Garden of the Month: September 2023

623 Prim Street

Elysian Graham and Lou Martinez bought the handsome house at 623 Prim Street in 2020 and promptly set about re-imagining the front landscape.  This is the Ashland Garden Club’s Garden of the month for September 2023.

They hired Banyan Tree Landscaping and landscape architect Lucretia Weems to do the job.  Among their primary goals were to achieve easy maintenance for their steep yard, conserve water, and be deer resistant.  They also wanted a subtle color palette, but color and interest all year, and to be pollinator-friendly.  They have achieved all this and more.

Only the large sweet gum tree on the left side of the garden and the thicket on the far right side, which is seasonally favored by deer, remain from the original yard.  Overhead sprinklers were replaced by a drip irrigation system.  The rock retaining walls and graceful stairs were added.

Ornamental grasses are highlights at this time of year and on through the winter.  As the homeowners and designers of this garden have done, the Ashland Garden Club urges gardeners to take care in choosing ornamental grasses that are not fire-prone, and to remove dead and dry growth.

The couple handle all the maintenance themselves and, as busy professionals, they are grateful that their yard is so easy-care.  Elysian particularly likes the guara and Lou likes the Japanese maple.

Photos by Lou Martinez

Article by: Ruth Sloan, AGC GOM Committee Chair

Garden of the Month: August 2023

Alicia and Jeffrey Welder had their welcoming house at 98 Westwood Street built in 2015.  The lovely garden that surrounds it was initiated in stages on the bare earth after that, and is now the Ashland Garden Club’s Garden of the Month for August 2023.  Working with Regenesis Ecological Design and designer Jane Alexanderr, the Welders created a space ideal for their two children and animals including two dogs, two cats and four rabbits, as well themselves and visitors.

The entry garden was designed to include a water feature that is audible from inside the house on days when the windows are left open, a graceful curved bench, and one of Alicia’s favorite plants, a weeping dwarf dawn redwood.  The front garden space is meant to resemble a small meadow teeming with life as pollinators enjoy the catmint and salvia while the children are able to spend time playing and observing nature with the many life forms in and around the water.  The front grass areas are seeded with Pro Time’s Fleur de Lawn, which is an eco-lawn designed with OSU for low water requirements.

The backyard is a child’s delight with a large grass area for play planted with JB kevlar tall fescue, grown in Oregon, which tolerates the high traffic of children and pets and is drought tolerant with lower water requirements than traditional lawns.  A small orchard is planted with a variety of apple, pear and peach fruit trees and seeded with the same Fleur de Lawn as the front meadow.  The eco lawn offers additional pollinator support with pink English daisies, Baby Blue Eyes, and sweet alyssum sprouting in the spring.  Alicia and the children love picking the wild flowers from the meadow for May Day crowns and small bouquets.  Tall grasses and wildflowers surround the childrens’ play structure for nature based play with a slackline for added fun.   A gazebo for shade rounds out the backyard space for use year round by the family.  A very large rabbit hutch gives shelter to the children’s rabbits who enjoy the cut grasses and trimmings from the garden and in turn, support the garden growth with plenty of bunny manure.  A large deck graces the back of the house.

There are many flowers throughout the year, including peonies, euphorbias, daisies, iris, germanders, hydrangeas, and hellebores.  The Welders love to watch pollinators hard at work in their garden.  Among the many trees are Seiryu and sugar maples that add vibrant colors in the Fall.

For fire prevention, the Garden Club urges homeowners to check lists of firewise plants to make sure that, like the Welders, they have chosen ornamental grasses that are not especially fire-prone and maintained so that there is not a lot of dry grass at any time.

Taproot Landscaping provides routine maintenance for the Welders and Alicia averages one to two hours per week doing the fine-tuning of the garden.

Red, White & Blue Poster: Happy 4th of July

Post by Goly Ostovar, AGC Member

Rw 1- Red Hot Poker (Kniphofia), Shasta daisy with Two lady bugs

Row2- Red and white Zinnias
Row 3-Forget-me-not, Love lies bleeding (pendant Amaranth)
Row4-Sweet onion head,  Cock’s Comb, (Celosia Cristata)

Garden of the Month: July 2023

500 Holly Street.

Notice the welcoming stone entrance to the garden at 500 Holly Street.  This is the Ashland Garden Club’s Garden of the Month for July 2023, home to Kathy and Stephen French.  

July 2023 photo by Larry Rosengren

A massive redesign of the entire yard in 2009 was conducted by Kerry KenCairn of KenCairn Landscape Architecture, with graceful curved stairs featured in both front and back gardens.

Spring 2023 photo by Kathy French

The Frenches purchased the property in 2021 from Nina and Paul Winans who had masterminded the earlier redesign.  Kathy French especially appreciates the sequential blooming times for different components of the garden which include iris, rhododendron, tulip, and hydrangea.  And both Frenches enjoy the bounty of the many fruit trees that the Winans had specified in working with KenCairn, only two of which were already on the property and now include two apples, pear, sour cherry, and fig.  

Spring 2023 photo by Kathy French

Before the 2009 overhaul, Paul Winans personally dug up many rocks on the steeply sloped lot, which were later incorporated into the retaining walls in back.  Raised beds in the side yard allow for a fine kitchen garden, currently filled with tomato plants and an essential assortment of fresh herbs—including thyme, basil, rosemary, and chives—to season any meal.

Spring 2023 photo by Kathy French

Currently, Rudolfo Ramirez and his crew mow the lawns and do the more routine maintenance.  Kathy French averages about an hour a day more closely grooming the garden.  And Stephen French does the occasional big jobs, including pruning the many trees.

With thanks to Marilyn Love for suggesting this garden.

Article by: Ruth Sloan, AGC Garden of the Month Chairperson