Neighborhood Gardens of Portland Part IV: Springtime Edition

It's time for neighborhood gardens of Portland again! We've been on a few neighborhood walks recently, one of which took us by one of my favorite gardens that I originally wrote about last July. 

Designed by Creative Landscapes, I aspire to have something similar but end up cramming way too many plants in my own garden. It looks great for late winter/early spring, I must say, something for me to remember. There's not a lot of difference between these photographs and ones from last July - that is to say this is mostly an evergreen garden. The July post can be revisited here.

A wider shot with the home in the frame. This is facing south with the hell strip in full view. Gravel mulch pulls it all together, while a seemingly simple planting plan is really spectacular, especially when the Zauschneria californica and Penstemon pinifolius really get going in the summer.

Right now everything is just waking up. The wooly thyme as a groundcover in the background is something that requires (through frustrating experience) great drainage and a nice, hot dry site.

Arctostaphylos and Frothergilla major.

Arctostaphylos in full bloom.

Arctostaphylos, and what looks like Yucca rostrata.

Hardy in our climate, it looks great in this setting. Heck, it looks great in most settings.

I believe this is Hesperaloe parviflora with great drainage and a hot south-facing cement wall.

It appears as if the heathers have received their dome haircuts for the year, keeping them in check. Penstemon pinifolius in the foreground, I believe. Another great drought-tolerant evergreen for xeriscaping.

Perfection.

Mahonia nervosa, a native evergreen, and Frothergilla major.

Not far from that beautifully xeriscsaped garden is this lovely place. This is a cool new home with a distinctly Northwestern-feeling landscape.

Native sword fern amongst a sea of sedum.

Japanese maple, some over-exposed candytuft (apologies) and lavender.
Simple and elegant.

Across the street this is a typical Portland cottage garden. Ubiquitous rosemary in the hellstrip (it does quite well there!), trees, bulbs, perennials and ground covers vie for space. Very much like my own garden, i.e., no room!

Farther down the street, spring bulbs brighten up one of my favorite ground cover gardens. The hell-strip on the left is covered in sedums, creeping thyme, Penstemon pinifolius and other low-growing drought-tolerant plants. A real stunner in the long hot days of summer.

When bulbs are massed, it's so much more effective. Don't you agree?

And why did I include a photo of an alley? I just like them.

Here's a bonsai gone crazy.

On the walk home this day, the spring flowers were popping everywhere.

Here's the sign I love to see, the "Pesticide Free Zone" sign. You can buy them here.

A little earlier this season I took a different walk in my neighborhood and took the following photos. I first spotted this lovely hamamelis. Oh, that color.

The formality! I secretly love it. As a child, I always thought I was supposed to live in a home like this. Too many fairy tales, perhaps?

Patterns.

 More patterns.

Another gorgeous hamamelis. The season has long gone, but I must get one.

More patterns.

Here is a phormium that actually survived our PKW, phormium killing winter, of 2013-14.

It's in this lovely hell strip in a fairly new garden not far from our home. It is a new home and started with the required perfectly green lawn. I was very happy to see the owners remove that to plant this, a very happy and quite drought-tolerant garden. The salvia, rosemary, creeping thyme, euphorbias are all well-suited for our Portland summers - much better than plain old grass - and much more interesting and diverse and much less water-required. This will attract more pollinators and birds indeed, so kudos to these gardeners! If you had this blank slate of grass to plant anything you wanted in our zone 8 climate, what would you plant?

That's what's happening this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always, thank you for reading and until next time, happy gardening!