Seminar Details for Friday, February 12, 2010

02/12 10:30 AM

Turning Off the Tap: Solutions for Reducing Water Use in the Garden

Speaker: Maurice Horn
Room: B 110-112

For gardeners in the Pacific Northwest facing continuing above-normal summer temperatures, increasing water costs and a lingering poor economy, it makes sense to be water-wise. But how little water can you really use and still have a satisfactory garden? If you are willing to do the work up front, the answer is almost none. This session will explore the how and why of low water usage as you learn about amazingly generous varieties and rethink when you plant.

Maurice Horn is co-owner of Joy Creek Nursery, a specialty nursery in Scappoose, Ore., featuring a wide variety of ornamental plants including clematis and hydrangeas. He has served on the council for the International Clematis Society, co-founded and served a Vice President of the Pacific Northwest Clematis Society (now Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection), and has been a long-time participant in the Great Plant Picks program at the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Wash. His written contributions can be found in such publications as Horticulture, Pacific Horticulture, The International Clematis Society Journal, The British Clematis Society Journal, and An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Clematis.

02/12 10:30 AM

Bringing the Alchemy of Water into Your Garden

Speaker: Laura Crockett
Room: B 113

More than almost any other garden element, including water in our gardens brings the greatest level of satisfaction and continued enjoyment. By examining the history, intrinsic characteristics and your personal water connections, Laura Crockett will help you understand how you can live the best possible life in your garden.

With an infectious and unlimited ‘joie de vivre’, Laura Crockett has been designing gardens in the Pacific Northwest and California for fifteen years. Her work has been featured in Pacific Horticulture, Portland Spaces, Horticulture, Garden Design, The Oregonian, Fine Gardening, as well as many other gardening magazines. Her custom designed water ‘events’ are a signature element in her garden commissions. Laura counts it a privilege to create beautiful gardens and enjoys collaborating with her clients and contractors producing truly unique outdoor spaces featuring art.

02/12 11:00 AM

From Sidewalk to Treetop: Maximizing Space in the Garden

Speaker: Lucy Hardiman
Room: B 117-119

What’s a gardener to do when they have too many plants and not enough space? Lucy Hardiman shares strategies for making the most of your garden. Reducing lawn, rethinking the role of traditional foundation plantings and connecting the horizontal and vertical planes are just few of the ways to rework the garden creating more space for artful and sustainable plant combinations.

Lucy Hardiman was to the garden born and is a fifth generation Oregon gardener. She is the principal of Perennial Partners, an award-winning garden collaborative group, recognized for their innovative approach to garden design. Her garden and those of her clients have appeared in many magazines and books. Most recently she was featured in the May 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. A popular speaker who lectures and teaches throughout the country, she also writes for regional and national publications and is a contributing editor for Horticulture Magazine. You can read her blog at www.lucyflora.com. She is on the Great Plant Picks Committee, is vice-president of the Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection and is a past president of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon.

02/12 11:00 AM

DIY Seed Starting Station

Speaker: Willi Galloway
Room: B 116

You don’t need to buy a fancy seed-starting setup to grow your own vegetable seedlings indoors. Willi Galloway will demonstrate how to create a versatile seed-starting station utilizing an Ikea bookcase, shop light and a few other basic tools. This project is quick, easy, and inexpensive to build. Plus the light station fits into small spaces and can be used to store books or garden tools once the seedlings move outdoors.

Willi Galloway is the West Coast Editor of Organic Gardening magazine and the founder of DigginFood.com – a website that serves up organic gardening and cooking inspiration. She also serves as a home and garden consultant for eHow.com, a division of Demand Media. Willi has grown food in backyards, in containers on balconies and rooftops, and in two Seattle-area community gardens. She is a weekly guest on Seattle’s popular NPR gardening call-in show “Greendays” and volunteers as a Master Gardener and for Seattle Tilth, a non-profit that teaches urbanites how to garden organically. She is currently at work on her first book – a vegetable growing guide.

02/12 12:00 PM

A Year at Windcliff

Brought to you by Monrovia

Speaker: Dan Hinkley
Room: B 110-112

Join Dan Hinkley as he leads us through a year at his current garden, Windcliff. Located in Indianola, Wash., Windcliff is a five-acre, high bluff site overlooking Puget Sound that employs grasses, shrubs, trees, perennials and vines. With a slant towards drought tolerance, Dan has created a naturalistic concoction that is meant to hold interest throughout the year.

Daniel J. Hinkley lives and gardens at Windcliff. He is a noted plants man, author, plant collector and lecturer. Dan has horticulture degrees from Michigan State University and the University of Washington. As an educator he was a professor of horticulture at Edmonds Community College and is a consultant on many television shows, including as a garden consultant for Martha Stewart Television. Dan has carried out design projects across the United States and has been featured in numerous magazine publications. His books include The Explorer’s Garden: Shrubs and Vines from Four Corners of the World and Rare and Unusual Perennials (Timber Press) and Winter Ornamentals (Sasquatch Press). Winner of many national and international awards, Dan received the coveted Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain in 2007.

02/12 12:00 PM

Small is the New Big

Speaker: Lorene Edwards Forkner
Room: B 113

Featuring city-sized gardens, high density urban housing, fewer hours for leisure (and even fewer for gardening), today’s busy lifestyle forces you to be a master of invention or mistress of ingenuity in order to make time to garden. See how today’s savvy gardeners are creating small garden with big impact that enhance the urban experience and still allow time for relaxing.

Lorene Edwards Forkner is a freelance writer and garden designer whose work celebrates the seasonal pleasures and broad scope of gardening in the Pacific Northwest with an infusion of color, texture, form and whenever possible, delicious flavor. Lorene has been invited to talk about gardening to audiences large and small including the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, Bainbridge in Bloom, Tacoma Home & Garden show, Master Gardeners and many local garden clubs. She is a contributing writer to Organic Gardening and Angie’s List magazines. She serves on the board of directors for the Northwest Horticultural Society and the Pacific Horticulture Foundation. Lorene’s most recent books, Growing Your Own Vegetables and Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest were published by Sasquatch Books in 2009. Visit www.plantedathome.com to learn more of her antics.

02/12 12:30 PM

Creating a Winter Wonderland with Witch Hazels

Speaker: Roger Gossler
Room: B 117-119

Bring the woodland onto your patio with a fern table. See Richie Steffen, curator of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden, create a miniature garden of greenery perched on a table top. These unique gardens use texture and form to make a great conversation piece in your garden.

Roger Gossler has had a lifelong interest in plants. He can usually be found at family run, Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield, Ore. The nursery specializes in magnolias, winter-blooming trees and shrubs, and many other beautiful plants including some unusual perennial plants. Roger is a life member of the Magnolia Society, member of American Rhododendron Society, Hardy Plant Society of Oregon, Willamette Valley Hardy Plant Group (board member) and the Royal Horticultural Society. He has lectured across the nation, including Horticulture magazine’s winter lecture tours, the Arboretum of Delaware College, University of Washington Arboretum, and the California Horticultural Society.

02/12 12:30 PM

Building a Fern Table

Speaker: Richie Steffen
Room: B 116

Witch hazels are the unsung stars of the winter garden blooming at a time when other shrubs and small deciduous trees are shrouded in winter dormancy. Interesting blooms ranging from butter yellow through vibrant red light up Northwest gardens during the quiet season. Join Roger as he shares ideas for companion plants to pair with these underused, elegant shrubs.

Richie Steffen is the curator for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden where he manages the rare plant collections and heads the acquisition of new plants for the garden. He has been actively involved in the horticultural community currently serving as a committee member of the Great Plant Picks program and as a board member of the Hardy Fern Foundation, Northwest Horticultural Society and the Rhododendron Species Foundation.

02/12 1:30 PM

Artful Sheds: Creating Your Own Dwelling in the Garden

Speaker: Debra Prinzing
Room: B 110-112

The humble shed has been an ever-present, while often ignored, architectural element of the residential landscape. Debra’s book, Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways (Clarkson Potter 2008) embraces the shed’s importance in the year-round, indoor-outdoor lifestyle garden setting. Three themes of expression are revealed: function, recreation, and inspiration. Debra’s talk will help you define your mission, identify your must-have, and then find creative solutions to possible design challenges. You’ll leave inspired and equipped to reevaluate your own backyard’s potential for showcasing a POD (personal outdoor dwelling) of your own.

Debra Prinzing is a Los Angeles-based outdoor living expert who writes and lectures on gardens and home design. She has a background in textiles, journalism, landscape design and horticulture. A frequent speaker for botanical garden, horticultural society and flower show audiences, Debra is also a regular radio and television guest. She is the creator of www.shedstyle.com, a design blog. Her five books include the award-winning Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideways, The Abundant Garden, and Pacific Northwest Garden Survival Guide. Debra writes for many national garden and house magazines and her feature stories appear in the Los Angeles Times Home section. She is also an associate with Lifestyle Insights, a group of savvy professionals who develop new-media content to help corporations communicate with women consumers.

02/12 1:30 PM

Perennial Pleasures: Perennials for All Seasons

Speaker: Linda Beutler
Room: B 113

The use of perennials in the garden is great for creating year-round interest. Revisit some classic varieties used in new ways, as well as unsung hero’s you may have overlooked, for year-round foliage and flower power.

Linda Beutler is a fearless gardener who grows a great number of plants on a simple, flat 50’ X 100’ city lot in the Sellwood neighborhood or Portland. She was a professional florist for 20+ years, and her first love in her own garden was growing flowers and foliage for cutting. That focus changed when she purchased her first clematis as a misnamed plant. Her personal collection of this genus now numbers 250 separate species and cultivars. This passion for clematis has lead to the publication of her first book, Gardening with Clematis (Timber Press, 2004). Linda is one of two Vice Presidents of the International Clematis Society and foundation member of the Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection. She served on the Friends board of directors until she was named the collections first curator in 2007. Linda has been an instructor of horticulture at Clackamas Community College for 13 years. Her second book, The Flower Arranger’s Garden (Timber Press) serves as a textbook for classes at CCC. Linda lectures nationally on numerous garden topics and is a garden writer for both local and national publications, including Fine Gardening, Pacific Horticulture, Portrait of Portland, and Birdwatcher’s Digest.

02/12 2:00 PM

Bold Foliage Texture for the Small Garden

Speaker: Sean Hogan
Room: B 117-119

Sean reinforces the old adage ‘foliage first’ in his own gardens and those that he designs for clients. Leaf textures, colors and forms are the bones of any garden and he uses them to maximum effect. Sean uses bold forms and textures to create strong focal points, contrast, rhythm and repetition in all seasons.

Sean Hogan started in the nursery industry at the age of 3, rooting boxwood cuttings and succulents in his Portland, Oregon boyhood home. Sean served as the curator at the California Native Cultivar Gardens of the University of California, Berkeley, and Botanic Garden. He returned to Portland in the late 90’s and co-founded Cistus Nursery on Sauvie Island. Sean lectures widely in North America and Europe, often about his plant explorations. His publications include editing Flora, a 20,000 entry tome (Timber Press) and Trees for All Seasons (Timber Press).

02/12 2:00 PM

Potted Up: Creating Container Gardens with Year-Round Interest

Speaker: Deby Barnhart
Room: B 116

Come learn how to create a container garden that fits your time requirements and personal style. Learn about what plants can hold up to being “on stage” for years in containers, how to put together color, texture, and compatible plants, adding edibles to the mix, pot selection considerations, along with how-to tips for long-term success in container gardening.

Deby Barnhart co-founded Cornell Farm in 1987, a 5-acre retail nursery in Portland’s West Hills with. The nursery features 13 greenhouses and growing beds for over 800 varieties of annual and perennials exclusively grown for the public. Along with assisting customers in store, Deby provides education on plant culture, garden design, container design, along with garden consultations. She is on the advisory board to PCC Rock Creek Horticulture Program and has been the Perennial Plant Association speaker on Container Gardening.

02/12 3:00 PM

Shade Gardening with New Perennials

Speaker: Dan Heims
Room: B 110-112

Learn about the methods of dealing with different types of shade as well as solving the problems of root and light competition. Gorgeous plant combinations are shown with an overview of new perennials and old favorites.

For 33-years Dan Heims has been deeply involved in all facets of horticulture. He is currently the president of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc., a company noted for its new introductions to horticulture. Dan’s articles and photography have been featured in numerous magazines. He has taught horticulture courses, wholesaled exotic plants, and run his own design / build landscape business. He has hosted a weekly radio gardening show and appears on US and British television. Dan’s garden and work have been featured in USA Today, Better Homes and Gardens, Sunset Magazine, and Organic Gardening.

02/12 3:00 PM

How to Grow Heirloom Vegetables: Techniques for Growing Heritage Vegetables Year-Round

Speaker: Bill Thorness
Room: B 113

How can gardeners get an early start on tomatoes and other incredible heirloom vegetable varieties instead of spending big money at the farmers market? Bill Thorness, author of the new book Edible Heirlooms: Heritage Vegetables for the Maritime Garden, shares many ideas and techniques that have worked in his organic Seattle garden. This jam packed session will give you tips for successfully growing Asian greens, unique garlic varieties and a host of winter vegetables that can put local food on your table throughout the year.

Bill Thorness is a garden writer who has been involved in northwest journalism and gardening since the mid-1980’s. A former magazine editor, he is a freelance writer with bylines in The Seattle Times, Seattle Metropolitan and is publications editor for Seattle Tilth. He is also the author of Biking Puget Sound, a road cycling guidebook. Bill is also a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Independent Editors Guild and Garden Writers Association.

02/12 3:30 PM

Shrubs that Carry the Garden from Summer to Fall

Speaker: Roger Gossler
Room: B 117-119

Summer and autumn blooming shrubs aren’t as well known as their spring blooming brethren. Roger shares a palette of shrubs that are the bones of the high season and fall garden with many blooming over a long period.

Roger Gossler has had a lifelong interest in plants. He can usually be found at family run, Gossler Farms Nursery in Springfield, Ore. The nursery specializes in magnolias, winter-blooming trees and shrubs, and many other beautiful plants including some unusual perennial plants. Roger is a life member of the Magnolia Society, member of American Rhododendron Society, Hardy Plant Society of Oregon, Willamette Valley Hardy Plant Group (board member) and the Royal Horticultural Society. He has lectured across the nation, including Horticulture magazine’s winter lecture tours, the Arboretum of Delaware College, University of Washington Arboretum, and the California Horticultural Society.

02/12 3:30 PM

Containerscaping Indoors and Out

Speaker: Steve Varga and Quinn Randall
Room: B 116

People spend a great amount of time indoors or on their patio. Containerscaping is a great way to bring exciting plants indoors or to get interesting vegetation closer to your outdoor living space. We will demonstrate and discuss container choice, soil and drainage, choosing plants with matching colors and textures, fertilization and drip irrigation and tropical plants that do well indoors and out. Slow-growing conifers, maples and other exciting and reliable container plants will also be noted.

Steve Varga has been in the horticulture industry for over thirty years. He is a graduate of Colorado State University with a bachelor’s degree in Ornamental Horticulture and specializes in the care and selection of ornamental trees and shrubs, natural pest control and fertilizer products, plant health care methods, and pruning.

Quinn Randall is a graduate of University of California at Davis with a B.S. in Environmental Planning and Management. She has been in the horticulture industry for over twenty years. Quinn specializes in container plants, tropicals, and architectural design as it relates to landscaping.