Why Use Mediterranean Plants in the Pacific Northwest?

A dramatic vignette in Linda Cochran’s garden: from the front, pale pink Phlomis purpurea, globular flowers of Allium ‘Globemaster’, russet tones of a fading Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii ‘Lambrook Gold’, and tall spikes of foxtail lily (Eremurus). Photographs by Terry Moyemont
Certainly, we are not California, not even Humboldt County in the far northern corner of the state. We’re on the fringe of the mediterranean-climate zone; you could call us the Gran Canaria of the West Coast or the Scilly Isles of North America.
We have always been fascinated with the Mediterranean—its culture, its art, its many languages, and, most of all, its plants. We even bought an abandoned village house in the mountains of Crete and, a few years ago, joined the Mediterranean Garden Society. Now we operate a greenhouse/nursery called Mesogeo (Greek for Mediterranean) and grow mediterranean-climate plants and hardy tropicals suited to the Pacific Northwest. When we look around us here on Bainbridge Island, Washington—at our friends and colleagues, our clients, gardeners of long experience, and newly enflamed novices—we see t...