Euphorbia ceratocarpa at Cistus Nursery

An HPSO open garden visit on Sunday took me about 20 minutes from Cistus Nursery on Sauvie Island, so I popped in to check on some plants I’ve been eyeing in their catalogue. After parking I wandered into the private area near the residence, where I saw this euphorbia, my personal holy grail, lining a path.

As far as entering the verboten part of the garden, at an exciting destination like Cistus my eyes see only plants and inviting paths, not signage. I truthfully did not mean to trespass and was mortified when I realized I had done so. Later in the visit I confessed my mistake to the owner Sean Hogan, and he was kindly reassuring and said they were getting deliveries so everything was open and not to worry. (He actually sent me back into the private area to check out Carex secta, a New Zealand sedge that hoists itself up on a “trunk” of old growth.).

This euphorbia has been tantalizingly out of reach for decades. Nobody offers it for sale. Seeing it on the path, it was much larger than the spindly specimen I grew decades ago in Los Angeles. I nursed a couple cuttings but lost them and the mother plant ages ago. It is incredibly long blooming, willowy, full of that bright character that only euphorbias bring to a garden. And I just recently discovered it was in Citstus’ catalogue. No plants ready for retail sales yet (and still building size for mail order). And as Sean explained, Cistus is predominantly a mail order nursery, although the retail side is always full of fabulous plants and worth browsing. (Available retail was a chionochloa I’ve been looking for to billow out over the east “boardwalk,” Chionochloa conspicua.)

So close to the prize! I’ve been assured that Euphorbia certatocarpa will be available for mail order very soon. The garden I also visited that day was Old Germantown Gardens, which I knew from a blogger’s Fling visit back in 2014. I didn’t write a single post on that visit. OGG is a lot to digest! I’ll be making a stab at it shortly. Something I’ve been struck by is a lot of garden writing I read naturally focuses on the ground level for small urban gardens, whereas the careful buildup with trees and shrubs in larger gardens remains to my eye mostly anonymous shapes. In LA I could half-ass “read” the skyline; in PNW gardens, not so much. It’s frustrating to know that every tree and shrub at Old Germantown Gardens was carefully considered for inclusion because of its unique and special qualities, but are nonetheless shapes without names to me. No wonder I never posted on it back in 2014! More soon, AGO