Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Joy Creek Nursery

Joy Creek Nursery was our last stop on our three day extended Memorial Day weekend. 

Tuesday afternoon, after touring the Elk Rock Garden, and lunch in North Portland, we drove north on the Oregon side of the Columbia River to Scappoose, then up on the hillside  overlooking the valley of the confluence of the Willamette River and the Columbia River. 
Joy Creek Nursery is a special place run by special people which features special plants not commonly found. 

The nursery has cool displays and lots of interesting plants to explore, but first you have to visit the display garden around the house. 






 We love Kalmias, but they do not seem to like our garden. We have killed several. 



 Growing fields in the distance.






 I loved this fern like plant with the magenta flowers, and finally found an expert to tell us what is was. It is Centaurea hypoleuca 'John Coutts', and it took some doing, but the persistent staff found one for us. Hopefully it will be happy with our new hostas. 
 That purple clump in the foreground is a Pineapple lily - Eucomis- and we bought one of those too. 
 That red flowerings tree is a Chilean fire tree, We did not buy one, but they are wonderful. 


 Dropped rhodie petals make hostas bloom. 






 Back in the nursery, we did some serious shopping, but the displays always catch my camera eye. 







Tom paid for his plants, which included a Mahonia 'Soft Caress', a Hydrangea Nigra that has black stems, and a native blue eyed grass - Sisyrinchium agustifolium. (I hope my serious gardener friends appreciate that I looked up all these botanical names. I don't even try to keep them in my head any more, let alone spell them!) 
We loaded our latest plant finds in the trunk of our little red car (must come up with a name for our little red car - Jill already owns the name "Little Red" for her car) and began the drive north, back to Seattle and home. 

It was a fantastic three day trip, one that still lingers in my thoughts  two weeks later.  Of course it helps that I have all these photos to share. 

12 comments:

  1. Great choices! I love my purple Eucomis, I hope yours does well. I don't try to keep plant names in my head either, I often have to look them up. Joy Creek is such a great place!

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  2. So beautiful! I wish you could bottle up what some of these places smell like and send them out with your blog posts.

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  3. I'd love to do some serious shopping, too, at that nursery! Hope all your purchases thrive.

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  4. Oh that red flowering tree is wonderful! What a pretty place:)

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  5. Lovely images- I can visually smell all the wonderful fragrances!

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  6. Another unbelievable garden tour. Looks like you will be enjoying the weekend for some time to come with all the new plants.

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  7. Another fantastic outing. I'm glad you share these so completely, Linda. My legs would be tired from all the garden tours otherwise. :-)

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  8. Each garden you tour I say, "that's the best one." but the next one is better again. This one is missing all the garden decorations which is fine by me.

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  9. That looks like an areca palm in there. How wonderful to bring back such lovely plant souvenirs to love long after your trip. You sure did have a fabulous time!

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  10. fun to pick out new plants to try. I've killed many garden shrubs, flowers and of course indoor plants like Boston Ferns...it takes a green thumb to make them thrive!

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  11. Great haul! I'm impressed that you looked up all of those names. I can never remember all of the latin. Technology is such a wonderful thing. I remember carrying heavy books to nurseries to look up plants in pre-internet, pre-smartphone times.

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