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...
White & pink cardiocrinum July 28 dawns sunny after a welcome spit of rain yesterday. The gardens are burgeoning - there just is no other word for it. All so very full and frighteningly still growing. It is lucky we are creating 3 new gardens to accommodate new plants and some relocation from the old ones.
Yesterday after we closed we decided to gather our various Roscoea and plant representatives out along a sparsely planted bed at the back of our barn. We had planted some Rosocea auriculata and cautleyoides there last summer and the results have been quite gratifying. We were a little worried the wind whipping around the corner might prove too much but they have some backbone to those pseudostems and have stood up admirably. It will be good to walk along and be able to compare various forms and species in identical growing conditions and be able to assess flowering times and habit. An ulterior motive is to take advantage of the fabled Roscoea promiscuity and hopefully end up with some pretty nice chance hybrid seedlings. We will even plant out the R. australis with its impressive foliar stature and the most pathetic squinchy flowers in our collection and hope that it keeps its genes zipped up.
Pink cardiocrinum We will likely close for most of August but will remain open by appointment. We hate to have folks miss most of the summer plants which normally happen in July but this year are waiting until the following month but we have to get some work done. Besides we are going to be selling at The Plant Sale Of The Summer, the Fronderosa Frolic at Fancy Fronds August 9-10. Seventeen most excellent specialty nurseries from OR and WA have been invited along with glass, metal and twig artists. Lectures as well. See www.fancyfronds.com for more info.
For those of you on the other side of the water who have not made it out here to the nursery but are pining for some of our plants, you can special order plants from us to be brought to the Frolic where you can pick them up. We have customers who do this every year so there is really no need to be left out. We will try to add some of our newer plants to our plant list so you have a reasonably broad choice. It is just a sea of pretty interesting plants out in the nursery and the sheer diversity and quantity is such that even we no longer know what we have. A customer yesterday was interested in different Dierama so we grabbed a flat and strolled around our growing area and came up with about 10 different species and cultivars which were not out on the sales tables and that was by no means all. 'Lame' came to mind quickly followed by 'Holy crap - we have a lot of cool plants out here - we're pretty darn good".
Shade garden addition.
Our dear friend Jolly who has helped out in many facets of the nursery construction over the past several years outdid himself by designing and building our new lath house addition to our shade garden. This will allow us to triple the size of our shade garden and we can hardly wait to get the soil and irrigation in so we can free a lot of stock plants from their pot bondage and get to planting. We are natural shade gardeners so this will be almost too much fun. We love planting a new bed because it is like getting to shop at this cool nursery with no limit and no restrictions. "Sure—go ahead and take as many stock plants as you want—they are free today." It is pretty much a plant geek's dream. Looking forward to getting all of our Trilliums in the ground especially.
Some great new plants on the sales tables.
Grevillea australis, Echium rosulatum, Callistemon pallida 'Eleanor' and C. sieberi, Cistus 'Jester', Jenkyn Place' and obtusifolius, Melaleuca ericoides, Leptospermum namadgiensis and L. lanigerum 'Silver Leaf Form', Hakea epiglottis, Ozothamnus 'County Park Silver', Olearia x haastii, Festuca californica, Sedum palmeri, Podophyllum delavayi, pleianthum and versipelle, Corokia contoneaster, Arctostaphylos pajaroensis 'Warren Roberts' and A. rudis 'Vandenberg', Aster carolinianus (a climbing Aster!), Nolina nelsoni, Yucca linearifolium, Hydrangea integrifolia, Myrteola nummularifolia, Glumicalyx goselloides, Salvia leucophylla, Melianthus 'Purple Haze' and 'Antonow's Blue', Kniphofia thompsonii - triploid form, Tree Dahlias and Romneya coulteri to name but a few.
We are carrying a few odd edibles.
Female Ginkgo selections, 3 different Gooseberries, Paw-Paws, a couple of nice Sea Berry varieties (Hippophae), the hardy Arbequina Olive and the mountain Huckleberry, Vaccinium membranaceum in case we don't make it up to the mountains to go berrying.
If you are coming some distance for a specific plant, it is good to call and make sure we have it as we do a lot of plants in small quantities and some folks actually buy plants with landscape design in mind and purchase in groups of 3's, 5's or 7's rather than our usual collector's drifts of one.
For the latest news, read Kelly's blog...
We're glad you stopped by to view what's new. Come back soon!
—Kelly & Sue