The 6th Annual Normandy Park Garden Festival

The barbecue is firing on all gas cylinders once again for the 6th annual Normandy Park Garden Festival on Saturday, July 8th, 2017! None other than world-renowned plantsman Sean Hogan will be our keynote speaker talking about his favorite plants to grow in our quasi-Mediterranean climate. Invite your friends and neighbors, bring the kids, and clear some space in your trunk for some of Sean's irresistible plant selections.

It's 100% free - see ya'll there! 

BIG thank you to Teresa Savage, CRPC Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. for helping sponsor this event!

Date: Saturday, July 8th, 2017

Schedule:

11am - Plant sale & gardens open
High noon - Lunch is served
1pm - Sean Hogan's talk
3pm - Plant sale ends

Please park at Marvista Park and follow the signs to the festival from there!

There is no tour on July 31st!!!

The post about the garden tour was for LAST year - sorry for the confusion! The NHS Meet the Board tour this year is on Sunday, August 13th, 2017. Join NHS for more info!

The 5th Annual Normandy Park Garden Festival

It's happening! The 5th annual Normandy Park Garden Festival will be held on Saturday, July 9th from 11-3 in the Galicic garden. Stop by and tour the gardens & plant sale all while nibbling on a crowd-sourced lunch way better than what you would probably be eating otherwise. We scaled things down a bit this year with no garden talk, but everything else is firing on all cylindars! Free as always. Hope to see you there!

Note: If you're going to be driving here, please park on the WEST side of the street (our friendly neighborhood officer loves to ticket law-breaking savages who park on the sidewalk). You can also park at Marvista Park and follow the ample signage to the festival from there.

For questions, please contact Justin Galicic at jgalicic@gmail.com.  See you there!

Life in the Amazon

Walking down to Pike Place Market a few weeks ago, I noticed they finally took the fencing down from the first building in the new Amazon mega campus.  So I took a little stroll through.  Their selection of plants had me salivating.

My first thought was someone who really likes Dan Hinkley designed the landscaping.  I later found out that he was hired as a consultant for the project.

Looks like Holboellia coriacea, Beesia deltophylla, and Adiantum venustum

This Holboellia vine, located directly in front of a heat exhaust vent, was already strutting its fragrant flowers.

There were lots of nooks and crannies filled with interesting plants.  Because of the towering canopy of the skycrapers, all of the plants here are adapted for shade.

This looks like Disporopsis, Disporum, and Beesia.  

Evergreen hydrangea relative Dichroa febrifuga

Close up of Dichroa febrifuga's metallic-purple berries

Can't wait to see how these plants naturalize together

Not a doggie toilet!

I can't say it's all good.  I want to like this plant's blackness but seeing it here finally made me realize it's just not black enough to qualify as a black plant.  I guess it's still slightly better than an azalea.

Coprosma 'Black Cloud'

Just across the street, construction is well underway for the greenhouse that will house more tropical plants.  I have been told that some plants that are outgrowing the conservatory at the Rhododendron Species Garden in Federal Way will move here.  At the rate it's going I'd say they should be done with it by summer.

Apparently we can grow watermelons!

If you live in Miami, Los Angeles, or Phoenix, you probably don't care that us Seattle folk just celebrated our 13,232nd minute of 80° (26.6°C) temps or higher this summer.  Well it's a big deal to us and this being our hottest summer ever in the Pacific Northwest, I can finally say that I have successfully grown watermelons:

Watermelon 'Sunshine'

The watermelon vines love basking up the heat stored in the rocks I made for them.

And cantaloupes and eggplants too:

Cantaloupe 'Sarah's Choice' & Eggplant "Little Fingers'

This is a practically instant castor bean forest.  There will be plenty of seeds to share!

Ricinus communis 'Carmencita'

I was floored to see Gloriosa rothschildiana come back to life.  It didn't pop up out of the ground until mid-June but it has been making up for lost time, completely devouring this magnolia tree.

Gloriosa rothschildiana

Another unlikely survivor is this Alocasia.  It was planted in the ground last summer and left for dead when winter came.  It obviously thought differently.

Alocasia (unknown species)

Our peach tree has produced about 80 pounds of peaches - the most ever.  This one is a cultivar named 'Frost' which doesn't have the most spectacular taste but makes up for it by being resistant to peach leaf curl.

Peach 'Frost'

We're lucky to see crape myrtles bloom in September around here in a normal year but this year they're a month ahead of schedule.

Unknown crape myrtle & Rose 'Just Joey'

As are the grapes.

'Lakemont' seedless grape

I guess it's a good sign if the fish are always begging for food.

Thanks for reading!  I'll do my best to not go more than three months before the next post.