Far Reaches Farm

A small nursery focusing on unusual perennials & bulbs and drifting into a few woodies and alpines.

Details

Open Days

Take Note!

Fresh out of gift ideas for that gardening friend?

We offer gift certificates in any amount which can be redeemed for some pretty neat plants here at the nursery or at any of our off-site plant sales where we are own cashier such as the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle or the Fronderosa Frolic in August at Gold Bar.

Volunteer opportunities abound here at the Farm.

Transplanting, potting and what have you. A chance to learn some professional techniques and be exposed to some pretty fun plants. "Will work for plants!" Give us a call if you are interested.

Help sponsor our next collecting trip.

Of course you would get some of the progeny of the seed collections but mainly it is something to feel good about. We take detailed collection notes and distribute suitable material to various Botanic Gardens and firmly believe that we are helping preserve biodiversity as many species are under enormous pressure from habitat degradation.

Welcome to Far Reaches Farm!

Sue Milliken & Kelly Dodson, proprietors

Directions:

It's simple—head into Port Townsend and take a left on Sheridan just past the QFC. You will go 3/4 of a mile and find a stop sign on 19th. Go straight through that until you come to the next stop sign which is Hastings. Turn left and go 1/3 mile and you will see the 1818 polka dot mailbox and turn right into our driveway and park out in the field watching out for Canela and Callie, our nursery overseers, who are brilliant in all things except cars. Please come only on our open days or by appointment. We'll have sandwich board signs out on our open days.

What’s Growing On...

Tuesday June 30 and we are feeling pretty good about the place. The various lily species are starting to bloom in the shade garden with Lilium majoense looking especially good and the bank of L. nepalense is poised to explode. We're pretty enchanted with a pure white Cardiocrinum in flower right now. It has a touch of cream in the throat and no trace of the expected purplish-pink. Our one flowering plant from our collection in the eastern Himalaya is blooming and looks typical in coloration with flowers on the larger side so we are quite content with the results. It is hard to imagine a green-flowered plant stealing attention away from the Cardios and the Meconopsis but the Paris polyphylla ssp. yunnanensis is doing just that with around 50 flowering stems 2'-3' tall. It seems to be a superior form (they said in usual understatement).

The summer border is looking quite good with the linchpin being the Cornus kousa 'Satomi' which stops 2 out of 3 cars coming in. (Note to selves: order some nice ones in for next year! Try being business people for a change instead of plant nerds.) Speaking of plant nerdities, the awesome (not) spectacle of our first flowering of Kniphofia parviflora is happening with wee and scant tubular flowers dangling sparsely along one side of a gently curved stem. This species comes in reasonably good yellow flowers and botanically -interesting-only green flowers and is usually scented. Of course ours is green and unscented and destined to languish in the dim recesses of the Demented Collector's Corner overlooked by all yet fiercely loved by its parents.

We had a couple from Maury Island come in who are serious plant folk and were very happy to have found us. "We get your emails but we had no idea from those that you have all of this going on." We always see the unfinished work and it is good to get an appraisal from some new eyes once in awhile. We have a lot of plants. We will have typed our 1800th label description this week and these are just for the plants that we have in enough quantity to sell or that we are willing to part with a few. We walk the greenhouses pulling plants for sale and sometimes we can only find a half dozen different kinds - the rest are stock that we are still building up and are holding for propagation. It is getting a little overwhelming.

We are enjoying offering 5 pieces of David (Ike) Eisenhour's (www.eisenhoursculpture.com) work in our new garden. Ike does fabulous bronze and steel sculpture of seeds and is currently exhibiting at the National Arboretum. It has long been a dream of ours to incorporate an outdoor art gallery into our gardens and Ike's work is a pefect melding of image and reality. Far Reaches Farm and the United States National Arboretum - kinda like it!

For the latest news, read Kelly's blog...

We're glad you stopped by to view what's new. Come back soon!
—Kelly & Sue