By RSBG Horticulturist and Assistant Curator Will Clausen While December might be dark, often damp, and sometimes chilly, these characteristics make it perhaps the most atmospheric time of year in the garden. At its best, December is truly dramatic. Wisps of fog wending through the conifers, or entirely enveloping the garden creates an eerie […]
By RSBG Assistant Nursery Manager Emily Joseph November, the month when even the drive along Weyerhauser Way invites you into the garden through a tunnel of deciduous color intermixed among a backdrop of evergreens. Native big leaf maples (Acer macrophyllum), vine maples (Acer circinatum), and black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) are ablaze in shades of yellow, […]
By RSBG Horticulturist and Assistant Curator Will Clausen October is here, and by now, the days are getting short, the sky cloudy and often heavy with rain, and in the garden, we start to see colors popping up where before everything was green. The month of fall color is finally upon us, a time of […]
By RSBG Assistant Nursery Manager Emily Joseph The sun-drenched days of summer have passed, ushering in cooler temperatures and welcome rain showers as the seasonal shift from summer to fall sneakily slides into view. Early signs of deciduous foliage gathering sugars and producing anthocyanins and carotenoids have begun (those red, orange, and yellow pigments that […]
Story and photos by RSBG Horticulturist & Assistant Curator, Will Clausen Throughout August, new Rhododendron leaves continue to emerge and mature as the relentless summer sun does its best to sear the garden. As the heat builds through the end of summer, the new growth is quickly becoming thicker and more adaptable to both the […]
Story and photos by RSBG Nursery Manager & Assistant Curator, Atsuko Gibson While our nursery specializes in species Rhododendron, we also propagate “companion plants” — the term we use for our non-rhododendron collection. We focus on plants that grow naturally alongside rhododendrons in the wild, as well as many other genera within the Ericaceae, the […]
July Story and photos by RSBG Assistant Nursery Manager, Emily Joseph Somehow, it always surprises me how much cooler it is beneath the shady canopy of the garden than just down the hill in the sun-soaked nursery. Yet it is a well-known fact that trees provide a cooling effect that reduces the buildup of heat […]
June Story and photos by Will Clausen June is a month of transition in the garden. Even though peak flowering has passed for rhododendrons, there are still plenty of species that put on their show at this time of year, and a few that will wait for an even later date. And of course, we […]
April by Will Clausen The beginning of April brings us near the end of the first big wave of color at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden. Thankfully, the second wave should get going just as the early flowers fade away. It has been an exceptional spring for flowers throughout the garden so far and as […]
March by Emily Joseph March at the garden is a month most known for its variable precipitation, temperature swings, and for being the reason we check the 10-day forecast repeatedly. Frequently extolled in weather lore and age-old adages, it seems like a time-honored tradition for the weather to fluctuate without any predictability. Yet, the balance […]
February By Will Clausen February might seem like just another winter month to some, but at the RSBG February means spring is already here. Flowers are starting to brighten up the garden, though sometimes winter weather sneaks through the gate. Rutherford Conservatory It is a short walk from the Visitor Center to the Conservatory, and […]
January By Emily Joseph Seasonal Interest: Often labeled as the dead of winter, January probably ranks as the month of least interest in the minds of most botanical garden visitors. Yet amidst the quiet cold, bastions of the winter botanical world are showing off structure, spectacular bark, and swelling buds about to break, giving life […]
Download pdf: Species-Profile-R.-nakaharae-by -Adam-Duell By Adam Duell This plant is available for purchase in the Spring 2023 Catalog. Rhododendron nakaharae is a very compact creeping evergreen azalea. With a typical maximum height of around 1 foot it is most suitable as a ground cover, rock garden, or container plant. Its small size also […]
If you’ve been to our alpine garden, you have probably noticed the most fantastic (possibly the best you have ever seen) display of Adiantum aleuticum var. subpumilum. This plant is basically a dwarf version of our Western Maidenhair fern, Adiantum aleuticum, but only reaching 6 to 8 inches in height. Due to its compactness, it […]
by Britt Board Hi, my name is Britt and I’m not a plant expert. I am but a lowly plant appreciator and part of the administrative team at the RSBG. Since I started in 2018, I’ve been fixing my coworkers with confused stares and asking lots of questions to help me better understand the […]
by Will Clausen In cold midwinter when little else is astir and most of the plants in the garden are in survival mode, one species of rhododendron is ready to burst into a cloud of pink. Rhododendron dauricum is a semi-evergreen thicket-forming shrub native to northeast Asia from Mongolia and northern China east into Siberia, Korea, […]
