Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: December Garden Pictures & Bloom Times

Friday, January 7, 2011

December Garden Pictures & Bloom Times

Collards December 2010

Corylus avellana 'Contorta' December 2010

Crows, clouds, Cascades December 2010

Helleborus argutifolius December 2010

Pieris japonica 'Variegata' December 2010

Very little began to bloom in my garden in December. I included dates from previous years. If you have plants that bloom in December in Seattle, please let me know. December was wetter & warmer than usual, although the last few days were below freezing at night with frost on the ground throughout the day. Leaf & flower buds began to form on many plants. New shoots of Helleborus x hybridus grew to 3 inches. Flower buds of Helleborus argutifolius & Helleborus x sternii were the size of my thumb. Flower buds of Magnolia stellata were fuzzy gray olives. Sedum 'Matrona', 'Brilliant' & 'Autumn Joy' were delicate, gray rosettes densely clustered on the ground. Hemerocallis foliage emerged. Still-very-solid catkins of Corylus avellana 'Contorta' began to droop from twisted branches.

December Bloom Times

12-22-10 Erica x darleyensis 'Mary Ellen' 1-18-10, 12-05-08
12-27-10 Cyclamen coum 1-06-10, 12-05-08, 1-01-08

12-28-10 Primula x juliana ‘Wanda’ 1-28-10, 2-14-09

2 comments:

Nellie from Beyond My Garden said...: I've enjoyed reading your blog and am glad to have discovered it this morning. As I have told my Seattle cousin, I am sometimes jealous of your growing climate. (though I am partial to our WV landscape.) I've had fun seeing the differences.; January 11, 2011 at 5:00 AM
Jordan Jackson said...: Thanks for your comments & for following my blog. I would surely follow yours, if you had one. We do have an excellent climate for gardening, although I wish we had more summer rain. West Virginia is a beautiful state.; January 11, 2011 at 10:26 AM

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About This Blog

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.

Our Land & Climate

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.