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About What's happening. (Eugene, OR) 1982-1993 | View Entire Issue (May 7, 1987)
more and more often in Eugene gardens. They form balls of orange scented ferny bright green foliage covered densely with small graceful single flowers of bright yellow (“Lulu”), orange (“Ursula”), or dark red and orange (“Paprika”). Hot, Dry Spots At this time of year, perhaps it’s hard to imagine that you have any hot, dry places in your garden! But come August, you may very well: places on tops of stone walls, in parking strips, traffic diverters, and along south walls. Plants that thrive in these con ditions also need good drainage. Some great plants for hot, sunny places include California poppies, spider flower, gaillardia, daisy-family plants from South Africa such as African daisy, ursinia, and monarch of the veldt, succulent-leaved plants —ice plant and Livingstone daisy— and gray-leaved herbs: sage, rose mary, and thyme. Several of my favorites for hot dry spots are low-growing and very bright-flowered: calandrinia, with silky-textured, rose-like flowers of bright magenta; phacelia or Califor nia bluebells, with upward-facing, bell-shaped flowers of bright deep blue; and portulaca, with rose-like flowers in glowing shades of yellow, orange, red, and pink. Portulaca, also called moss rose, is so drought-tol erant that it reseeds itself in dense col onies in the gravel on burning-hot New York City rooftops! Shady Places Lots of Eugene gardens are more than adequately supplied with shady places: on north-facing walls and fences, near omnipresent cherry laurel hedges and tall conifers. Lots of annuals tolerate partial shade, and a few endure fairly heavy shade, although few can grow and bloom well where there is heavy root competition—under or close to exten sive root systems of larger plants. Browallia and impatiens are two of the best choices for a lot of shade, along with fuchsias and ferns. In light shade, the choices are more extensive. I have a shady yard, so I’ve done a good deal of experimenting. Annual flowers that bloom well in partial shade include anagallis, anchusa, cornflower, godetia, larkspur, Chinese forget-me-not, annual can dytuft, alyssum, ageratum, pink and white cosmos, baby snapdragon, four o’clock, love-in-a-mist, torenia, nemesia, nasturtium, and lobelia. Godetia is a lovely plant with satiny, cup-shaped flowers in shades of pink, white, and red, and lots of bicolors. Root and leaf vegetables are also sur prisingly tolerant of partial shade. The Self-Seeding Garden There are a number of annual flowers that come back fairly reliably year after year by sowing themselves. If your garden soil is light and well drained, with good tilth, plants are much more likely to reseed them selves there—and of course you’ve also got to give them a chance to go to seed at the end of the summer. Some of the flowers I’ve had the best luck with are lobelia, viscaria, Chinese forget-me-not, California poppy, alyssum, larkspur, and pink and white cosmos. Others that reseed themselves sometimes but not always, or with only a few seedlings, include calliopsis, cornflowers, signet mari golds, godetia, clarkia, blue globe gilia, corn poppy, baby snapdragon, love-in-a-mist, and nasturtium. Several annual herbs also self-sow —chervil, coriander, and especially summer savory. Surprises Every year I try some flowers that I don’t know much about, because one or another thing about them sounds irresistible. This year abelmoschus or silk flower heads my surprise list. Seed catalogs are intriguingly vague about abelmoschus—botanists fin ished naming it yet it has a genus name but no species name—and no body is sure where it's from, perhaps central Asia. The flowers look like smaller versions of hibiscus, three or four inches across, red or pink, with white centers. The plants are little more than a foot tall, and are said to bloom for a long time in sun or part shade. Then there’s leptosiphon, or star dust. Everything about stardust is miniature: its leaves, which resemble very fine-textured pine needles, and its one-half-inch flowers, wide-open and five-petalled, yellow, pink, white, and red, with red-and-yellow centers. There’s also a new variety of viscaria. Viscaria is an astonishingly sturdy plant, covering itself with flowers, reseeding prolifically, and I’ve always considered it unfortunate that viscaria should be so vigorous when its flowers are a magenta so in tense that it causes wincing in the beholder. But “Blue Angel,” new in this year’s catalogs, has violet-blue flowers with dark red eyes. It sounds very restful. And I want to try sweet sultan, a relative of cornflower with fringed, mildly fragrant flowers that are soft shades of pink, lavender, yellow, and white. I saw many buckets of these feathery, graceful flowers in markets in Soviet Central Asia last summer, and this summer I want to grow them myself. Maybe with carrots. Almost all the flowers I’ve men tioned are available locally, some of them grown by many nurseries, others only by Loghouse Plants, a wholesale nursery in Cottage Grove that spe cializes in unusual flowers and sup plies many local nurseries. South Hills Crystal Shop featuring a complete line of crystals and rocks —Amethyst —Rose Quartz —Citrine —Fluorite —Rare Crystals from the Northwest Stop by or call for directions 342-6544 31334 Fox Hollow Road Authorized Diamond Pacific dealers. See us for discounts. Car Care with a Conscience Audi • BMW Porsche ’Volkswagen Alfa Romeo tut t a • y. ut, r‘ i. t * ' ‘H 687-0040 9/5 v /tri Avenue • ugene regon 9/4.2 ■ Ours 8 Jr to 5 30 D m) Ill I hine Automtive Workmanship Wise birds do their Mother's Day Shopping at t$ rur* Made in Oregon Open 10:30-5:00 Mon-Sat 295 E. 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THE BIJOU THEATRE at 13th and Ferry Streets in Eugene BIRTH OF A BEAR in the 5th Street Public Market CHEF FRANCISCO, Incorporated FLICKS AND PICS video at 28th and Friendly & Marketplace West THE GENESIS JUICE Cooperative HALLEY'S COMET Arcade and Snack Shop on East 13th on campus HUMBLE BAGEL at 24th and Hilyard JIFFY MARKET, WINE & DELI on Hilyard near West Amazon RAINBOW OPTICS on East 13th ...in the Smith Family Building SELCO CREDIT UNION SUNDANCE NATURAL FOODS at 24th and Hilyard TARYM’S TOYS north of the fountain on the Eugene Downtown Mall UNITED FINANCIAL SYSTEMS at 16th and Oak KRVM is grateful to them for underwriting its programming for an extended period of time. KRVM is grateful to you for doing business with them! RUA =Ary5
