Niche Nurseries Know Their Stuff Wealth Of Information Available From Specialists

Gardeners looking for special plants and expert advice might consider browsing the many niche nurseries scattered around the region.

The Inland Northwest is home to dozens of small specialty growers who are willing to share their knowledge, and maybe make a sale.

Alan Tower knows his hostas as well as anyone in the country.

Gerry Krueger is internationally regarded for her old-fashioned roses.

Christy Hensler says a gardener can’t go wrong getting into daylilies, because they are survivors.

Doris Delatte teaches the history and uses of herbs, and raises them for sale.

Sali Combelic is passionate about peones.

Larry Parton’s goal is to obtain a complete collection of well-known Iowa-bred roses.

These growers, and others like them, are skilled horticulturalists.

Like many collectors, they’ve slipped into plant specialities. It is partly the fascination of discovering unique varieties, but also the satisfaction that comes from having plants truly worth admiring.

Hobby gardeners can take advantage of this expertise if they are willing to search out the nurseries or their mail order catalogs.

“Spokane is a gardening town,” said Gerry Krueger, who runs Blossoms and Bloomers nursery with her husband on their 22-acre preserve on Pleasant Prairie.

The nursery sells roses, perennials and shrubs that attract song birds. The acreage out back is being turned into a wildlife sanctuary.

Krueger has about 350 old-fashioned roses, including one variety that dates to the 1200s. Many are available for sale each year, but in limited quantities.

Most of Krueger’s roses bloom only once in the spring. Many have intense fragrances that put modern roses to shame, she said.

Her nursery includes a well-landscaped garden that is open on spring weekends starting at the end of April.

She doesn’t water her outdoor garden during the summer, so all of her display plants are hardy to summertime dry spells. The plants also are adapted to cold winters.

She and the other local growers invariably talk about the need to select hardy plants that are acclimated to cold Inland Northwest winters and cool springs.

Cold is a challenge for gardeners of all kinds in this region.

In the vegetable garden, some crops like tomatoes struggle to ripen because of our relatively short summer growing season.

Christy Hensler, who specializes in cold-hardy plants, said she’s found two newer kinds of tomatoes that perform well at her Rock Garden nursery near Diamond Lake.

One is the Oregon Spring tomato. The other is a black plum tomato, which is best used for cooking.

“We are still trying to break the locals into the idea they don’t have to grow Early Girls,” Hensler said.

Hensler, who sells a range of cold-hardy vegetables and flowers, is trying to breed snap beans that can tolerate a spring frost.

Her No. 1 passion is for a plant known as Hemerocallis, or daylily. She handles some 150 varieties of different colors and habits.

One of the daylily’s best attributes is its willingness to survive mistakes like overwatering. She calls it “idiot proof.”

Her nursery, on Viet Road in southern Pend Oreille County, is open May 1 through mid-July. It is closed on Wednesdays.

Doris Delatte, who runs Homestead Horticulture near Elk, said she finds area gardeners enjoyable company.

Delatte teaches classes on herbs through the community colleges’ Institute of Extended Learning and shares her expertise as part of any transaction.

“The purpose of my business is to teach people how to grow plants, what succeeds,” she said.

“I teach gardening. Selling the plant is secondary.”

Delatte has more than 60 herbs for sale. They can be used in food, for health reasons or as decorations in crafts. She is a walking textbook on traditional uses for herbs.

For example, she sells lavender, which can be grown as a fragrant flower and used for the soothing properties of its aroma.

Her nursery is open for business on weekends in May and June.

Sali Combelic worked for years at a perennial nursery, and grew to appreciate the color and beauty of peones, a flower she said is revered in much of Asia.

“It’s really about enjoying something that’s beautiful,” Combelic said.

She has collected 65 varieties of peones and sells roots from about 45 of those. Her display garden is in Peaceful Valley at Cedar and Main.

Visitors may look in from outside the fence, where Combelic has left order forms. Customers write down what they want, and then wait until fall when the roots are dug up from her field on the West Plains.

Gardeners looking for native plants might try Plants of the Wild in Tekoa, or Smart Gardens, at Argonne and Bigelow Gulch Road, which sells stock from the Tekoa nursery.

Bearded iris fans should visit the Iris Test Garden near St. John.

Larry and Cinda Parton at Northland Rosarium specialize in hard-to-find roses, including old-fashioned roses that repeat bloom.

They are propagating an unusually hardy group of roses developed by the late Griffith Buck at Iowa State University. They already have 70 of the plants and plan to acquire a complete collection of 88 shrubs.

Larry Parton calls it his quest.

About 45 of the Buck roses are now in production.

Like Krueger, all of Partons’ roses are raised from cuttings that are allowed to set roots during the summer. They are hardier plants than those sold by large-scale growers who graft cuttings onto another root stock.

The nursery near the Cheney-Spokane Road has a display garden for visitors. It will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 11-12, May 2-3, June 20-21 and July 11-12.

Parton, a vice principal at Ferris High School, said he and Alan Tower have talked about organizing a public nursery fair.

Tower Perennial Garden on the Palouse Highway has a collection that includes more than 700 varieties of hosta, a shade-loving foliage plant that is subtle and sublime. Tower, a self-described plant nut, has tripled his stock this season, adding new European hostas among other items.