🌿 Artichoke Bouquet 🌿

For Charlie and Amy,

Enjoy the Kale in your community garden.

And for Lauren and Rueben,

I appreciate your support of this garden

and warm notes in the Gatehouse shed.

🌿 AQUILEGIA vulgaris 🌿

AQUILEGIA vulgaris
Spring, Shaw Island, WA.

Common name: Columbine

Type: Herbaceous Perennial

Growing region:  Zones 3 to 8
Days to sprout: 14-28.

Height: 1.5 to 3-ft.

Bloom time: April to May

Bloom Description: Blue or violet-blue.

Sun: full sun to part shade.

Water: medium

Maintenance: medium

Flower: showy

Attracts: Hummingbirds

Tolerates: Rabbits

Culture:

Easily grown in average, medium moisture, well-drained soil. Surface sow.

Remove flowering stems after bloom to encourage additional flowers. When foliage depreciates, plants may be cut to the ground. Aquilegia may be easily grown from seed, will naturalize in the garden over time; self-sowing easily. Seed collected from garden plants, may not come true because different varieties of columbine may cross-pollinate in the garden producing seed that is at variance with either or both parents. This seed is harvested from a plot of blues. They can also be easily grown in large pots.

Notes:

Genus name comes from the Latin word for eagle (aquila) in reference to the talon-like spurs on most flowers.

Columbine comes from the Latin word columba meaning dove-like. The number and varieties of Columbines are staggering.

These seeds should be 90% blue tones as I still rogue out a few pink and magenta in the same garden.

Uses:

Borders, rock gardens, cottage gardens, woodland gardens or naturalized areas. A good choice for a hummingbird garden. Continue to water plants after bloom to enjoy the ground cover effect of the foliage.
Long lasting for flower bouquets.

Research notes: Missouri Botanical Garden.

Aquilegia vulgaris
Common name is Columbine.
A dependable, easy perennial,
great for bouquets.
Seeds for sale at the Gatehouse,
Reefnet Bay Road, Shaw Island.

Homegrown Seeds

Thanks to the Newberrys, for the note at the seed shed. A bouquet for you.

Sweet seeds of the fig from the Bryant garden.
Blue Elderberry seeds

SEDUM nussbaumerianum

Eccremocarpus scaber "Tresco Gold"

Shaw Island, 4 August 2015.

Seed Harvest 2015

Chamomile seeds sifted for tea
Rhododendron species on the left.
Harvesting on Shaw Island, 
summer 2015.

"The healthiest way to gamble is with a spade and a package of garden seeds." Dan Barett.

ON GARDENING

Rhododendron 'Polar Bear'
Purchased from Meerkerk Gardens, Whidbey Island, WA.
Blooming on Shaw Island this day of Eleven July 2015.

"Gardening is not some game by which one proves his superiority over others, not is it a marketplace for the display of elegant things that others cannot afford. It is, on the contrary, a growing work of creation, endless in its changing elements. It is not a monument or an achievement, but a sort of travelling, a kind of pilgrimage you might say, often a bit grubby or sweaty, though true pilgrims do not mind that. A garden is not a picture, but a language, which is of course, the major art of life."

The late, great Henry Mitchell, in the Essential Earthman.

      Slate published a beautiful tribute to one of my favorite garden writers in 1998. See Deborah Needleman 

ISLAND SUMMER ROSE

 Rosa filipes 'Kiftsgate'
Angela's summer on Shaw Island.
Photo caught by C. Christensen.

🌿 ELSIE'S CALIFORNIA POPPIES 🌿

California poppies surviving in the rock along
Blind Bay Road, Shaw Island.
Planted by island gardener Elsie Fowler long ago.
Photo June 2015.

Elsie's California poppies,
not exactly wild and not native,
but self-sowing gently each year to brighten the roadside.

Botanical Name: Eschscholtzia californica

Native: USA and Mexico. The official state flower of California where it covers the hills of Napa Valley.

Zone Range: 4-10

Life cycle: Annual and perennial.

Preferred climate: warm and sunny.

Bloom: An almost continuous summer display of bright orange flowers on mat-forming foliage 12" high. Flower petals close at night and on cloudy days.

Culture: requires poor, well-drained soil in full sun. Drought tolerant, self-seeding. Resents being transplanted.

Degree of difficulty: EASY.

Seed viability: one source claims 3 years.

Notes: Widely planted as an ornamental. Survives mild winters.

Gwen Yansen told me that her friend, Elsie Fowler (1900-2003), scattered the poppy seeds many years ago; they still survive in the hot, dry, rock bank across from the Community Building on Blind Bay Road. 
      Elsie, who came to the island in 1938, moved away to Anacortes in 1996. She was an early member of the Garden Club, later called Women's Club, that kicked off the fundraising for the Shaw Islanders, Inc building project.
      The seed packets carry Elsie's name to honor her love of Shaw Island and garden flowers, she bloomed where she was planted.
      These seeds are not harvested from her plants in order that the small colony of poppies will self-perpetuate.
      If you broadcast California poppy seeds along the road, as Elsie did, choose the sunny side.


Nomenclature:


"Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz (1793 - 1831) was a Livonian physician, botanist, zoologist, and entomologist. He was one of the first and most important scientists in the exploration of the Pacific, Alaska, and California.
Born in Dorpat (now Tartu) in the Russian Empire. He studied medicine at the local University of Dorpat, and spending the main part of his career there: extraordinary professor of anatomy (1819), director of the zoological cabinet (1822), and professor of anatomy (1828).
From 1815 to 1818 Eschscholtz was a physician and naturalist on the Russian circumnavigational expeditionary ship Rurik. He collected specimens in Brazil, Chile, California, the Pacific Islands, and on either side of the Bering Strait, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands.
One of the other naturalists was the botanist Adelbert von Chamisso, who took over Eschscholtz's specimens on the completion of the voyage. The two were close friends and, after his early death, Chamisso named the California poppy Eschscholzia californica in his honour. The results of the trip were published in the Berlin journal Entomographien in 1822."
Source of nomenclature data: Seedaholic.

These island-grown seeds are for sale
at the Gatehouse seed shed,
Reefnet Bay Road,
Shaw Island, San Juan Archipelago,
WA.

🌿 JUNE ONE 🌿

Peonies are royal garden visitors for early summer.

This luscious Peony shared by former islander, Eve E. Nygren Shaw, came without a cultivar tag, so I call this the "Eve Shaw Peony." Eve was a great gardener who married retired Captain Clayton Shaw and settled very happily on Broken Point, in 1971. Clayton was the last member of the pioneer Shaw family on the island. Clayton and Eve moved away to Alabama in the mid 1980s after donating several family antiques to the local museum. The island wasn't named for this Shaw family but the myth persisted for awhile, helped a little by Eve.
      No seed packets of this plant are planned for the Gatehouse but the plant has had a long life on Shaw Island and may show up for a fund-raising auction some year.