The Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Tree, is the showiest of all cherry trees. It’s light and dark pink blossoms are doubled, so its petal production creates more blossoms than any other flowering tree. Its blossoms are large thick clusters of 3-5 flowers, which look similar to carnations, and loads the tree with stunning flowers! This is an ornamental cherry, so it does not produce fruit. Kwanzan Cherry Trees bloom in April.
500 Parkside Drive
Since 2000, the Ashland Garden Club has been selecting Ashland gardens as Garden of the Month, from April through September. From late fall through early spring, no gardens are chosen because most gardens don’t look very good at that time of year. The garden at 500 Parkside Drive is the exception. It looked good all winter, looks great right now, and is being honored as Garden of the Month for April 2019.
This property is owned by Terry and Barbara Oldfield. This year
they spent the coldest months of the year near grandchildren in Arizona, while
the Ashland house and garden were looked after by family and neighbors.
Terry usually does the garden maintenance. The side and back yards were
designed by Banyan Tree Landscape about three years ago and the front was
designed by Solid Ground Landscape five years ago.
Mostly this garden is attractive because the plants were chosen to look good
all year and/or because of their early- or late-season beauty. Among them
are hellebore, nandina, pieris, and heathers. The colors are especially
nice right now. The plants are also situated nicely, with larger plants
framing smaller plants. In the back yard, a magnolia is blooming now, the
daffodils are just finishing up, and strong shoots herald a lovely display of
peonies in the coming months. There are many comfortable spots to sit and
enjoy the view.
There are surprising features in this yard which are small lawns of artificial turf both on the side and in back. While some Garden Club members applaud its water-wise qualities, artificial turf is not without its detractors, and a garden with fake grass has never been selected as Garden of the Month before. While air pollution caused by power tools to mow, blow, and trim real turf counter the oxygen-providing benefits of real grass, fake grass contains known allergens, potentially harmful substances that leach into the earth beneath it and into waterways from runoff, and is not, at the end of its approximately 25-year life, biodegradable. It’s difficult to remember drought after the wet winter and early spring we have had, but it must be anticipated, and this is certainly one way to maintain an attractive green space.
Article submitted by: Ruth Sloan, AGC Garden of the Month Chairperson
Subtitle: No Longer a Prisoner of Bad Soil
Speaker: John Kobal, Master Gardener
John Kobal uses 30 years of gardening experience and 16 raised beds at home to focus his talk on the benefits of raised beds, how to begin and how to maintain them for maximum production.
Lecture is open to the public
Location: Ashland Community Center 59 Winburn Way, Ashland, OR
Time: 12:30- 1:15pm
Today in the garden: October 2, 2018
Fall Flowers:
Asters – Chrysanthemums – Coreopsis – Salvia microphylla- Dusty Miller
204 Alicia Avenue
You can often tell, just by looking at a garden (house too) that someone artistic lives there. Such is the case at 204 Alicia Avenue which is the Ashland Garden Club’s September Garden of the Month. This is the home of Betsy and her husband Chuck. Betsy is a Crafts Artisan in the costume shop at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They have lived in the home for eight years.
The house remodeling and garden hardscape were a collaborative design effort with James Stiritz of Dragonfly Construction. Wonderful details abound in the decorative fencing, garden screens, and car arbor.
Betsy prefers curves to straight lines in the garden and she is conscious of textures and scale as well as color. Irrigation and original plantings were by Carol’s Colors, but Betsy has moved, replaced, and added to the vegetation in the intervening years. In the summer, she spends a couple of hours a day working in the yard.
The musical notes of a seasonal creek and pond add to the calming ambiance of the backyard retreat.
Among the many interesting plants are a smoke tree, grasses, ferns, spirea, rock rose, morning glory, euphorbia, and eucalyptus. Edibles include plum, cherry, and crabapple.
Article by Ruth Sloan
Photos by Larry Rosengren