Last week, my wife and I vacationed in Portland, Ore. To quote my wife: "It's nice to leave, but it's always nicer to return. Always."
She is concerned when she returns about the condition of her garden, while I'm anxious to see my dog.
We went to visit Terra Nova Nursery in Canby, to see the Rose Garden in Washington Park and to attend the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Study Weekend.
Dan Heims, owner of Terra Nova Nursery, gave us a two-hour tour of the display garden and facility. This wholesale nursery is the leader in propagating plants by tissue culture.
Many gardeners are not familiar with propagation by tissue culture.
Without getting too technical, Heims gave us a brief explanation of plant tissue culture, also called micropropagation. This is a practice used to propagate plants under sterile conditions, often to produce clones of a plant.
Plant tissue culture relies on the fact that many plant cells have the ability to regenerate a whole plant. Single cells can often be used to generate a new plant on culture media given the required nutrients and plant hormones.
From tissue culture, Terra Nova propagates annuals and perennials, but the nursery is known for introducing new plants into the horticulture market.
Terra Nova is noted for its introduction of a wide variety of heucheras, commonly called "Coral Bells."
Before we left Auburn, Rosemary Headley, one of my two favorite Rosarians, told us to make sure to see the roses in bloom in Washington Park. Portland's Rose Garden in Washington Park contains 10,000 plantings of 550 varieties and all were in bloom, creating a spectacle of colors.
Each June the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon has a study weekend. The word "hardy" is the British word for perennial. We are among the few Californians who are members of HPSO.
The three-day event involves gardens tours, guest speakers and plant vendors.
The garden tours were on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the afternoons. We visited 19 private gardens in three days.
Dan Hinkley, former owner of Heronswood Nursery and plant explorer, was the keynote speaker Friday evening. Other guest speakers spoke in the mornings on Saturday and Sunday. The plant vendors were selling all three days.
The Oregon folks who are members of the HPSO, all 2,000 of them, are avid gardeners -- referring to themselves as hortiholics or even "hort-heads." Members have wonderful gardens. They know their plants, not only by the common name but by the botanical name.
Why is there such an interest in gardening in Oregon? One reason, I think, is the climate. A lot more rain. A different climate. A different focus of gardening.
Oregonians have many retail nurseries offering a wider variety of plants -- many not usually available here in California. We visited Portland Nursery on SW Stark Street and, of course, my wife bought some plants that she has been craving. Yes, craving.
She also bought plants from the many vendors at the study weekend.
I, too, bought a plant, Helianthus annuas, an annual sunflower called "Titan," one of the all-around biggest sunflowers. It reaches 12 feet tall with 18- to 24-inch seed heads with edible seeds. I plan on saving seed for next year and growing a forest of sunflowers.
Next year the study weekend will be in Eugene, Ore. More gardens, interesting speakers and different vendors.
Saul Wiseman can be reached at swiseman368@sbcglobal.net.