Hansville Log Articles

Buck Lake Garden articles published in the monthly Hansville Log highlight seasonal activity in the garden.

Observe and Learn

Author: Mary Booth Hansville Log Date: Jul 5, 2023

‘Tis the season to be outside: nature is showing off in all her glory. But it’s also a good time to slow down and observe. The Native Plant Garden’s Mary Booth has some suggestions for ways to make fresh acquaintance with your natural surroundings:
Take a leisurely walk with intention, to see how flora and fauna around you are interacting. What captures your interest? What flowers, butterflies, birds, insects do you see, and how are they behaving? Take notes as you observe. Record the date, what you see in bloom, what colors seem to be attracting the bees (beautiful native blue ceanothus was out a month ago, and its legions of happy bees sounded like a loud avant-garde piece for string orchestra); your notes can become a valuable resource for use in your own garden.
What setting have you chosen (a meadow, near a stream, in woodland shade)? What plants readily grow there? Do some appear to grow near or under others? What kind of soil do they thrive in?
What insects and birds do you see, and what are they attracted to? Cedar waxwings were recently gorging on Oregon grape berries. Who is eating the elderberries? You might see a bird carrying twigs or bark or lichen, flying toward a place it’s building a nest—or, if her eggs have hatched, perhaps she’s gathering insects or worms for her young.
What do you hear in the trees that you might not be able to see? The Cornell Ornithology Lab has a wonderful app called MERLIN that allows you to identify a bird from its call, simply by holding the phone up toward the sound you hear.
Intentional, mindful observation allows us to perceive the synergy between native plants and wildlife. It’s also great for our blood pressure and our knowledge (and love) of the world around us.

Want to volunteer at the Native Plant Garden? Come to a work party. They’re on the first & third Monday morning of each month thru October, 9am-12. Website: www.bucklakegarden.com ; Facebook page: Buck Lake Native Plant Garden. Take the Hansville Garden Tour on July 8 (10 am – 4 pm), which benefits Hansville Helping Hands—one ticket entitles you to visit a half dozen gorgeous gardens at your own pace, including the BLNPG. (For info and tickets, Google “Hansville Helping Hands Garden Tour 2023.”)

Propagating with Seed

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Jun 5, 2023

Beautiful orange native columbine is springing up from seed I was given and threw on the ground last fall. I haven’t had much experience with seeds, and want to know more. Here’s what a little research, plus advice from experts, yields about some basics of collecting and using seeds.
It takes planning: you’re reading this in June so you can be ready in the next 2-3 months to collect and store or sow seeds.
Mother Nature is the big expert. In nature, when seeds are ripe, they drop, fly away in the wind on wings, explode and shoot, stick to clothes or to fur, or get picked up by any number of creatures including ants. Birds and larger animals transport them to new places and deposit them complete with their own “fertilizer packets.” Many seeds are programmed to sit on the ground and go through the winter cold (or even two winters) before they can germinate in spring.
You can imitate Nature and also have some control over where seeds land and germinate. If you have self-seeding plants like columbine and lupine, leave bare earth around them in late summer so their seeds have room to do their thing.
In general: collect seed on a dry day, as soon as seedheads ripen (indicated by color change, usually green to brown). Further drying will often cause them to open so the seeds are easily shaken out and collected. Timing of seed maturity varies according to the plant, but is generally late summer to late autumn. Seeds come in many packages: different plants have their seeds in nuts, cones, pods, catkins, capsules, and berries.
The plants you collect seeds from should be healthy and vigorous, otherwise the seeds may not be viable.
You should know that seedlings from seeds you get from a hybrid plant will be extremely variable, and can revert to their “true” species.
The easiest and most natural method for propagating from seed is to pick a shady cool location on your property, put the seeds in the ground there, and cover lightly—the wire mesh of an old window screen can protect seeds and seedlings from birds, foraging rodents and other pests and weeds.
Generally, the smaller the seeds, the more shallowly you should sow them. Some of the smallest can simply be scattered on the soil surface. Rake the soil lightly to loosen it, scatter the seeds, and rake again to cover them.

If you want to collect and store:
Don’t collect immature seeds. Many seeds will continue to ripen as they dry, but if you collect them before they have completely formed, they will not mature and produce viable seed. They should be fully formed and starting to dry.
Pick the seedheads and lay them out to dry on a greenhouse bench or warm windowsill. Remove the seedheads on their stems as they turn brown. After extracting the seed, clean off any surrounding material (chaff) attached to them, as this material can rot or harbor pests and diseases, and place into a labeled paper bag or envelope. Make sure to label everything as you go: indicate the plant name and variety, and date collected. If you wait until you can spread everything out to identify your seeds, headaches will ensue.
Storing over the winter: Seeds need moisture, warmth, and light to germinate, so give them the exact opposite for storing--a dry, cool, dark environment such as a corner shelf in the garage, basement, closet, or in the rear of a refrigerator. Place your seeds in envelopes or paper bags and keep them in glass jars. If you have any silica packets around, throw one into your seed storage container to absorb moisture.
Whether to store seeds in your garage or plant to overwinter on the ground depends on the plant. Find info online, OR: come to BLNPG Monday work parties and ask! (upcoming work party days: 6/5, 6/19, 7/3, 7/17.) Or find Robin Rose’s book Propagation of Pacific Northwest Native Plants (OSU Press, 1998).

Welcoming Pollinators and Birds

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: May 2, 2023

This year, spring took a long time to arrive: April was almost over before the thermometer reached 60 degrees for the first time. Nevertheless, the blossoming started--nature’s irrepressible clock was ticking away.

Here are some considerations for the health of your native garden and its creatures. Normally we think only about plants, but you’re encouraged to enlarge the picture and consider the fauna in your garden. Bees, wasps, butterflies, beetles, hummingbirds and other birds are an essential part of the ecosystem as pollinators. Pollen sticks to the bodies of pollinators when they feed on nectar, a sugary fluid produced by flowering plants. The pollinators transfer pollen grains from plant to plant, et voilà, this fertilizes flowers and allows them to produce fruit and seeds.

To support pollinators, a garden should provide sources of nectar. Some early native bloomers to feed insects are manzanita, kinnikinnick, red-flowering currant, Indian plum, salmonberry, willow, fawn lily (our favorite early spring bloom), and tall Oregon grape.

Be a friend to baby birds, too. Their parents must find protein for them as soon as they hatch, so in the wilder and messier parts of your garden, nurture protein sources (caterpillars make delicious meals, as do insects and worms). Birds also need nest-building material, and the fledglings need safe places to hang out in, such as in foliage of trees and shrubs; holes made by sapsuckers in some trees (particularly paper birch) are also ideal places.

Welcome Wildness!

Author: Mary Booth Hansville Log Date: Apr 3, 2023

Carve out an area in your garden to give nature the upper hand. Let it be messy. Maybe just a small corner to start, but a wild hedgerow along a boundary could be even better. Allow shrubs, herbs, flowering plants to grow. Allow insects to have free reign. Add some nettles to nourish butterfly caterpillars. (You can find nettles in many moist places and dig them up--make sure you‘re wearing good gloves.)
This area will support many kinds of wildlife. Remember that baby birds are fed mostly on protein, which means insects, slugs, worms. Keep a pathway to separate your wild area from your regular garden.

The bloom time for many plants has been altered this spring by our unusually cold and wet winter. But we encourage you to visit our Native Plant Garden where you will hopefully see some favorite spring flowers: red flowering currant, native dogwood tree, manzanita, charming little fawn lily (erythronium—you’ll find them a few feet west of the bench & sidechair area).

KITSAP’s GREAT GIVE is April 11 this year, coming right up! This is how you can contribute to your favorite organizations that work so hard during the year to make justice, opportunity, and beauty for all. Keep the Buck Lake Native Plant Garden in mind—we depend on your generosity.

The BLNPG welcomes everyone to our WORK PARTIES, 1st & 3rd Mondays, April thru October, 9am to noon. Learn about gardening with native plants, get your hands in the dirt, meet like-minded people as you work. Bring gardening gloves.

A Primer on Soil

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Feb 3, 2023

Before we get down and dirty (so to speak), here’s a belated thank you to the Hansville Community Center for donating this year’s proceeds from the annual Chili Cookoff in September to the Buck Lake Native Plant Garden. With these funds we created a curtain drain along the north end of the Garden and extending out into the park field. It is alleviating a lot of the pooling of winter rain in the field and shows that our community works best when it works together.

What is soil, and what should you know about it?
Soil is a mixture of minerals, gases, air, living and dead organisms, and water that together support life. It is constantly developing and changing via physical, chemical, and biological processes. The five major factors controlling how a soil forms and evolves are CLimate, Organisms, Relief (=landscape), Parent material, and Time— referred to as CLORPT. There’s a word for you!
Another great word: all the living organisms in soil (bacteria, fungi, microorganisms, worms, insects, etc.) are the edaphon. A handful of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial and largely still unexplored. The living component of the soil resides largely in its uppermost layers.
Soils offer plants physical support, air, water, temperature moderation, nutrients, and protection from toxins. Soils provide nutrients to plants and animals by converting dead organic matter into various nutrient forms. And soil cleans water as it percolates through it.
Soil absorbs rainwater and releases it later, thus helping prevent floods and drought, flood regulation being one of the major ecosystem services provided by soil. Current vicious cycles of drought, fire, and flooding are the result of a mix of climate change, human actions (e.g. paving, industrial farming), and the desertification of its soil.

How can you have healthier soil in the garden?
Much to say here, such as rotating crops and preventing erosion, but here are two major factors in healthy soil.
Composting breaks down organic matter to enrich your garden soil. We’ve posted Joe Seals’s wonderful basic guide to composting at the bottom of the "Resources" page: print it out and keep for reference. One of its many wise points we didn’t know: the correct ratio of green stuff (fresh grass clippings, veg scraps, etc—the nitrogen) to brown stuff (dead leaves, coffee grounds, sawdust, aged manure—the carbon) in your compost should be 1 to 15 or even 1 to 30. Another thing: spread finished compost as a mulch on top, not mixed in with the soil; the nutrients will make their way down.
Soil pH is a measure of the soil’s acidity or alkalinity. A pH of 7 is neutral. The lower the pH, the more acid the soil. Acid-loving plants such as azalea, rhododendron, and blueberry thrive on acidic soil with a pH of 5 or 6.
How do you adjust the pH of soils in your garden? First, you must know its current pH. Then adjust it: dolomitic limestone neutralizes acidity and also adds magnesium to the soil, good for gardens in the Pacific Northwest where this nutrient is naturally low. Sulfur lowers pH—that is, acidifies the soil. pH-measuring and -adjusting products are available in local nurseries and online. Continue to monitor pH levels, since rainfall and other factors can alter the pH over time.

How Plants Get Through the Winter

Author: Margaret Roach Hansville Log Date: Dec 1, 2022

What gives the foliage of deciduous trees the signal to let go?
Why do conifers turn partly yellow and brown, in preparation for shedding?
And as winter approaches, what gardener does not wonder how dormant buds and other tender-looking parts of plants survive intact?
Putting some botany into our horticulture can help improve results in the garden. But best of all, it deepens our appreciation of how plants live their hard-working lives.

Batten Down the Hatches: Dormancy
Dormancy is a “virtual metabolic standstill,” wrote botanist Brian Capon. It’s an ecological adaptation for living in a cold environment, to survive the cold.
Herbaceous plants have two choices: They can complete their life cycles and leave only their seeds behind for the following year (annuals), or their aboveground portions can die back, leaving the roots and storage organs like rhizomes, bulbs and corms to carry on when favorable conditions resume (biennials and perennials).
But woody plants can’t completely tuck in like that. Even those that drop their leaves as part of their overall defense have parts that remain exposed. Those include organs as small and seemingly vulnerable as the buds of next year’s leaves and flowers, or the growing tips of twigs and branches where elongation will resume again come spring.
In preparation, the undeveloped flowers, leaves or shoots may become encased in overlapping bud scales every autumn. Some species may also coat the covered buds in a thick resin to protect them from the cold and wind.
It’s not just the buds that benefit from the waterproof sealant. Some insects do, too. Honey bees, for instance, mix the resin they scrape from bud scales and other plant parts with their saliva to produce propolis, which they use as a glue to seal cracks in their hives.

Coloring Up, and Letting Go
Shorter days and cooler weather trigger the breakdown of chlorophyll, the predominant pigment in most leaves. What gets unmasked are accessory pigments, including yellow and orange carotenoids that were there all along. Although hidden during the growing season, they were helping with photosynthesis.
Then—no matter the color, but all too soon for our liking—the foliage on most deciduous trees takes flight. The big event’s timing is determined by changing chemistry in the tiny abscission zone, a narrow band of cells at the base of each leaf stalk, where it attaches to the stem or branch.
None of this would happen without the plant hormones. Which hormone is at work in leaf drop? Ethylene—better known for its role in ripening fruits—is the catalyst. (Fruit and flowers, with their own specialized abscission zones and timing, are likewise influenced by ethylene on when to drop.)
It starts to break down the cell membranes and form this zone where the leaf eventually can just fall, sealing itself off and leaving a scar on woody plants. A thin cork layer forms to prevent water loss and fungal invasions.

Yellow and Brown Inner Conifer Needles
The often narrow foliage of conifers is winter-adapted: less vulnerable to the effects of ice, snow and wind than broader leaves, and coated in a waxy substance that guards against the elements.
In early fall, when the inner foliage of many conifers turns yellow and brown, people might wonder what’s wrong with the trees. As part of their life cycle, conifers undergo leaf drop, too. It’s sequential, though, not an annual process like that of deciduous trees, and not to be confused with discolored foliage throughout the tree or at the branch tips at other times, which may indicate disease or injury.
Each year, the oldest foliage fades and prepares to fall. How long each needle holds on before that is particular to the species, ranging from two years to four or more.
Admittedly, the process can look alarming. There’s no need to panic, though. Nothing’s wrong, provided you know a little about how to read the tree leaves.

Condensed from New York Times article by Margaret Roach, “How to Read the Tree Leaves,” 11/16/2022. See also Brian Capon’s Botany for Gardeners: An Introduction to the Science of Plants (1990).

For more cozy winter reading, visit our Facebook page (Buck Lake Native Plant Garden).

Water drainage--Beauty and Utility

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Nov 1, 2022

It may well be raining as you’re reading this edition of the Log. The skies seem to be trying to compensate for their radical summer-long neglect of our area. Now it’s time to think about water, and what to do with excess water in and around our gardens. We can influence the quality of the water with which we fill the aquifer (and the lakes and saltwater beyond), by helping Nature do the job of cleaning.
One wonderful option available to Kitsap County residents is to build a rain garden, because The Kitsap Conservation District can provide technical and material assistance. You can even apply for a grant from them that might pay for most of the project. A few years ago, two KCD guys came and assessed our water issues, tested different areas of the property for how well the soil drained, helped us choose a site, brought in machinery and dug the garden, spread good soil and planted plants (see below), and voila! For us it was all free: the drainage improved, and we’ve helped bless the water table and Salish Sea with clean water.
Even simpler: if there is a driveway or other roadway near your home, make a drainage swale. If you have a ditch to the side, plant it with wetland plants. This means plant not on the sides of the ditch, but right in the bottom. These plants filter out pollutants and allow clean water to seep into the ground, and they also add beauty to the property.
If there is a level area between your ditch and roadway, you can opt to plant grass there and mow it. You can even plant and mow grass on the ditch’s side slopes.
Three native wetland plants that will grow and spread in a drainage swale or rain garden, and which provide habitat for birds and insects:
Slough sedge (Carex obnupta) grows well in sun or shade. (In three years or so it develops a hearty rhizome system and can get quite dense. You can thin them to make room for more irises.)
Spreading rush (Juncus patens). Two kinds of rushes grow readily in our area. One is a yellow-tinged green and grows very (too?) vigorously; the rush we prefer is Juncus patens, more of a bluish green. You can see both in the drainage swale in the Native Plant Garden to the west of the main path, though we work at getting rid of the more aggressive variety.
Douglas iris (Iris douglasiana). This almost-native iris (common in California and Oregon) flowers a lovely bluish purple, favors rich soil, and will grow both in sun and shade.

For the Kitsap Conservation District’s program on rain gardens, see https://kitsapcd.org/programs/raingarden-lid .

Early Blooms for the Pollinators

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Oct 1, 2022

October is the time to step back and assess your garden. What plants did well in which places, and what might do better elsewhere? (Main factors to consider are sun/shade, soil composition, moisture, predators, surrounding plants and trees, and dumb luck.) We’ve learned that wood chips, not bark, are best for your autumn mulching, since they allow water to penetrate to the plant, and they eventually decompose to enrich the soil. For maximum nutrition and protection, first lay down a thin layer of compost, then 2 - 4” of wood chips on top.
This is prime time to plant bulbs! Consider early-blooming bulbs: bees need the protein-rich nectar and pollen from flowering bulbs, especially the March and April bloomers, to survive and thrive. It’s their first fresh food after the winter. Bees are most attracted to flowers that are blue, purple, white, and yellow.
Here are some suggestions for early bloomers (one good bulb source is www.johnscheepers.com). Forgive us—the plants below are not native.
Species crocus: “Cream Beauty” (Crocus chrysanthus), “Lilac Beauty” and “Ruby Giant” (both Crocus tommasinianus).
Snowdrops: Go for Galanthus elwesii, the giant snowdrop, with single rather than double flowers, since bees can access its nectar and pollen more easily.
Wood squill, “Spring Beauty” (Scilla siberica).
Grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum).
Early narcissi or Cyclamineus. The “Tête-à-tête” narcissus is yellow, the “Toto” narcissus is white with a pale yellow trumpet.
And always in the interest of pollinators (don’t forget beauty and variety too), may we suggest a very early-blooming shrub? Witch hazel (Hamamelis) blooms in winter. This is the same witch hazel that’s in your medicine cabinet, a liquid distilled from the shrub’s leaf, bark, and twigs. The plant displays spectacular fall colors, and the fragrant flowers of its various hybrids range from yellow to coppery orange to dark red.
For more about native plants or the BLNPG, visit our website - https://bucklakegarden.com , the Washington Native Plant Society - https://www.wnps.org , and our Facebook page (Buck Lake Native Plant Garden).

Nature Recycles

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Aug 31, 2022

As we know, nature is the recycler par excellence. While we are stomping on cardboard, washing cans and bottles, and separating plastic and paper, fauna and flora are doing so on a vast scale. Lichens, earthworms, beetles, mushrooms, and microscopic creatures spend their lives turning dead plants and animals into nutrients for new life. A case in point is rotting stumps and decaying logs, which might seem useless in gardens but are far from it.
Along with fall leaves, dead and downed wood is so essential that many plants cannot survive without it. Decomposing wood has many complex eco-functions like supporting fungi that live in symbiotic relationships with plant roots. Eventually, the stuff that may look messy to us turns into fertile soil which supports plants which support insects which support birds…
Here are two Northwest native plants that need decaying wood to thrive.
Red huckleberry (vaccinium parviflorum) grows directly out of the center of old stumps. It’s an attractive deciduous shrub with small flowers, and the berry that follows is a beautiful bright red, edible too. Your chances of success with red huckleberry increase by planting it with rotting wood or any decaying organic matter. It can look dead for up to two years, so don’t give up hope and pull it.
Bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis) is a charming deciduous ground cover, another plant that wants some rotting wood or other decaying organic matter as well as compost to grow well. Like red huckleberry, it is often difficult and slow to get established—up to two or three years—but is worth the wait. In spring it bears small dogwood flowers, just like its larger cousin, the lovely native dogwood tree (Cornus nuttallii). Bright red tight clusters of berries follow in late summer or fall. Bunchberry needs water throughout the growing season, preferring moist acidic soil in a cool area of your garden.

Pictured: Red huckleberry growing from a stump (image by Pam Keeley); Bunchberry's white blossoms (image by Halcy, https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/groundcover/bunchberry-dogwo...)

Summer Is Berry Season

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Aug 1, 2022

Summer in the Northwest is for berries. You know the delicious ones popular to eat: blackberries, salmonberries, and thimbleberries, all of which can be found on walks in the woods or by roadsides. Then there are berries that some people eat or make jam from: elderberry, salal, Oregon grape, serviceberry, red huckleberry. A profusion of additional native berries appeal to wildlife. The Native Plant Garden is host to trees and shrubs that show the variety of these berries that sustain birds and other creatures.
Among the most striking is the berry of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosa). (Why don’t we jettison the label “false” and call it Western Solomon’s seal?) In July a striking cluster of golden berries appears, looking like some kind of strange wedding favor.
Native red huckleberry (Vaccinium parviflorum) started to ripen in late July this year—everything has been slow because of our cold rainy spring. The berries attract many birds including flickers, jays, thrushes, chickadees, towhees, and bluebirds, and by several small mammals including squirrels and foxes. When ripe, the berries are bright red; they’re edible, but face-puckeringly tart. Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) has dusty blue berry clusters that birds love too. You can make jam from both huckleberry and Oregon grape, but by all means don’t forget the sugar.
Twinberry (Lonicera involucrata), after producing its brilliant yellow tubular flowers, grows lustrous black berries, relished by fruit-eating birds, small mammals, and bears.
Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) produces a blueberry-like fruit, to the delight of many birds, as well as mammals including humans in the know. The berries start out green, turning pink, and are finally navy blue when ripe.
Come by the Garden to see native berries in action and get inspired to plant something in your own garden to attract feathered friends.

Native Flowers to Brighten Up the Garden

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Jul 1, 2022

If you have a hedgerow that could use some color in front, consider brightening it up with an informal assortment of native flowers. Once native perennials establish themselves, they are little trouble and attract beneficial pollinators such as butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.
One success story in the Native Plant Garden is the bright yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus. Preferring sun or partial shade, it will bloom from May to September under ideal conditions. Monkeyflower is growing like crazy at the south entrance of the Garden (see below). You will also find the pink variety, Mimulus lewisii.
Another favorite at this time of year is Henderson’s checkermallow, Sidalcea hendersonii, with the tall, showy pink-to-purple blossoms pictured below. It grows by strong rhizomes and can root from fallen stems. Once established, it’s low-maintenance, preferring moisture (it grows in our rain garden). Human development has made it an endangered species, so you’re doing it a favor by cultivating it—and it’s edible too.
“Oregon Sunshine,” Eriophyllum lanatum, is an easygoing, drought-tolerant plant with a daisy-like flower and deeply lobed leaves that are a fuzzy grayish green. These cheery yellow flowers could also be at home in a rock garden.
Keep in mind that it can take some plants two or even three years to decide to grow. Be careful when weeding in early spring that you’re not eliminating what you planted a while back!
Along the Garden’s front fence you’ll find the spectacular native orange honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa), a deciduous vine, in bloom this month. July is a great time to check out all the color in the Garden and to find inspiration for your garden at home.
The BLNPG is one of the stops in this year’s Helping Hands Garden Tour, Saturday, July 9. For tickets to the tour, go to buytickets.at/hansvillehelpinghands .

Rhodies and Azaleas in the Native Plant Garden

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Jun 1, 2022

May was a busy time for the Buck Lake Native Plant Garden: we celebrated being chosen as Hansville’s Outstanding Community Organization of the Year, we hosted many visitors to the garden, and volunteers did gargantuan amounts of spring planting, transplanting, and weeding. Work parties persisted cheerfully under the rain; after all, the Northwest was fortunate to receive such even-tempered rainfall when so much of the country suffered destructive drought, wildfire, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

The garden is sporting colors that range from the fiery red-orange of the native columbine, the bright yellows of skunk cabbage and the garden’s new “Big Money”(!) iris, to the deep purple of trillium, the blue of camas, and the white of the magnificent flowering dogwood—and we wouldn’t have this rainbow without the rain.

Right now another striking color, pink, is appearing in the showy native rhodies and azaleas.
Rhododendron macrophyllum, Pacific rhododendron, is Washington’s state flower. Although many gardeners prefer cultivated varieties that bloom in other colors, Pacific r. is certainly among the most spectacular with its large pink flower clusters and broad leaves. Its scientific name literally means “rose tree with big leaves.” Where they grow in woods, the plants become tree-like, reaching up to 25 feet. In open gardens, Pacific r. is shorter and more compact.

Rhododendron occidentale is the Western azalea, native to the coasts of Oregon and California. This elegant deciduous shrub can reach 15 feet; it grows in moist, open woods and stream banks. Its captivatingly fragrant flowers are pale rose to white, with a yellow area on one petal, and sometimes deeper rose markings. Western azalea has the capacity to resprout from the ground if the top has been destroyed by fire, landslides, or flooding, as long as the root system remains intact. And like most other rhodies and azaleas, it prefers humus-rich, acid soil. It blooms May to July. Bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies visit its flowers.

Neither rhodies nor azaleas have served as food or medicine for humans. But their sculptural and floral beauty place them among the most popular native plants for Northwest gardens.

Oregon grape

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: May 1, 2022

Oregon grape, native to the Northwest, is an excellent choice for part- or full-shade areas in the garden, and is prized for its beauty and hardiness. It has vibrant yellow flowers in the spring and dusty-blue berries in summer; its tough, holly-like foliage ranges through the seasons from reddish to bronze to green. It attracts deer and small mammals for cover, as well as songbirds, bees, and other pollinators.
Native Oregon grape comes in two varieties: low (Mahonia nervosa—which means veined, not nervous) and tall (Mahonia aquifolium). Size is the most obvious difference between the low and tall varieties—low O.g. grows to about 2 feet, while tall O.g. can reach 5 to 8 feet. Their leaves are similar, but the low variety has more leaflets per stem (11-20) than the tall (7-9). Tall O.g.’s leaflets are shiny on top. The flowers on tall O.g. consist of dense rounded clusters at the end of a branch; low O.g. produces a more V-shaped cluster.
Pacific coast indigenous people have traditionally used Oregon grape for both medicine and food. The bright yellow inner bark contains an alkaloid called berberine, which has strong medicinal properties and is also used to make a dye for baskets. The tart berries were eaten, often mixed with salal berries for more sweetness.
Elise Krohn’s indispensable website, Wild Foods and Medicines, gives two recipes for jelly using Oregon grape berries, sugar or honey, pectin, and patience. She also notes, “Oregon grape can be used both externally and internally to fight bacterial infections. For wounds, you can make a strong tea [with the yellow inner bark] and soak the wound in it.”

Spring in the Native Plant Garden

Author: Claudia Gorbman Hansville Log Date: Apr 1, 2022

Last year, Congress approved April as National Native Plant Month. Coinciding with Washington’s own Native Plant Appreciation Month, this resolution stresses the importance of native plants to our ecosystems amid the threats of climate change. It’s a perfect time to visit the Buck Lake Native Plant Garden, one of Hansville’s jewels. Winter heaves a last sigh, old branches and spent flowers get cleaned up, and green shoots and leaves and buds herald the coming of spring.

One of spring’s first signs is the native red flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum. You might see it on roadsides, and of course it’s also in the BLNPG. At the south end of the garden, check out two large shrubs of a white-flowered form.

The garden’s first volunteer work party of the year is April 4 from 9:00am to noon; work parties run on the first and third Monday of each month from April thru October. Forget the troubles of the world, get your hands in the ground, learn from master gardeners, and check out Nature’s beauty! Wear sturdy shoes and bring gardening gloves.

Kitsap Community Foundation’s Great Give, the annual 24-hour online giving event, will take place on April 20. Buck Lake Native Plant Garden will participate again this year along with other local nonprofits such as the Greater Hansville Community Center, Flotsam & Jetsam Garden Club, and Hansville Helping Hands. Your donations are increased through bonuses funded by the Foundation. Last year, more than 350 Kitsap nonprofits received over $2 million in support. Explore all these worthy organizations at https://kitsapgreatgive.org/about, and give generously on 4/20.

Looking for more about native plants or the BLNPG? visit our website - https://bucklakegarden.com, the Washington Native Plant Society - https://www.wnps.org, and our new Facebook page (Buck Lake Native Plant Garden).

Pruning Red-twig Dogwoods

Author: Martha Pendergast Hansville Log Date: Feb 1, 2022

Prune and shape up your too-tall or messy-looking multi-stemmed red-twig dogwoods (Cornus sericea) in February while the plants are dormant. Mine always looked messy after the deer had browsed them. Munching deer have either no eye for pruning or a very different aesthetic from mine. Red-twig and yellow-twig dogwoods (Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea’) normally grow to 6-15’ tall and 8-10’ wide. As you prune, remember the colorful barren winter branches were last year’s new growth, so you may cut them back too. You can safely trim a third of the branches per year, staggering the remaining branch cuts so it doesn’t look like your shrub got a bowl haircut à la Moe in The Three Stooges. If your dogwood to so overgrown that the idea of pruning causes despair, you may cut it back nearly to the ground, leaving 8-12 inches of the lower stems. If some branches touch the soil, consider propagation by ground layering rather than removal. The roots of these plants can be aggressive so you may want to root prune them. Use a shovel to sever the roots 3 feet from the perimeter of the base.

Don’t forget to tidy up your sword ferns (Polystichum munitum) by removing broken, discolored, and dead fronds in late February before the fiddleheads start to unfurl. Every three years or so, all the fronds may be cut off to invigorate the growth.