Saturday, December 29, 2012

Winter News Letter


庭木 Plantmad Nursery
Guy & Chiyoko Meacham
PO Box 643, Boring, OR. 97009
Tel: 503 970 7065 | Fax: 503 662 7267 |  mail@plantmad.com  |  http://www.plantmad.com



December 29th 2012
A post apocalyptic Winter’s greeting.

Well, since the 12/21/12 apocalypse didn't happen, we have emerged from our bunker & it looks like we are going to have to keep on growing plants for a while longer! We thought that we would celebrate our survival by sending out an updated stock availability list to all of our fellow survivors!

We hope that you have all had a great Holiday Christmas season & like us are looking forward to the New Year. 2012 was a good year for Plantmad Nursery, even though people haven’t exactly been banging our doors down to buy plants we have been able to increase our sales volume again this year & look forward to doing so again in 2013. As our sales increase we are able to add more harder to find & unusual plants to our list. 




We have sold out of a few items already & inventory is low on others but we still do have a good selection of “out of the ordinary” plant material available for sale.

Embothrium coccineum liners are still in good supply, mostly because when our first batch of seed didn’t germinate after 6 weeks I sowed a second batch, then a week later both batches germinated! Grevillea victoriae is also still available, this has been a star performer year after year in our our garden with bright red flowers all winter long.




We have also been able to reduce the price on some of our liners since the Summer list. This includes our selection of Mahonia liners & our Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Ogon’ among others. (If you already have these on order with us we will reduce the price on your confirmations)




A good portion of our business is custom propagation so if there is something that you would like us to produce for you please let us know & we may be able to help you out.

And finally a quick reminder that our most current stock availability list is always available on our web site. This letter can also be found on our website with clickable links to some of plants mentioned here.

Best wishes for 2013.
Guy & Chiyoko Meacham.

The end is nigh!

The end is nigh for our Fargesia nitida 'Ems River'! It's suddenly started flowering. Wells most 'Ems River' has actually already flowered & died. We are hoping ours holds on long enough to give us some viable seed to play with.


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Grevillea victoriae


This plant has been a star performer in our garden for many years. It's been bone hardy for us, never showing any signs of winter damage. It flowers all through the winter months from late Fall to Early Spring & is a Winter favorite of Anna Hummingbirds that live in the garden. Oh & we still have some liners available for sale :^)..

Snow Bananas


December 18th & we still haven't had a killing frost yet this year which means that our Musa basjoo still have leaves on! This is the first time that they have seen snow & they are not happy about it :^)...

Friday, December 7, 2012

Wisteria Liners ready for the off!


We depotted our first order of our grafted wisteria liners today for Winter Shipping. Depotting greatly reduces our customers shipping costs.


New Plants!


We would like to thank Lucile Whitman of Whitman Farms for sharing some of her precious Daphniphyllum macropodum seed with us. We had been looking for some for a couple of years but it's hard to find!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Four Trifoliates!


Comparing the bark on 4 Trifoliate Maples:

a. A. triflorum | b. A. mandshuricum | c. A. griseum | d. A. griseum x nikoense ‘Molly Fordham’

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Snow Poles are in for the Winter!


We never used to put snow poles in our greenhouses, though they are only made out of half inch black pipe the design had been used by several nurseries in the area for over 30 years without a single house being lost. In December 2008 though we had the snowfall from hell with between 20" & 30" of snow falling over a couple of days. Many nurseries in our area lost all their greenhouses some of them large multi span structures that were far more elegant & costly when compared to our simple tunnels. Thanks to Chiyoko's hard work in removing snow we didn't loose of ours but they were damaged. They are now flatter on top than they used to be & so weaker than before. The snow poles are now our bit of added insurance during the winter months!

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Witch Hazels Ready to go!


A contract propagation order for about 25 cultivars of Hamamelis & a few other odds & ends ready for the off!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Kalopanax pictus

(syn. Kalopanax septemlobus)

We are not brave enough to grow this plant for production, Chiyoko draws the line at Mahonia potting! We do have this one growing in the garden though, I think it always looks it's most impressive at this time of year.

A lone flower!


There are many reasons to plant a Disanthus cercidifolius in your garden not least among them being their fantastic Autumn Color. That being said their small flowers are probably not one of the reasons, though when they do flower they give away their identity as members of the Hamamelidaceae. This year we have liners of both the species & the variegated cultivar from Japan 'Ena Nishiki' available.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Manchurian Maple Seeds....


We picked our curious Acer mandshuricum seed this week. The first time I saw this seed was when I ordered it from a seed company & I called them up to complain that they had sent me non viable hollow seed! Despite it's funny hollow looking appearance there are viable embryos in there!

Monday, November 12, 2012

Gunnera manicata


This photo of Gunnera manicata was taken at Dart's Hill Garden in Surrey BC. The two most commonly available giant Gunneras that we see in the PNW are Gunnera manicata & Gunnera tinctoria (syn. Gunnera chilensis). Unfortunately G. tinctoria is often sold as G. manicata & it can be difficult to tell the difference until they flower. A non scientific way to tell the difference is that the inflorescence of  G. Manicata resembles a Bottle Brush while those of G. tinctoria resemble Corn on the Cob! If planted in the same conditions G. manicata will be larger in every way.

Friday, November 9, 2012

A Magpie



One of our new acquisitions this year is this great looking Stachyurus cultivar. We have had it in the garden once before but lost it shortly after planting. If this one does well liners liners will show up on our stock availability list in a year or two!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight'


We have Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight' back in production again this year. Here are our liners showing some lovely Fall Color.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

A great Maple by any name!


This is a very old Japanese cultivar but still a great plant that isn't widely available or known. There is a bit of a mystery concerning it's correct name. Most sources list it as a cultivar of Acer sieboldianum but in his "Book for Maples" Masayoshi Yano lists it as Acer tenuifolium which is Acer shirasawanum var. tenuifolium. For me the leaf does seem to resemble A. shirasawanum more than A. sieboldianum so we have gone with Masayoshi Yano's name.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Acer palmatum 'Hupps Dwarf'

Last Spring a friend gave us a 1" long scion of Acer palmatum 'Hupp's Dwarf' We are now the proud owners of a 2" plant! I think it will be a while though before we are harvesting any scions :^)...


Ginkgo biloba 'WB'


This Ginkgo is moving up our list of favorite Ginkgo cultivars! I don't know where it originated or who gave it such an imaginative name :^).. We got it from the late Bill Jensen of Collectors Nursery many years ago. Its slow growing but still retains a tree shape rather than being just a round ball. The one in this photo is about 12 years old & 5' tall.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Three Maples

It hasn't been a great year for Fall Color in the Plantmad Garden this year. Our 100 day dry spell & my reluctance to give the garden more than survival water rations stressed a lot of the plants to the point that the leaves just dropped off when the colder weather came!

Three maples representing 3 different species were looking good though on this rainy wet weekend though.


A. pseudosieboldianum ssp. takesimense looked particularly good, native to the Korean Island of Ulleung-Do in the Sea of Japan. Ours is seed grown but the plant is often grafted on Acer palmatum.


This is an older cultivar selection of the Full Moon Maple but always looks good in our garden. 


About 25 years ago Talon Buchholz gave me a grafted liner of 'Kamagata', I still have that plant it's now a perfect miniature Japanese Maple that's about 12' tall. It always puts on a good show of red Fall Color.


Sunday, October 28, 2012

A Bitter Orange Anyone!

For the first time we have fruit on our Chinese Bitter Orange, Poncirus trifoliata, but it's only about 1" across :^)..


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Pontine Oak

Quercus pontica

This is one of 2 Quercus pontica growing at the Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle. It's become one of our favorite small Oaks & we would love to be able to grow it but we have never seen acorns available for sale. I do have a couple of plants in the Plantmad garden that are grafted onto Q. robur but we have yet to see how they will do as grafted plants.


Saturday, October 20, 2012

Wollemi Pine

I was up at the Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle yesterday. They have 4 Wollemia nobilis that they planted in the garden 4 years ago. The first Winter was a tough one by Pacific North West Standards & there of the plants were quite badly damaged by the cold, 2 lost they growing tips.

Since then though the trees have been doing mush better, last year one started producing male cones & this year that same tree has also produce it's first if rather small looking female cone.

  
    
Wollemia nobilis                                                             Male Cone



Acer saccharum 'Monumentale'


For the first time we have Acer saccharum 'Monumentale' liners for sale!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

A Heinz 57 mix!


Over 50 different contract grown seedlings & rooted cuttings ready for the off!

An Evergreen Stewartia

Stewartia pteropetiolata

We grew these evergreen Stewartia pteropetiolata from wild collected seed under contract for the collector. They were collected from a tree growing at over 6500'. It would be nice to think that at least a few of them will be hardy in zone 8.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Classy Mahonias!


This is the first year that we have been able to offer these excellent cultivars of Mahonia for sale though they have been growing in our garden for many years. We have about 8 different cultivars planted in the same bed not far from the Kitchen Window. The Humming Birds take up residence in them in mid November & don't venture far from them until the end of February!


Chilean Firebush Galore!

When we sowed our  Embothrium coccineum seed this Spring we waited & waited but nothing happened! We had a second batch of seed & sowed that late in the hopes of getting a few plants. Well about 10 days after sowing the second batch both lots decided to germinate like Mustard & Cress! We still were not sure that we would be able to get full size liners due to the late germination but our long hot Summer helped them out & we have finished the season with plants that are bigger than last years!

We are taking orders!

Saturday, August 25, 2012

2012 Stock Availability List is done!

Our 2012 stock availability list is finally done & up on the Web site! There are lots of new plants on it this year. Odds & ends will continue to be added & removed throughout the year from the Small Quantity section at the end of the list. We hope you find something that you can't live without :^)..



H. chinensis DJHC695
H. chinensis Heronswood Narrow Leaf Form
H. japonica
H. chinensis Heronswood Broad Leaf Form


Yes we are still here!

Well it's been a couple of months since I updated our Nursery Blog, Summer came & most of our spare time has been taken up with hiking & exploring up on Mt. Hood along with a trip to the Elkhorns of Eastern Oregon. There was also a quick trip to Vancouver BC.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

A Pink Cloud



We got this lovely tree from Roger Gossler many years ago, sadly it's just a bit too tender to live outside in the garden & so lives a pot bound existence in a Greenhouse. I think we will take some cuttings this year though, if we can get a couple of backup plants going & might give this one a try in a sheltered corner of the garden.

A curious Gunnera



We picked this up at Heronswood years ago on one of our annual visits to the "Heronswood Wonderland". Dan Hinkley's notes from that time say it appeared in seed pots of Gunnera magellanica collected in S. Chile in the winter of 1998. It gets much bigger than G. magellanica with leaves up to 10" across.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Another Snowbell



We purchased this Styrax several years ago from the good folks at Forest Farm as Styrax confusum but Flora of China lists it as Styrax confusus so we will go with that! An as yet little known species from the mountains of central China, it's done well in our garden.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Yes it's a Buckeye!


This cut leaved Buckeye isn't for everyone but some people wont be able to live without it! It needs to be protected from afternoon Sun to have any chance of looking half way decent!

Friday, July 6, 2012

The Willow Leaf Stachyurus


We have had this Stachyurus in the garden for about 10 years now & it has turned into a lovely garden plant with it's clean long slender Willow like leaves. It has suffered no damage in our Zone 8 garden but probably isn't much hardier than that.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Two More Stewartia

Last week we posted photos of S. rostrata & S. sinensis that were flowering in the garden. This week S. psuedocamellia & S. serrata are in flower. S. psuedocamellia is the most commonly available & with good reason. S. serrata has smaller flowers but is still a lovely plant. Both plants should be available for sale this Fall.



Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Paraná Pine


We received a small bag of these this week, we were unsure if we should sow them or make a necklace out of them :^)...