I am happy to report our tree appears to be saved!
The benefits of water removal from the soil and the capacity of the roots to hold the soil in place appear to be the saving factor. I hope so!

Frozen plants

If you think you are having fun with the snow, think about your outdoor plants!

Those of us who are plant nuts look at rhododendrons with ice hanging off their leaves and shiver. Will everything survive? The answer is no – there will be some losses. The good news is you will probably only lose those items that you would expect to lose in a normal winter. Some of those hardy pansies and cyclamen will not look so good when the snow melts.  If you didn’t take the time to wrap some of those tender plants that are really more tropical than we are  (Windmill palms, cordyline, Hardy bananas) you will probably have severe dieback. As long as they were not in containers (in which case you should have wrapped the planter as well) the roots may survive and you could see some growth come up from those roots when it gets warm enough in the spring.

The good news is there was snow with our cold temperatures. The snow acts as a blanket to protect plant roots and may save some plants that would not have survived otherwise. The melting snow will also help to rehydrate ground and plants that have had all the moisture sucked out of them with the wind.

Has the freezing rain broken some branches off your plants?  When the weather clears, make that nasty broken end clean by sawing it off so that the wound is at a spot where new natural growth will occur in a way that will create an attractive plant. This means looking at the areas on the stem or branch below the break. Look for a swelling (where a new bud or branch would come out) or an existing branch that is going in the direction you would like to see the new growth go. (For me that means a branch that is going out and up in a pleasing direction – not in to the center of the plant or down at some weird angle). Then make your neat new cut just above that point. Your new branch will come out at an attractive angle creating a beautiful plant!

We will be busy the next couple weeks adding fresh color to our frozen container plants. We will also be hoping we don’t have to repeat again this winter.

As an aside, I just noticed the birds are loving the fact that I haven’t cleaned out the dead seed heads from my garden yet! The birds are delighted at finding the extra sustenance from those Greek oregano and Coreopsis seed heads that never got removed. I hope you were a lazy gardener as well so the birds can survive!

We have a 90 year old Cedrus deodora in our yard. It is one of the reasons we bought our house. Over the years (especially when my office was in my home) I have watched the squirrels play, the branches sway and the raccoons climb it and make their messes at the bottom of it. Eagles and herons rest in it. Every Halloween a bat flies down from it on unsuspecting trick or treaters.

It is expensive to maintain. Every time we need it trimmed, it costs us anywhere from $1200 to $2000 and it is not a do it yourself job.  But I love it.

I did not realize how much until my neighbor told us he wanted it down. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. It took me at least 24 hours to recover because it was so unexpected. I have taken a lot in the last year but I was expecting it; my daughter went off to college, our dog died, my mother in law died but the thought of losing the tree affected me the most because it was a surprise and I discovered I am surprisingly connected to the tree.

My neighbor has valid points and I can understand his concern but it will still leave a big hole in my life. To honor the tree, we hope to connect our arborist with a wood artist in a business group that I belong to. You can see their work here.  I also will take 1/2 yard or so of the wood chips to use as a mulch in my gardens. (Whole tree wood chips – as opposed to bark – are the best mulch in your yard).

We are still in the process of getting a permit to do the work. It turns out the City of Seattle has a rule that states trees over 6″ in diameter require an arborist to certify them as hazardous and then you must get a permit to take it down.  The reasons are valid. Trees reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, they hold hillsides in place, absorb excess rainfall, reduce temperatures in urban areas, are home to wildlife, and in my opinion bring tranquility! I guess I could be called a treehugger.

The City requires us to  replant. I haven’t gotten that far to see what diameter/variety is required but it will hopefully be a joy for someone else many years down the road.

Holiday Poinsettias

You ended up with a poinsettia.  Your first mission is to keep it alive until Christmas. Poinsettias prefer a good drink of water without sitting in it. You should then let your poinsettia dry slightly before watering again.  They are a tropical plant so unless you live in a part of the world where it is always above 55 degrees, you should not leave it sitting outside your front door or let it sit in a cold car while you go shopping. Place your poinsettia in a bright area that is warm (65-75) during the day.

Christmas is over. Now what? Our personal opinion with our clients is that it is time to get rid of them. We compost them and recycle the plastic pots.  If your poinsettia still looks beautiful and you have the space and proper lighting, you could hold onto it. Eventually the flowers fade and you cut them off. If you are trying to keep it as a houseplant, I recommend cutting about a third of the branches down to within 2″ of the main stems. This will encourage new growth and a prettier plant that is full.

If you want to make it flower again, keep it healthy and growing through the spring in summer. Fertilize once a month with a weak liquid fertilzer for houseplants.  Then 14 weeks before you would like to see color, get a box big enough to put over the plant every night. There must be 12 hours of total darkness and then normal bright light during the other 12 hours.  Even one night of skipping this routine will delay the coloring of the bracts.  Alternately, you could find a room that will be totally dark for 12 hours.

One thing NOT to do (we have had people do this and then ask us why their poinsettia died) is to put it in a closet in total darkness and leave it there.

When I was young, there was a woman we visited who had beautiful walking sticks made from polished poinsettia canes. Now that I am older, I realize she must have purchased them on a trip to Mexico and not grown her own.

Here is a more detailed article on poinsettia care and feeding:

Thank you to everyone who came to our warehouse clearance sale.

Even though we are hard to find, you found your way here. We raised $85 (wait, we just had one more sale – make that $97) for Treehouse www.treehouse.org. 100% of the sales from our “used plants” went to Treehouse and we set aside 5% of the rest of our sales.

Treehouse works with foster children giving them opportunities such as summer camp, dance lessons and new clothes that foster parents can’t always provide on what the state gives them for care.

We now have room to put the hundreds of poinsettias we will be supplying next week and a fresh outlook on our space. We hope you enjoy your plants!

One of the benefits of being an Envirostars business is the opportunity to visit other businesses in the group. Today we had the opportunity to tour Bastyr University – a university that trains naturopaths. They are constantly looking for ways to reduce their impact on their physical site and improve lives through their education.

Gardener Jenny Perez shares her passion for growing useful plants and saving endangered plants

Some of the unique facts (I hope I have my facts straight):

• 97% of their construction waste from the demolition and building of their butterfly roof dorms was recycled
• They lease bikes to students in an effort to reduce the incentive of students to buy cars
• Their parking lot runoff runs through a series of natural biofilters before returning to the wetlands.
• They have some food gardens on campus that supply some of the food for their cafeteria (we ate delicious pumpkin coconut curry)
• Some of the herbs for their herbal sciences program are grown on campus and then used in their medicinal lab
• You can rent the chapel for weddings and events
• You can participate in seminars exploring nature, natural medicine and a dazzling array of other topics
• Deer pass through campus daily and sleep in their bioswales at night
• The passion of the three tour guides we had for their mission shown through brightly
• On the first Saturday in June the public is invited for their herb fair – a day of information, learning and fun as as the kickoff of their sacred seeds project. Here is a link to their site  http://www.bastyr.edu/. We will post more information about fair dates when we have it.

I could tell the group was inspired by the number of questions we had.

Dried herbs

Butterfly roofs on these energy efficient dorms allow open views of the campus

Earlier this year I was talking to the head gardener on the campus of one of our clients. I was praising his eye for finding unusual plants and plant combinations while still keeping the budget and appearance in line with the expectations of the business.

He pointed out the knowledge you gain from years of experience in the same field. He called himself the “maturing gardener”. I could relate and took it even farther to an analogy on how life is lived as well.

When this gardener first started caring for the campus, it was all about flash – annuals – lots of color that only lasted one season.  You don’t have to worry too much about making mistakes, the plants are relatively inexpensive and if your color and plant combinations aren’t quite right, you can correct them next time(A lot like being a teenager and changing your style all the time while you find your fit).

The next progression was to perennials – again flash that lasts a season but it will repeat itself and get larger the next year. These perennial combinations take more planning and knowledge than annuals. If you make a mistake it is still fairly easy to correct or rearrange the next season. However, if you don’t correct your mistakes, they easily get magnified as well. (Here is where we are as young adults – getting entrenched in a career and family but still able to make changes fairly easily).

Now that his hair is gray (as is mine), he has moved his attention to plantings that provide a legacy and are difficult to erase. Shrubs and trees that could be on the campus for decades. It takes guts and maturity to plant things that will get big and provide cornerstones for design for years to come. These types of plants need to provide seasonal interest most seasons of the year. You need to consider how much care they will require in the decades to come and you think of the people that will pass under their canopies and be responsible for their care  in the future.  This is the stage in life where you reflect a bit more on big decisions and think about how what you do will affect those after you.

The maturing gardener and his plants – a reflection on us all.

Here is one of my three season plants I like! Kind of between a perennial and a permanent tree in the maturity theme.

Smokebush "Cotinus coggygria"

This lovely shrub/tree can have a weedy shape if you don’t keep after it. It can grow to 25′ tall. It will tolerate dry conditions and does best in poor soil.

This variety is purpureus and has purple leaves in the spring that turn greenish in the summer and then this brilliant red in the fall. The flowers are what gives it it’s name. From a distance they look like puffs of smoke poking out of the shrub.

Enjoy your gardening and appreciate what maturity brings.

Have you ever walked by a plant or put your hand down on the table under your plant and had your foot or hand stick? You probably have scale on that plant. The stickiness you feel is honeydew- which to put it politely is bug excrement.

Scale is common on Ficus Benjamina, Scheffelera arboricola, Rhapis Palm and Ficus Lyrata – just to name a few. It is a small bug that disguises itself to look like plant parts.  Different varieties of scale can be different colors.

If you click on the photos you can get to a larger view that points out the actual bug. On the rhapis palm you will see that the scale looks a lot like the natural hairs on the leaf and stems. On the Arboricola, you will see all forms of scale from juvenile to mature armored adult. Once the insect develops this armor protective coating, it is harder to kill.

If the population of scale gets large enough, you may begin to attract ants to the honeydew. It can be a real mess if you don’t step in quickly to curb the population.

We don’t use highly toxic methods to control pests in our client accounts (or in our warehouse). Here is what we do:

• The first step is to keep plants as healthy as possible. Right plant, right place – proper care.
• The second step is to constantly observe the plants we care for. This happens as we clean and groom them. We are trained to look more closely and pay attention to changes.
• When we do find scale, we immediately wipe it all off and prune off highly infested branches.
• We will then spritz the affected areas with our plant shine. This shine protects the plant leaf and makes it more difficult for the bugs to breathe through their exoskeleton.
• If these methods don’t keep the scale in control, or if the plant is a large one that we can’t afford to lose, we will set up a spray area and wash the plant down with horticultural oil.
• If it is a small plant that is heavily infested and has no sentimental value, we will often compost the plant, wash the pot and bring in a new plant.

If these plants were outdoors, it is likely the scale would be set upon by birds or even other insects and be kept in control naturally.

Scale is one indoor plant pest that needs to be acted upon quickly to avoid an even bigger mess!

Today I just wanted to share some photos of a relatively new job. This is a nicely redone building that left some history exposed. The new indoor plants balance nicely with the rough edges.

Powder puff flowers from Silk Tree 'Albizia julibrissin'

At least that’s what I call it. The common name used by most people is silk tree. Last week I had the opportunity to take a walk around Green Lake . Seattle was having a beautiful fall day and the Mimosa trees were in full bloom. At least that’s what I always thought they were. I learned a lot just now doing research for this blog. I learned that my beautiful powder puff trees that I always thought were Mimosa are Albizia julibrissin.

What I love about them are the soft little pink puff flowers. They are so delicate and the color is delightful. The tree itself is a relatively small tree with multiple stems or trained as a single stem with an umbrella canopy. Right now they are in full bloom making a pink spectacle of themselves. The deciduous trees  are native to many parts of Asia. Their delicate light sensitive leaves fold up for the night! An all round unusual and beautiful small tree. Check them out at Green Lake.

Silk Tree aka to me Powder Puff Tree