Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Daboecia cantabrica

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Daboecia cantabrica

Daboecia cantabrica 'Rainbow' September 2008

Daboecia cantabrica 'Rainbow' & Hebe recurva September 2008

Daboecia cantabrica is a small shrub known commonly as Irish Heath. Dabeoc is an Irish saint. Cantabria is a province of Spain. Daboecia is closely related to Erica (Heath). The flowers are beautiful balloons of rich purple-pink. They continue to bloom from spring into fall. Daboecia comes in green & variegated selections. A particularly lovely cultivar is ‘Rainbow’ with green, yellow, & a few pink leaves. Combine 'Rainbow' with dwarf conifers with yellow foliage such as Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Lutea Nana’ & Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Nana Lutea’. Or try plants with blue-gray foliage such as Hebe recurva for an interesting contrast.

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This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

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The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.