ARTICLE BY: KATE McMILLAN Kate McMillan is a HPSO Board member and owner of Cultiverity, a garden design company in Portland. When she’s not working on her own or someone else’s garden, she’s running her web design studio, Outbox Online. She can often be found posting to the HPSO Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter feeds, and coordinating this blog. *** You know that person who is always like, “Have you heard about ____? You have to try it!” That’s me with ground cover. I tell everyone about its virtues in the garden, and why not? It’s the answer to so… 

ARTICLE BY: MEGAN HANSEN Megan Hansen is a Portland gardener, plant nut, HPSO member and founder of plantlust.com — a searchable database with over 30,000 plants from nearly 100 independent nurseries, many of them located right here in Oregon. [Editor’s Note: PlantLust.com has been an invaluable resource to me as a gardener learning about plants.  It provides lots of photos of the plants listed, so you can get different views of them (close up and the whole plant), and see them in different seasons.  It also aggregates the information from multiple nursery tags so you can read what the experts… 

Don’t you hate it when something fabulous ends up scheduled on a day you already have plans? That’s why we’re letting you know early about this year’s Hardy Plant Society of Oregon / Garden Conservancy Open Garden Day… July 14th, 2018 Save the date! / LEARN MORE… This year’s event will include touring seven outstanding private gardens in North/Northeast Portland plus free “Digging Deeper” programs at Garden Fever and Thicket Nursery. Timber Press authors will be signing books, and there will be pollinator classes from bee experts and water conservation information from the regional water consortium. All that, plus there’s… 

The HPSO Grants & Scholarships Program is named in honor of the late Elaine Joines, who was designer and curator of the Martha Springer Botanic Garden at Willamette University and a dedicated member of the HPSO Grants Committee. The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon works to promote education and understanding of herbaceous perennial plants, and is dedicated to helping special gardens of botanical, horticultural, or historic interest, including the support of community gardens. We award funds to non-profit organizations throughout Oregon and Clark County, Washington, for projects that further these goals.  Specifically we award grants for plantings, horticultural equipment/supplies for gardening or… 

ARTICLE BY: LAUREN HALL-BEHRENS Originally Published in the HPSO Quarterly in Winter 2013 Lauren Hall-Behrens is a HPSO Member, Garden Designer & Owner of Lilyvilla Gardens *** Hardscape, including paths, patios, arbors, and pergolas, is the solid material underfoot and the architecture overhead that creates the framework and the structure of a garden. It dictates how we move through and react to a space and establishes an architectural relationship between a garden and the home it surrounds. This structural framework also contains and organizes a garden’s plants. A well-designed hardscape can bring an overall sense of order and calm to…