Our neighbor Heidi really enjoys selecting her flowers from our u-cut garden and then making large bouquets for her home! Nice job Heidi.

Our soil is clay and sand courtesy of the Dungeness river over eons of flooding. It gets pretty hard and packed, so before we try to roto till, we use a shovel to break it into chunks.















Next, Tom uses our little red tiller to break up the soil to a depth of about 8 inches.

















Finally we spread 3"-4" of "Sequim Gold" (pure cow manure from the Smith Dairy) on the rows and roto till again. Lots of work, but it makes for easy planting and strong healthy plants. It took 3 of us about 4 hours to prep 700 row feet of soil. Tomorrow we will begin to plant out in earnest, for though it's not our 'guaranteed' last frost date yet, warmer weather is predicted for the next 5 days and our seedlings are busting out of their pots in the greenhouse.

We are trying to keep the alstromeria blooms off the walkways this year using orange plastic mesh...we'll see, it looks squished to me!















The German statice is well up and thanks to our intern Marie, it's well weeded too!









It's time to tie up the peonies, we'll just have to make our days longer to get it all done!

u-cut garden prep annual plants

We have lots of volunteer larkspur which will make a nice first crop - of course they will be variable colors, but that will be nice.















Here come the sweet peas, it's been a cold and therefore late spring, so the seedlings are short for May 4th






















The delphinium and valerian are almost 18" tall though and should be ready for cutting by early June.

We had a mystery plant in the garden last year, just a low rosette of large shiny leaves that looked quite a lot like skunk cabbage. Brooks (the gardener) and I discussed what it might be and whether we recalled planting it. Well, this year it was back with a vengeance; it grew and grew and grew with bright waxy heart shaped leaves and a 'Jack and the beanstalk' growth habit. At long last it began to set blooms and then one day, there they were - about 15 gorgeous creamy white lily blooms with lovely dark ruby red throats and a delicious fragrance. Finally I recalled that my neighbor Sally had given me one of her Cardiocrinum lily babies and the mystery was solved. The very best news is that our baby is now a Mom. She has produced 6 more little plants at her feet which we will carefully dig and divide so we can enjoy the show in other parts of the garden in years to come. Of course this time we won't plant it under a dwarf cherry tree - this spectacular lily grew to 12'

CARDIOCRINUM (kar-dee-o-KRI-hum)LILIACEAE. Giant Himalayan lilies, grown for their striking display.—Cardiocrinum giganteum. 'GIANT HIMALAYAN LILY'. The most magnificent of all lilies, reaching 9 - 12 feet tall, with racemes of 6 - 20 deliciously scented white flowers, each 6" long and nearly as wide. May & June. Large heart-shaped leaves. Himalayas, in damp, shady forest, 7500 to 10,600 feet. Easily grown in light sandy soil. Hardy to Boston. Sow in fall outdoors to germinate and give top growth the next spring. Flowers in 5 - 6 years.

April and Andrea shared the joy of their commitment to each other with friends and family on Sunday June 22nd.
April's bouquet was made up of deep burgundy peonies and sage green cerinthe from the Cutting Garden while Andrea's corsage was a white rose surrounded by deep burgundy aquiligea.

The weather was bright and sunny and the snow on the mountains made a perfect backdrop to the colorful gardens.