Two Tough Plants

by Pat Diaz, from the October 2003 Newsletter

This month’s article features two really tough plants that will be big hits in your garden. Both are a favorite of mine so I can attest to that with personal experience. One beautifies with its blossoms and the other provides beautiful leaf and branch interest as well as a tasty harvest!

The first is the potentilla, a beautiful flowering shrub that will tolerate our clay soil. They’re a favorite of landscape gardeners all over the Palouse. There are more than 500 varieties of this plant, commonly called cinquefoil. Many of these species are herbs and perennials, but the one you want to use for a flowering shrub is called Potentilla fruticosa.

These plants stand up to cold weather, our less-than-favorable clay soil, and also to drought and heat. They grow slowly to about four feet and have a nice mounded shape. The flowers come in several colors – yellow, white, red, orange and a beautiful salmon. They are insect- and disease-resistant and need little to no care whatsoever. Occasional watering and fertilizing just makes them flower more beautifully. Potentillas begin flowering in spring and don’t stop until the first frost.

If you’d like a more low-growing variety, look for the Klondike, a dense two-foot-tall variety with 2” deep yellow flowers. Two other kinds are Abbotswood and Mount Everest, which have white flowers. The salmon one is called the Miss Willmott and seems to always draw the most attention. For yellow 4-foot varieties, try Goldfinger, Primrose Beauty, Jackman’s Variety, and Katherine Dykes. For real pizzazz, Red Ace is a 2-foot-tall shrub with bright red flowers with yellow centers, or Tangerine which has yellow-orange blossoms. The red and orange varieties like it just a bit more lightly shaded than the yellow or white ones.

Another really tough “plant” is the filbert, which is really a tree. Filbert or hazelnut trees provide year-round interest as well as delicious nuts. You can get this tree in shrub form also and there are actually 15 different filbert species available.

Hazelnuts were very important to First Nation peoples – they ground them into flour, which kept for long periods without spoiling and they used the tree’s boiled bark to heal cuts and treat fevers. In the late 1800s northwestern U.S. farmers began growing filberts as an agricultural crop and today Oregon is America’s top producer of hazelnuts. Turkey is the largest hazelnut growing country in the world.

The variety that I have is the Harry Lauder Walking Stick, a hybrid of the European filbert, that grows distinctive crooked stems and is striking in the winter with its gnarled look and golden catkins hanging long after the leaves have gone. In the summer it looks like a disreputable green rag bush but that just makes it more lovable to me. This variety doesn’t produce nuts. (It’s named for a Scottish vaudeville singer and World War I hero whose trademark was a twisted walking stick.) Another unique variety is the Purple Giant filbert, which is 15-20 feet tall and has dark-purple leaves that gradually fade to dark green as the summer progresses. This filbert, too, doesn’t produce nuts.

For a handsome tree that withstands tough conditions, including drought, AND produces tasty nuts, choose the Turkish variety of filbert. These are often seen planted along streets and in parks. Turkish filberts often reach heights of 40-50 feet. If you want a shorter tree, try the American or European filberts, which reach 8 to 20 feet. They also make great hedges.

Filberts have few pest and disease problems and require little upkeep. Once they’re established, they are drought-tolerant. They like a well-drained soil, so amend your clay before planting the tree. You also need to plant at least two if you want an abundant harvest of these tasty nuts, as the trees can’t pollinate their own blooms. Some varieties produce ground-level shoots or “suckers” but just cut those off below ground level. Probably the biggest challenge to growing filbert trees is fending off the squirrels and deer!

Copyright: Copyright on articles, recipes and images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors, except were otherwise noted.

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