Plants for Gabriola gardens
Last spring I chatted with a Gabriola gardening friend about what I was planning to plant in my garden. What she recommended was a thing called Daphne laureola, which depressed the hell out of me. It’s an invasive plant, it’s poisonous, it’s a huge problem in the Gabriola forest, and it’s something a person can buy in most garden stores. How depressing is that? This cursed plant often escapes from gardens into the wild, and it seems that’s what’s happened on Gabriola. Did I mention that this is a massive problem on our island? And nobody’s doing anything about it, because it’s not as obvious as our even more massive broom problem.
I went home and used large amounts of scotch and Palestrina to regain my sanity.
I heard somewhere (Gabriola Land and Trails Trust? Gabriola Gardening Club?) that garden centres are trying to stop selling these invasive plants, and that they’re trying to promote native plants instead. Now that’s a great plan.
Anyway. Here’s what I saw at Gabriola’s Wild Rose Garden Centre last week: Oregon Grape. It’s a fantastic plant, it’s drought-resistant, it’s incredibly interesting, and it’s native to Gabriola. I am so pleased to see this plant for sale.
One of these days I’ll show you more photos of Oregon Grape, and I’ll tell you exactly what I love about it.
(But now I have to get back to the marrow-sucking project that is taking up way more time and energy than anything ought to take. sigh.)
Filed in Gabriola Island,invasive plants,native plants One Response so far
One Response to “Plants for Gabriola gardens”
cheryl on 18 Feb 2010 at 6:49 am #
In August of 2002 Oregan Grape was named Plant of the month by Arthur Lee Jacobosn, Writer and Plant Expert. Oregon Grape is also know as Oregon Grape Holly, Washington Holly, Ash Barberry, Holly Grape, Shining Oregon Grape and Holly Leaved Mahonia. It was discovered by Meriwether Lewis in 1806 on the Columbia River. It was later named Berberris Aquifolium in 1814. Tall Oregon Grape is the State flower of Oregon it ranges from B.C. into California. You can read More about this article at http://www.arthurleej.com/p-o-m-Aug02.html then click on Plant of the month. The Oregon Grape I’ve seen around here is the low variety though there may be some tall ones also. I’d have to pay more attention to see if we have both tall and low Oregon Grape. You can hardly go any where in the the woods without tripping over this plant. Before a friend told me what it was I always called it Mock Holly.