Visit Molbak's summer calender of events and gardening workshops....
"The garden is mostly the work of my wife, Laura. As you mentioned she works for Molbak's. She is a Certified Professional Horticulturalist. My roll is periodic manual labor and design input. If you must use one of our names, by rights it should be called Laura's garden." - Abbott
UPDATED: As you drive down 104th Street near Avondale and look left and you'll see a sidewalk neighborhood planting area affectionately known as "Laura's Garden." This photo shows Abbott's wife Laura diligently tilling the soil and planting the "seconds" she picks up from her job a Molbaks. They live adjacent to the planting area on 184th Ave NE and 104th Ave NE.
"The garden is mostly the work of my wife, Laura. As you mentioned she works for Molbak's. She is a Certified Professional Horticulturalist. My roll is periodic manual labor and design input. If you must use one of our names, by rights it should be called Laura's garden." - Abbott
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| This Douglas fir manufactured snag is visible from NE 104th Street near Avondale |
Last year, "Redmond Blog" (RNB) featured Abbott's Arbor. This year, the Douglas fir snag has been added to the Abbott collection, mostly by luck and good intentions of the city. It was classified "hazardous" and manufactured into a snapped-off tree snag. The trunk is loaded with woodpecker holes.
Do you see the snag? It has jagged edges on the top High school science students walking up the hill will tell you this tree snag provides invaluable habitat and foraging for hundreds of species of wildlife and insects.
So, who in the city do we thank for not stumping this tree to the ground. Parks? Department of Natural Resources? The Street Division, Planning & Development? (an 11-lot plat is approved down the hill), The city council Ombudsman? The neighborhood? My vote's on the Mayor. He's a good listener; can't you see?
Opinion and photo by Bob Yoder
Following cottage garden traditions, we call our home and garden The Caffeinated Gopher. The moniker comes from the fact that my wife and I tend to dig more dirt in a season than a pair of caffeinated gophers.
ReplyDeleteThe garden is mostly the work of my wife, Laura. As you mentioned she works for Molbak's. She is a Certified Professional Horticulturalist. My roll is periodic manual labor and design input. If you must use one of our names, by rights it should be called Laura's garden.
Our garden, like all gardens, is a work in progress. Each year we tweak and adjust. This season we took advantage of the city removing the tree and leaving a snag to open up the area along the southeast corner of the garden. We've added some new trails through the heart of the Southern border and limbed up an number of the evergreens so that we can bring in some more perennials and deciduous ornamentals.
This is the 8th year we've been at the garden. When we arrived it had good bones but a very narrow bloom window and almost no garden architecture or perennials. For the past 8 seasons we have been slowly transforming the landscape.
We use a few simple design ideas to create the structure of the beds. The garden is designed for 4 season interest. The bloom season is spread throughout the year and foilage, form and bark are equally important. We have very few annuals in our garden. Instead we prefer to maximize our investment using perennials. We also tend to shy away from some of orangish reds and sulfur yellows. Pinks, corals, blues, purples and soft yellows are more common. We also tend to use families of plants rather than simply planting multiples of single plants. So for example, we have a collection of beardless irises. I prefer the foilage of beardless varieties over the broad fans of the more traditional bearded varieties. Siberian iris, Japanese iris, PCH iris and some species dot the garden. The similar foilage and bloom shape provides unity and the variety of different species extends the bloom time and adds interest. We also use related species like Sea Hollies (Eryngiums) and Globe Thistles (Echinops). The spiky blue and white foilage and blooms links them together without the monotony of one variety being repeated.
We don't have quite as much architectural structure as we would like yet. This summer we intend to bring in more rustic structures made from the salvaged water sprouts from our two older apple trees. In particular we would like to give our collection of larger roses some more support.
Thanks for all of the kind comments that we received from the neighborhood. It is a labor of love and our way of trying to give something back to the place we love.
After the "rotted" hazardous tree was manufactured into a snag a second tree was noticed behind it. This tree - a fir - is wounded and decaying and after calling the Ombudsman (council@redmond.gov) the tree is scheduled to be removed "as soon as the paperwork gets processed, in about 30 or so days..." It will be left as snag habitat. I hope manufacture the look and act like a more like snag.
ReplyDeleteSomeone put up a bird house on the snag...kinda like an exclamation mark!
ReplyDeleteShould our city Dept. of Nat. Resource consider bat boxes, roosting platforms, or bird houses for the topped cottonwoods on by the 95th Street bridge (and storage centers)?