| Where
the garden meets the wild
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STUDY CENTRE |
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| This is where we share information with fellow plant-lovers. Please click on our pictures to enlarge them. | |
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| EARLY FEBRUARY 2007 | |
| Our garden will be sunnier this year because a series of exceptionally fierce winter storms removed a lot of trees. Cleaning up involved much stomping and gouging. Plants are rising through the leaf litter as though nothing had happened. | |
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| From left: Geranium richardsonii, Helleborus atrorubens, H. thibetanus (twice). | |
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| From left: Anemone (Hepatica) acutiloba, Eranthis x tubergenii 'Guinea Gold', a sterile hybrid that is multiplying much faster than we expected; Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewitschii, P. daurica subsp. wittmanniana. | |
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| SMALL BULBS IN BLOOM, LATE MARCH 2006 | |
| Somehow it's the smaller bulbs that touch our hearts. Here are a few of the many in bloom in our garden and cold frames toward the end of March 2006. Most are in the open garden. The frames have been open to the elements since January. We are in wet Zone 6 and will close the frames in time to give the bulbs a dry fall and winter. | |
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| From left: Fritillaria aurea, F. armena, F. stenanthera, F. pudica. | |
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| From left: Trillium hibbersonii , F. eastwoodiae, Corydalis solida 'George Baker' with Chrysosplenium sp., Tulipa bifloriformis 'Starlight'. | |
 
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| From left: Eranthis x tubergenii 'Guinea Gold', Crocus x reticulatus 'Ego', C. chrysanthus 'Blue Peter', Colchicum montanum, C. kesselringii. | |
 
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| From left: Colchicum szovitsii white form, C. cupanii, Olsynium douglasii, Chionodoxa forbesii. | |
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| EARLY WILDFLOWERS IN THE COLUMBIA GORGE, MID-MARCH 2006 | |
| Pat and Paige drove east on the north side of the Columbia River Gorge, in Washington state, then returned, driving west, on the south side, in Oregon. It was very early in the wildflower season, cold and blustery with cloudbursts. These photographs begin after the Lyle Tunnel on the north side of the river. | |
 
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| From left: (1, 2) Basalt cliffs. The Columbia created its gorge by wearing down through repeated layers of cooled magma. (3) Quercus garryana meadow: these particular Garry oaks are young but the association of meadow plants beneath them is thousands of years old. (4, 5) Lomatium grayi. | |
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| From left: (1, 2) Fritillaria pudica. (3) Lithophragma sp. (4, 5) Lomatium columbianum. This was the plant Paige most longed to see blooming in habitat. If we'd seen nothing else, she'd have gone home happy. | |
  
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| From left: (1, 2) Still on the north side of the river, we drove up the Dalles Mountain Road, a typical unpaved ranchland scar through hills benignly rounded like huge, sleeping animals. (3) Lomatium macrocarpum, white form. (4) Crocidium multicaule. Backtracking a little, we crossed to The Dalles and stopped at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, which has a garden of native plants. (5) There we found one Olsynium douglasii in precocious bloom. |
