Pacific Northwest Gardening: Hedychium (ginger) in the Pacific NW?, 1 by kosk0025

kosk0025 wrote:
Hi all,
Yesterday I helped construct a new garden at my friend's house (see pic). It has a tropical flair, and the mulch is cocoa shells.....so it smells like chocolate! It's stunning! Her kids love the stepping stones. It will really fill out this summer with orange impatiens, red salvia, pineapple sage, a canna, a euphorbia, and a flowering ginger. This garden gives a nod to many of the places she has lived in the world with a hebe from New Zealand and the Hawaiian inspired ginger. The tree is a yew tree. We also used two barberries (one orange-red in the foreground and a golden one). We were able to utilize existing ferns and red dianthus plants as well as the mystery green shrub in the center that we pulled out from under a tree. We also filled in with 10 coleus plants of varying colors that I grew from seed for her. I can't wait to see this garden bed in August. Last but not least, we snuck in 2 pumpkin plants on the far edge which will be trained to grow outward over the rocky area towards the fence. This bed is a labor of love. It required many, many hours of prep work to amend the heavy, heavy clay soil with compost and sand. (the kind of clay you can make pots out of and then fire them in a kiln).

My question to you is: do you have experience growing ornamental ginger in the Pacific NW? How does it do here? Does it get huge? I have asked her to email me with the specific type of ginger that we put in.....I can't remember the name.....at the nursery it said it was hardy down to 0 degrees F. If you have any pics of your ginger, I would love to see them......The ginger is the semi-stalky tall plant in the pic.
Thanks, Stephanie ("kosk")