Planting Edmonds is a monthly column written by and for local gardeners.

“The best gardeners have killed the most plants,” jokes Edmonds College horticulture student Juniper Smith. “The plants know what to do. Leave them alone.”

Plant humor aside, even though Juniper is a second-year student, she is already a certified professional horticulturist working at a commercial landscape nursery. She handles inventory and quality control at Puget Sound Plants. At Edmonds College, she majors in nursery and greenhouse management.

Juniper’s classmate Rachel came from the tech world, worked in plant sales for a while and now studies sustainable landscape management, focusing on conservation and restoration — think rain gardens and native plants. She plans to continue working as an educator in critically protected wildlife areas.

Their teacher and department head Michelle Rau has a personal goal to plant 500 trees a year! She’s almost there for 2024. As a certified professional horticulturist and ISA certified arborist, Michelle trains students to work in all aspects of horticulture.

Chris Walton and I attended a recent arboriculture class in which Rachel, Juniper and two dozen of their classmates were rescuing unsaleable trees that had been rejected from local nurseries. “Our goal is to get good plants into the landscape,” says Rau. The students replant these trees and nurse them back to health, and many will end up in the college’s spring plant sale.

The 25 students in the arboriculture class gathered in small groups. Rau taught them to unpot the rootbound trees without yanking on the stems (imagine 25 students pounding pots on tables), remove moss and weeds on top, examine the root systems, tease apart the roots, discard the old soil, trim any wayward roots and repot the trees properly in larger pots.

For seedlings in small-celled planting trays, Professor Rau recommends breaking apart the trays rather than stressing the plants by yanking them out.

The college maintains sharp tools and keeps them clean. When the students trim the roots, they are taught to make clean cuts without tearing. Tearing the cuts unevenly will damage the plants. On the other hand, Rau says, cutting a structural root when the plant is at the nursery stage won’t kill the tree. The roots can then spread.

The donated plants we saw had been buried too deeply in containers, so the students learned to replant them up to their “root flares.” Not too deep! If planted too deeply, the soil suffocates the plant. It seems counterintuitive but the roots need air. The students’ mantra was “plant it low, it won’t grow; plant it high, it won’t die.”

These little conifers (Thijopsis dolbrata) originated in China and are actually years old — they’re very slow growers – but they weren’t healthy enough to sell. They were donated to Edmonds College by Puget Sound Plants, a commercial landscape company that acts as a broker for farms all over the state.

The Edmonds College horticulture program

The Horticulture Department at Edmonds College is one of the college’s few programs that was able to meet in person during the pandemic; they didn’t even lose members.

Besides nursery, greenhouse and sustainable landscape management, the students can major in landscape design or urban agriculture. All the students study soil science, botany and plant identification no matter what their major, and everyone takes the career seminars class.

The students are pursuing a rigorous, science-based education. To that end, everyone has to take five separate identification classes. They memorize the Latin name, common name, leaf shape and bark type for 200 plants each quarter, broken into groupings (deciduous, conifers, broadleaf evergreens, natives, tropical/desert and herbaceous perennials). The plant I.D. classes are some of the most transformative because the students can see the plants in their local habitat.

The students can take plants home; after all, their education continues in caring for them long term.

Many of the students do outside projects in the community. Aiden (photo below) was one of the volunteers who helped plant trees at the Edmonds marsh.

The landscape design students often work with community members on residential designs so they can experience varied landscapes, budgets and types of clients.

In 2019, EC students collaborated with PlantAmnesty and the Seattle Parks Department in the Cass Turnbull Garden at the Bullitt Estate. They got to work with landscape architects, designers, maintenance crews and board members on conceptual drawings and implementation of their design ideas.

In 2021, the design students presented the Evergreen Arboretum board with some design ideas that were enthusiastically implemented in the garden.

Edmonds College Professor Hillary Ethe’s students did a project at Edmonds Native Plant garden for her Restoration Ecology class. They had to analyze their sites, identify manageable goals and source the necessary materials. Three of the projects they came up with were:

– Designing an interactive space that would appeal to children

– Enhancing the marsh habitat by stabilizing the soil along the tributary creek

– Designing plantings that could thrive beneath a legacy second-growth Western red cedar

The EC Horticulture Department serves the community in other ways as well. Non-student community members can audit classes without pursuing a degree. It’s an excellent continuing education resource for retirees.

Community members can also hire students. To find the expertise you seek, send an email to Michelle Rau, michelle.rau@edmonds.edu listing the scope of work, kind of plants, location and your contact information. You can negotiate a price but expect to pay $35 to $40 an hour, says Rau.

The college’s website lists horticulture graduates who are available to work for hire.

Where the plants come from and where they go

The trees the students repotted for this class were donated to the college by Puget Sound Plants, the largest nursery in the state. PSP generally sells to major landscape companies for large commercial jobs. The company has farms all over the state and can ship to anywhere in Washington.

Juniper says plants that don’t meet PSP’s quality standards get donated to arboretums, charitable organizations or community groups; otherwise, they’ll be culled and become compost. “That’s why it was so nice to see what would otherwise go to waste be planted by the college.”

Commercial nurseries find that bare root plants, whips (long branches that will root) and plants from seed are more profitable than plants grown via propagation, which is more labor-intensive. (Propagation means cloning a plant by taking a cutting from a mother plant and rooting it.)

The college does teach propagation because it is an important skill set for horticulturists. They also teach grafting and pruning.

The nurseries donate unsaleable plants to the college. The college in turn donates rehabbed plants to the Evergreen Arboretum and other nonprofit organizations or sells them at their annual plant sale.

The spring plant sale around Mother’s Day each year “offers cool plants that you can’t find just anywhere,” says Rau. “Program founder Walt Bubelis is still connected to many of the greatest plant collectors in the region, and he and the department keep rare plants in cultivation that might otherwise be lost.”

“Sustainable landscape management is at the heart of our teaching, and we do this through collaborating with various municipalities, farm owners, business owners, designers, caretakers and professionals,” Rau says. “From the project with Hilary Ethe in Edmonds to previous classes taught at Farmer Frog in the Paradise Valley Conservation Area, our program has given students hands-on experience working in wetlands, disturbed sites and larger plots of land that impact the health of our waterways.”

Postscript: Fun facts I learned at the arboriculture class: our soil in Edmonds consists of 16,000-year-old glacial till, which in geologic time is very young. Also, that horsetail is a living fossil, unchanged since prehistoric time – the time of the dinosaurs. The roots go down 2 feet as you know if you’ve ever tried to pull it. You can make compost tea or harvest and eat it like asparagus. Some people claim horsetail has anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits, plus it strengthens bones.

Find out more on the Horticulture Department’s Greenhouse Facebook and Instagram pages.

— Story by Marty Ronish

— Photos by Chris Walton