A river runs through it, finally, almost

I posted a couple of years ago on this topic and didn’t realize quite how aspirational putting in a dry river bed proved to be. Never fear, it is still aspirational. This means I haven’t finished yet, but “aspirational” sounds so magazine editor I just can’t resist. “Unfinished project” sounds more Alaskan though, so it’s a toss up.

1. Now every river in Alaska need some salmon. If I have a trademark (besides inserting (unnecessary) parentheticals in my blog posts or having my hair done a brand new color every 6 months) it is my rusty salmon. So clearly they are included in a dry river bed.

2. How about some driftwood? Luckily Alaska has about as much coastline as a small continent, so plenty of places to harvest that. Currently acquisitions are from the mudflats behind the Kincaid Park chalet. Yes, there were inquisitive looks as I stumped up the paved trail with a twenty foot hunk of battered tree on my shoulder. To say nothing of the smaller pieces shoved willy nilly under my other arm. Luckily driftwood is very light weight. One observer actually had the temerity to laugh when a very long piece would not quite fit into the back of the truck. Phooey!

3. Rocks. Must not forget the rocks. Gravel river beds are as Alaskan as blue tarps, moose, and junked automobiles in the front yard. The autumn of 2012 saw the delivery of 13 tons of gravel to the Last Frontier Garden. And since my garden motto has been reduced to “go big or go home” we are having another 12 tons delivered next week. As we have no excavator handy, my back is starting some anticipatory twinges for the shovel work.

Also in this category are large rocks. Back twinges from shoveling gravel graduate to spasms with a sure promise of shooting pains. I don’t rule out groans and grunts when dealing with the small boulder size. My two best friends: a long pry bar and an electric heating pad for when it’s all over. Also useful: family members built like NFL linebackers with about 300 pounds of pure muscle. I’m still looking for a few on Craigslist.

4. Alaska is home to a bazillion kinds of grasses and grass allies. I once wrote a (slightly) technical article on the subject for the Alaska Master Gardeners, Anchorage home page (read it here), but I am too lazy to consult it for the actual number of grasses in this 49th state. Suffice to say, there are not may rivers in Alaska without grass waving around nearby.

I didn’t want the river to look too fancy (Alaska is not fancy in any way), if that makes sense, so no variegated grass. You’ll pardon me a moment while I mop up my tears, for variegated grasses were so beautiful and useful in my last garden it nearly breaks my heart not to use them liberally in the dry riverbed. Must. Be. Strong. I guess the yellow and chartreuse leaved grasses are out under the “fancy” rule, too. This just sounds no fun anymore.

Yet I persevere and come up with the (apparently ubiquitous in the Lower 48, but still not well enough known in Alaska) standby: Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster.’ I didn’t know this plant was as common as Potentilla or Pelargonium until a national gardening magazine informed me of the fact, having the gall to write “overused”. I generally like the aforementioned publication, so instead of firing off a heated letter to the editor, I just imitated my 12 year old and said, “whatever.” It helps somewhat.

Calamagrostis brachytricha was chosen to keep it’s taller and stiffer cousin company in the river. Not a “look a me” type plant, but a good mingler and not fancy. Alas.

5. Structure, woman! What are you going to look at when it snows? Besides the driftwood, big rocks, and rusty fish. So in go a couple of Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Center Glow’. Don’t judge me. I have to deal with moose, bears, and a snow blower in the unfenced front yard so sacrifices must be made. Remember, no fancy.

6. And the piece de resistance will be a Pinus aristata, the sublime bristlecone pine. I left a small 3 foot specimen at my last garden and haven’t forgotten it. Tragically for my wallet, a small specimen would look ridiculously out of scale next to the tall front facade of my house. So a bigger chap will be necessary and very pricey. I’m taller than the 5-foot, $700 specimen balled and burlapped at the tree lot, but the cost of an 8-footer might put me behind on the mortgage payment for a couple of months. Perhaps I should print up my standard “new garden” flier for the neighbors: Looks dumb now, but wait 10 years!

All this dry riverbed business at my place was started because we had some drainage problems that required a massive excavation and French drain installation in front of the house. Since some of the turf grass was demolished for that, it seemed the perfect excuse to put in my first garden at our new house. It took three years, but now I feel more legitimate. The Last Frontier Garden has a garden. Woohoo!

 

What is part of a dry river bed in your area landscapes?

Civic Pride: Town Square edition

Recently my out-of-state relatives were in Anchorage enjoying the warm weather, and possibly my company, but this is debatable. One of the things that non-Alaskans seem interested, nay, obsessed about are the plethora of giant things around here. I include bears, political egos, and vegetables in this category. So naturally I took the opportunity to show off our city-maintained plantings in Town Square (544 W. 5th Avenue) which usually feature giant kale or obese cabbages. That is if the homeless don’t get them first.

(True story sidebar: My sister, in a previous life, worked in the Town Square gardens, planting, weeding, and watering for our city. She said, besides being threatened by the occasional bum, she found used drug needles, human excrement, and once, a copulating couple in the plantings. Replacing the kale or cabbage due to human poaching was both expected and planned. If they ran out of spare cabbages, they just replaced them with something else. Gotta love downtown, eh?)

Civic pride seems strong downtown (just step over those drug needles, would you?) but lessens with each step southward, and by the time you hit 15th Avenue and head down Minnesota past the “flower picture” in the hill you’ve pretty much seen the last of it, with a few exceptions. So take this review as the somewhat jealous observations of a resident of south (unbeautified on the public dime) Anchorage.

Town Square is the hub of the floral explosion and it radiates out from there. There is a fountain in the middle of the square and if one can but avoid the skate boarders, panhandlers, and idiots stopping suddenly to take photos (oh, wait, that was me….), it is a lovely place for snapping a picture, consulting a map, or checking to see if you still have all your shopping bags/children. Each bed seems to have a color theme of it’s own. This year I noticed a yellow theme, white theme, pink theme, dark red theme, and rounding them all out, a dahlia bed with no color theme I could discern.

Now some pictures of the dahlia border. My legal team tells me I must disclose the fact that I have two dahlias in my own garden. They encourage me to state this means I am neither a “hater” nor a “dahlia nut.” Their words, not mine.

OK, enough of the Town Square dahlias. For additional flower sightings, head to the visitor information log cabin. If you aren’t sure which log cabin it is, it’s the one with the sod roof, and this summer, the sod is crispy. So head north from Town Square until you find a shack with dead grass on the roof and you’re there (546 W. 4th Avenue).

For those visitors inclined to censure, I feel I must mention the reason we have hanging baskets of blue lobelia with a white eye and yellow marigolds every year without fail: they are the colors of our state flag. “Eight stars of gold on a field of blue….” Thus begins our state flag song. Does this excuse rampant marigold and lobelia use? The jury is still out.

There were still some intact cabbages as of this writing, so gather the kinsfolk and head downtown. Just find Town Square and you and yours will get an eye full, and see a lot of flowers, too. If the cabbages run out, you’ll have to wait until the Alaska State Fair starts on August 22nd. See my coverage of that here.

 

How do you show off your area to visitors?

Those trees growing in my yard: Anchorage edition

A few people have requested a post about the native trees in their yards. There aren’t that many trees and large shrubs native to the Anchorage area. If it’s tall and growing in your backyard and you want to know what it is, you’ve come to the right place. Or if I missed one, you all will let me know.

 

1. White spruce, Picea glauca. The shaggy Christmas tree in high heels. If it doesn’t lose it’s leaves in the winter and it’s a tall, native tree, the answer is spruce. Usually quite a bit taller than wide, especially with age. Needles are shades of green, sometimes with a bluish cast.

 

2. Black spruce, Picea mariana. The ugly stepsister of the white spruce. It’s charms are somewhat, shall we say, subdued. Well, I would be too if I had to grow in a swamp. If it looks scrawny, spindly, and half dead and it’s growing in a low, poorly drained spot, it might be a black spruce. Doesn’t get as tall as the white spruce.

3. Cottonwood, Populus trichocarpa. The one that grows about 8 feet a year and drops twigs, branches, leaves, etc. at any time and for any reason. If it’s “snowing” in July, it’s a cottonwood. Last year, the air was thick with little white fluffs for several days. Trees are either male or female. Do not park your Ferrari under this one on a regular basis unless you were going to have it repainted anyway. Other cottonwoods call Alaska home. Do think twice about planting this.

4. Birch, Betula spp. A couple of different varieties of the tree forms, but for our purposes, just birch. Hosts monster aphid parties every year, has white, peach, gray, brown or any-combination-thereof-colored bark. If there is a new pest in town, it will move into the birch hotel for a stay. Keep this one watered if you plant it or things can get ugly…real ugly. Sometimes a very respectable yellow gold leaf in autumn.

 

5. Willow, Salix spp. We have scads of kinds, from wee baby willows to big daddy willows. If the bark has been sampled by the moose on a yearly basis, then it’s probably a willow. In fact, one sure way to tell (besides the silver, furry catkins covering the branch tops in March) if it’s a willow is the 45 degree angle of the trunk or branch where it’s been snapped over by said giant ungulate. Leaves usually longer than wide, sometimes remarkably so, bark gray.

6. Alder, Alnus spp. The shrub that is too big to be a shrub. When I think shrub I think 8 feet max, though I realize this is not true and the dividing line is around 30 feet botanically. If it has 6 trunks instead of one, that’s a clue. Also the lenticels on the bark, sort of light colored marks that function like pores. Check for itty bitty pine cone looking things that are in fact called female catkins (or cones, or conelets, take your pick). If your kid wants to climb the almost diagonal limbs of some 30 foot shrub, it might be an alder.

7. Red Elderberry, Sambucus racemosa. Definitely a moderately sized shrub, not really in the same category as the big ones, but it has annoyed me so much this spring that I am including it in the hopes some of you have chainsaws and less than tender hearts. Leave this one alone if it’s in an out of the way spot or you enjoy yearly pruning. I had two in my last garden (planted by robins, not me) that made spectacular informal hedges with yearly trimming.

 

With great age (which for this shrub counts as about 15 years) can become a tough, sprawling monster, but branches only a year or two old are easily breakable. Kids adore making scepters, swords, and buggy whips from the younger wood. I have been whipped a few times while hauling brush and yes, it does hurt. One of the first shrubs to leaf out in the spring, white flowers, wood smells unpleasant if broken or bruised. Robins eat the berries but you shouldn’t.

I have been busy in the yard, have you? Or did I miss any common native Anchorage trees?