Land of the balsam-root, blue camas, and housing sprawl

Balsamorhiza sagittata and an Eriophorum sp. on Rowena Bluffs, OR.

 Spending two weeks in the USA. Mostly in the Pacific North West. Between doing lectures and workshops I have been out and about seeing as much of the wild plant life in this most beautiful of regions. At the moment, I can't bear the thought of going back to England, which seems so tame, limited and ecologically damaged by comparison. For those who have never been, the PNW offers a truly amazing range of epic landscapes and incredible biodiversity.

For all sorts of geological reasons connected with ice ages, the flora here is richer than in Europe, and far more than in Britain. There is also that extraordinary change as you go east – west, which is what you find all the way down the western spine of mountains and intermontane basins from British Columbia to Chile. Quite unlike anything in the Old World, a few hours west-east driving takes you from lush temperate to semi-desert (or even real desert) and then to cooler montane temperate, and so on. So, different floras mix and match and interweave in relation to different climates but also of course geology.

Lupinus sp. possibly L. sericeus in Ponderosa Pine woodland

The Rowena Bluffs area of the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon, is Quercus garryana (Garry Oak) savannah, with castilleja, lupin and Balsamorhiza sagitata (Balsam Root). Castilleja is a semi-parasite, related to the yellow rattle beloved of by British wildflower meadow restorationists. And famously difficult to grow in garden conditions. Pictures here.

Turnbull Wildlife Refuge is in eastern Washington. It is a truly epic landscape. You can get the feeling that this is what this country looked like before white settlers - as far as you can see there is no trace of human habitation or obvious impact. It is also a very attractive landscape – parkland, a kind of Ponderosa Pine savannah, which alternates grassland with a very loose open forest. I think (as indeed do many others) that we respond to this kind of landscape because we came from the African savannah and it is somehow hard-wired into our brains. The wildflowers were sensational, a result of a dramatic geological history which has left shallow, even minimal soils over basalt, with closely intertwined wet and dry places. The blue Camassia quamash grows on the wet while yellow umbellifer Lomatium triternatum on the drier. You can see pictures here.

Balsamohrhiza again, unlike the lupins, a long-lived perennial which apparently takes 5 years to reach flowering size, with a deep taproot, hence not seen much in gardens.

Being here is also an opportunity to look at a characteristically American way of living, which is kind of worrying for the future – low density living. Travel outside any US city and its aureole of suburbia and you hit huge areas of housing more or less hidden in the woods. Lots of houses on big lots - often over an acre. I think of it as 'exurbia'. Rarely do folk 'garden' most of this area, which stays wild, but only sort-of. Ok, but not great for shy wildlife (although increasingly US wildlife is anything but shy). However over time, the whole process of woodland regeneration will inevitably suffer. The inevitable suppression of fire means that the species mix will change, and all too often when there is a fire, it will burn out of control because of the fuel build-up of years worth of dead leaves, branches etc. How many homeowners know anything about forest management anyway?

The idea that houses in large lots keeps the rural character is an odd one. You can't escape the houses, their drives, the aggressive 'keep out' signs. By building at such low density, vast areas of real rural areas, in the form of unmanaged or natural forest land is being effectively lost. I can't help feeling that the big lot sizes are part of an unsustainable 1950s 'American Dream' way of life along with enormous houses ('MacMansions') and the widely criticised 'trucks' (enormous gas-guzzling cars, which seem so essential to the expression of masculinity here). It also feels that, amongst some people, there is a deep aversion to living in any kind of community; a landscaping style which also mean a long-term loss of natural communities as well.

Link here to a fascinating piece on the vanishing White Oak in eastern forests, which relates to these issues:

http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/10/927.full 

 

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If you like this blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.

A flying visit to Chicago and the Lurie Garden

Interesting being at the Lurie Garden in Chicago after such a viciously cold winter and seeing it all coming back to life, garden director Jennifer Davit tells me that “everything” of Piet Oudolf's planting has survived. All down to snow cover – with a decent depths of snow you can get away with a lot. Its great to see everything coming back to life and the first bulbs, which are almost over at home in England, so I feel like I'm getting a second crack at spring.

Muscari do well here, this is the support act for the Salvia River later on but they do not spread like they do at home.

What's so great about the Lurie Garden is the intensity and diversity of the planting, you can look at a bit a few square metres across and say “there's so much going on here, I could imagine having this at home” which you couldn't with a classic Oehme van Sweden planting. It's what convinced me to work with them on doing the little book, a sort of primer for gardeners: Gardening with Perennials: Lessons from Chicago's Lurie Garden.

One colleague I had breakfast with, said he thought the Lurie was too much an “intensive care unit for plants” which isn't really fair, as although it takes a lot of work, some of it done with volunteers, the comparison you have to make is with the convention of summer bedding, which takes vastly more work, an annual expenditure, offers only the most temporary home for biodiversity and raises so many sustainability issues. The fact that it does take effort to maintain is actually a way of getting public engagement with gardening.

Lovely pale form of Mertensia virginica, which seeds itself around here, is summer dormant to fits well with other later perennials and grasses. At home in Hummelo Piet finds it even grows in with big clumps of grasses.

It's such a great place, this time I felt, not its scale, but actually its intimacy, it is quite a small area compared to the vastness of the whole lakeside park area. Which helps, I think, get the message across that this is something relevant to home gardeners. And if you are here, make sure you check out the plantings on lake side of the Art Institute of Chicago too, designed by Roy Diblik. Who, by the way has got a very good new book out.

Euphorbia polychroma 'Bonfire' in Roy's planting at the Art Institute.

Piet Oudolf in Somerset

Just popped into Durslade Farm, just outside Bruton in Somerset, home of the new Hauser + Wirth gallery. The Guardian are talking about it as the "new Guggenheim". We shall see.  Whatever artworks it will host, it is a wonderful design project, with the 19th century farm buildings being lovingly and imaginatively restored to provide gallery spaces, all being done to an incredibly high standard.

Piet Oudolf is doing the planting, of a courtyard area and a field out the back which will link the gallery to the surrounding countryside via blocks of perennials. He seems very pleased with the project. A distinct feature is the elevations in each block, which don't look much now, but will probably have quite an impact on how we see the plants.

Jo walking down the newt fencing

The newt fencing is a legal requirement apparently, special buckets have to be set out for them to fall into so they, and other trapped amphibians can be then removed to the safe side. All well and good, except that I don't see one of the causes of reptile/amphibian decline being dealt with anytime soon - the shooting industry and its legions of pheasants which gobble them up wholesale.

Jo with Alice Workman, gallery Director

This promises to be a very exciting project, and nice to have it relatively nearby for frequent visits.

Sporobolus clumps escaping into the walkway

Positioning artworks using 2D representations.

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If you like my blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.

Lost in translation

Tall herb flora in Kyrgyzstan on a wet scree slope. Aconitum leuostomum mostly, to 2m tall.

I just had the following letter from a student in canton Zürich, Switzerland. It raises some interesting topics, not least the very different approaches to studying plant management in German-speaking and English-speaking countries. I'm answering her through a blog posting, so more of you can see it.

I'm currently studying at the ZHAW in Wädenswil... The topic of my term paper is the "stability" (Standfestigkeit) of "large herbaceous perennials" (Grosstauden). I don't know the proper technical terms in english. For this reason I hardly found English literature. Now my question to you: Could you translate following words in technical language? "Standfestigkeit", "Grossstaude" and "Staudenhecke". Maybe you even know some links or papers about these topics?

The embarrassing thing is that, unlike in German-speaking countries, we do very little, indeed almost no formal research into ornamental plant design or management. James Hitchmough and colleagues at the University of Sheffield do some fantastic work on establishing perennial combinations and a little on management, but the field is so vast, and no-one else does anything. Collecting data and being precise are a bit too 'Germanic' for most British gardeners. Yes, its frustrating. We are trying to change things, but it is slow.

Standfestigkeit translates as 'stability' or the more colloquial term we gardeners would use would be 'sturdiness' – i.e. does it fall over or not? Especially after flowering.

Grossstauden as 'tall perennials'. And yes, tall perennials do tend to fall over in gardens. Let's unpack this a bit more and look at the ecological and regional origin of perennials which grow tall.

1) 'Tall herb flora' has a very special meaning to an ecologist; in Britain we have very little of it, and the expression has little meaning, so I sometimes find myself using the German Hochstauden to English-speaking audience, to stress that this means something special. This may sound pretentious but there is a long tradition of English-speaking intellectuals using German words, which can often say in a word what English needs a sentence for (we are always talking about Zeitgeist, Schadenfreude etc). Hochstauden or tall-herb flora means those incredible places you get in hilly or mountain areas where very mineral rich and oxygenated water flows constantly underground to nourish the growth of perennials to massive sizes. My best experience of these was in Kyrgyzstan a few years ago, but the Alps can be good too. Huge perennials, many of which we grow as garden plants: many Aconitum, Campanula lactiflora, Persicaria amplexicaulis, and yes, in nature they are very untidy and often fail to show much Standfestigkeit.

2) Prairie plants, from the tallgrass prairie – high rainfall, fertile soils, high summer temperatures, grow tall too, but tend not to fall over (ok. my prairie experience is limited but I have never seen a flopped-over prairie). Grasses play a role and may help support the forbs, but also I suspect that competition ensures that growth is kept within limits.

3) Perennial forbs from places with monsoon climates, so a bit like the prairie. I'm thinking of Russian far-east and Hokkaido, Japan. Massive growth to compete in a wet resource rich environment.

Filipendula camtschatica and a Eupatorium in Hokkaido, Japan.

These plants in cultivation tend to be grown with wide spacing compared to nature, and so there is little competition and so they overfeed (like getting fat really) get top heavy and fall over. Simple as that. Grow them at closer densities and they are less likely to get so large and more likely to show good Standfestigkeit.

Staudenhecke – translates as 'perennial hedge', which is something they have been experimenting with at ZHAW. Basically, plant a line of tall self-supporting perennials in a narrow band and you have a seasonal hedge feature. Nice idea. Have never seen anyone do it here, apart from the one I did here three years ago, and which I cannot find a photograph of which show it clearly :( Basically I have a line of Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster' and some forbs acting as a screen half way down the garden. I'm not entirely happy yet with the companion forbs: Veronicastrum virginicum/sibiricum is ok Vernonia would be if the ****ing slugs hadn't eaten them all last year, Eupatorium maculatum/fistulosum etc. are very good, I think Helianthus 'Sheila's Sunshine' would be good too. Anything bolt upright.

Perennial hedge at ZHAW, Switzerland.

Which brings me on to my final point, which I have never seen described anywhere, if you dig up any of the perennials I have just described, you will find something very interesting. The helianthus – you just dig up, comes up easily, like an aster or solidago. The eupatorium and vernonia involve hacking your way through a massive radial root system - which takes a few years to build up, and is clearly a solution to how to stop 3m high plants from falling over. It is quite unlike anything you will find in any other perennial. Impressive engineering. So perfect for the Staudenhecke which I must really try to complete this year.

In researching the use of the German terms which Anna asks about, I came across the most fabulous looking Staudengarten (perennial garden) near Rostock. Can't wait to get there. http://www.wildstaudenzauber.de

Anna – There is one book you might find useful: Tall Perennials, Turner, R. Timber Press, 2009.

one book I really do recommend, which is about plant ecology, but highly relevant to garden and landscape planting design is:

J. Philip Grime, 2001. Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes, and Ecosystem Properties. Wiley.

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If you like my blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.

Monarchs and Monsanto - a plea to think (and grow more milkweed and eat more insects).

The last few years has seen discussion of a rather worrying trend in declining numbers of monarch butterflies. One fairly obvious reason for the decline would appear to be a decline in the milkweeds (Asclepias species) on which they feed. This is because farmers are now so efficient at eliminating all weeds from their fields.

Cue a hysterical reaction. Like this.

I have long thought that environmentalists are often bad for the environment and this is a good example. The complete failure to think through some basics on this issue is spectacular. As is the refusal to take responsibility for one's own eating habits. Why take responsibility when you can blame an easy scapegoat. Like Monsanto. Just mention the company and you get an instant knee-jerk reaction – with an associated brain disconnect. Blaming Monsanto avoids actually looking at the issue.Which is what I intend to do here.

Furthermore, the easiest solution to this problem is so obvious its ridiculous, and it is something which directly involves gardeners and the landscape industry. 

As anyone who grows their own veg can tell you, weeds compete with your crops and you have to minimise them. Farmers have to do this to survive commercially, something organic growers know as well as conventional. So can we blame farmers for using an effective herbicide like Roundup? Or combining the herbicide with crops which are genetically modified to resist the chemical?

And why do the farmers of the Midwest grow so intensively? Or indeed any farmers?

Well there are rather a lot of us. And as living standards rise, which they are rather doing strongly in many poorer countries, one of the first things people do is eat more meat. Meat production is an inefficient converter of plant material to animal: chickens aren't too bad, pigs and sheep are not so good, but beef cattle are terrible. In other words, farming needs to be intensive to provide us with the diet we have chosen. If you eat meat every day, it's no good blaming Monsanto for selling Roundup and Rounup-Ready crops, you should take responsibility for the disappearing milkweed. And don't say that you only eat local grass-fed beef, or some other politically correct feel-good foodie excuse. Do you suppose that organic beef farmers let toxic milkweed grow all over their fields?

An alternative sounds attractive. Less intensive farming, wildflower strips, higher weed populations. Yes, all well and good. Except that the demand for crops is still there, and they have to come from somewhere. Reducing intensity leads to a trade-off effect – a need for more arable land. And that is one thing we don't have much of left. Arable land is actually declining globally. We also do not want to sacrifice any more wild landscapes, forests, wetlands etc. We simply have to get the most out of what arable land we have.

I have driven around Iowa a bit (whilst researching at Ames Uni. and attending the World Food Prize, some years ago) - it is the quintessential Midwest farming state, and one where monarch butterfly populations and milkweed have notably fallen. And do I remember roadside to roadside crops? Every patch of ground covered in soya or corn? Er no actually. I seem to recall that like much of the rest of the USA there is an awful lot of mown grass. Vast areas of the stuff in fact. Alongside roads, around houses, offices, churches, shops there seems to be endless acres of this utterly useless vegetation. You can't eat it, cows can't eat it, wildlife can't live on it, and it needs mowing all the time. Why not plant wildflowers, include lots of milkweed of course. Problem solved. There is space for milkweed AND crops.

On a slight change of subject, we would all live more lightly on the earth if we ate not just less meat, but er.... more insects. They are fantastically efficient converters of plant to animal protein. In Mexico last week I tried chapulines – grasshoppers, and even brought some back with me. Delicious AND sustainable!!!

Dialectic of the Polyanthus Part Two

 You may recall a piece I wrote about the philosophical aspects of polyanthus/primulas some time ago. Anyway, I have tracked down the source of the plants, which are now increasing in ever varied variety. You can read about them here in The Daily Telegraph. An interesting bit of plant breeding.
I love that title the Telegraph gave the piece "polychrome-princess-of-the-petrol-pump".
If you want to know more about the plants, here is the producer website, but please note, they are not retailers and are unable to supply anyone other than professional growers, nor are they able to advise on suppliers - you just gotta shop around the garden centres.

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If you like my blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.

A walk in the (Mexican) woods.

Mexico has incredible biodiversity, with the state of Oaxaca having 60% of the country's higher plant species - some 6,500, that's four times the plant biodiversity of Britain. And its safe and very well organised for trekking.

An Eryngium - a classic Mexican genus - their biodiversity starts to get good here and carries on right down to Argentina.

We went with Tierraventura, a long-established eco-tourism company in the region, the pueblos mancomunados which is a unique co-operation between 8 indigenous (Zapotec) villages to promote rural development and eco-tourism.

 Latuvi, where we stayed overnight. Isolated but clearly going places. Mexico's indigenous people are finally catching up. Their strong sense of community self-help counts for a lot, indeed there is a lot going on here which the rest of us could learn from. Many of the social problems which plague other parts of the country seem absent.
Agaves are very much part of the landscape and used for a kind of crude hedging along roads.

T 

They don't need dry conditions, sneaking up to the water when they can! 

 

With mostly acidic ingneous rock, Arbutus, i.e. madrone with amazing peeling bark is a minor tree element amidst pine and further down, various oaks. Arctostaphylos, i.e. manzanita species also very common, reminding me of trekking in California.

 

Doesn't this remind you of Deep South longleaf pine and wiregrass? According to our guides it is not a fire-mediated plant community however. The interesting news is that all this young pine is re-afforestation as the area used to be used for potato growing.

Gentians! Just like Switzerland, but much paler. Later we found another gentian species.

Is that a bullet hole in the sign?

Saw a lot of this little alchemilla. I never realised that the genus exists in the New World.

 

Epiphytes are what make this trip. Huge numbers especially on west facing tops of slopes or escarpments where humid air is forced up.

 A Tillandsia species, sitting on a twig like birds on a cable. Distribution varies, some species dominate in some locations, but then are replaced by others a few kms further on. 

 

Surely one of the strangest and most specialised of flowering plants, Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor a moss so lets stick to calling it Tillandsia usneoides. 

Cordyline/Dracaena/Yucca relatives, not sure of identity look surreal in woodland, as do agaves, but that is how they grow. I am reminded of Philip Brown's planting of cordyline and phormium in native woodland at Portmeirion in North Wales. We tend not to think of these as woodland plants but why not?

 Some orchids, ID? on damp rock, later we saw some on trees, mostly older trees. 

Always intriguing to see which plant families dominate an unfamiliar area. Mexico is famous for Salvia - we saw quite a few but this was the dry season so they were not very prominent. Also many and this is true of a lot of shrubs here are messy gappy plants in the wild, often in shade (the sun is very strong) and do not make much impact. A lot of shrubby Asteraceae, which we are not familiar with at all, Many would make good plants for horticulture in areas which get only light frosts.

Interesting to see shrubby species of general familiar as herbaceous in North America, like this gorgeous Vernonia, from which i did get seed :) . It fades to white from mauve. 

Lots of shrubby Ageratina (a group of formerly Eupatorium). this one was out in the sun and had lost its leaves but it made a great impact and a reminder that in the right place they can form nicely shaped shrubs. We have A. ligustrinum in cultivation in milder parts of Britain, but there are others here. Would be good for autumn flower. Notice the warm shirt, as it starts off jolly cold at 3000m +.

 

Finally the cacti, of which we saw a lot on rock outcrops on the last part of our two day trek, the most uphill and hottest part, often on rock outcrops and sometimes in company with ferns - the fern flora here has many species which die right back in the dry season. 

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If you like my blog, why not check out my e-books, which are round-ups of some writing I did for Hortus magazine back in the early 2000s, along with an interview with the amazing Beth Chatto. You can read them on Kindle, or Kindle packages for smartphones or the computer. You can find them on my Amazon page here. You will also find my soap opera for gardeners - currently running at eight episodes.