Gardens just right for four-legged friends

Coming June 25th to Garden University: "Pet Friendly Gardens" with Anne Taylor and Melinda Frey

Join landscape designers Anne Taylor and Melinda Frey for a discussion on adapting your garden so that it can be a safe and inviting space enjoyed by your family - including your pets! We’ll address frequent challenges that occur with pets and offer solutions.

Saturday June 25th at 1 p.m.

NOTE: the location of this lecture has been changed to the Education Center

Tickets: $15 non-members (includes Garden admission); Free for Garden members

About our speakers:

Anne Taylor is originally from Wisconsin with an in-born interest in nature. This interest is the reason she started her company Living Elements Landscape. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin. After moving to Portland, she received an Associate of Applied Science in Horticulture. Anne is a licensed landscape contractor, a certified arborist, landscape designer, an organic gardener and animal lover. Through her business Anne shares her skills, beliefs, and obsessions with everything green.

Melinda Frey established Raindrop Garden Design in 2006. A gathering of influences have led Melinda to garden design. Growing up in a family where art and the creative process were encouraged as a means of expression, each member took a slightly different route. Countless hours playing and exploring in her childhood home’s garden left a lasting impression on Melinda beginning a lifelong passion for plants and a love of gardening. A healthy respect for nature also developed early on, exploring the wonders of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

After studying photography at Brookes Institute, Melinda spent many years in the photographic industry developing a strong sense for composition, color, texture and flow, and now borrows from this skill set to visualize and design gardens.

As a lifelong pet owner, Melinda has shared her garden with numerous dogs over the years, implementing pet friendly gardening techniques. Her home garden has adapted to their best friend’s needs as well as being beautiful and inviting surroundings for all who use the garden. In 2009, Melinda launched a collaborated project with friend and associate Anne Taylor to share information and techniques that have worked well in our personal gardens with our own pets. The presentations we offer become as much of a learning experience as a teaching format.

More ideas about designing pet friendly gardens:

http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Gardening/Archives/2009/Create-a-Dog-Friendly-Wildlife-Garden.aspx

Conifers to fit any location

Up next in the Garden University series:

Small Trees for Small Spaces

June 11, 2011 at 1 p.m.

Education Center

Tour of Conifer Garden to follow

The Lecture:

Exciting new conifer cultivars provide designers and garden enthusiasts with a whole new palette of textures, shapes, and colors for creating year-around garden interest.

As a professional garden designer and current President of the Association of Northwest Landscape Designers (ANLD), Anne Marsh will show through slides some of these new and unusual conifers being used in Portland gardens, discussing issues such as placement and objective. At the same time, Dave Leckey, a grower of mature small conifers, will discuss and have examples of these same conifers on display. Between Anne and Dave, the audience will be able to see the plants, learn of their characteristics and growing needs, and get ideas on how to successfully place them in garden situations.

The Speakers:

Anne Marsh has over 35 years of experience in plant selection and garden design and is the President of the Association of Northwest Landscape Designers (ANLD). Anne’s company, Marsh & Fear Garden Solutions was created by Anne and her partner, Gary Fear, about 9 years ago after transforming their own garden in SW Portland. They welcome the public to visit their garden each month from April to August. Open garden dates are available at www.marshfear.com For more information about the ANLD, visit http://www.anld.com/

David Leckey has put his lifelong passion for energy conservation and earth-friendly practices into use in his business, Oregon Small Trees Nursery. The nursery, located west of Wilsonville, specializes in mature, slow-growing, low-maintenance, container- grown conifers and Japanese maples. David has also either written for or been featured numerous times in publications including Fine Gardening magazine, The Oregonian, and Digger magazine. Dave’s nursery is open to visitors by appointment at www.oregonsmalltrees.com

Ciscoe Morris speaks at The Oregon Garden this week!

Don't miss this opportunity to get some great garden design ideas and to ask your gardening questions! Ciscoe Morris will be speaking at the next Garden University program May 21st at 2 p.m. at The Oregon Garden.

Learn more about Ciscoe at his website, Gardening With Ciscoe

Another garden project from Ciscoe:

Spuds taste best when you grow them in a garbage can.

Kids and adults both love growing potatoes in a garbage can. Begin with a clean 15 gallon can and punch lots of holes for drainage in the bottom. Locate the can in full-sun and fill it with 6 inches of potting soil. Plant the seed potatoes just below the surface and make sure they are completely covered with soil. Either mix in an organic vegetable fertilizer or feed every two weeks with a soluble houseplant fertilizer. Water the spuds and in no time the vines will begin to grow.

When the vines grow about 4 inches, cover all but the top inch with a growth medium such as soil, compost, woodchips or straw. Water as necessary to keep the soil moderately moist, and continue the process of covering the vines until they grow out of the top and the can is completely full. Soon the potatoes will bloom. At this point you can reach and feel around for potatoes. If you find some good sized ones, bring them in and cook them up.

These are new potatoes, not long lasting, but they taste great, especially if you follow Julia Child's advice and add more butter! If you wait until the vines die back in fall, you can store your potatoes for a long period. This is the real fun. Make sure the kids are present before you dump the can to check out the bounty. It's always a surprise. Once I only got 8 potatoes, but the biggest one was the size of a Volkswagen bug! Another time I harvested 55 delicious, good-sized spuds. Buy an extra big plate, just in case you grow a Volkswagen.

Garden tips from May speaker Ciscoe Morris

On May 21st, radio and television personality Ciscoe Morris will be speaking at Garden University program "Spice Up Your Garden with Environmentally Friendly Design Ideas" Join us at 2 p.m. in the Education Center to hear Ciscoe's fun and interactive talk. Book signing to follow.

Here are a few tips from Ciscoe:

Outwit apple pests

When you bite into an apple and a worm smiles back at you, the extra protein is complements of a codling moth. If, on the other hand, you’re greeted by the smiles of several half-maggots, you’ve just snacked on apple maggots. My best efforts at using environmentally friendly methods, from sticky traps to spraying clay, to control these pests have failed miserably, and every year most of my apples end up a gourmet treat for my neighbor’s horse. Now there’s a new, natural way to control these pests and That is 100% effective against apple maggot and fairly successful at preventing coddling moth as well. You simply place a pantyhose footie around each apple when you thin your fruit in early spring. You don’t need to tie a knot.

Simply stretch it over the fruit making sure the apple ends up in the middle. Footies won’t harm your apples. They breathe, don’t absorb water and expand with the apple as it grows. The only problem I've found is that you get slightly more apple scab on susceptible trees. To prevent expensive visits to the relationship counselor when your better half discovers that all the feet have been cut off her nylons, buy them by the box from your local nursery or at http://www.homeorchardsociety.org/fruitsoxs/

Berry Pruning Demonstration April 9th

Garden University presents "Twigs & Berries: A Pruning Demonstration" with Dawn Hummel on Saturday April 9, 2011.

Raspberries, huckleberries, blueberries, strawberries - oh my!
Dawn Hummel will teach you how to take care of cane bearing fruits in small, urban gardens.

Class begins at 1 p.m. in the OSU Room of the Pavilion. Tickets and Will Call are located in the Visitor Center.

Tickets:

$15 non-members, includes Garden admission

Free for Garden Members

Contact Beth Maurer at 503-874-2533 for ticket information.

Tips on Container Gardening from Ellen Zachos

Container gardening isn't any more difficult than traditional, in-ground gardening...it's just a little different. All those differences make sense when you stop to consider the reduced volume of soil in which you're asking your plants to grow. Think about it: in the ground roots have almost unlimited space to reach out for water and nutrition, not to mention plenty of insulation from extremes of heat and cold. In containers the volume of soil is greatly reduced. It's the gardener's responsibility to make up for that shortfall by increasing attention paid to watering, fertilization, and climate extremes.

Some plants grow better than others in containers, and while limiting their root size may inhibit top growth, that's not always a bad thing. For example, you can have a perfectly happy crabapple tree in a container. It may never get to be 20 feet tall, but a crabapple in a 30" square container can easily grow to 10 feet with excellent flower and fruit production. Don't let the lack of a big yard hold you back. You can pack a lot of punch into a container garden.

Ellen Zachos coming to The Oregon Garden!

Don't miss this great opportunity to make your garden containers stand out!

Author and gardening professional Ellen Zachos will be at The Oregon Garden on Saturday March 26th. She will be conducting a hands-on workshop in the morning, then presenting a lecture in the afternoon. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Workshop: Annuals for an Indoor/Outdoor Show

Many of our best loved houseplants and favorite summer annuals are actually tropical plants, so why not make the most of this happy coincidence? Plant a mixed container of gorgeous tropicals that looks great indoors, when the weather is cool, and is equally happy outdoors when the temperatures get up into the fifties. Learn about the thriller-filler-spiller principal and how to care for your container garden throughout the growing season. Participants each take home a planted container.

10 a.m., J.Frank Schmidt Jr. Pavilion

$35 non-member; $30 member

Lecture: Professional Tips for Impressive Containers

Not every plant grows well in containers. This lecture focuses on perennial and annual plants, as well as trees and shrubs that are especially well-suited to container growing. We'll also discuss container construction materials, light-weight potting mixes recommended for containers, and their unique fertilization and watering requirements. Book signing to follow.

1 p.m., OSU Room, Pavilion

$15 non-members (includes Garden admission); Free for Garden Members

Ellen's book, Down & Dirty: 43 Fun & Funky First Time Projects & Activities to Get You Gardening, will be available at the Visitor Center Gift Shop.

About Ellen:

Ellen Zachos is a garden writer and photographer, a garden designer and an instructor at the NY Botanical Garden (NYBG), where she teaches classes on perennials, annuals, container gardening, rooftop gardening, tropicals, and orchids. She is a Harvard graduate, and has received certificates in horticulture and ethnobotany from the NYBG. Ellen is the author of three books: Down and Dirty: 43 Fun & Funky First-Time Projects & Activities to Get You Gardening, Tempting Tropicals, and Orchid Growing for Wimps.

Ellen is the proprietor of Acme Plant Stuff, a garden design, installation, and maintenance company in New York City. She is also a former Broadway performer and recently released her first CD, entitled Green Up Time. On this recording, Ellen combines her two passions, plants and music, for a Botanical look at Broadway.