The Untended Garden in March!
Excuse the weeds, but the bumbles bees like them.
~Garden and Poster by Goly Ostovar, AGC Member
Garden Poster
Tag Archives: local gardens
Garden Tools
Gardening Tools used and recommended by Ashland Garden Club Members
Japanese Hori Hori Knife: For weeding, digging, cutting roots, dividing perennials, removing plants from pots. Unbelievably versatile!
Nejiri Gama Garden Hoe (Japanese garden hand tool): Narrow end pushes deep into the soil helps with weeding, planting seedlings, aerating the soil, making seed trenches, and breaking up clods & soil.
Hand Plow Ho-Mi Digger (short-handled): A Korean tool that’s an all-around hand-digging tool, useful for planting, weeding, rock-removal and finding irrigation lines.
Kneelon Knee Pads – Flexible, Waterproof, durable, machine washable.
Sheep Shearing Tool: Large long blades are useful for clipping & trimming small shrubs .
Garden Bucket Caddy: Slips into a plastic bucket and holds garden tools.
Long Handle Spading Fork (48″ Handle): Dividing perennials, digging out trees, shrubs & perennials – Easier on the back when using long handle as leverage.
Flexible Buckets: Great for hauling weeds, plants, hand tools around the garden.
Felco Pruners, 2 sizes: Pruning, quality pruner, replaceable blades & parts, easy to sharpen. Right or Left handed offered.
Felco Pruner 7: Ergonomic heavy duty pruner with spinning handle – great for arthritic thumb joint issues.
Florian Ratchet Pruner: Ratchet-cut mechanism increases hand strength, prunes branches up to ¾ Inches in diameter, has a Lifetime Warranty. Right or Left handed offered.
CircleHoe – For weeding & cultivating close to plants.
Hoop Hoe, Stirrup Hoe, Action Hoe – All Similar hoes for weeding around plants.
Winged Weeder, Scuffle Hoe, Triangle Hoe: For weeding, cultivating, edging, aerating and making furrows.
Balling Spade: Ideal for cutting deep and slicing through roots.
Potlifter: Lifts 200 lb – Saves your back when lift pots or rocks.
Pro Potlifter lifts 350 lbs
Leaf Luster Digital Soil Thermometer: to measure Soil temperature for germination and transplanting.
Leaf Luster Soil Tester: Contains tests for ph, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels.
Rapitest PH Meter: Easily checks the pH level of your garden soil and potted plants.
Mico-tip Pruners, aka Floral Pruners: For deadheading & pruning smaller plants & flowers. Fiskar Softough Mico-Tip Pruners: Recommended by Arthritis Foundation – Easy-to-use for people with arthritis or limited hand strength.
Roto Digger Auger: For planting bulbs, bedding plants, seedlings, deep water aeration, fertilizing trees & shrubs.
Corona AC 8300 Sharpening Tool: 5-Inch super carbide file for sharpening straight edge tools.
Fiskars Softouch Weeder (7060) – Ergonomic weeder with forked tip cuts deep to remove weeds by the root.
Yard Butler RKT-1000 Rocket Weeder or Grandpa’s Weeder: Pull weeds from the roots, organic weed control, ergonomic handle, ejector button pops off the weed-keeping your hands clean.
Leaf Rake with longer “York-style” bent tines: Good for scooping leaves, great for cleaning leaves out of ponds.
Tru Temper Narrow Garden Fork D-handle: For digging and mulching.
Tru Temper Miniature Shovel: [Size 27 x 6 x 8.5 inches] For planting bulbs and weeding.
Leaf Scoops: Multi-purpose hand-held leaf scoops.
Corona Clipper Folding Pruning Saw: Sturdy, easy to use, easy to store. Lifetime warranty.
October Color
In the Garden: October 22
Photos by: Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member
October: N. Mt. Park’s Heirloom Garden
Heirloom Gardeners: October in North Mountain Park’s Heirloom Garden
Pictures by Lynn McDonald, AGC Member
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.
