99 Nursery Hop, Skip & Jump
April 12, 2024
101 Pots Make a Makeover
August 30, 2024
Northwest Garden Nursery
86813 Central Rd, Eugene, OR 97402 • (541) 935-3915
C an you believe my 100th blog post is here?! Kudos to all of you readers who have tolerated me for so long on this adventure. We’ve shared plenty of laughs and eye-rolls, but I hope my posts have helped fertilize your plant passion.
If you are hopelessly plant-love afflicted like I am, there is no cure. The only thing you can do for it is go plant shopping! So if my posts have been therapeutic for you, I’m glad. They have been for me!
For this milestone post, I’m sharing a visit AP and I made recently to a nursery where no one can do any shopping.
But it brought me to tears.
I mentioned Northwest Garden Nursery in post #29 Hello, Hellebores where I featured some of the 25 Hellebore varieties I have in my garden. Here are 6 of mine in bloom…
I love love love Hellebores but have pinky-sworn that 25 varieties is enough for me. Though you know how pinky-swears go….one day I will run across a new Hellebore that I must have and all my other fingers will grab it up!
Before 2023, Northwest Garden Nursery was the premium Hellebore grower in the country and the top creator of new Hellebore varieties.
I’ve mentioned how AP and I tried every February for 8 years to travel there for the annual open house when they let you walk through the gardens to see all the fabulous Hellebores in bloom.
Sadly, my work got in the way or seasonal storms prevented travel over the mountains to Oregon, and we never made it there.
In 2023, Northwest licensed its heritage Hellebore breeding program to Little Prince Nursery, moved everything there, and discontinued the annual open house. So sad!!
However on a recent 4-day nursery trip to Oregon, AP and I revisited 11 nurseries from previous travels plus 3 we had missed on those trips.
One of the 3 was Northwest Garden Nursery!
(It chaps my hide when we miss nurseries for whatever reason. My brain obsesses over all the fabulous plants I imagine got away from us!)
Before this trip, as usual, AP and I diligently confirmed which days and hours Northwest and all the nurseries would be open so we could efficiently visit all 14 in 4 days (including travel days) and not waste a minute of precious plant ogling.
When we don’t confirm days and hours in advance, this happens…
Well, best intentions, right? On our visit to Northwest Garden Nursery, what did we find? A closed gate!
Northwest is located outside Eugene, Oregon on a narrow country road. When we got to the entrance and the map woman said “You have arrived,” my foot was still on the gas—no time to brake and turn in.
Good thing too. As we passed, I noticed if I had turned in we would have rammed into the closed gate located just a few yards in, and the back of my van would be sticking out into the road.
I felt so annoyed as I pulled over. And my heart sank…this was the nursery we most wanted to see.
I grabbed my phone and proceeded to call the nursery number. Maybe someone had forgotten to open the gate.
No answer. I went to their website to check if we had our days and hours wrong.
“Does it say they’re supposed to be open?” asked AP.
“Yeah,” I said. “But seems they ain’t!”
Maybe when they gave up their Hellebore program they permanently closed but had not updated their website. Grrrr!!
This nearby sign gave me hope though…
That’s a Northwest Land Conservation Trust guarantee. I hoped it meant that Northwest would never close permanently to the public.
AP and I are NOT ones to sit wondering what to do, and we don’t easily give up. So I drove back and turned slowly into the short drive and right up to within an inch of the closed gate.
And, voilà, thank the god of motion sensors, it opened!
Felt like the gates of heaven were inviting us right in.
Off to the right sat a charming house, but a sign pointed the other way to “Nursery.”
There wasn’t a building in sight that looked like a nursery, but we followed the arrow and parked.
An older gentleman had seen us and was walking our way. He noticed the company name on the side of my van: Xscape Gardens: Consultant, Designer, Installer.
I lowered my window and said, “Hi. We’re here for the nursery.”
“No, sorry,” he said. “We’re retired now.”
I saw that I would need to use my power of persuasion, so I launched into our story about how we had tried to come every February for 8 years but each time storms got in the way or other such things that kept us from being able to make the trip, blah, blah, blah…
(No, Reader, this is NOT where I came to tears to make the nice gentleman feel sorry and let us in!)
He said, “Well the nursery is gone. We closed permanently. But you’re welcome to stay and have a walk through the gardens.”
Yes! I literally flew out of the van, and AP climbed down more nimbly than I’d seen in a while.
Even though this wasn’t Hellebore bloom time, we both felt giddy and lucky to finally see the garden we’d dreamed about for so long.
Plus, with no one else in sight, we’d have the place all to ourselves!!
We saw a new dry garden installation underway near where I parked. Beyond that a gate led to the main garden.
Take a look at that fence. Beautiful!
Inside the gate we turned onto a pathway where every step we took led us to beauty after beauty…
Now let’s cry.
Planting to create contrast is one of my top goals and a favorite way to design. Everywhere I looked in this garden was a masterclass of plant placement and leaf-color combos.
Look at these gorgeous yellow leaves…
Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’ (Tiger Eyes Sumac)
And this yellow-chartreuse shrub…
Calluna vulgaris ‘Firefly’ (Heather)
I love heathers but am just too cold at my place to grow them. I have tried again and again! Hopeless.
We came upon a plant I featured in #20 Fabulous Fall Foliage that I bought in 2016 at Home Grown Gardens in Corvalis…
Berberis thunbergii ‘Bailerin’ (Limoncello Barberry)
During its growing season—and especially in the Fall—it is one of the most spectacular plants in the garden.
You can find this Barberry in almost every nursery in Oregon but never have I seen it offered in California. Lucky me!
Okay, I have tried 3 times to grow this Daphne…
Daphne burkwoodii ‘Briggs Moonlight’
On my most recent try, it lived for a year—probably because I ignored the damn thing. Then death.
I’ve talked to other growers and nursery owners and they’ve all given up on Briggs Moonlight. But look at it there. That pale silver-green color. Crap….so lucky!
Now here’s something my husband would do to save an old tree…
How simple and elegant is this…
Carex testacea (Orange New Zealand Sedge)
Midway through our stroll the path led behind the house we’d seen when we drove in. We saw a woman there weeding the garden…
I thought we may be intruding so I asked if it was okay if we continued on through.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
I asked, “Are you and the gentleman we met at the entrance the owners here?”
“We are,” she said. “I’m Marietta. That was my husband, Ernie.”
We chatted awhile and, as one garden-passionate person to another, I found her fascinating.
I said, “I bet you’ve been working this property for over fifty years.”
“Yes, fifty-five years,” she said.
I knew it. You don’t get deep, mature beauty without years of blood, sweat and tears plus a whole lotta know-how and love for plants.
She told us her main challenge with the garden is water, water, water. Their 3 wells provide less than optimal pressure, so watering takes forever.
The irrigation system mainly uses 4-foot high overhead popup sprayers. She runs each one for 2 hours on a fine mist so the plants don’t droop from heavy drops.
“I lie awake at night too often,” she said, “going over the day making sure everything got watered!”
Gardens can be exhausting in so many ways.
Here’s the book the couple wrote together…
It’s a good read and makes a wonderful coffee table book.
After 55 years, and just a few weeks prior to our visit, Marietta and Ernie had finally been able to take a vacation. They went hiking up in the Cascades.
Now these two must be well into their 80s and are in excellent health. I’m a fair bit younger and pretty sure I would not survive hiking the Cascades!
Two employees come in twice a week to help the couple maintain the garden.
Reader, how would you like to wake up mornings, step outside with a cup of coffee and just sit?…
This is where I turned to AP and said, “I think I’m going to cry. It is so beautiful.”
And I did a little.
This next view is of the east side of the house…
It obviously receives shade. So pretty.
And there’s a pond!
You know how I love me some garden art!…
She looks like she’s pruning! How clever is that?
And this?…
At first glance, he looked real to us!
AP and I agreed that our visit to Northwest Garden was the highlight of our 4-day trip. Thank gawd we didn’t give up, and that my van was too long and the driveway too short so the automatic gate opener got triggered.
Otherwise, we would have missed one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever visited.
On the occasion of my 100th post, Dear Reader, I wish you could have witnessed the beauty of it with us.
You would have had tears on your cheeks too.
