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Plant Life Valerie Easton

Leading With Authority

Experts who put practicality ahead of theory will guide us on sustainable gardening

HOW IS THE Northwest Horticultural Society able to coax so many garden luminaries to speak in Seattle? I'm just glad they're able to pull it off, especially for their annual symposium.

"Sustainable Gardening: The Green Approach" is the timely topic of this year's event on March 24, just as we may be readying for another dry summer. The symposium features a local speaker, two from Oregon, and Janet Marinelli from the East Coast. She's the author of that fat and fabulous tome "Plant: The Ultimate Visual Reference to Plants and Flowers of the World." Can you imagine being qualified to write a book with a title like that? Marinelli's up to it; she's not only an ecological designer but a plant conservator and expert on invasives and biodiversity.

While the day-long gathering will offer plenty of earth-saving practicalities, Marinelli brings a world-wide perspective. "For millions of years, birds, bees and other animals have been the agents of biodiversity, scattering pollen and seed across the land," explains Marinelli by e-mail. "Now it is we who have the power to be either the promoters of biodiversity or its destroyers. We exercise this power every time we choose what to grow and not to grow and in how we design our gardens."

Marinelli believes gardeners play an essential role in what she calls the age of extinction, for we can reject invasives as we preserve threatened species in our gardens. "Some plant species may not survive the 21st century unless gardeners grow them," says Marinelli, giving the examples of Franklinia alatamaha, Wood's cyad and Sprenger's tulip, which are wiped out in the wild yet growing happily in home gardens.

As Marinelli and I e-mailed back and forth, it became clear she's not just a theoretician. Her ideas are firmly rooted in garden design. She urges us, for example, to consider local ecology when planning gardens to shelter and feed wildlife. "How can we mimic in our gardens the vertical layers of vegetation found in nature? Can we gardeners help bolster the gene pools of shrinking populations of native plants?" Marinelli will help us not only determine the vital questions but answer them.

Sean Hogan is way ahead of the curve on ecological gardening. For years he's been selling drought-tolerant Mediterranean plants at Cistus, his destination nursery near Portland. In his talk, "Raindrops on Rooftops," he'll tell us about the trials and tribulations of an eco-roof project he's designing in Portland that uses unusual grasses and yuccas to top a high-rise.

Hogan is a realist who advises cutting way back on "plants that suck up water." Yet he thinks we need to leave ourselves room to cheat a bit, because that's what gardening is all about. "We don't have to suffer to do good; it's not painful," says Hogan, an admirer of chaparral and mountain plants. I love his idea of designing gardens to be crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. No, he isn't talking about some new kind of candy-bar approach, but advises planting up the perimeter of your property with rosemary, grasses, olive trees and other plants that prefer neglect. Closer to the house, indulge yourself in a water feature, cannas, palms or hydrangeas if you must.

In Hogan's own garden? "Oh, I never go out there anymore," he laughs.

The day will be rounded off by designer Cameron Scott, an expert in sustainable water practices, and Maurice Horn from Joy Creek Nursery. In his Scapoose, Ore., nursery the lavender path, dry border and texture garden are rarely watered. He'll share recommendations for the choicest unthirsty plants, and because he's a clematis enthusiast I hope we'll hear about his favorites. Horn's talk is entitled "True Grit: Creating Low- to No-Water Gardens for the Pacific Northwest," with an emphasis on his successful experiments using gravel as both soil amendment and mulch.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net.