HARVEST TIME IS HERE

Shaw Island grown
European Pears
"Orcas" variety 
developed by Joe Long of Orcas Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
September 2023 harvest. 

THE EARTH HAS ROLLED AROUND AGAIN

AND HARVEST TIME IS HERE,

THE GLORY OF THE SEASONS

AND THE CROWN OF ALL THE YEAR.

Carolyn Wells

BRINGING UP THE COW'S TAIL

 

Wild Douglas Aster

(Symphyotrichum subspicatum)
Photographed 12 September 2023.

Gatehouse garden 
Shaw Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Click image to enlarge.

The last native wildflower seeds to be harvested for the Gatehouse this year––the highly noted Douglas Aster. Highly regarded by gardeners who like to feed a large cross-section of visiting pollinators while knowing this perennial is low maintenance, deer-resistant, and adaptable to conditions of full sun or part shade. 

The plant featured in the above photograph was grown by direct seeding, broadcast from Shaw Island wild-collected seed. Easy street. Cast out in autumn or spring in this hardiness zone of 8b.

Fresh seeds for fall planting
are now installed at the 
Gatehouse Seed shed,
Reefnet Bay Road,
Shaw Island, WA.

More particulars about the cultivation of this plant can be seen with earlier posts on this site 

DEADHEADING

Heirloom
Rose "KATHLEEN"

Growing on Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
July 2023
Click image to enlarge.

Heirloom
Rose "HANSEAT"

Growing on Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
July 2023.

Deadheading is the one profoundly rewarding war. It tidies away the signs of death and encourages yet another show of flowers. It was wonderfully understood by Vita Sackville-West in her garden at Sissinghurst Castle. 

"Deadheading roses on a summer evening," she wrote, "is an occupation that carries us back into a calmer age and a different century. Queen Victoria might still be on the throne. There is no sound except the hoot of an owl and the rhythmic snip-snip of our secateurs." Vita Sackville-West

Source:

Robin Lane Fox, English writer
Thoughtful Gardening
Perseus Books Group
2010; New York.

SUMMER WHITE OVER THE GARDEN GATE

Clematis montana
wilsonii "Peveril"
Growing on Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.,
USDA Zone: 8b.
 for this photograph taken 
7 June 2023. 

She casts slight fragrance and
stretches the blooming season
of the species Clematis montana.
Soon a bounty of fresh 
ripe seeds will be on the vine.

Worth a try after reading 
Clematis, The Montanas;
A book for Gardeners.
John Howells, M.D. 2005  
Garden Art Press.
A division of 
Antique Collectors' Club.

"Summer is a promissory note signed in June,

it's long days spent and gone

before you know it, and due 

to be repaid next January.

American writer Hal Borland

HAPPY MAY DAY

 

May Day Flowers 
A bouquet of the earliest
heritage Lilac to bloom locally,
 originating on the former
John Biendl/Ruth Shaw farm,
Shaw Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Often known as "Biendl's Early White Lilac"
Grown from a sapling courtesy of
gardener Gwendolyn Yansen. 

Lots of seed packets installed on the racks on Reefnet Bay Road, Shaw Island, WA. Hand-harvested, hand-packed, healthy, island grown. 

BOWLES' GOLDEN GRASS

 

Remember this post from pre-Covid days? The seeds are back at the Gatehouse since the grass is stunning in the garden after a long, gray winter & early spring. The golden leaves are trying hard to shine out and cover up a rotting Alder stump. One of my favorite domestic grasses.

It is featured in a spring 2023 issue of the luscious British magazine Gardens Illustrated.

Bowles' Golden Grass
(Milium effusum 'Aureum')

A colorful grass worth knowing.
Click image to enlarge and view
the thin spray of dainty seeds
bringing magic to the garden.

Photo was taken in the evening
rain of 20 May 2019.
Save the seeds to sprinkle around
in the shadier places in your woodland
garden or snip the stems into a bag,
if you wish to control the numbers.
 for some strange reason.
Deer resistant and pathetically easy.
Back on the rack at the
Shaw Island Gatehouse,
Reefnet Bay Road, 
San Juan Archipelago, WA.

Botanical name: Milium effusum ‘Aureum’
Native Region: Garden origin. Prefers open woodland.
Zone Range: 6-9
Type: Perennial grass.
Bloom Description: As the season progresses tiny golden, bead-like flowers on thin stems gracefully create a delicate sparkle of gold.
Maintenance: Easy.
Tolerates: Deer.

Notes:
Most grasses and grass-like plants require full sun, but this semi-evergreen grass is the exception to the rule. The bonus is that the delicate chartreuse leaves will brighten a shady corner in any garden. Sow seeds in fall or spring, by just broadcasting out where you would like to see them germinate in situ. Best grown in partial but will take full shade. Self-seeds freely, but is very easy to control.
If it gets messy looking in the heat of high summer, just use scissors to snip back the delicate foliage.
This grass comes true from seed propagation.

RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM.)

The common name "Bowles Golden Grass" is to honor E. A. Bowles, a British horticulturist, plantsman, and garden writer who introduced this variety into cultivation. It was considered one of his best finds when he introduced this yellow form of wood millet.

"E. A. Bowles, (1865-1954) 
Edward Augustus (Gus or Gussie) Bowles, known professionally as E. A. Bowles, was a British horticulturist, plantsman, and garden writer. He developed an important garden at Myddelton House, his lifelong home in Enfield, Middlesex and his name has been preserved in many varieties of plants.
 E. A. Bowles was born at his family's home, Myddelton House. He was of Huguenot descent through his maternal great-grandmother and his father, Henry Carrington Bowles was Chairman of the New River Company, which until 1904 controlled the artificial waterway that flowed past Myddelton, bringing water to London from the River Lea. 

      Through his elder brother Henry, Bowles was the great uncle of Andrew Parker Bowles (born 1939), whose first wife, Camilla Shand, became Duchess of Cornwall on her marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales in 2005.

 
      Bowles gave his name to upwards of forty varieties of plants, and there are others that originated with him. For example, he named a Hellebore 'Gerrard Parker' after a local art master, Crocus tommasinianus 'Bobbo' after the boy who first spotted it, and Rosmarinus officinalis 'Miss Jessopp's Upright' after a gardening neighbor.

 Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve' was among "200 plants for 200 years" chosen by the RHS to mark its bicentenary in 2004 and, to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the Chelsea Flower Show in 2013 was shortlisted (from among introductions between 1973-83) as one of ten "plants of the centenary".
 Other significant introductions included Viola 'Bowles' Black', cotton lavender 'Edward Bowles' (Santolina pinnata subsp. neopolitana). Vita Sackville-West cites the yellow and brown Crocus chrysanthus 'E.A. Bowles' as among the first bulbs to flower in her garden at Sissinghurst, while another spring plant, the slow-growing Muscari 'Bowles's Peacock', is commended by Richard Hobbs, holder of the British National Plant Collection of Muscari. 


      E. A. Bowles brought into cultivation several other yellow-leaved grasses and sedges. He also introduced a golden form of the wood sedge, Luzula sylvatica 'Aurea' and found Carex elata 'Aurea' on Wicken Fen, one of his favourite hunting grounds. 
      It has been described by another doyen of plantsmen, Christopher Lloyd, as "a plant to treasure, its colour changing in unexpected ways". 


      In 1908 Bowles was elected to the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), whose grounds at Wisley, Surrey, now contain a memorial garden to him. Bowles received the society's highest award, the Victoria Medal of Honour, in 1916 and was a Vice-President from 1926 until his death almost thirty years later. RHS colleagues knew him as 'Bowley'.
"

GARDENERS, BE LOOKING UPWARD

SNOW GEESE,
Skagit flats
Packing their bags for their trip 
to the far north.
These photos courtesy of islander
Sally Vongsathorn,
 who was passing by mid-April 2023
(During Tulip Festival.)
Click images to enlarge. 
Three days later islander Ruthie Dougherty
 catches the Snow Geese flying NW
over Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
See her video below.
Thank you gardeners for sharing these heart-thumps.

WILD GEESE WITH JACK MINER

"Wild geese pair off for life. I never knew them to even make an application for divorce. The male guards his mate on the nest. As soon as the young hatch, he protects them from the side opposite the mother, keeping the babies between the parents. He will leave his family for her and for her only, but he will die in the front ranks for any of them.  I have placed their bushels of corn around one of my mating pairs, and of the thousands of hungry geese that come here, none will interfere with these little plots to take even one kernel. 

When traveling in the air, the male Canada Goose leads the way, breaking the air for his sweetheart, who is quartering behind him, and his family travels next to her. In brief, he is one of the most self-sacrificing, godly-principled leaders the human eye ever beheld, and to know him is to love and admire him."

Jack Miner and the Birds: And Some Things I Know About Nature.

Below video was captured on 17 April 2023 by Ruthie Dougherty looking upwards from a forest on Shaw Island, WA.

Thank you, crew!

PRECISE MOMENT ~ ~ ~

 FROM HENRY MITCHELL ON GARDENING

Houghton Mifflin Co. 1998. p. 65

Gatehouse Garden
14 March 2023

"This is the precise moment to move snowdrops, while they are in full mature leaf and before they begin to die down. I have a few that have been overgrown by some Kurume azaleas. Every year I vow to get under there and move them forward, but spring is the time of a thousand tasks and one task (I have been rereading Sir Richard Burton), so I hope this year the job will finally get done. They move nicely when dug with the earth still attached to their roots. They are not dried off but are planted instantly––do not answer the phone ––and water well. They will bloom in their new spot next February as if they had grown there for years."

STRAY SEEDLINGS IN A SLEEPING GARDEN

 

A sleeping garden
Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.

"It is pleasant to see the garden laid to bed for the winter. [White] blankets of earth cover the secret roots. Nothing is seen overground, but a lot is going on underneath in preparation for the spring. I think it is a good plan to leave a heavy mulch of fallen leaves over the flowering shrubs instead of sweeping them all away. They serve the double purpose of providing protection against frost, and eventually rotting down into the valuable humus that all plants need. There are leaves and leaves, of course, and not all of them will rot as quickly as others. Oak and beech are the best, to compost into leaf mold in a large square pile, but any leaves will serve as a mulch over beds and borders throughout the hard months to come. 

The professional gardener will raise objections. He will tell you that the leaves will 'blow all over the place' as soon as the wind gets up. This is true to a point but can be prevented by a light scattering of sod or sand over the leaves to hold them down. This objection may often be overcome by the application of some common sense. There are few people more obstinate than the professional or jobbing gardener. Stuck in his ideas, he won't budge.

It is well worthwhile to search rather carefully for any stray seedlings which may have lain concealed beneath fallen leaves and the dead stalks of herbaceous stuff. It is surprising how many shrubs will thus reproduce themselves, even at some distance from their parent. They may be only a few inches high when found, but by next spring they should start growing into useful little plants if you lift them with their roots intact and pot them up and sink the pots in a nursery row, either in ashes, sand, or ordinary sod. The point of sinking the pots is to safeguard them from being frozen hard, as they would be if left standing nakedly in the open.

I have found more unexpected things: thriving little children of myrtle and the sweet-scented bay; the graceful Indigofer; clerodendron of the turquoise-blue berries; Solanum jaminoides, that energetic climber; and even self-sown yews which if only I had had the sense and foresight to regiment a long a drill years ago would be now have developed into a neat clippable hedge.

This is all satisfactory enough, but there are even more exciting possibilities. There is the chance that one of these stray seedlings may turn out to be better than its parent, or at any rate different. I believe I am right in saying that Rosa highdownensis, that lovely hybrid of R. moyesii, appeared accidentally in Sir Frederick Stern garden at Highdown, and that Caryopteris clandownsis of a deeper blue than either Caryopteri mongolica or C. incana, was suddenly noticed by the present secretary of the RHS in his own garden at Clandon. Of course, to spot these finds you have to be endowed with a certain degree of serendipity, meaning you have to be endowed with the faculty of 'making discoveries by accident and sagacity' of something you were not deliberately in quest of. Scuffle about for yourself, before you let a jobbing gardener loose on beds or borders."

Vita Sackville-West. The Illustrated Garden Book. London. Michael Joseph Ltd, 1986.

Good gardening to you all in 2023.