Where to Start When Your Spring Garden Feels Overwhelming
If you've ever walked outside in April and felt your stomach drop a little at everything staring back at you, this one's for you. Spring has a way of making…
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After years of crossing paths at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show and never quite having enough time, we finally got to sit down for a real conversation with John (from Vashon), and I’m so glad we did. John Coghlan is a landscape designer and gardener based on Vashon Island, where he runs HomeGrown Organics, and this one is a good one. We get into his love of Vashon, what shaped his plant palette, and the winding road that led him to where he is today.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How the landscapes John has lived in, from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California to the highlands of Guatemala, show up directly in his plant palette, and why you can see that progression clearly when you look back at his show gardens over the years
- How sedges caught John’s attention early in his landscaping career through Seattle’s Rainwise program, digging out lawns and redirecting water back to where it wanted to be, and how that early love culminated in his 2026 Northwest Flower and Garden Show garden, uplifting sedges into something truly special
- John’s deep love of Vashon after moving there with his family 13 years ago, the island’s incredible horticultural history and roots, from the Beall Greenhouses, once one of the most well-respected orchid growers in the world that sheltered Kew Gardens specimens during World War II, to Mukai Farm and Garden, to the magic of the Whispering Firs Bog, one of only three intact peat bogs left in the lower Puget Sound
- The gift John hopes to give every client through their garden, getting them outside and actually in their space, wandering around with no agenda, noticing things, and knowing he’s done his job when someone texts him a photo of the morning light hitting their plants from their coffee cup
- How we tend to overlook the beauty right in our own backyard and find it instead in the places we travel, from Claire growing up annoyed by manzanita everywhere to people in Guatemala pulling orchids out of trees like weeds, to John coming home from an International Oaks Society trip with a whole new appreciation for the plants that are abundant in his own backyard
Resources:
John Coghlan
Places mention:
- Mukai Farm and Garden
- Beall Greenhouses
- Whispering Firs Bog
- Maury Island Marine Park
- North Creek Park Boardwalk
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Until next time, I hope you find something in your garden to truly relish.
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