Garden On, Vashon

I’ve been trying to get to the garden club lately in an effort to meet more gardeners and discover what the club has to offer. So before I reveal at length this year’s winners of their annual awards, let me just announce:

2009 Garden Club Award Winners

Len & Nancy Wolff , Mike McKelvey & Bea Johnson, and  John & Colleen James, whose garden is featured below. I’ll interview the other gardeners in the weeks ahead.    

The James Garden

This garden is on the Burton Loop; the property slopes down to the front of the yellow Victorian house, which faces south.  John & Colleen James moved here from Gig Harbor in September, 2005. “It was a blank canvas, kinda nice because it was just grass, mostly dead by then.”

They stripped away all of the grass on the slope leading down to the house and smothered what remained over the following winter with layers of cardboard and compost mulch. Later, they brought in several truckloads of compost plus more loads of 3-way Mix (compost, sand, and manure) to add to their sandy soil. 

What’s really impressive here is the depth of the beds—but that’s what you’ll get when you replace a lawn with perennials. Here’s a view across the house front, looking from east to west.

 Standing tall above the perennials is a grafted salix integra (dappled willow), which she said “isn’t too happy: it wants more moisture.” Calendula have scattered themselves throughout the garden; she makes a medicinal salve from it and sells it at the Farmer’s Market.

Here’s the view from the opposite side, looking back east: note that dappled willow and flax in the upper-left corner, and the plentitude of plantings: calendula, hardy geranium, lilies, poppies, dahlias, mexican hair grass, lavender, echinacea—even, I believe, a eucalyptus in the background.

 Surprisingly, despite the slope’s 10-15 foot drop from the road, the only terracing is at the bottom, where a 2′ cobblestone wall holds the toe of hill up off a front patio.

Because this slope leans toward the north, larger plants overshadow smaller ones. So, Colleen has come to specialize in shade plants for her market offerings. One of her favorite plantings is this shade-happy arrangement of erigeron, pulmonaria, spurge, and royal fern in the dappled sunlight. Beautiful!

She also knows a lot about deerproof plants, recommending “ligularias, hostas, japanese forest grass, some really wonderful ferns like Royal Fern and Japanese painted fern, also sweet box (sarcococca). Below is such a pairing in a pot, demonstrating her penchant for high-contrast plantings: a towering, deep-burgundy ligularia underplanted with japanese forest grass. They’re happy together because both like moisture and shade.

And here’s more color play, this time with black-eyed susans against blues and silvers, the purple of smoke tree and the silver architecture of a cardoon.

Colleen uses pots frequently; here a massive, robin’s egg blue pot studs the flowery haze with something sold, substantial.

The foreground alliums are actually garlics: “I bought them at the grocery, plugged them in during fall, and they are wonderful. They last longer than allium globemasters: it’s December and they’re still standing.” Butter-yellow Cape Fuchsia glows on the right.

She accesses her deep beds with meanders of stepping-stone paths surrounded by ajuga (bugle) seen here in the foreground below the calendula. She cuts the bugle back in high summer to keep the stones in view. 

Colleen James spends a lot of time in her garden. And she’s become a Master Gardener, a plant vendor on Saturdays, and does some garden design consultant “to help people create something wonderful.” 

Here’s her front entrance pergola, which directs visitors toward the “real” front door (there was some confusion!) and provide some privacy when she wants it. John James laid the flagstone walkway and stairs.

And finally, a last look across the front yard of this talented plantswoman, Colleen James.