Garden Tours with Uncle Alan 4 The Mississippi Begins…

Posted on August 18, 2012 by Jaime

This is Lake Itasca, in Minnesota, the source of the Mississippi river.

Here is the actual beginning of the river…

Silly people come here from all over just so they can say they waded across the Mississippi.

Silly people. *Editors note: this silly person is my dear Uncle Alan Kruetzer.

But I wonder: How did they decide that this was the Mississippi? As you come up river you come to lots of places where, say, the river goes right, and a tributary comes in from the left. Couldn’t you just as easily say that the tributary is on the right, and the left fork is the river? So what we call the Missouri is actually the Mississippi turning west at St Louis, and the one going north from there is, say, the Minnesota River?

But! It’s been decided! It’s been officially certified, by the National Bureau of Making Decisions About Rivers, that this river, and no other, is the actual, genuine, bona-fida Mississippi River!

So the silly people all went away happy.

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Design By Nature

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Jaime

Let the natural landscape inspire your garden!

Memorial Day Weekend offered many of us time out of the city and in nature. Were you as inspired as I was by the natural beauty of our Oregon Landscape? Here are some wonderful scenes from my hike over the weekend that offer some great ideas for your own landscape project.

8 design lessons I learned exploring the Willamette Valley

1. Use simple plantings with distinct form and a path to create a little garden mystery.

Oak Savanna

2. Plant it! I discovered Oso berry with berries. Somehow I had only seen Oso berry in the early spring with new leaves and blooms, or later in the fall. I was delighted find the berries so beautiful and delicate in color and form. What a gardeners treat.

Oemleria cerasiformis - Oso berry

3. Cow Parsnip: Plant it but don’t eat it. What a fabulous white cloud on earth.

Meadow with Cow Parsnip (Heracleum maximum)

4. Poison Oak: Don’t plant, or touch, these leaves of three!

Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum)

5. Create layers of color and texture with mass plantings and borrowed landscape views.

Meadows and Fields

6. Lupine is a fabulous native perennial for the garden.

Lupine and Oregon White Oak

7. Natural elements make for beautiful, sculptural, and playful landscape focal points.

Standing inside a hollow snag.

8. Frame an interesting view.

View from inside a the snag.

8. Make your garden explorable, interactive, and delight in its surprises.

There's a tree hugging me!

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The Ever Fashionable Multnomah Falls #9

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Jaime

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Christmas eCard

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Jaime

This year at Kahoots we are celebrating the season with a tribute to the beautiful seasonal qualities of our native landscape, specifically that of the Western end of the Columbia Gorge and Multnomah Falls.

Here’s a cheat sheet for the native plant species included in our 2011 eCard. Starting from top left.

Gift 1

Western Columbine Aquilegia Formosa (spring)

Salal Gaultheria shallon (fall)

Salal Gaultheria shallon (Summer)

Salal Gaultheria shallon (Spring)

Gift 2

False Solomon’s Seal Smilacina racemosa (late summer)

False Solomon’s Seal Smilacina racemosa (spring)

Red Elderberry Sambucus racemosa (late summer)

Red Elderberry Sambucus racemosa (late summer

Gift 3

White Spirea Spiraea betulifolia lucida (spring & summer)

White Spirea Spiraea betulifolia lucida (fall)

Pacific Dogwood Cornus nuttallii (spring)

Pacific Dogwood Cornus nuttallii (fall)

Gift 4

Blanket Flower Gaillardia aristata (summer)

Golden currant Ribes aureum (fall)

Golden currant Ribes aureum (late summer)

Snow Berry Symphoricarpos albus (winter)

Gift 5

Bald Hip Rose Rosa gymnocarpa (spring & summer)

Bald Hip Rose Rosa gymnocarpa (winter)

Kinnikinnick Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (spring)

Kinnikinnick Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (late fall & winter)

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