Advanced search

Portraits By Valerie Easton

Lorene Edwards Forkner

She gives gardens a new look with old things

Lorene Edwards Forkner is a rock star of the Seattle garden scene. Owner of Fremont Gardens Nursery, she's a style-setter who won the Founders Cup in 2003 for her Northwest Flower & Garden Show display garden.

Q: What year is your red Dodge Dart convertible?

A: The girlie muscle car? It's a '64 named Ruby.

Q: Is funky retro how you'd describe Fremont Gardens?

A: More urban hillbilly chic.

Q: What's hip in gardens these days?

A: Anything recycled or repurposed, like this Lug Bucket made of old tires, or vintage metal window boxes. Metal grids of rock screen sold by the pound at Pacific Industrial Supply could be industrial salvage or garden art. I grow vines on it.

Q: Table-top knot gardens?

A: That's the only size knot garden you should have. You use a square pot for geometry and then plant it with dwarf boxwood cuttings. I collect metal wheelbarrows, and I think I'll make a portable tabletop knot garden in one, ideal for today's mobile society.

Q. What's new in containers?

A. Pots with a purple/mauve glaze — plants look so good in them. Square pots are more of an architectural element, good for defining space. I'm using single specimens that will live in the pot for a long time. And I have a crush on dwarf conifers, but only here at the nursery. If I take them home I'll kill them; forget to water.

Q: How about color trends?

A: I think the world is catching up to brown, the bad-boy plants. I did a display of black plants and somebody told me it looked so Johnny Cash. I love to do color runs. I'll use masses of turquoise and teal plants like dianthus and hostas.

Q: What's new in your garden?

A: I'm ripping out plants. It's more about the spaces, now. I have a Lil Loafer camper that looks like a tiny Airstream trailer in the garden. It inspired an aluminum garden with Brunnera 'Jack Frost,' Iris pallida and Astelia nervosa that have a metallic, silvery sheen to them. And I've replaced the vegetable garden with a meadow, that Piet Oudolf thing, of yarrow, ornamental grasses, allium in the backyard. It's loose, fluid, low-maintenance, but in the winter it's just gone.

Q: What can someone add to their garden for an instant makeover?

A: Introduce an object like a birdbath or an architectural remnant. There are so many possibilities for items.