It’s time for a tour… the final weekend of Le Tour des Plants is here and it is a perfect time to head out and visit your local garden center. You can catch a seminar and learn something new, tour a garden or take advantage of some great plant specials. Or you can stop by Cornell Farm and take in their Pansy Festival and help support bee research at OSU (see below). It is sure to be a great weekend for gardeners on this last weekend of summer.

This week we featured...

Cornell Farm Pansy Fest

Pansies, despite the name, are the workhorses of the winter garden. They take a beating and keep on coming back. It is great that Cornell Farm (503-292-9895) has a festival just to celebrate them. We caught up with Deby at Cornell to talk about how important these flowers are to the fall and winter garden. The Pansy Fest runs from the 15th to the 30th of September and has a special benefit tied to it this year. The crew at Cornell has decided that the emergency of the ‘bee colony collapse’ needed to be addressed, so they are donating a portion of their sales from their stock of 35,000 pansies to support bee research at Oregon State University. Pansies are also great because they go along so well with other garden plants. During the festival you can enjoy numerous classes on building winter containers, planting winter vegetables and low maintenance gardening. Now is also the time to cash in those Pansy bucks that you may have received during the past year. So, you can save a bunch of money, support a healthy bee population and bring a pop of fall and winter color to your garden, all in one stop! What is the drawback? Drop by and visit them soon.

Fall Hydrangea Care

Now is the time to start cutting back your hydrangea plants in preparation for winter. We traveled to Hydrangeas Plus (866-433-7896) to get some tips on making those hard cuts to your hydrangeas. This time of year you will start to see the buds for next year’s growth and fall is an excellent time to prune your plants to shape too. Don’t worry about making those hard cuts; you can take off as much as a third of your old wood if you want. Kristin VanHoose showed us where to make those important cuts, but if you still are worried you can give them a call (or drop them a line) anytime. It is also a great way to save the color of summer. Pruning is a great way to bring those blooms you love indoors to enjoy all winter long. It is easy to preserve your blooms by following a few simple steps. First, don’t do it too early, unless you have a preservative handy. The early blooms have more color, but they are also touchy and need TLC and a professional preservative to keep that fresh color. Most varieties will dry on the vine to a nice chartreuse color that can last all winter long. Check the Hydrangeas Plus website for more tips.

Street Smarts

The late summer has a lot of people thinking that the ‘bloom is off the rose’ so to speak. The colors are fading and you may think that the garden is past its prime. But you can regain that curb appeal by following a few simple steps. Patty joined us from Al’s Garden Center (503-981-1245) in Woodburn to talk about how you can add that punch back to your garden again. First look for big bold colors. We found a lot of perennials and semi-hardy plants that can do the trick for the fall season. Next we looked for texture. By mixing different leaf styles and blooms you can add depth and interest to all your plantings. Finally you can look at structure. Tall statuesque grasses mixed with shorter bushy perennials can really draw your eye to neglected areas in your garden. The possibilities are endless. If you are interested in learning more you can check out the Al’s seminar on ‘Street Smarts’ at the Woodburn store as part of their Le Tour des Plants. This weekend also features seminars at the other locations of Al’s including a Canopy of Color featuring Japanese Maples in Sherwood and a class in favorite small shrubs in Gresham. Check out your local Al’s Garden Center for more events and specials.

Jan’s September Tips

The changing of the seasons chased us into the greenhouse for the tips of the month. Jan took us in to show us a bunch of different things she is working on. First we talked about some of the issues you need to pay attention to in your fall garden. Don’t forget about the weeds. Work to control them now and you will have less of them next year. Also, watch your watering. We still haven’t had the soaking rains of fall and your garden could still be dying of thirst if you don’t pay attention. Check it often. Then we moved inside to check out the Tomato from her garden. It was over a pound and looked delicious. It was hard not to take a bite out of it. We also saw some of the early season flower cuttings of some streptocarpus that she did. All it took was a little cutting of a leaf and now Jan has some beautiful blooms that she can take inside and enjoy for the next few months. Finally we checked out the Lemon Grass that Jan has been growing this year. This grass can be cut and pealed to give you a great product to make home-made tea or even lemon chicken. In fact, Kym Pokorny from the Oregonian will be trying out a lemon chicken recipe and if it proves to be successful you will find it here next week! To find more tips for your fall garden you can check out the OSU Extension website.

Fall Berry Plants

The arrival of fall is not a reason to be sad at the loss of garden blooms. For most plants the showy blooms have given way to the resulting fruit from those early season blooms. This bounty of fruit is all over the garden. Lee Powell from Garland Nursery (1-800-296-6601) joined us to share some of the most unusual fruits he could find in the nursery. The first plant he pulled out was the Crabapple ‘Sugar Tyme’. This one had wonderful white flowers in the spring and now it is blessed with a plethora of pinkish to red tinged berries. Next we saw the Chionanthus, or White Fringetree. This one has almost olive looking fruit and is a total reversal from the delicate white lacy flowers in the late spring. We moved to a vine next. This one was the variegated Porcelain Vine ‘Elegans’. The berries on this one range from a red, to blue, to a metallic purple, plus you have the beautiful variegated foliage too! William had a taste of the next plant, the Himalayan Honeysuckle (Leycesteria). This plant has long, hanging burgundy blooms that get a fruit that tastes like burnt butterscotch or caramel. Not so yummy! The next plant is a new introduction, the Vibernum ‘Brandywine’. This one has bunches of pink and blue berries that form in clusters on the plant. Finally we saw the ‘Dr. Seuss’ tree (as Lee called it). This Dogwood called ‘Satomi Red’ has very large berries that start as pink flowers in the spring and end up as large, spiky, edible fruits.

Garland is also part of this year’s Le Tour des Plants, so stop by, check out these unusual fruiting plants and take advantage of the Le Tour activities and specials they have to offer.