Lessons from the Garden
Related: Q&A with Michael Fleming
Planting fragrance is easy. People stop in front of the kobus magnolia tree’s big white blooms and breathe in the fragrance. It’s potent―but it’s not from the magnolia; it’s from the Viburnum x burkwoodii that grows behind it. This plant is widely available in the Northwest and easy to grow in your own yard.
Tiny seeds quickly grow into mighty trees. One of the garden’s dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is 86 feet tall with a trunk 5 feet in diameter. Carl English is believed to have started it in 1948 from the first seeds brought to America after the species was rediscovered in China. (A deciduous cousin of the coast redwood, it had been considered extinct.) And Sawara false cypress trees are so big that last year a group of great blue herons built nests in them.