🌿 A Deer and Drought Resistant Garden 🌿

Herb 'Golden Feverfew'
A deer-resistant Shaw Island garden plant.
(Most often deer resistant.)

"A vegetable garden almost anywhere in the San Juans requires a fence to keep out the deer. However, there are a lot of beautiful plants you can use in an ornamental border that the deer won't touch––and many of them are drought-resistant as well. Doug Bayley, a landscape gardener who worked at the Farm Nursery on Orcas Island had an experimental deer-resistant and drought-resistant garden there and he learned a lot.
      Some plants were more inviting to the deer than he expected and got nipped in the late summer after the lush growth in the fields tapered off. Those included Shasta Daisies, gaillardia, tulips, pansies, and almost all the annuals except zinnias. Deer also eat yew shrubs (although they're supposed to be poisonous) and cypress, and in the fall they rub small trees and shrubs with their horns and strip the bark off. 
      But there's a long list of plants that came through a full year untouched by the deer, and he recommends them for unfenced areas. All the herbs did well, including rosemary and lavender. Rosemary is considered good luck next to the front door, he added, and rosemary cuttings make a traditional housewarming present. Successful shrubs included potentilla, especially Ellen Willmott; choisya and skimmia, both plants with fragrant white flowers; ceanothus, rock rose, broom, juniper, rhododendron, cotoneaster, heather, hypericum, buddleia, boxwood, ilex, Pieris, and barberry.

Rhomneya coulteri
Deer resistant.
Photograph by Far Reaches Farm Nursery,
Pt. Townsend, WA.

      Among the perennials, Rhomneya is both deer and drought-resistant but difficult to propagate. Doug tried a couple hundred cuttings at the nursery and was successful with five. 
      Peonies, daylilies, and delphinium lasted as long as they bloomed, but then "the deer munched them down," Doug said. Iris, "are pretty cast iron." Other successful perennials included santolina, dianthus, bergenia, crocosmia, pulmonaria, hardy geraniums, Ajuga, Campanula, Lychnis, poppies, evening primrose, hellebores, and catnip.
      Most of the drought-resistant plants are California natives. Some of the more successful plants were Ceanothus, California wild lilac and rock rose. Doug pointed out that many plants will take a lot of drought in August if they get plenty of water in May. In fact, a dry August helps them harden off for winter. 
      We have some limitations in the San Juans, including the deer and the lack of water––but Doug pointed out that the climate here is ideal for almost all kinds of gardening."
Text by San Juan Island writer, Louise Dustrude. San Juan Islands Almanac. Friday Harbor, WA. Volume 11. 1984.
      
For her Shaw Island experience, Diana includes these on a list of deer-resistant plants:
Lily, Aster, Gladiolus, Alyssum, Cosmos, Dahlias, Zinnia, Sunflower, Crocosmia, Pieris, Viburnum, Stachys byzantina (Lamb's Ears) and Helleborus.

     Others that Cherie can add; Agastache rugosa, Boxwood, Camas, Foxgloves, Fritillaria imperialis (Gatehouse flower spring '18), Cotoneaster dammeri, Crocus, Cyclamen, Daffodils, Dianthus, Echinops, Epimedium, 'Honey Bush', Leucojum (Summer Snowflake"), Lonicera nitida, the winter-blooming Mahonia x 'Charity', Magnolia grandiflora, Papaver cambricum (Welsh Poppies), Nicotiana sylvestris, Oriental Poppies, Trillium, the old-fashioned Kniphofia (but not the gorgeous large yellow-flowered cultivars), Common Mullein (Verbascum) which are being tested around the Gatehouse garden. Alyssum has been devoured in the Gatehouse garden summer of 2018. The names in red ink are stocked on the seed shelf at the Gatehouse.
🌿 In 2019, Shaw Island deer enjoyed the juicy center buds coming on the new growth in a pot of Dahlias at the Gatehouse and dined on the red flowers of Crocosmia 'Lucifer.' Some pots are climbing higher to the top of a spool-table so let us see how that goes.
In July of 2019, the deer cleaned off the flower heads on Yarrow, Rubeckia, Persicaria, and several Red-Hot Pokers. But the flowering tobacco is strong and without teeth marks.
🌿 There is an informative essay by Jeff Chorba on Designing with Deer Resistance. Click here.

🌿 BLUE-EYED MARY for MAY 🌿

Blue-eyed Mary
(Collinsia grandiflora)
Mideke porcelain pot.
In early April on coastal bluffs, on through June,
whole ledges and slopes reflect the sky color as
myriad Collinsia open their buds.
It can be a rather tedious gleaning of seed from the
small capsules, so we might not find it for sale at
Gatehouse Seeds.
Enjoy her in the wild.
Anno One May Two Thousand and Seventeen.

🌷 TULIPS 🌷 NOW AND THEN

There are only a few more days to catch the riot of color in the tulip fields of the Skagit Valley for the spring of 2017.
      The Tulip Festival folks have a helpful site--here is a link to Bloom Status, the source for this beautiful photo. RoozenGaarde lists they will have tulips blooming until 7 May 2017.

Skagit Valley tulips
RoozenGaarde Farm,
as of 27 April 2017.
Photo from the Bloom Status site.

If you'd rather I stay within the bounds of our garden isle of Shaw, I can do that with one of my favorite tulip photos from the garden of Gwen Yansen, from fifteen years ago. These are Menton Tulips, an attractive blend of three colors.

Menton Tulips ©
A late-blooming, single tulip bred in 1971.
As pretty as the grower, Gwen Yansen (1915-2012.)
Gwen's garden, Shaw Island, WA.
Photo by author 2002.

🌿 HAPPY EASTER 🌿 2017

🌿 Swamp Beauty 🌿 "YELLOW ARUM" One April 2017

YELLOW ARUM
(Lysichiton americanum)
Most often known in the PNW as "Skunk Cabbage,"
they are more stunning up close and personal; if you are
on the island, it is worth a stop to view this native happy
along a small stream on Ben Nevis Loop Road,
where lives a lot of the March rain.
Shaw Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Anno One April Two Thousand and Seventeen.

"The large tropical-looking swamp plant whose brilliant yellow spathes illuminate the dark swamps as early as February or March [is still out to greet us this day on Shaw Island.] The spathe unfolds to reveal the spadix, a thick stalk bearing hundreds of small greenish flowers. Shortly the fleshy oval leaves emerge from the mud, ultimately to form huge fans. These are the largest of any plant occurring in our area. Some have measured 56" long by 29" wide!
      The whole plant has a smell of spring, of surging growth, that would be objectionable in a closed room but is not unpleasant in its own habitat. For the record, it does not smell at all like the mephitic spray of the skunk. Bears consume the whole plant, including the short thick rootstock, while deer occasionally browse the leaves.
      This huge plant is related to the taro, staple food of the Polynesians. Both plants produce a stinging sensation in the mouth, due to calcium oxalate. Ages ago, the natives of our area discovered, as did those of the South Seas, that roasting and drying the root drove off the substance responsible for the stinging, burning taste, after which it could be ground to an edible flour.
      Look for the yellow torches of the Yellow Arum (Lysichiton americanum) in the mucky ground and swampy areas along the coast from Alaska south, and in the interior of BC south from about the latitude of Prince George to central California."
Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest from Alaska to Northern California. Clark, Lewis. Sidney, BC; Gray's Publishing Limited. 1976.

Nancy J. Turner (Plant Technology of the First Peoples of British Columbia. UBC Press, 2001.) tells us that the large, flat, water-repellent leaves were used as wax-paper by virtually all coastal aboriginal cultures and even some cultures in the interior. They also made makeshift berry containers by folding and pinning the leaf edges together with sticks.

🌿 ELSIE'S HELLEBORES 🌿

Heritage Hellebore from Elsie Crawford Wood,
Shaw Islander who cultivated a garden now under the
WSF traffic lanes at the landing.
Anno twenty March two thousand and seventeen.
Celadon porcelain vase by Mideke.
For K.A.L.

"Never expose your Oranges, Lemons, and the like tender. Trees whatever seasons flatter, 'til the Mulberry puts forth its leafe, then bring them boldly out of the Green House." 
John Evelyn's spring advice to his gardener at Sayes Court in 1687.

"Presumably the mulberry waits to put forth its leaf until all danger of frost is over, so the advice should hold good for one's geraniums and other tender bedding plants."
From: A Countrywoman's Year. Verey, Rosemary. Little, Brown and Co., 1989. 

🌿 JOAN IRVING BRANDT on her birthday 🌿

Remembering the flowers 
& friendship of
Joan Irving Brandt, artist &
helpful summer resident 
of Shaw Island.

"Butterflies 

and poppies 

belong to each other.

The flower's petals

are as translucent as wings.

I really feel that they would fly away too, 
if they were not tethered by their stems."

Joan Irving Brandt

Joan's career in watercolor got off to an early start with the purchase of one of her works by the prestigious Metropolitan Museum. At that time she was the youngest American painter to be so honored. Over the subsequent years she lectured, taught and juried from Hawaii to Italy. But she is best known for her observant genre subjects found in the United States and especially the American West Coast. 
      The American Watercolor Society voted Joan an Honorary Life Member. She is cited as an important force in the mid-century revival of watercolor as a major American art form.
Excerpts from a commemorative talk by friend and art collector Gene Crain on the Patio at Blue Sky, 2 December 1995.
      "Happiness is too often confused with acquiring things. Awareness is self-rewarding in that it leads on to appreciate without desiring." Joan.1949.
      The watercolor in this post is the cover of a 16 page booklet archived in the Gatehouse collection of Shaw Island history, courtesy of long time islander, Marlyn Hoffman. Joan's artist husband, Rex Brandt, inscribed: "Joan thought an extra lot of Shaw Island people."
      Hanging at the Shaw Island Community Building there is a Joan Irving Brandt watercolor of the islanders on South Beach, celebrating the launching of the John Alden cutter, JOHANNA, 27 May 1987. Thank you Joan.

🌿 GARDENING IN THE DIRT for MARCH ONE🌿

Gwendolyn Yansen (1915-2012)
Shaw Island gardener
enjoying the annual spring rite releasing her
 pots of cherished Begonias from winter storage,
under the house, as she did for c. fifty island years.
She wouldn't mind if Rosemary Verey called
her a dirt gardener, but Gwen always changed into
clean clothes to go to the landing for mail.
A hard act to follow.
Photo 2000.

"Americans speak English but often their expressions are far removed from ours. On one occasion I was introduced as a 'dirt gardener'. I felt mildly surprised and even embarrassed––did my fingernails so easily betray my daily occupation? Later I learnt it was intended as a compliment, to convey that I actually dig in the garden myself. A shared appreciation of a subject or a mutual way of life is the best way to seal a friendship."
A Countrywoman's Year. Verey, Rosemary, OBE; Victoria Medal of Honour, from the Royal Horticulture Society, the highest accolade the Society can award.

Shaw Island Hamamelis flowers in February and
stretching to Gwen's birthday on March 4
Shaw Island March 2017.