Rhododendron and
Azalea News

Gardens

Finnerty Gardens

Something to think about...with the ARS Convention being held in Olympia WA, you might want to consider visiting one or more of the following gardens while In the area.

Finnerty Gardens has one of Canada’s best collections of rhododendrons.  The spectacular three-acre plot is tended by the Finnerty Garden Friends, a special group of University of Victoria alumni and community members who advise on the planning and development of the year-round garden.

The Gardens were developed when, in 1974, the estate of Mrs. Jeanne Buchanan Simpson of Cowichan Lake was left to the University.  She and her husband George, beginning in the 1920’s, built up a notable collection of rhododendron species at their Lake Cowichan home.  Many plants were grown from seed obtained directly or indirectly from famous plant explorers of the day.  Theirs was the largest collection in British Columbia.

The Buchanan Simpson’s gift transferred to the University the responsibility for the well-being of a significant collection of a popular genus among Victoria gardeners.  The University decided to move many of the rhododendrons to the campus where they would form the nucleus of a new garden that was created on nearly three acres of land at the south end of the campus.

The Simpson plants were up to 50 years old and presented a challenge to the transplanters.  After the death of her husband, Mrs. Simpson had been unable to maintain the garden properly.  The rhododendrons had to struggle for survival without the benefit of summer watering and in competition with the invading “jungle”.  You will recognize these sometimes distorted giants in the Garden today.  Most of them are R. decorum or R. fortunei.  In their growth-form they resemble these species growing in their native mountains of Asia.

The collection now includes more than 200 rhododendron species and azaleas along with an extensive planting of hybrids, most of them of early origin.  The accession list includes about 1600 entries for trees and shrubs.  All are catalogued and identified by a number that refers to a master list, which is available.

This is a garden in active growth.  Its rhododendrons may be seen in flower from mid-January until late June, also extensive collections of spectacular perennials from July onwards.

Lakewold Gardens, Lakewood, WA

Lakewold Gardens offers one delight after another!  As you walk around from garden to garden you will find surprises in each area.  It is the former home of Eulalie and Corydon Wagner and is now open to the public.

These are the various garden areas:

• Rose Garden, originated as a cutting garden to provide flowers for arrangements in the Wagner home.  Mrs. Wagner selected warm colors, with corals, yellows, and coral-red predominating.
• Knot Garden has been called “classically English in its design, classically Church (Thomas Church landscape architect) in its location.  Resembling a ribbon loosely tied, the Garden features culinary herbs, whose leaves tend to be more ornamental than their flowers.  The herbs add texture, color, and pungent fragrances.
• Scree Garden imitates an alpine microclimate consisting mostly of particles of rock where plants that demand perfect drainage make their homes.
• Fern Garden is where ferns and mosses thrive in a misty microclimate created especially for them.  Mrs. Wagner collected choice dwarf hardy ferns from many parts of the world.  Lakewold is one of a diminishing number of places in the world where rare plants find sanctuary.
• Rock Garden is located on the lower hillside overlooking the lake, providing good drainage, air circulation, and full morning sun.  It’s perfect for growing gentians, saxifrages, dianthus, lewisias, dwarf rhododendrons, and tiny ground-hugging cushions of alpine treasures.
• Rhododendron Collection has thousands of hybrid and species flourishing at Lakewold.  Tiny groundcovers to tree-size beauties all bring bursts of color to the Garden.
• Boxwood Parterres and topiary represent some of the oldest and most versatile of garden styles.  The name partrerre (pronounced PAR – tare) is from Old French ‘par terre’ literally translated ‘on the ground’.  It is a flower garden having the beds and paths arranged to form a pattern.  Topiary, the art of shaping plants to alter their natural form is an ancient means of using plants as art.

(Data from the Lakewold Garden website.)

Sunday in the Garden

Alec McCarter, Victoria Chapter

Gardening is special!

Nourishing to body and spirit!

Plants have relationships, too!

“One is nearer to God in a garden, than anywhere else on Earth.”

I’ve been wondering if gardening has anything to do with religion. As a child, the Sabbath was a day on which one did “no manner of work.”  But I observed after morning service, our family would sometimes spend the rest of the day in the garden.  Mind you, only light chores like weeding, or watering plants were undertaken…not heavy digging.  I noted that regular churchgoers sometimes excused themselves from going to church by going to the garden instead!

So…perhaps, “gardening” is an activity that, in part at least, can substitute for religious observance!  There is something about the sunshine, the soil, the growing green plants, the smell of the earth, and the scents of flowers that brings one closer to the universe and makes one forget about the work-a-day world of “getting and spending” at which we do, indeed, lay waste our powers.

Going to the beach, or for a long walk in forest or field—in fact, just getting out into the country gives one much the same sort of revelation and sense of being a part of something infinite and glorious.  BUT, gardening is special!  It is so very basic.  It is nourishing to the body and spirit.  It is so very basic.  It is GOOD!  It is infinitely satisfying and warms the spirit of beginner and expert alike.

Pets—like dogs and cats, and other animals, too—are, perhaps, closer to us than plants, in that the mobile ones are aware of being alive, perhaps, not introspective, but of giving and receiving relationships with others.  There is no evidence, I think, that plants can do that.  Yet, they respond to our feeding and watering, of giving them good soil in which to put down their roots, of sitting them where they will get light and warmth sufficient to their needs.

While scientists are searching for life on other worlds, we gardeners are intensely aware of the uniqueness and immediacy of this world upon which life exists.  We know that the physical conditions which we must obtain for life to develop as we know it, are so stringent, and so very unlikely to be meet, that the chances are extremely small that there is other life in the universe.  One cannot be dogmatic about saying so because life has happened at least once—here, on this hospitable ball traveling in now-visited, indifferent, limitless space.  AND, the miraculous results seem unreal.

Here in the sunshine, with our hands in the very soil of the earthy earth, and with the vast blue sky overhead, we break apart the clumps of plants and place them where they will live and grow.  It is real, real, real.

We muse about these things even while we dig and trowel, observe and marvel, prune and harvest.

ARS Victoria Chapter's February 2003 newsletter and the story had earlier appeared in the Finnerty Garden Newsletter, July 2002.>

A garden conversation

An over-heard conversation in the garden of Jim Reynolds, Butterstream in Bounty Meath, Ireland, between noted plantsman Graham Stuart Thomas and garden writer Rosemary Verey went something like this:

Rosemary Verey commented: “Have you ever seen such caterpillar damage?  Oh, the weeds…they’re huge, and vine weevils must be enormous!”

At that point, Mr. Thomas calmly turned to his companion and said,

“Rosemary, my dear… hasn’t anyone told you that the ‘gentry’ always looks up to see the good things in life?  Only the ‘commoners’ look down, and see the weeds.”

As a final note, Mr. Reynolds advises, “Real gardens do not have to be pristine and perfect.  Why, if I looked at myself in the mirror too carefully in the morning…I’d go back to bed!”

Arrival of spring, Cowichan Valley Chapter, March 2003

Judy Gloster reports the arrival of spring and the beginning of the garden year coincide in the month of March in our area.  Suddenly the days are longer, the nights are warmer, and the garden is bursting with green shoots and colourful spring bulbs and flowers.  After a few sunny days the garden seems to grow by the minute as trees and shrubs unfurl new buds and leaves. Red, pink, and white camellias and yellow forsythias are especially cheerful, providing welcome patches of colour among the tender green foliage.

Among the highlights of the month are displays of spring bulbs, visible everywhere in city gardens, open fields and local parks, even in front of downtown high-rise buildings.  As the early crocus and snowdrops fade, they are replaced by an amazing variety of shapes, colours and sizes of bulbs, including scillas, iris, anemones, hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips, giving us some of the most beautiful display of bulbs to be seen anywhere in the world.  Don’t forget to look at our native species (Canada); a delight bulb that flowers this month is the Easter lily or dogtooth violet (erythronium oregonum), a plant that can be incorporate easily into a woodland area of your garden.

R. sargentianum

Everett Hall,
Siuslaw Chapter

This is an ideal plant for a rock garden, or tucked into a little niche in your garden, because at maturity the plant is such a little gem.  Plants grow to about 18 inches tall and about that wide; there may be some larger than that, but I’ve never seen one.  They grow slowly but start blooming as small plants.  Sometimes plants grown from cuttings will start blooming within two years.  It is a twiggy compact plant with small aromatic leaves that are shiny green on top and densely covered with tiny rust colored or dark brown scales.

In the central Oregon coast area, this species will bloom in April or early May.  The flowers are small, narrowly tubular with spreading lobes that are held in little trusses of five to seven flowers.  The flowers are either white, pale yellow, or lemon yellow.  The yellow forms are in greatest demand…but I really prefer the clones with white flowers.

This is an alpine rhododendron and, like most alpine rhododendrons, it is absolutely essential that it has good sharp drainage and an open location.  However, try to provide it with afternoon shade, as it doesn’t seem to like the hot sun.

R. sargentianum is one of the finest dwarf rhododendrons you can have in your collection.  In the spring it will cover itself with a profusion of color and when it is not in flower it is still an attractive little shrub.  Don’t forget that fragrant foliage!  R. sargentianum does not look like a ‘typical’ rhododendron and will be certain to add more interest and variety to your garden.

Thoughts