July Tip from the Wedgwood Garden Club: You Don’t Need a Green Thumb

Jacqueline Houston is a member of the Wedgwood Garden Club, and also a Master Gardener of King County. She has been gardening in Seattle for over 30 years, and now has a garden consulting/coaching business called Enchanted Garden Consulting. Wedgwood Garden Club always welcomes new members – contact Jacqueline at tppoems@comcast.net for more information on our monthly meetings

Evergreen huckleberry

As a Master Gardener, I am required to put in 15 hours or so each summer, answering gardening questions from the general public at various locations such as Ballard Locks, farmers’ markets, and (bizarrely) the zoo. And I cannot count the number of times that someone has included the phrase, “….but I don’t have a green thumb” in their account of the sad decline of their potted hydrangea, or their new Japanese maple, or their stricken tomato plants, or their miserable evergreen huckleberries.

My response is always, “No, you don’t need a green thumb, you just need some basic information.” Yesterday I noticed my colleague’s response was, “No, you don’t need a green thumb, you just need to pay attention to the plant”, which is a true component but incomplete without the addition of that afore-mentioned basic information.

For example, that potted hydrangea – a lovely gift from the young lady’s boyfriend – had been sitting inside their house for 2-3 weeks, getting sadder and limper by the minute, and she blamed her lack of a green thumb. I told her it wasn’t suited to be a houseplant and needed to be outside, in a pot or in the ground, and her whole face lit up. “So it wasn’t anything I did!” she said, beaming at me.

The new Japanese maple was in a pot in front of a west-facing stucco wall, getting fried every afternoon, and we explained that most Japanese maples (especially in their youth) don’t like such a fiercely hot spot. They had a shady backyard and we suggested they move it there.

The similarly afflicted evergreen huckleberries were planted out in a row in a bare, full-sun hell strip, in the belief that a native plant can tolerate anything the PNW can throw at it. We explained that they evolved as understorey plants in shadier and cooler conditions, and to instead plant heat- and drought-tolerant mediterranean-style plants such as lavender, rosemary and Russian sage.

And those stricken tomato plants, it often turns out, were planted out in the garden too early, before night-time temperatures were reliably over 50 degrees (usually sometime in May), because nurseries and big-box stores put them out for sale way early and people assume they are good to go.

Often a quick Google search will give you the answer, as long as you think of asking the question, such as “What growing conditions does (blank) need?” And no, you do not need a green thumb.