Well known northwest garden expert now in his 42nd year as a gardening personality, Ed Hume spoke at Bridgepark Retirement residences at 3204 Southwest Morgan Street on Friday to a group of about 120 people. He spoke for an hour on container gardening and put an emphasis on hanging basket plants.
He had copies of his book, "Gardening with Ed Hume - Northwest Gardening Made Easy", on hand at a special price of $15 for those attending the talk.

The West Seattle Herald spoke to Hume about these talks and about being a northwest garden expert.
"I do about 75 to 100 talks a year and sometimes it will be about four or five in a week. I enjoy it, I love it." Hume said.
"I've been talking on vegetable gardening and everywhere I talk it's been standing room only."

If you are a gardener you remember that Hume has had a weekly radio show and his television show, Gardening in America is known across the nation. He's one of several garden experts people in the greater Seattle area are familiar with. Do they know each other? "We're all good friends. I think you'll find that true of almost all garden writers. I belong to the Garden Writers Association which is about 2000 people internationally. So does Ciscoe, Scott Connor. So we get together all the time and we get together locally too."

Hume had some recommendations for hanging basket plants that you can assemble yourself:

SUN BASKETS
Vining Trailing plants
Bacopa -Trailing (several colors). Green or variegated leaves
Bidens - Trailing (yellow)
Lotus Vine - Trailing (gold, yellow or red) Gray leaves
Million Bells - Trailing (many outstanding colors)
Trailing Lobelia - Trailing blues, mixed colors
Verbena - Trailing varieties (wide range of colors)
Ivy Geraniums - Trailing growth habit (several colors)
Creeping Charlie - Variegated white and green leaves

Fillers:
Petunias - Small flowering varieties. (wide range of colors)
Marigolds - Low French type - yellow orange mixed
Licorice Plant - Gray foilage
Dusty Miller - Gray foilage, Different textures
Heliotrope - Purple or white. Wonderful fragrance
Plectranthus - Variegated leaf variety. Semi-trailing
Verbena - upright varieties
Lantana - Orange, yellow and bi-color
Lobelia - Low bushy varieties. Light and dark blues
Alyssum - White, pink and lavendar. Fragrant.

SHADE BASKETS
Fuschias - Trailing varieties
Lobelia - Trailing varieties (wide range of colors)
Impatiens - Common varieties will hang over edge of basket
Impatiens - New Guinea varieties . Large flowers/nice leaf color
Begonias - Hanging basket - trailing varieties
Begonias - Upright Non-Stop or tuberous varieties
Fiberous begonias - Often called Wax Begonias
Pansies/viola - Wide range of colors