Linda Beutler shares natural garden wisdom
The yard around Linda Beutler’s Sellwood cottage is packed with plants, from fruit trees to orange rose hips to bright berries that last through winter. Her yard provides food and habitat for birds and other wildlife in her neighborhood.
"You can’t have an effective organic garden without having birds in your yard," she says. "They’re such good little pest-getters."
Her plants supply a great view from the cozy indoors through the rainy months. She’s planned it that way, and you can, too. Winter is the perfect time to plan, and it starts, Beutler says, with looking out the window right now. Look for gaps in foliage that can be filled for better views. Then you can develop a garden design that’s pretty and nurtures nature year round – one plant at a time.
That’s what Beutler did. She and her husband Larry moved to Sellwood 20 years ago, and they have planted nearly every plant in their yard, which they share with their 2-year-old black lab Tessie, and cats Coco and Rufus.
Beutler offers expertise at free Metro workshops
Beutler teaches free workshops that are part of the natural gardening program Metro offers in partnership with the Oregon State University Extension Service. She also teaches horticulture at Clackamas Community College and has written two books, Gardening with Clematis and Garden to Vase, both published by Timber Press.
Her expertise spans decades. She has had gardens everywhere she’s lived, "even if it was just pots on a fire escape." Sure, she has a special love for plants. But, she says, it’s the gardening community that’s kept her at it. She and dear friend Lucy Hardiman, along with other regional gardening experts like Mike Darcy, worked to find a permanent home for the Rogerson Clematis Collection, which now lives at Luscher Farm in Lake Oswego. Beutler curates the collection.
Berries and rose hips: Winter color isn’t just for the birds
At home, Beutler and her husband started with the vegetable garden. Last October, giant Roma tomatoes were still ripening on the vine amid purple leeks, herbs and flowers, including a 5-foot tall fuchsia and dahlias just starting to bloom. She attributes the size of the Romas to the neighboring flowers, which help attract pollinators.
Such symbiosis is apparent all over Beutler’s yard. A towering pear tree creates a natural trellis for the Purpleleaf grape (Vitis vinifera "Purpurea") with its giant clusters of seedy grapes, which emerge in early fall and feed the birds in winter. Beutler loves its fall foliage – some leaves speckled, some splashed with color, and intensifying over weeks before dropping.
Nearby, the bright berries of a European cranberry bush (Viburnum opulus "compacta") are spectacular. They start yellow after summer flowers, then go orange, then turn red and stay that way. The birds like them when they’re more shriveled and raisiny, Beutler says, which happens in December and January.
Beutler also grows snowberry. Native to Oregon, this deciduous shrub sets its berries in the fall. The bright white orbs linger on elegant leafless stems, providing a starchy snack for resident thrushes, robins and cedar waxwings in late winter after they’ve finished off the rose hips. Two giant rose bushes in the south-facing parking strip fill with bright orange fruits in early fall, providing sweet nutritious snacks for the birds (and color to Beutler’s holiday wreaths). Her disease-resistant pink Meidiland rose, unsprayed, unpruned and unwatered, is more than 10 feet tall.
"If you’re growing the right roses, you don’t have to prune them and you don’t have to water them," Beutler says.
It started in East Multnomah County
Beutler traces her gardening roots back to East Multnomah County, to the 3-foot by 3-foot garden plot her mother gave her when she was 5 years old.
"My first crop was radishes," she says. "But the slugs got most of ’em."
Maybe that’s when it dawned on her that she might need some help. And that doesn’t mean using chemicals. Beutler does it naturally, attracting feathered pest control with a garden that is vibrant and colorful year round and offers great views from every window in the house.