Sara Mauritz is the author of “Fearless Latin: A Gardener’s Introduction to Botanical Nomenclature.”
She is a life-long plant collector and gardener — she has lived in Portland for 45 years — and is a member of Portland Garden Club and Garden Club of America Horticulture judge.
She offers these tips for successful gardening:
- Know your plants so you put the right plant in the right place.
- It is helpful to know the origin of the plant. What country it comes from and where it grows. Sunny slopes, forest floor, low elevation, montane region.
- If you can replicate the growing conditions of a plant, it will succeed in your garden. Having said that, plants can adapt to moderate changes. A shade-lover will not flourish in a place that gets full sun all day, but will probably do just fine with morning sun and shade from the hottest sun of the day. Water needs are a little trickier. A desert plant will probably never thrive if it gets too much irrigation. And a plant that originates in wet marshes will not do well in a very dry area.
- Any garden will have a variety of growing conditions from dry shade under Doug firs to partial sun under deciduous trees to full hot sunshine all day. If you think about your plants, you can probably find a place in which they can thrive.
- Experimentation is the best teacher. Try a plant in two or three growing areas of your garden to find the place that it does the best. Hybrid tea roses will never be happy in the high desert area of eastern Oregon but you just might find a good place if you experiment.
Learn more: A good way to learn about plants is to visit nurseries, plant society shows like the Rose Society or the Fuchsia Society, or attend flower shows like the Portland Garden Club Flower Show. The horticulture classes will display the wide variety of plants that thrive in this area.
— Homes Gardens of the Northwest staff
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