@eugeneparnell@mstdn.social
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eugeneparnell

@eugeneparnell@mstdn.social

Sculptor. Garden designer and educator. Tech industry veteran. Bigfoot stan.

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eugeneparnell, to Bloomscrolling
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On Memorial Day, I took a day off from the garden to visit one of the most famous spots in the Cascade range (Washington State) for plant geeks. It's called Perry Creek, about 90 minutes NE of Seattle. A unique coincidence of topography and weather patterns allows about 250 species of native plants to thrive in a small valley. It has a special protected status under the National Forest Service. A meandering plant photo thread.
1/n




Mountain valley, cloudy misty day. A pyramidal peak, snow capped, dominates the horizon. Wooded slopes frame either side of the picture and a trail leads through very mossy rocks into the distance towards the peak.
Trail leading beneath maple trees off into the distance toward the mountain. Moss hangs in curtains from maple branches and more moss blankets the stones I. Either side of the trail. Dappled afternoon sunlight peeks through the trees.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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Other people are going away for the (US) holiday weekend, barbecuing, hiking, whatever. I'm hauling gravel. The garden show is a month from yesterday. The countdown is on! I'm terrible about taking "before" photos but trust me this is a big improvement. And why yes, that is an electric on the right there in photo 1. 5 stars. Would recommend.


A photo looking the other way. A gravel path between a low retaining wall on the left and another one on the right, ferns and shrubs on the right as well. A massive tree trunk in the distance left and a huge ceramic vessel which had been featured in other posts. A blue wheelbarrow at the end of the path.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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If you find yourself in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area this weekend and you're interested in cool plants, come to Blue Poppy Day at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden. Meconopsis 'lingholm', the Himalayan blue poppy, is renowned for its incredible color--and is famously difficult to grow. This place has just the right conditions, and they have thousands! They also have hundreds of species of rhodies in bloom.





https://rhodygarden.org/events/blue-poppy-day-2024/

A Himalayan blue poppy a flower with paper like petals which are sky blue in color, and a yellow center. Photo courtesy Rhododendron Soecies Botanical Garden.
A Himalayan blue poppy a flower with paper like petals which are sky blue in color, and a yellow center. Photo courtesy Rhododendron Soecies Botanical Garden.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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Everyone is talking about this NPR story about USDA hardiness zones shifting. It's a great story and the shift is real and it's evidence-based. But a couple things about USDA zones:
It's based only on the minimum winter temperatures and nothing else. For example my new zone is 9a, which is the same as a lot of Georgia. My climate is nothing like Georgia except for this one statistic.
1/2


https://apps.npr.org/plant-hardiness-garden-map/?name=Seattle&state=WA&lng=-122.351538&lat=47.619335

eugeneparnell,
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USDA hardiness zones part 2:
The average min winter temp is based on the average in the previous period (12 years). So while the average has moved up, temperature volatility is also increasing. Temps jump up and down more. So even though my zone is now 9a, I still need to plant like it's 8b or even 8a because there are still cold snaps down to the same temps. This isn't because the climate isn't warming, it's because the warming is causing more chaos.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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Today in the garden: irises and chickens. Who doesn't love irises and chickens? The chickens are four years old this week (they are all sisters, or half sisters). The irises are at least 20 years old. They came with the house and I've moved them several times before settling on this spot. They're finally doing well here--maybe they like being near the chickens.




A clump of large bearded iris with the same chicken yard just behind it. The same gate as in previous photo is visible on the left. Several irises are in bloom.
Closeup of an iris flower, purple and lavender with yellow patches, in the foreground. Chickens wandering about out of focus in the background.
Another view of several iris blooms.

michael, to nature
@michael@social.tree.dance avatar

as i read up on invasives, murrow's honeysuckle is a bit of an asshole:

"[S]ome studies have led researchers to believe that honeysuckle may release a toxin into the soil from their roots that would harm surrounding vegetation, preventing their growth."

https://www.nps.gov/articles/morrows-honeysuckle.htm

@plants

eugeneparnell,
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@michael @plants This would make a lot of sense. The woods in the US Midwest where I grew up once had an understory with lots of different native plants. Now there's only shrub honeysuckle. Literally it's the only understory plant. That and winter creeper which is just as awful.

timrichards, to random
@timrichards@aus.social avatar

Off on this gorgeous outback train for an excursion today. They don't make them like this anymore.

#Longreach #train #Trains #outback

eugeneparnell,
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@timrichards So it's a train that works like a bus but it's a train? That guy in the front is the driver? Is there a locomotive in the back or is there an engine underneath the car? Whatever it is I wish we had one here.

eugeneparnell,
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@timrichards that's really cool. You know a lot of American cities used to have a streetcar system that went all over. Never as elegant as your machine -- they fell out of favor as automobiles got more common-- they ripped them all up in the 1950s. We could have had cool things like that. But no, the car companies and petroleum companies had other ideas.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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I found the strangest thing in my yard today. A tangle of white ribbon with a monkey-faced key attached. Clearly it didn't belong to anyone in my family and was too far from the fences to be tossed over by a neighbor. I can only imagine that some crow was passing overhead, hauling it back to their nest, and dropped it here.
1/2


eugeneparnell, to gardening
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Buying plants online,:a short thread. There's no substitute for a good plant nursery/garden center near where you live. I'm lucky to have several. But not everyone does, and sometimes if you're after something specific, something rare, you can find what you want online. But will you get what you paid for? Will they survive?

Here's my latest shipment from Far Reaches Farms in Port Townsend, WA. Let's open it and see how it's done.
1/x
#gardening
#gardeningMastodon
#Plants
#horticulture

eugeneparnell,
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Buying plants online, part 2. First, sellers need a license to ship plants across state lines in the US. There are some restrictions state-by-state. This is to prevent invasive species and diseases from spreading. Make sure any online vendor you work with follows these rules. Shipping internationally is even more restrictive, for very good reasons. Sellers on eBay often flout these rules, please don't use them. Ditto with Amazon.
2/x
#gardening #gardeningMastodon #Plants #horticulture

eugeneparnell, to Bloomscrolling
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A walk in the Illinois woods. Since I've been back to see the eclipse with my family, I've been going for walks in the Central Illinois woods and here's some of the fantastic native plants you can see here. First photo: Erythronium americanum (trout lily, the yellow kind). Second photo: Trillium grandiflorum, a trillium much less common around here than the usual red-flowered ones. I see this one in cultivation on occasion.
1/5




A small plant with triangular leaves. They have seems running up their length. In the cemetery is a flower with three long white triangular petals, also with quilted seam like pleats in them, and a bright yellow center.

eugeneparnell,
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A walk in the Illinois woods Part 2. A large (by current standards) patch of mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). My favorites. These once covered acres of Midwest forested bottomland. Photo 2: Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), which will grow readily in a garden setting if you're so inclined.
2/5

A clump of flowering plants. The leaves are large, oblong, and a bit like those of a hosta. The flower stems support groups of blue tubular flowers that flare at the ands like bells. Some have a pinkish blush.

eugeneparnell,
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A walk in the Illinois woods Part 3. A honey locust tree (Gleditsia triacanthos). It has these spectacularly wicked looking thorns, like something more suited to Mordor than the Midwest. Its orangish timber is surprisingly hard, glassy, and rot-resistant, and I've seen it sold as an environmentally friendly alternative to tropical deck woods like ipe and teak. Outside its home range, it can be an invasive pest.
3/5

Wider view of the tree trunk. Even more clusters of huge thorns.
Another closeup of the thorns which sometimes branch into smaller thorns.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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I'm back in Illinois this week to see the eclipse and visit the family homestead so I'll share a pics from my family's native plant garden. When I was a kid all these plants were everywhere in the woods but invasive species have really done them dirty. Fortunately my mom collected starts and now we have them growing where we can look after them. Short thread: first up, Virginia bluebells (mertensia virginica).
1/5




Plant with ovate leaves and a large inflorescence of tubular blue flowers tinged with pink. They flare at the ends like bells.
Plant with ovate leaves and a large inflorescence of tubular blue flowers tinged with pink. They flare at the ends like bells.

eugeneparnell,
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Native spring wildflowers if the Midwest part 2/5. The wake-robin, road shade, or bloody butcher or nowadays just Trillium (Trillium recurvatum). Plants in the genus are found across the northern hemisphere but this the most common in Eastern NA. Only visible for a couple months each year as they go summer dormant. I've been told they can be tricky to establish in a garden (I've killed some myself) and are slow to expand.

A small plant with 3 leaves on a single stem held out horizontally. They have elaborate snake-like patterns on them, dark and light green. In the center is a single upward facing flower bud.
A pair of small plants with 3 leaves on a single stem held out horizontally. They have elaborate snake-like patterns on them, dark and light green. In the center is a single upward facing flower bud.

eugeneparnell,
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Native spring wildflowers of the Midwest part 3/5. May apples (Podophyllum peltatum). Peltatum means "umbrella shaped" and you can see why as they open up. The only North American species in this genus--but there are some truly spectacular related species native to East Asia. Unlike its Chinese cousins, this one is a spring ephemeral and will be gone by midsummer.
3/5

A new shoot of the same plant as previous photo. This one is barely open and looks like a patio or beach umbrella still closed. It has newly emerged from leaf litter.

eugeneparnell,
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Native spring wildflowers of the Midwest part 4/5. Dutchman's breeches is our local name for Dicentra cucullaria, which as you probably tell is close relative of the popular garden plant called bleeding heart. Named because it looks like several pair of baggy knee pants on a string.
4/5

A small plant growing on the forest leaf litter. The leaves are very dissected or lacy. And in the center is a white flower shaped like several pair of baggy bloomers or breeches on a string.

Tattooed_mummy, to gardening
@Tattooed_mummy@cupoftea.social avatar

Just divided my parlour palm. It was about 10 years old and I've pruned a lot of the root too! Hope they all survive.
@plants

eugeneparnell,
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@Tattooed_mummy @plants wow you're gonna have a whole forest soon! They look very healthy

LoraHughes, to gardening
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1st herb robert of the season. I'd never seen these before moving to the UK & immediately fell in love w/both the flower & foliage. What's not to love, right? They do take the run of the place, so I can only let them bloom for so long before time to address that issue. Like dandelions, so many folk view them as weeds, so they're one of my many well loved vices. Dandelions, of course, are another. @gardening

eugeneparnell,
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@LoraHughes @gardening I have tons of these plants in my garden. If they're not in the way of anything I really care about, I leave them to flower and then yank them before the seeds ripen...usually. Sometimes I don't get to them in time. Which explains why I have so many.

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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So this is my next garden project. I'm getting the garden ready to participate in a garden tour later this summer so it's all got to look its best. Wood chips (not bark) make excellent mulch for perennial beds (https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/wood-chips.pdf). I'm a big advocate of Chip Drop (https://getchipdrop.com) but I can't use it because their trucks won't fit into my small front drive. So I'm having a landscaper deliver chips for a fee. They smell AMAZING.
🧵1/4



eugeneparnell,
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Here is an update on mulching. As discussed in the previous post, if there's one gardening axiom I want on my tombstone, it's "no bare dirt"! Mulch is your friend and wood chip mulch has consistently tested the best vs bark, gravel, ground up tires, etc. here are some before and after photos. By June, the chips will have faded to a driftwood silver color.
3/4

The same bed as in the first photo but with orangish brown cedar chips applied to the ground.
A garden bed before mulching. This one has lots of May apple plants and geraniums in it. The ground is a dull gray and silver from the old mulch and some compost.
Same bed as the previous post but with orangish wood chip mulch applied. Much prettier and tidier looking. And the sun has come out!

eugeneparnell, to gardening
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Like a horde of muppet ghosts, the young shredded umbrella plants drag themselves out of the mulch and into the light of day. They'll be almost 3 feet tall by the time they are done. They are my favorite plants to watch emerge from the ground. This clump is almost double what I had last year, which makes me very happy. Syneilesis x media, shade to partial shade zones 7(?) and up.




CharleneTeglia, to random
@CharleneTeglia@mastodon.social avatar

ARGH the worst landscape co in the world is at it again next door. They aim their gas powered blowers at the mulch where bumblees like to nest on my side of the line and bash my Little Gem magnolia with their backpacks and are just the worst. I wish them boils and athlete's foot.

eugeneparnell,
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@CharleneTeglia @Lizette603_23 Oh you have got to be kidding. I would have been livid. I've had that with maintenance workers who were supposed to be in my yard (but not in the garden bed) but not neighbors.

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