From 'Oh, la la' to 'Oh, no!' Ciscoe talks spring gardening in the PNW

Colder weather roared back into Western Washington this week, after a recent false spring had some people out in short sleeves. How do you manage a garden or other landscaping through this unpredictable late winter weather? For answers, KUOW’s Paige Browning reached out to master gardener Ciscoe Morris.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paige Browning: The Northwest Flower and Garden Festival is happening this week, a yearly event that indicates it's almost time to get out there. You co-hosted a seminar called "My Plant is Better Than Your Plant." Am I sensing some smack talk?

Ciscoe Morris: It almost is smack talk. I always do a thing at the Bellevue Botanical Garden called "Plant of the Week" with Nita-Jo Rountree. The two of us show each of our favorite plants on Instagram and Facebook, and it's always a big smackdown argument, whose plants are better. This was a whole show, and I think I won!

I want to let people know that the Flower and Garden Festival is really great. If you get a chance to go down to the Convention Center. There are 21 cool display gardens. It's a lot to see and do down there. The shopping is to die for, the garden art, and the plants. Oh my gosh. It makes me go, "Oh, la, la." It makes my wife go, "Oh, no!" when I come home with more stuff.

We have a lot of people in our region who don't own land. Do you have any tips for renters?

Well, you can really grow a lot of things in pots. I grow everything from tomatoes and vegetables — I even grow peas sometimes with lettuce in there around them. Almost all of these plants are really attractive to pollinators. Even plants like Zinnia, and that's an annual, I never see a Zinnia without a bee on it. They're really attractive.

You could do a mix of some really cool perennials that are attractive, like salvias or lavender. Lavender pulls in both hummingbirds and bees like nothing you ever saw. You could do a pot and maybe put a cool perennial in the middle, like a hardy salvia that would attract a lot of pollinators and then put some Zinnias or pansies or other plants around it, and you're going to be attracting a lot of pollinators. And you'll probably get to see hummingbirds come right to your balcony in between the bees. So it's definitely worth doing containers, and it's a lot of fun, too.

This winter we've been warmer than normal in Western Washington, and our snowpack statewide is less than half of normal. We sort of had this false spring recently. Is that a worry for you in the garden? And what can people do about it?

Well, it doesn't worry me too much, as long as we don't get a really bad cold snap. The worst thing that can happen is for the temperature to go from let's say, 49 degrees, down to single digits. If something like that happens, you're going to lose some plants, and there's not much you could do. We're actually lucky that we're getting this little bit of colder weather right now, because this is telling the plants to harden off, this isn't spring yet. But one nice thing, if it stays about this cold for a while, like cherries are blooming so early this year, the good news is, if it stays kind of cold like this, they'll get kind of stuck in mid bloom, and they just bloom for really a long time.

We're going to enter actual spring weather soon. What are your March must do's in the green space?

The first thing you need to do is to prune a lot of plants. This is the perfect time to prune your hydrangeas. Don't prune them way down low. A lot of hydrangeas bloom on last year's growth. Most hydrangeas, you just prune them back a little bit. Keep last year's growth. You could tell what it is because it's kind of shiny and different color.

And then if you're growing things like hardy fuchsias, salvias, all kinds of plants that die back to the ground, you could cut those down to the ground and they'll come right back and start blooming all summer long.

And one last thing, if you're growing lavender, prune your lavender a half inch above the top of the bare stems. Do that in March. If you do that, you won't get those bare stems on your lavender so quick. It really slows that down.

But there is one thing I have to warn people, if you prune your lavender like that in March, you will gain weight. That's because when you smell it, you'll start thinking about Provence, and the next thing you know, you're in the house eating baguettes and pain au chocolat. There's nothing you could do about that!

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.