Jane McGary

Jane lives in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, near the Clackamas and Willamette Rivers, on sloping site of 1/2 acre on a ridge. The soil is moderately acid, heavy clay loam of volcanic origin. Rainfall averages 38 inches per year, almost all between October and June. Minimum temperatures range from 0 to 25 °F (-18 to -4 °C) with typical winter low around 15 °F (-10 °C). Cold periods usually last from 3 to 7 days. Summer highs are in the low 90s F (c. 32 °C), and summer humidity is low, so that night cooling is sharp even during heat waves. The main challenge to growing Mediterranean bulbs is excessive wetness in spring and cycles of wet freezing and thawing in winter, so most bulbs here are grown, at least until a good stock is propagated, in a "Mediterranean house," a greenhouse with a solid roof and wire mesh sides. The garden includes raised beds, basalt and tufa rock gardens, and mixed borders with different irrigation regimes, as well as a "bulb lawn" of sparse turf planted with a number of genera. Jane edited the NARGS journal, the Rock Garden Quarterly, for 10 years, as well as three books copublished by Timber Press and NARGS: "Rock Garden Design and Construction," "Rock Garden Plants of North America," and "Bulbs of North America." (See http://www.nargs.org for more information on NARGS, a very bulb-friendly organization.) Plants are her avocation; she recently retired from her profession in editing, primarily scholarly reference works with concentration in linguistics, history, literature, and anthropology. Jane is the current membership coordinator of the Pacific Bulb Society. Contact her at <janemcgary@earthlink.net>.


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