Visionscapes NW Landscape Design

I personally hate this stuff. It destroys the ability of the soil to mingle the organic layers and to be naturally aerated. It also makes the land uninhabitable for overwintering insects (which create the web of life for birds etc). Its use as a w**d deterrent is minimal, since seeds blow in on top of it anyway and root. And in ten years you have a partially decomposed plastic layer of garbage that’s hard to remove and sterile dead soil below. The only thing I hate more is astroturf!

The Pros and Cons of Using Landscape Fabric in Your Garden Landscape fabric is often used to suppress w**ds. Is it worth it? Keep reading to learn the good and bad of landscape fabric.

This post is from a Twitter account based in the UK, but the information applies to us and everywhere. Too much tidiness in our landscapes destroys all the places that pollinators and birds need to overwinter.

Along with "Leave the Leaves" the Xerces Society is asking people who care about our native bees and their survival to "Save the Stems". A lot of our precious native bees overwinter as eggs inside the hollow stems of perennial plants. Consider leaving the stalks through the winter, you can cut the dead flowers off but the stems are hosts. We need to do all we can to encourage our invertebrate friends (basis of our ecosystem) to come back from their current precariously low numbers.

We’ve got quite the bumper crop of Interlaken grapes this year on our arbor. They’re seedless, very sweet, but the skins are pretty tough. Just a cautionary note: while they look really pretty when the clusters ripen, grape vines can be a lot of work to maintain and they’re messy. They drop a lot of litter from flowering through the fall.

Aftermath of a morning of gardening before the heat sets in. Portland this summer has been really hot! Seedling Japanese maple with pretty red-tipped leaves is going to get potted up; lantana as an annual for the butterflies (not very many this summer!);

Backyard arbor recently revamped with privacy panels across the back from Modinex: “Bali” 3’ x 5’, color: charcoal. 80% privacy rating.

Day 2 of Pacific Northwest heat wave. Flowers holding up so far, supposed to have a full week of heat though, it will be hard on everything! Garden gnome hanging by the milkw**d (Asclepias tuberosa) hoping to see some butterflies. Hydrangeas are: H. serrata ‘Preziosa’, H. macrophylla ‘Pia’, and H. m. ‘Paris’.

Beautiful kousa dogwood tree tucked into a front yard on NW 22nd avenue in Portland. Holding its 1000’s of white “petals” out for display on a rainy day.

I just discovered this podcast from Pacific Horticulture that is revelatory if you are a gardener or designer who is serious about creating nature-enhancing designs. https://www.pacifichorticulture.org/podcast/
How to build pocket meadows, the “Keystone Plant Matrix” for your area, why oaks are essential to plant communities even if they’re wind pollinated (think oaks are hosts to scores of larval insects), pollinator-specific plants, and other topics of great interest. Take home: Oak trees! Yes! I recommend to my fellow garden nerds, designers, and rewilders! The future is in our hands…

Saw this on a Twitter account from the UK that I’ve started following called *tlawns and I find the reasons to say no to artificial turf are also completely valid here in the US. There’s no reason to put this garbage into your yard, ever. Period. Be creative and hire a landscape designer to find you an infinitely better solution.

If you're interested in helping conserve and protect monarch butterflies in the western states, here is a link to an organization that is mapping locations of milkw**d plants, the monarchs' host plant, as well as the butterflies themselves. Just take a picture of the plant or the butterfly and upload it along with location information here: https://www.monarchmilkw**dmapper.org

https://www.catssafeathome.org/2021-catio-tour-registration

Register for the 2021 Catio Tour! — Cats Safe at Home Join us IN-PERSON for a fun day around Portland with fellow cat lovers OR explore the catios through the ONLINE VIDEO TOUR. Choose what works best for you and find your inspiration to build your own dream catio!

I’m enjoying the hot pink blooms of Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Cityline Paris’ this week. Photo color is unretouched. Nice compact plant too. ”

The incredible fiddlehead flowers of Phacelia nemoralis, an Oregon native wildflower. While the flowers don’t have a lot of pop to our eyes, they are irresistibly attractive to all kinds of pollinating insects. I purchased these at Sauvie Island Native nursery who call them “Oregon Bees’ Friend” for good reason. They must be loaded with pollen and nectar. Lacy Phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) is showier to our eyes but not necessarily to the bees.

Please be careful if you are sharing or swapping plants this spring not to spread this horrible new worm around. It’s truly awful and no controls are available once it’s in your yard or farm.

Don’t let your plant sale or plant swap pass along an invasive species along with the plant: Jumping Worms are making their debut in Oregon gardens.

Learn how to identify Jumping Worm, how they are spreading, why they are a problem and what gardeners can do to prevent the spread of this invasive species in this new article on our website: https://beav.es/3cB

Jumping Worm is the worm Oregon gardeners DON’T want to see.