental poppy

White Oriental poppy

Looks like candy!

Verbascum

Native Camassia

In white too, but this one has variegated leaves, which you'll see tomorrow for Foliage Followup

Jack in the pulpit in the shade garden

Last fall I pulled out a bunch of columbines to make way for some more interesting shade foliage plants, but I did leave a few.

I prefer single Columbines, with those long, elegant spurs

Native Aquilegia formosa with maidenhair fern

The tips of Indian paintbrush are coloring up

Looking a bit like Queen Anne's Lace on steroids, Heracleum maximum aka cow parsnip is growing way back in a dark corner. It's another favorite native.

In late winter I dug and divided all my Pacific Coast irises, replanted some and potted up the rest. Now the only one flowering is one of the potted up divisions.

I bought this Enkianthus last year about this time, but only got it in the ground a few weeks ago. It's flowering beautifully.

I hope you enjoyed this look at what's flowering now in my garden, here in Zone 7b/8a Washington. Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is the brainchild of Carol Michel of the blog May Dreams Gardens. Every month on the 15th, bloggers from around the world post about what's flowering in their gardens. You can find links to their posts here.

Happy Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

Old Goat New Goat

Nigel and I spent last Saturday visiting two places -- Mountain Lodge Farm, a goat farm in Eatonville, WA that produces delicious goat cheese for sale at nearby farmer's markets, and Old Goat Farm, a small but wonderful nursery in Graham, WA.

Mountain Lodge Farm

Once a month Mountain Lodge Farm holds an Open House, offering tours of the barn, a cheese tasting in the creamery, and sale of its cheeses on the front porch of the farmhouse.

The barn at Mountain Lodge Farm

The creamery, where we tasted a handful of different cheeses produced from goat's milk on the farm

A little glimpse into the immaculate cheese-making operations

The elegant farmhouse, where we stood in line to buy one of the last of its packages of delicious Chevre

A pair of young goats at Mountain Lodge Farm

When we first arrived, we took a quick look around on our own, and then lucked into a little tour, being led by Brian Weir.

With two resident llamas, who are used to guard the sheep

Brian holds Blossom (isn't she the cutest thing on four legs?)

While standing just outside the pens full of young goats, I felt a tug on my sweater, and looked down to see a goat chewing on it! They really will eat anything.

Being mobbed by babies

The farm is beautifully landscaped

There's a lovely water feature near the entrance

A rain chain hanging off the farmhouse

You can read more about the farm at this link to an article in the Seattle Times.

We had some of the Chevre for a light supper on Sunday night.

Yum!

Old Goat Farm 

I visited Old Goat Farm last year at about this time, you can read about that visit here. Peter of The Outlaw Gardener also wrote a great post about his visit last July, which you can read here. Old Goat Farm is a garden and nursery that you can go back to again and again, because there is so much to see, there is always something you missed the first time around, or just have to see again.

Old Goat Farm is a century-old farmhouse, garden and nursery run by partners Greg Graves and Gary Waller, purchased by them in 2005. They moved from Capitol Hill in Seattle and set about renovating the garden with truckloads of plants they brought with them. Living on the farm is a menagerie of animals that includes dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, peacocks and two goats named Ozzie and Harriet.

My favorite part of the garden is the shade garden. It is a masterful collection of foliage plants, wonderfully combined. And it has a mischievous sense of fun.

The garden is playful and fun

They sell these gabions, unfilled of course, in the shop

The shade garden's forte is foliage combos

Chartreuse-leaved Hosta and Persicaria 'Lance Corporal'

A lesson in what to do with a ground orchid

Masterful collection of foliage

Feathery fern

I'm not sure what they feed their Podophyllums there, but this leaf was so huge I literally could have picked it and used it as an umbrella!

Enormous Jack in the Pulpit

Syneilesis aconitifolia

A white peacock -- we could hear it calling throughout -- had the run of the garden

Primula 'Sunset Shades'-- I want this one so much!

Semi-Double Peony -- not sure, but I think it's an Itoh peony, possibly Cora Louise?

Inside looks like an exotic confection -- good enough to eat

This goat statue presides over the sunny garden at Old Goat Farm

I didn't buy much. I know it's hard to believe, but I really think I'm starting to get a touch of new plant fatigue. And I need to get what I have recently bought, and all my little seedlings as well, in the ground ASAP.  Peter and I are going to the Heronswood sale on May 18, and planning a trip that same day to Far Reaches Farm in Port Townsend. I hope I get my mojo back before then.

I bought two pots of this Oxalis adenophylla -- such cute gray pleated leaves!

Did you do anything special on Mother's Day weekend?