Jeanie

14 Articles

Jeanie Taylor has lived near Greenlake for over 25 years. She enjoys working with individuals and small groups to save biodiversity one garden at a time. Her professional experience includes greenhouse management, plant propagation, landscape maintenance, and horticultural instruction. She has worked as a Senior Gardener with Seattle Parks, and holds a B.S. in Botany, and an M.S. in Conservation Biology. She blogs about her own project in Oregon to restore endangered plants and rehabilitate 20 acres of Oregon white oak habitat at gophervalleyjrnl.wordpress.com.

You Don’t See One of These Every Day

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I haven’t received any urgent garden questions from Wallyhood readers lately, so I decided to take a tour around to see if there were any notable horticultural wonders. Sure enough, I spotted something.

More on that below, but first, a reminder to send your garden questions anytime to me, Jeanie, at [email protected].

So, the horticultural wonder: when they’re not in bloom Chilean fire trees (Embothrium coccineum) blend in to the green background we Seattleites are used to. They tend to be a bit gangly. However, a small grove in bloom is guaranteed to make you slam on the brakes …

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Late Spring Flower ID

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If you were looking for something positive regarding our cold spring, the slow start means the bright, hopeful spring green foliage lingers. Some trees haven’t leafed out, apparently having trouble deciding, leaving more light for the plants in bloom. Also, it seems like the early bloomers are lasting longer in this refrigerator-like climate. Here’s another installment of flower ID, helping you get to know the flowers growing around Wallingford. I hope you enjoy it!

The electric blue of Ceanothus (California lilac) is arresting. There are lots of species and many cultivars available, most growing into huge woody shrubs (don’t be …

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Call Before You Cut

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The life of an urban tree is not the greatest. Two of my clients have had tree vs. sidewalk situations lately, so it’s likely many others will have to address this too.

Count yourself lucky if the tree in your parking strip has grown into the space allotted for it without heaving the sidewalk, getting into overhead power lines, or becoming a hazard. I hasten to add, these problems are not the trees’ fault, but the result of being planted in the wrong spot, or having us build inappropriately around them.

Sadly, having survived development, this cedar is now slated …

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You heard it here first – plus herbs for beginners

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Moss update: after the post on Wallyhood about moss, there were two more mossy articles – one in the Seattle Times, and one in the NY Times. However, we can proudly say that Wallingford residents had their fingers on the pulse (also Ciscoe, who mentioned moss in his column on the same day) because our moss articles came out first!

Marina writes:

Could you write a beginner’s guide to growing herbs (ideally on a porch) here? Are some herbs better than others to grow here? Where can we buy herb seedlings locally?

Herbs in containers are good for beginners, …

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It’s garden repair season

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I have a small backyard that gets a couple hours of good sun a day. In the rainy season our dog completely destroyed what little grass existed when we moved in last summer. We are interested in planting grass and don’t know where to start. The yard is mostly mud now. Please let me know any tips and when we should start.

—Heather

Heather,

Your observations illustrate several things going on that contributed to the loss of your lawn: grass needs part to full sun for a good part of the day – just a couple of hours won’t support …

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What’s that flower?

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We are lucky to have so many late winter and early spring bloomers in the Northwest. I’ve had a request to identify some of the flowers popping out, so here we go:

There are lots of great big mature Camellia shrubs blooming. They’ve been used in landscapes for a long time and Wallingford’s older homes have a number of really large ones Vinca minor (periwinkle) is widely sold and used as a groundcover, but it is becoming invasive and is on several states’ noxious weed lists. Evergreen candytuft (Iberis) was used for rockeries extensively in the past. many have more…

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moss / garden

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(Ed. Note: Wallyhood welcomes Jeanie Taylor as our new contributing writer, focusing on gardening. Jeanie owns Taylor Gardens, a gardening coaching service and Wallyhood sponsor, holds a B.S. in Botany, an M.S. in Conservation Biology , and teaches workshops for home gardeners on propagation and sustainable gardening. If you have questions on gardening, please e-mail her at [email protected] and she’ll try to answer them here. Welcome, Jeanie!)

Welcome to the inaugural Wallyhood Garden Questions column. I am pleased to be taking questions that will enrich the lives of Wallingford gardeners – or at least bring up some interesting ideas to …

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