Plant Name: Helleborus orientalis ( Lenten rose)
Plant type: Perennial
Height: 12” – 15”
Bloom Time: February to April
Flower Color: Varies – Purple, Whitish Yellow, Whitish Green, Pink, Burgundy
Exposure: Full Sun in Winter, Partial Shade Rest of the Year
Soil Requirements: Well Drained Soil
Water Needs: Medium
Attributes: Early Bloomer, Deer Resistant , Waterwise plant, Long Bloom Season
Note: Mulch to maintain summer moisture
Uses: Borders, Containers, Mass Plantings, Woodland Garden
USDA Zone: 2-10
Tag Archives: Flowers
Horticulture Report: Oakleaf Hygrangea
Plant Name: Hydrangea quercifolia 
Common Name : Oakleaf Hydrangea
Cultivar: Ice Crystal
Plant type: Deciduous Shrub
Height: 3-6 Ft tall – 3-6 Ft wide
Bloom Time: Summer to Fall
Flower Color: Creamy White aging to Pink (clusters of conical shaped flower heads)
Exposure: Sun to Part Shade
Soil Requirements: Acid soil, Excellent Drainage
Water Needs: Low to Moderate ( prefers drier soil after established)
Attributes: Showy Flowers, Interesting Leaves that turn red in Autumn, USA Native, Compact Mounding Shrub, Papery Bark, Multi-Stemmed, Fragrant Flowers.
Note: Will not tolerate “wet feet”. Plant will get root rot very fast if left in soggy soil!
Uses: Woodland Plant, Borders, Group Plantings
USDA Zone: 5-9 ( hardy to -20 F)
By Carlotta Lucas
Garden of the Month: July 2015
Driving past 128 Wimer Street I often admired the beautifully landscaped front garden and the lovely home rising up from the street, but my eyes were always drawn to what lay just beyond the home. A tall deer fen
ce marked the back garden and what appeared to be two “sheep” standing among the roses. I just knew there had to be something special behind that gate.
I met with Cindy Barnard, the owner, and was able to get a closer look at her garden and meet the not-so-real sheep that guard it. What I do know, is that there are no words to adequately describe the beauty of the landscaping or any pictures that can capture what you’ll find there. What I can tell you is that the yard holds two majestic trees – a Coastal Redwood (planted approximately 1906), a Douglas Fir and a stately oak – that have been there for many years. The Conrad and Lavina Mingus home, built in the late 1880’s, and at the time nestled in the middle of a small fruit and nut orchard, was originally designed to accommodate the harvesting.
Cindy bought the home in 2006 and in 2007 began planning an extensive remodel. Joanne Krippaehne (Madrone Architecture, Ashland) was the architect chosen to redesign the home and Kerry Kencairn, the landscape architect, who, with the involvement of Cindy’s son, Seth Barnard of Solid Ground Landscaping, turned this property into the inviting garden it is today. After several planning workshops and sessions, the concept simplified into: “bring the outdoors in and the indoors out.” But, even as the project grew more complex than originally anticipated, it is now easy to believe that Cindy wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
The garden, originally on the Spring 2009 AAUW garden tour, contains a variety of trees and plants – old fashioned quince, a new Asian persimmon and two fig trees, hydrangeas, peonies, berry bushes, roses, hostas and so many others, too numerous to mention. After recently spending winter days at Hidcote garden and Yew Garden in England, Cindy found joy in the winter color included in those beds and, after lawn removal, added a beautyberry bush (genus Callicarpa) to her back garden. A thriving hand-watered vegetable garden and three compost piles take up a sunny location in the back of the property.
Submitted by: Kaaren Anderson
2015: Feast of Will
Every June members of the Ashland Garden Club create 150-180 beautiful Feast of Will table arrangements with flowers cut from their personal gardens. This Lion’s Club’s sponsored event celebrates the seasonal opening of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Elizabethan Theater.
2015 Feast of Will
Garden of the Month: June 2015
The lovingly tended Victoria
n house at 386 B Street, at the corner of Third, is now surrounded by colorful gardens. After purchasing the 1886 house in 2011, the current homeowners replanted the front in 2013 with design and labor by Banyan Tree Landscape and the back in 2014 with partial design and labor by Sage Hill Landscape. But the gardeners who live there are having fun developing the gardens themselves.
The gorgeous colors in the front and side, including an extra wide planting strip 
between the sidewalk and Third Street were chosen to blend with paint colors of the house—blues, pinks, purples, and whites. They were also chosen to provide color throughout the early spring through late fall, with heather blooming first, then lobelia, then phlox, and finally germander and thyme. Dwarf daphne, lave
nder, and Santa Barbara daisy add to the colorful display in season. They have also added trees; peely-bark maple, crepe myrtle, Japanese maple, redbud, magnolia, and dogwood—a few of which are still struggling to get thoroughly established. All of the plantings outside the fence are drought-tolerant and deer-resistant.
There are recirculating water features in front and back, statues of Buddha and Mary, metal sculpture cranes, and other eye-catching elements throughout the garden.
Older, larger trees on the property include box elder, walnut, and cedar. They have added olive trees at the side and back. Near their guest cottage, there is a gorgeous smoke tree (cotinus “Golden Spirit”) in a huge pot with oregano that spills over the side later in the season. In the side-back area executed by Sage Hill Landscaping, they have added arborvitae to increase privacy and also passion vine, pomegranate, Phormium atropurpureum, Stipa tenuissima, hops, Agastache “Firebird,” Salvia “Hot Lips.”
by Carol Walker
Garden of the Month: September 2014
Garden of the Month
: 913 Mary Jane
by Kaaren Anderson
by Kaaren Anderson
Richard Lee moved into the house at 913 Mary Jane and began the first steps to grow plants and landscape the yard, beginning with the foundation plants of nandina, green spirel euonymus, and Oregon grape.
Paige joined him in 2005 and together the couple created the garden you see today. In that year, the front landscape changed dramatically when the house was remodeled. This process created a mound of excess soil which they creatively decided to leave, adding plants that began with dwarf nandina and mugo pines.
Richard installed a 1400 square foot greenhouse in the backyard where he began raising plants from seed, including perennial geraniums which are planted inside the yard as well as on the street side of the photenia hedge. For color they have annual geraniums, hibiscus, dahlias and zinnias, with the zinnias currently reaching a height of 64”. On the street side, also grown from seed, are echinacea and coreopsis. On the mound was added a cercis tree and a bakers Cyprus which is a native tree to the Siskiyou mountains. In front of the picture window is a coral bark maple. Access to TID water for part of the summer helped keep the plants happy and healthy.
In the springtime you will also see columbine, lilies, gladiolus, daisies, crocosmia and camilias, which I know would make the garden even more spectacular than it is now. But though Paige worried that her garden wasn’t at its best, I assured her that even at this time of year, and in one of the the hottest summers on record, it stood out as a jewel.
Thank you Paige and Richard for sharing your garden with us!