Magnolia Garden Center

The full-service Magnolia Garden Center is conveniently located in Magnolia Village just ten minutes from downtown and surrounded by Queen Anne and Ballard. We've been a trusted source for annuals, perennials, house plants, trees and shrubs, mulches and soil amendments, tools and supplies for over 40 years.

For container gardening on your balcony or deck, we have a great selection of containers, and plants to complete the look.

We regularly schedule classes and workshops on topics of seasonal interest such as container planting, rose pruning and flowering plant selection. Sign up for the email newsletter to make sure you don't miss anything.  See our Special Events page for what is coming up.

Christmas Shop

Before your very eyes, our Stephanie is transforming our Gift Shop into your local source for all things Christmas--the ornaments and decor, the gifts, cards and wrap--just what you need for the holiday season!  Our new fall and winter linens will create just the party or everyday look you want.  Stop in, say hello, and get your hands on the coolest new stuff!

LANDSCAPE DESIGN

We offer landscape design services for your garden.  Whether its a complete landscape design or just a quick consultation at Magnolia Garden Center our staff can accommodate your needs. See our Landscape Services page to learn more!

We invite you to stop by and enjoy the coolest little garden center in Seattle.

Chuck's Garden Post

Garden Pests I

Garden Pests II

Edible Gardening

Fragrance

Blueberries

Garden Pests I

This spring’s sunny moments, or at least the dry periods between the showers, are offering gardeners fleeting chances to work in their gardens.  Still, we are hearing from lots of people with some common problems this year.  While not exactly pestilence or plague, insects and diseases are distressing many by their presence.  Two problems bothering many gardeners this season are aphids and fungus.

Despite conditions that seemed uncomfortable to us, the winter was generally mild for the insect population.  The cold temperatures were just barely into the upper 20s for most of the winter, which is not cold enough to kill off many of our usual insect pests.  When we started hearing about aphids in January and February we realized it might be a big aphid year.

Aphids are active here throughout most of the year but conditions usually limit their numbers.  These tiny sucking insects feed on the juices of many plants.  Usually they find the tender new foliage on which to lay their young and seemingly within a day or two the number of bugs can go from none to thousands.  Often these creatures find plants that are already in distress and a large infestation can make matters worse for a stressed plant.

Usually in the home garden attacks of aphids don’t cause much damage and are primarily more a nuisance than a threatening presence.  The first most effective approach is to try to wash as many as possible off the plant with a blast of water from the hose.  Once the young aphid is dislodged from the plant it rarely is able to reattach itself.   For those more inclined to let nature do part of the work, try ladybugs.

 Ladybugs are aphid predators. Between the familiar adults and the more voracious ladybug larvae (which look something like a very tiny black and orange spotted alligator!) they can reduce a population of aphids in your yard in a matter of a few weeks.  If you need more ladybugs in your yard you can buy containers of 1500 adults to release at home.  While many of these will find their way to your neighbor’s, enough should stick around to do the job in your garden.

If this doesn’t work fast enough there are many safe organic sprays available.  There is normally no reason to use a harsh chemical spray for aphids.  (Next time: Getting fungus under control.)

Garden Pests II

The winter, er, ah, spring …  or wait, is it actually summer???  Well, whatever season it is, it is giving us some problems that seem to be affecting lots of gardens and gardeners – the Fungus is among us!  From black spot and mildew on roses to powdery mildew on rhododendrons to leaf spot of lots of other plants, we are seeing lots of it.  And it all has the weather in common.  Damp days with temperatures in the 50s offer perfect growing conditions for many of our local fungus diseases.

Many of the fungus spores are normally found in the garden soil throughout the region just waiting for the opportunity to grow.  That opportunity comes along when a spore finds itself on a moist plant leaf at temperatures in the mid 50-degree range for a span of 5 to 10 hours.  For plants like roses growing in Seattle, that usually comes in the summer when the gardener waters in the evening, or when the dew lands on it in the early morning hours and the sun doesn’t dry it off early.  This year it is happening in the middle of the day – rain plus daytime temperatures in the 50s equals mildew.

So what can you do?  Hope for better weather?  Ignore it?  Treat it?  The treatment will depend on what plant we’re talking about.  For many plants, there are sprays available: some safe and organic, some not so much.  Often the safer the spray the less effective it is.  However, there is a relatively new organic spray (Serenade Disease Control) available. The active ingredient is a bacteria benign to us yet quite toxic to certain fungal diseases.  The label lists a wide range of diseases that are effectively controlled by this product.  The WSU coop-extension has not yet recommending it for all those diseases but it may as it tests for each. 

Another line of products contains either sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate.  These compounds, found in RosePharm or Remedy, alter the environment on the leaf surface making it inhospitable for fungal colonies to grow. 

Edible Gardening

Between the cold blustery rains, the snow, sleet and thunderstorms we’ve seen paltry few mild and sunny days this year.  Spring hasn’t allowed us to stop and smell the flowers.  Now that May is here, flower gardening interest is finally starting to build. However, excitement in another category of gardening has been evident since early this year – edible gardening.

Recent concerns about costs and carbon footprints especially related to transportation have turned attention to fresh-from-your-backyard grown food.  Across the country there is tremendous attention to “eat local” and “grow your own food”.  We have always had a loyal following of gardeners buying organic tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and lettuce.  They are asking for French Crisp and Merlot lettuce, prize-winning Momotaro tomatoes, golden beets, Kaffer lime trees (leaves for Thai cooking) and lemongrass. 

One of the most rewarding things we see is the excitement the gardeners have while planning their garden and then thinking about the great fresh salads and other dishes they’ll be enjoying in a few weeks.  We spend a good part of the next several months salivating over the various foods they talk about preparing. 

While some city farmers are pulling out their lawns to install edible garden beds, one needn’t go to that extreme.  There are many locals successfully growing crops with good yields in mini-gardens or just containers.  The key is matching your crops to your “farm”: whether an entire backyard or a few small pots on your deck. 

Here are a few suggestions for the container gardening crowd.  For tomatoes in smaller containers select determinate types.  These are usually smaller in size and don’t require such a large container to get maximum yield.  Leaf crops such as lettuce, romaine, arugula, etc. are great crops for small spaces.  Harvest the larger leaves from the outside of the plants for small salads whenever desired.  For pepper fans, jalepenos, Anaheims or even Bell’s make great container plants.  I plant three pepper plants in each large (18 – 24” wide) pot and grow them in a warm sunny spot.  Add a generous amount of compost (Gardener & Bloome makes an absolutely amazing vegetable compost) to your fresh potting soil, water regularly and sit back and sip your mojito (with your freshly picked mint). 

Quick recipe: Prepare a wonderfully tasty appetizer by lightly grilling sliced peppers over coals or open flame.  Then marinate them in olive oil over coals until tender.  Use a variety of peppers for a more spicy taste.

Fragrance

After enduring a long cold winter, we’ve finally had our first taste of summer.  Spring seems to have skipped us almost entirely this year.  The warm weather enticed many of us outside this past weekend and much to our surprise there is still much blooming spring to enjoy.  Masses of flowers and their wafting perfumes intoxicate the senses. 

Our Winter Daphne, which started its fragrant bloom back in late January, is still sweetening the yard with its essence somewhere between orange blossom and sweet clove.  For those desiring a fragrant gardens this plant is a must have.  I think most gardeners would place this among the most beautifully scented of all.  Though some seem to find this a difficult plant to grow its requirements are simple.  It grows well in partial shade and in our well-drained sandy soil.  Just make sure to place it near a walkway so you can be sure to enjoy its enchanting aroma.

The scent of the lilac harkens many back to childhood at Grandma’s.  A bouquet will fill any room with an old-fashioned perfume guaranteed to evoke distant memories.  Our largest lilac (a variety named Frank Klager) is a rich and deep purple reminiscent of grape juice.  Right now a good chunk of our backyard is blanketed with a robe of its royal purple flowers. 

We purchased this particular plant for one reason: though it was less than a foot tall it had a blossom on it that was almost half the size of the whole plant!  Though I think it may have skipped blooming in its second or third year it has produced significantly more flowers each subsequent year.  Like people, individual plants tend to do certain things well.  In this instance our plant has always been a great flower producer.  This is a lesson one can extrapolate to many other flowering plants.  If you want a plant that produces lots of flowers, buy one that has lots of flowers when it is young.

While we have many other fragrant plants sharing their perfumes with us, I find a pair of Rhododendrons of great interest.  These two grace one of our shadier garden spots.  The first (Rhododendron Puget Sound) is a relatively short but increasingly wide shrub while the second (Rhododendron Loderii King George) is just starting to show signs of just how big it is capable of becoming – there is a specimen at the English Garden at the Ballard Locks that is the size of a small house.  Both of these plants force a more intimate encounter to access their floral fragrance from immense trusses of pink flowers: A perfume that truly defines floral essence.     

Blueberries

Grow Your Own Berries

A couple of years ago Margaret decided that since I enjoyed blueberries so much (and that they are so good for you) we should grow them in our garden.  She brought home a couple of the traditional northern deciduous type plants along with three evergreen “Sunshine Blue” hybrids developed from southern varieties.  I have to admit to being skeptical about the whole project.  Many years ago we had attempted to grow blueberries with a huge 30-year-old plant we bought from a blueberry farm going out of business.  Among other things we learned why farmers usually replace their plants after 15 to 20 years of production!  Additionally, I didn’t believe that an evergreen hybrid like this could produce a decent crop of tasty berries and also function as a lovely ornamental plant all winter long.

For the first two seasons I mostly ignored the new berry plants since it is recommended limiting your harvests for the first one or two years.  Then early last summer Margaret told me I better check out the new berries and that I might want to take a container with me and pick some.  When I finally got around to sampling the crop, I found I needed to go get a second container to pick all the wonderfully sweet berries that were ready for harvest.

During the course of the summer I harvested at least 10 quarts of berries from those plants for wonderful pancakes, waffles and pies.  Only a handful came from the “normal” highbush plants while the shorter “Sunshine Blue” produced nearly all the crop.  Admittedly the former plants were tucked behind the latter in a shadier spot.  But the Sunshine Blue’s yield and taste quality were both great.

Growing these plants is relatively simple and only requires a few things:  a mostly sunny spot, adequate water through mid-September and an acid soil (pH 4.5 to 5.5).  Many people worry about the acidity but in Seattle our soils tend to be acidic to begin with.  Rhododendrons do best in the same pH and see how well they do here.  But if you do need to lower the pH it is easily accomplished with a good acidifying fertilizer like an Azalea Rhododendron fertilizer with ammonium sulfate.

It won’t be too long before the warmer days of summer will bring us outdoors for cookouts and patio dining.  For many of us, these meals have to include some of our own homegrown fresh produce.  What could be more local than your own backyard?