Author Lucy Hardiman will speak at Lakewold Gardens at 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 on "Voluptuous Vignettes: The Art of Making Plant Combinations."

Hardiman is a garden designer and author in the Portland area.

In order to get a sense of her style check out a video of her winter garden here. (Skip the first two minutes of ads)

Members of the Northwest Perennial Alliance get in free but nonmembers pay only $5.

Lakewold Gardens is at 12317 Gravelly Lake Drive S.W. in Lakewood.

The first day of fall is Monday, Sept. 22 but you can get an early start on the season Saturday at Point Defiance Park.

The W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory is holding a fall plant sale from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at the Point Defiance greenhouses at 5402 N. Shirley.

Hardy herbs, garden mums, perennials and houseplants will be on sale.

I talked with conservatory manager Mary Anderson today. She said they'll have a wide variety of quality plants on hand. Most of what is on sale is grown specifically for the fall plant sale.

"We actually grow things for the sale that we know people want," Anderson said. But some are excess that were grown for parks.

Some of the houseplants are grown from cuttings taken at the conservatory.

Generally speaking, 3 1/2-inch pots will sell for $3.50 and gallon sized plants are $5, she said.

Proceeds will benefit the Conservatory.

Call 591-5330 for more info.

I'm getting just a little annoyed with this weather we've been having. I keep having to remind myself it's August.

So, I was happy when my sunflowers started blooming. This variety is called Ring of Fire from Territorial Seed Company. It's only about four feet high. The flowers are small and you can see for yourself the interesting color pattern.

What's missing from this picture? The green sunflowers and giant sunflowers I planted behind Ring of Fire. They have long since been destroyed by digging cats.

This is my second year of growing sunflowers and I'm totally in love with then. Next year I'll try again.

With a guard dog.

The hills are on fire this time of year and I couldn't be happier. Not really on fire, just blooming with Epilobium angustifolium, aka fireweed.

My earliest memories of Washington state are of hillsides covered with the magenta colored plants. And the bubbleator at the Seattle Center.

My mom has the same fascination for the plant. Here's her greenhouse, surrounded by the tall spiky plant.

I have a couple growing in my garden this summer. I guess it's just a matter of time before I too have a fireweed plantation.

Reader Nan Maynard of Tacoma called me yesterday afternoon with a question about dahlia tubers. I was glad for the break. I was swamped, thanks to my fellow editor Craig Sailor being strapped with reader rep duty this week (call him at 253-597-8432 to complain about, well, anything. He deserves the torture).

"I got tubers from a friend, but they've been in a box for three years. Can I replant them?" Nan asked.

I paused. Dahlias in a box? For three years. Yikes. Then I remembered the summer of 2005 when I moved and lost a bag of tubers. I found them in a random box in my garage in 2007 and planted them. They came up just fine. I told Nan my previously lost dahlias are shooting out of the ground right now. They seem ok.

But what if I was just lucky? Can dahlias survive three years locked away in a lonely little box? Nan swears they have been stored outside and they haven't seen any light.

Your thoughts?

In the meantime, I've got a call in to Connell's Dahlias in Tacoma. We'll see what they say.

Last weekend I took a tour of Northwest Perennial Alliance gardens on Vashon Island. As I always do on Vashon, I drug my lower jaw through a collection of amazing gardens.

First up was the hillside garden of Edna and James Dam. The couple have a steeply sloping acreage that they've planted with a variety of perennials. Interestingly, they also have grapes, pinot noir, that James has just begun experimental wine making with.

This photo shows an ebony and ivory pair of bulbous oat grass and a dark foliaged dahlia.

Next, I stopped at the always interesting and colorful nursery, DIG. Sylvia Matlock's nursery seems to be appearing in every national garden and architecture magazine I pick up these days. Last November, she expanded her business indoors and now sells interior wares. I wanted to buy everything.

Matlock told me she has shrunk her nursery but it seemed bigger to me since my last visit. Just an optical illusion, she said.

This is one illusion not to be missed.

Next up was the shoreside garden of Anita Halstead and Kelly Robinson on Maury Island.

This garden recently won an award in a garden design contest sponsored by that other newspaper up north. It's easy to see why.

Spectacular borders frame sculpture and views to the water. Interesting plants and combinations, like this crocosmia, globe thistle and flax caught my eye.

You can ponder your next move in the brilliant summer sun on this chess set.

Finally, I finished at the garden of Cindy and Steve Stockett. I've been there before but the garden looked a lot different. Cindy said the windstorm of 2006 did a lot of damage and they've spent some time replanting.

It would take a whole story to tell of the wonders of the Stockett garden but I'll show you something I've seen before but this time it really caught my eye.

This biennial, Echium pinnata, was huge, as the photo above shows. Cindy told me it takes two years for it to bloom and then it perishes - like a good biennial does. But, they reseed naturally. I stuck my camera inside the...uh....leaves...?...and shot this photo of the fleshy colored...uh....head...?

Anyway, I have got to get me some of these.

What is there not to love about daylilies? I find them impossible to kill, which means I automatically like them. I have five big ones in my front garden bed (yes, they're crowded and yes, I need to divide them and move them).

I love this time of year when they start to bloom. Each bloom seems to last about a day (thus the name, I suppose). I inherited them from a neighbor who was separating them on Easter weekend in 2006 and yelled over to my house asking if I wanted them. Of course I said yes, I love garden castoffs. I'm like a cat lady in my inability to say no to a stray plant. I'm not sure which variety I have. Take a look at my picture below and tell me if you think you know what it is. Oh, and send us pics of your daylilies, we'd love to see them. Email me at sue.kidd@thenewstribune.com (Legal stuff our lawyers make us print: Submissions may be published in any form, blah blah blah).

Photo here. Enjoy. (haha)

On Saturday Aug. 2, two weeks from today, we'll publish a story about daylilies by garden writer Jean Parietti. She interviewed Bill Havens, a Tacoma resident and master gardener who cross-pollinates his own day lilies. He plants somewhere around 300 seedlings and year and decides from that batch which ones to keep. Watch for the story in two weeks here.

My nasturtiums began blooming this week. In my garden that means one thing: Dinner time!

This entire plate is made of greens from my garden: Romaine, arugula and some unknown strange, spicy greens from Territorial Seed Company.

The nasturtiums add not only color to my salads but a spicy flavor as well. If you have some be brave, eat 'em. You're not scared of a pretty little flower, are you?

We are back from our field trip and I am sunburned. Don't let the overcast weather fool you, the sun is out. It is just sort of hiding, that's all.

Craig and I had good times at the Chinese Reconciliation Park and Tall Ships. Watch for a post on that in a bit after Craig works up the photos and I formulate some thoughts.

Here's something fun: We swung by the farmers market on our way back. I sauntered right on up to the Amergardens booth and bought myself a garden full of lavender. Or, at least it will be a garden full of lavender in a few years. Right now, it's baby lav. Ready to be nurtured.

I bought: Silver frost, grosso, munstead, lodden blue and Spanish.

Look! A picture! (Not as good as Craig Sailor's, but it will pass. I took this with my cell phone just now).

Here are my five varieties of lavender, nestled among the offerings of my desk: the SoundLife team digital audio recorder, today's paper, a falafel sandwich from MSM deli (in the bag) and my water bottle. Enjoy!

Vashon Islander Elsa Croonquist called the newsroom Thursday to let us know that the sixth annual Vashon Lavender Farm Tour is coming up, July 19 and 20, and wouldn't we like to write about lavender?

You bet, Elsa. I am just discovering the nuances of lavender. I'm becoming lav-obsessed. I spent some time at the Ambergardens booth at the Tacoma Farmers Market Thursday with my nose buried in different pots of it, trying to decide which variety to buy. (Read this post for what lavenders were at last week's Ambergarden booth.)

My first adventure in growing lavender: blue cushion. This Thursday at market day, I'd like to buy a royal velvet and silver frost. What next? Any suggestions? Maybe I'll do an entire garden bed with just different varieties of lavender. On second thought, maybe not. The aroma might be a bit ... confusing. I do rather like the idea of planting the lavender in proximity to the seating areas in my back yard. It's a wonderful thing, to stumble across a cloud of lavender.

I started doing some research and here are a few interesting links I found. I think this link is a good place to start, it has all kinds of details about growing and selection. And, this link to a WSU fact sheet on lavender also is a nice source of information for our climate.

So what's next for me and the lav? Watch for an article about lavender in the Home&Garden section on July 19. I don't know what I'll write yet, but I'll come up with something. Or my fellow garden blogger Craig Sailor will tell me what to write. He's good at that.

Note: Here is a link to the big Sequim lavender festival, which is the same weekend as the Vashon lavender festival (I smell a Get Growing blog field trip to both).