It was snowing when I left Queen Anne hill on Friday morning, but the sun beamed through before I'd reached Vashon Island. I was scouting a story about the Vashon garden tour (June 27 & 28). Organizers have recruited some very special gardens this year - stay tuned for a story and photos in Pacific Northwest mag in early June.
Vashon Island is gorgeous this time of year - pastures full of pygmy goats, horses, and llamas, sweeps of fruit trees in hazy white and pink bloom. Here are a few of the spring sights, and a teaser for the garden tour....
If you think you're behind on pruning back your lavender, imagine the task ahead of this Vashon gardener with an entire front landscape of lavender....
A labyrinth in tour chair Anita Halstead's front garden - what a great way to cover the ground
I wonder if gardeners on Vashon realize how lucky they are to have such a stylish and well-stocked nursery as DIG Floral and Garden, which is one of my favorite nurseries anywhere....Proprietors Sylvia Matlock and Ross Johnson have created a destination full of cool plants and clever ideas...here are a couple of DIG scenes: a water feature made of sewer pipes, and a little outdoor seating area on gravel - shows that a great outdoor rug can create a comfy scene just about anywhere...
Narcissus in full bloom, and one of many pebble mosaics in one of the tour gardens.
I drove past DIG four (!?!) times during the past few weeks and never had time to stop. Agonizing! I love that place. I was somewhat concerned to see a realty sign on the property - do you know if they're selling up, or was that unrelated? I had one of those plastic rugs in my hands once last year but ended up putting it back. Now we're maybe re-purposing some pea gravel from paths into a seating area and of course I wish I'd bought it now!
Posted by: Karen | June 07, 2009 at 11:01 PM
Hi Kelly,
I think you should return those plants to the nursery where you bought them - they certainly shouldn't look pale and droopy, and the soil shouldn't smell nasty.
If you do try to salvage your Spanish lavender, plant them in full sun and well-drained soil. Loosen the too-tight rootball, or score the sides of it, and when you settle them into the garden be sure and water them in well.....they may well recover, but they've certainly had a setback....hope you can return them and get a healthy batch...
Best regards,
Valerie
Posted by: valerie Easton | May 13, 2009 at 02:35 PM
Hi I live in Berkeley, CA (near San Francisco) and I bought some spanish lavender. When I took them out of their pots, the bottom of the roots and soil fell off and smelled badly. I'm guessing they have root rot. The remaining roots are tightly packed to the soil. Before I repot them, should I try to loosen the packed soil from the remaining roots? Should I cut some of the roots off, if so how much do I cut off?
How do I tell if the lavender is dead? The flowers looked healthy when I bought them. They had beautiful dark purple flowers, but now, only a week later they have lost their color and are drooped over. Is this normal for them to do what they're doing?
I hope you can help me. I bought about 20 of these and all of them have the same problem.
Posted by: Kelly Tiedemann | May 13, 2009 at 01:59 PM