fine weather for garden tours

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Denise


The overcast skies burned off late morning but temperatures stayed moderate with light breezes. Nice garden touring weather. More will be forthcoming from the Venice Garden & Home Tour later this week, but Sunday’s tour deserves a quick post because it is a very special event to us locals, the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour. To learn why this tour is so special, you must read Dustin’s heart-tugging tribute to Mary Lou on his blog here. It may come as a surprise — it has always surprised me — that with few exceptions Southern California has been largely bereft of great local plant nurseries. One such beloved exception was the wonderfully curated plant nursery Mary Lou Heard created in the drive-by city of Westminster, on the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, that drew in believers from cities in both counties. The tour reflects this spillover, with tour gardens weighted probably more toward Orange County. It was at Mary Lou’s nursery many years ago that I first met a teen-aged, plant-crazed Dustin Gimbel. (As a customer of the nursery when Dustin worked there, I distinctly remember having a discussion bordering on argument about erodium with him.)

To have his own garden included on her namesake tour this year is a very special, full-circle moment for Dustin and Mary Lou and their friendship that began with a love of beautiful plants.

Grevillea strutting on the tour
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These are all photos of Dustin’s garden, the only garden on the tour I attended Sunday. The back garden has been the focus of Dustin’s attentions recently and has undergone a dramatic transformation. It now includes large vegetable beds, an outdoor dining area, and the newly completed water garden built from concrete blocks. (All the materials in Dustin’s garden come from the humblest of origins.) That simple wooden screen affords the most amazing framing opportunities of multiple shifting views through the cut-outs from either side of the screen, plants billowing on one side, glasses clinking on the other. The new water garden is ingeniously sited under a cut-out, straddling both the dining area and outer garden. Watching the breeze-driven meanderings of those glass floats would be a fine summer evening’s entertainment.

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Acacia pendula gaining size on the rebar arbor in the front garden.

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For a look at Dustin’s front garden in soft evening light instead of mid-day glare, check out this post from fall 2010.


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friday’s clippings 5/4/12

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Denise

Spring is such a great whoosh of a season, isn’t it? A spring weekend really needs to be four days to accommodate all the incredible stuff there is to do. Let’s get those bright minds in Congress on that right away. Here in Southern California, tomorrow, May 5, is the Venice Garden and Home Tour, which overlaps the Jane Jacobs Walks that are taking place in cities across the globe. The “What Would Jane Do” walk for Los Angeles will take place in the Silver Lake neighborhood and includes former homes of Richard Neutra and Anais Nin. (Raise your hand if you read the entire collection of Nin’s diaries in your late teens/early twenties.) You can see if there’s a walk taking place in your city here. The Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour also takes place this weekend, and guess who’s on the tour Sunday? Some clues: He’s on my blogroll and is a garden designer and master of the non-sequitur who will be opening his garden Sunday to the curious hordes, of which I am and always will be one. Addresses on the self-guided tour for both days can be found here.

And without any context, just some odds and ends from recent garden tours.


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Top three photos by MB Maher.


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Brassica juncae ‘Scarlet Frills Mustard’

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Denise

This mustard is the only edible I brought home from the recent plant sale at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. I have a satellite 10X20 foot vegetable garden this year at a local community garden that’s already full to capacity with tomatoes, squash, and beans, and it’s really the tail-end of the cool winter growing season for brassicas here in Southern California. But whatever this beauty wants to do, grow or go to seed, is fine with me. I’ll save the seed and plant ribbons of this frilly stuff next fall. Johnny’s Selected Seeds is a current source for seed.


Brassica juncea ‘Scarlet Frills Mustard’

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Reputedly the fieriest mustard you can grow, I’m excited to find out what it can do to my favorite fast food these days, spaghetti with anchovies, recipe from Mark Bittman at The New York Times. Ever since we were served plump, fresh anchovies in a Trastevere restaurant after an exhausting, late-night ramble in Rome some years back, we’ve enthusiastically embraced these tasty little fish. Granted, that fish we had in Rome and what’s available locally don’t have a lot to say to each other, but the salty spirit of the sea still comes through in the fish packed in olive oil in those little tins. Better if you can find them in glass jars. I’m not sure whether to lightly cook the mustard or use it as a garnish. But at a minimum, the mustard’s burgundy lacyiness will look divine sprinkled on top. This winter I’ve been substituting spinach for arugula and use anchovies from Trader Joe’s.

Pasta With Anchovies And Arugula via Mark Bittman

Salt and fresh-ground black pepper
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and slivered
8 anchovy fillets, or more to taste, with some of their oil
1 pound linguine or other long pasta
2 cups arugula, washed, dried and chopped
1/2 teaspoon or more crushed red pepper flakes

PREPARATION

1. Set a large pot of water to a boil, and salt it.
2. Put half of the olive oil in a deep skillet, and turn the heat to medium. A minute later, add the garlic and the anchovies. When the garlic sizzles and the anchovies break up, turn the heat to its lowest setting.
3. Cook the pasta until it is tender but not mushy. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid, and drain. Add pasta and arugula to skillet, along with enough of the reserved cooking water to make a sauce. Turn heat to medium, and stir for a minute. Add salt and pepper to taste, plus a pinch or more of red pepper flakes.
4. Turn pasta and sauce into a bowl, toss with remaining olive oil and serve.
Yields 4 servings

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succulents in spring

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Denise

Prowling around the garden yesterday with this or that new plant in one hand, spade in the other, looking for planting opportunities where I already knew none existed, it seemed more constructive to put the spade down and pick up the camera. This small group of succulents right outside the kitchen door may be overgrown and out of shape by the end of summer, or changed up on a whim, so a spring portrait seems like a good idea at the moment.

The tall green pot holds a young Agave americana var. striata. I’ve been told never to select green ceramic pots, any color but green, since it will only blend into the background. Sometimes blending into the background is the point, though. Aeonium ‘Cyclops’ leans in, with Cotyledon orbiculata, the latter two planted in the garden. The thin red tips on the cotyledon just slay me.

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Aeonium ‘Cyclops’ is recovering from a winter of snail depredation. The snails mercifully eat mostly the older leaves lower down on the stems. Last year Solanum marginatum grew here and was a small tree by the end of summer.

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This photo was taken on a different day, after an early morning fog.
I love that loosely incurved rosette shape that this hybrid inherits from Aeonium undulatum. ‘Cyclops’ is potentially a giant that may very soon become much too large for this small corner.

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This baby Agave victoriae-reginae was growing in the ground but became engulfed by surrounding plants, was rediscovered, rescued, and given a safe haven in a small pot atop a larger container. Small agaves can become engulfed and forgotten when one too frequently prowls the garden with a new plant in one hand and a spade in the other. Froth of lime green Sedum confusum on the right.

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Backing up a bit to include Aeonium balsamiferum, spilling out of a smaller pot. I like the echo of pot rims and rings from this angle and the tension of containment and surge. Sliver of a trunk on the left is a 6-foot Manihot grahamii also growing in this pot, its canopy an increasingly receding tuft of leaves as the maturing trunk twists and elongates. The yellow flowers are from the bulging Sedum confusum.

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Back further still. What a happy community they’ve made for themselves, for this brief moment in spring anyway. Self-sown bronzy Haloragis erecta threads around the pots, always choosing to seed at the garden edges.

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Huntington plant sale swag

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Denise

Sunday’s plant sale at the Huntington was the best I’ve attended in many years.
The succulents and cactus sale tables are always reason enough to attend, but the herbaceous stuff has been unexciting in recent years bordering on the moribund. This year I found a couple salvias that were new to me, and this gorgeous, leafy brunette, Rumex flexuosus:

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Senecio vira vira formerly S. leucostachys, is a favorite silver that’s rarely available. Nice to find this old friend again.

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A good plant sale creates its own giddy momentum. Carnivorous plants, succulents, edibles — seems I brought home at least one of everything with the exception of water plants, though there was much lingering and sighing over the lotus. A full list for record-keeping purposes will go up later this week.

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freeway wildflowers

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Denise

Two Sundays ago, on Earth Day, in fact, I bounded out of bed early to head for a strip of wildflowers I’d been watching gain momentum for weeks and which looked to be approaching peak bloom. Instead of driving miles out of town to see the wildflowers in bloom, like I resolve to do every year and then never do, this year the wildflowers had come to me, blooming in a narrow strip alongside the 7th Street onramp to the 710 Freeway as it leaves Long Beach.

For some visual context, the wildflowers are blooming in a narrow band parallel to the freeway onramp in the midst of all this industrial mishegoss. If you’ve seen movies like To Live And Die In LA and Gone In 60 Seconds, you may already be familiar with this view.

Port of Long Beach with the concrete-bottomed Los Angeles River flowing at the bottom of the photo:

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I would have hopped on my bike since it wasn’t far, but this can be a lonely part of town before 7 a.m. on a Sunday.
A sign at the garden proclaimed the patrons of this garden to be a local bank, some civic associations, as well as a corporate sponsor (Walmart).

Up close the garden held some surprises. For starters, it wasn’t strictly an exercise in native plant restoration. On closer examination, the planting was a mix of natives and drought-tolerant exotics.

I’m guessing a form of Pennisetum alopecuroides (edited to add confirmation by Dustin Gimbel as Pennisetum messiacum)

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Kalanchoe beharensis

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Cistus

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As well as cistus, there were other tough, classic mediterranean climate plants such as rosemary, lavender, species pelargoniums, helianthemum…

aloes

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kniphofias

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But the California natives were there too. Tidy Tips, Layia platyglossa

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Mimulus aurantiacus

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Scorpionweed, Phacelia crennulata, native to the American Southwest and Mexico.

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Along with the usual suspects that come in wildflower seed mixes.
Bachelor buttons, Centaurea cyanus, mostly in blue, with a few outliers in purple and pink.

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California poppies, Escholtzia californica, were well represented, perversely enough my least favorite poppy.

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Purple background haze is from Verbena lilacina

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Last exit out of Long Beach is holding quite the springtime show.

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Saturday’s Clippings 4/28/12

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Denise

I enjoyed this article very much earlier in the week, well worth a Sunday read:

“Any patch of earth, large or small, turns out to be a mad surprise party of species — fluid, unpredictable and wild — and a microcosm of what is happening and has always been happening around the corner and around the globe.” — NYT 4/24/12 “Counting Species on a Little Patch of Earth,” by Carol Kaesuk Yoon.

Off to do some species counting myself at the Huntington Botanical Garden plant sale tomorrow, Sunday, April 29.

Catching up on this week but still counting species, what a nice touch it was for Dustin Gimbel, of Second Nature Garden Design, and Laura Dalton, of Agave Coast Landscapes, to include our native Catalina Ironwood, Lyonothamnus floribundus, in their display garden for South Coast Plaza’s Spring Garden Show which I attended on Thursday and which is still open Sunday, April 29. The Catalina Ironwood was in one of three enormous pots, the other two holding agaves in bloom, all three plants towering high into the atrium ceiling — a grand gesture impossible to capture by photo at a crowded garden show held in a mall, so I very sensibly didn’t even try.

Lovely Fermob chairs were featured, too, pale celadon green, from Potted. Burnt orange arctotis and chartreuse Agave attenuata, maybe ‘Kara’s Stripes’ or “Raea’s Gold.’


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And there you have it, proof that garden show display gardens don’t have to be all that complicated. Nice chairs, cool plants, and I’m satisfied.

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And there was some beautifully executed stonework to admire in the display garden by Sarah Robinson…

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This show held at the South Coast Plaza shopping mall has room for just a handful of modest exhibits and is really about the plant vendors. Disconcerting though it may be to find yourself hemmed in on all sides by the Apple store, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel, etc., the mall’s atrium ceiling has a unique advantage over the typical dark, cavernous settings of most garden shows.

Natural light.
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Orchids, bearded irises, succulents, lilies, African violets, sinningias, Japanese maples. The specialty growers are always generous with their time and knowledge.

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Agave ‘Felipe Otero’

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A special thanks to the nice gentleman at B&D Lilies who spent several minutes explaining why he felt the lily ‘Lankon‘ was the most exciting lily he’s encountered in 35 years in the business. (I tracked ‘Lankon’ down last fall, and it’s now forming buds.)

And it was very moving to find the late Gary Hammer’s nursery, Desert to Jungle, selling plants at the show, with an impromptu shrine to Gary consisting of his photograph, paperclipped to which were cards with the names of the many plants he introduced. The mystery Ecuadorian knotweed I bought from his nursery many years ago still grows in our parkway.


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selections from Mar Vista’s Green Garden Showcase

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Denise

A quick look back at one of the gardens on the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase last Saturday, which was a huge tour, with over 80 houses participating. Careful logistical preparation is required, researching and winnowing through descriptions online, mapping out routes, which we didn’t do, so consequently only a handful of gardens were toured. Next year we’ll be better prepared and ready to spend the better part of a day on the tour. And maybe bring bikes too. Photos by MB Maher.

The first garden we visited was the home of landscape architect Katherine Spitz and her husband, architect Daniel Rhodes.
It was this December 2011 article in the Los Angeles Times that put their garden on our must-see list. (This blog’s spin-off post can be found here.) The article’s photo gallery gives a comprehensive tour of their garden, including these twin Hidcote-inspired follies.


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The mature bamboo privacy screening threaded with vines was of a stupefying height and achieved complete seclusion.

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Five fountains, varying changes in elevations, strong English and Italian influences superbly adapted and executed in simple materials — and all I could think about were those courtyard trees! The entry courtyard masses familiar dwarf Pittosporum tobira around a central concrete fountain, over which two weeping Acacia podalyriifolia were seductively dangling their seedpods. Against this restrained, pared-down backdrop, the acacias shimmered and twirled in the dappled light, their sylvan performance rippled back by the reflecting pool. I stood for as long as I could to take in this simple but mesmerizing vision until tour-goers started to back up behind me. Those two trees could carry that entire courtyard without any other plants, just the paving and simple basin fountain. I fell so hard for these trees that I’ve already ordered one, having no space whatsoever for another tree. (Annie’s Annuals & Perennials currently carries this acacia.) Ms. Spitz told me she was asked so many times on the tour for the name of these trees that she regretted not hanging name tags from the branches.

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Sinuous, silvery seedpods.

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A tour well worth bookmarking for 2013. Just be sure to do your homework ahead of time and map out an itinerary.

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Carex pansa

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Denise

“Somewhere out there in nature, he reasoned, there had to be a grass…that would be naturally low-growing, drought-tolerant, evergreen, and trampleable: a natural lawn grass.” – The New Yorker, August 19, 1996, “The Grassman.”

Carex pansa, the California meadow sedge, as seen in a garden on the recent Mar Vista garden tour, blanketing the backyard of a fairly large property. I’d never seen such an extensive planting of the California meadow sedge before. A pathway of stepping stones on a base of decomposed granite meandered through the sedge.


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In The New Yorker article published August 19, 1996, entitled “The Grassman,” Wade Graham traces Greenlee’s early enthusiasm for outsized prairie grasses growing where manicured lawns once held sway, up to his epiphany:

“Eventually, it came to Greenlee: Americans have to have some sort of lawn…The botanist in him asked, If grasses can be big and floriferous, why can’t they also be the opposite: low, self-effacing, and well-behaved?”


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John Greelee wrote back in December 2001 in “Sedge Lawns for Every Landscape” that “This native Pacific Coast sedge is hands-down one of the finest native sedges for making natural lawns. Largely untested in the East, it has proven durable in Texas and Colorado. Slowly creeping, dark green foliage grows 4 to 6 inches unmowed. California meadow sedge will tolerate varied types of soil conditions and temperatures, from sandy, exposed seacoasts to heavy clays and hot, inland valleys. It is also exceptionally traffic tolerant. Thriving in full sun to partial shade, it will thin out in deep shade. Mowing two to three times per year keeps the foliage low, tight, and lawnlike. Unmowed, it makes an attractive meadow and remains evergreen in all but the coldest climates. California meadow sedge is fast to establish from plugs planted 6 to 12 inches on center.”

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the clematis club

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Denise

I’m referring to a club in the informal sense, with really only one criterion for membership. And that is to push on past the inevitable early disappointments associated with growing clematis until one is found that will bloom in your garden. Because, let’s face it, apart from the challenges zone 10 offers, the clematis is a flowering vine with a fearsome reputation everywhere for doing unnerving things like wilting in full bloom overnight. With such a temperamental reputation, clematis weave in and out of fashion but will always have a rabid corps of enthusiasts.

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A clematis in bloom is a rare sight in zone 10 Southern California. The jackmanii hybrids are faithfully offered for sale at local nurseries, but bringing one of these home is a surefire way to propagate the myth that clematis just will not grow in zone 10. The smaller-flowered viticellas are much more suitable here. Clematis have roughly the same needs as roses as far as nutrients and water consumption, and I’ve been leading the garden in a leaner direction, so it’s been a long time since I’ve had a clematis in bloom. In the past I’ve always kept to the easier viticella varieties like the stalwart ‘Madame Julie Correvon,’ which are much less finicky about growing conditions than the jackmanii hybrids, but I really do prefer the subtle beauty of the viticellas and species clematis in any case. Among the viticellas, ‘Betty Corning’ has a reputation as being one of the easiest and most vigorous. Stunning too.


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Care for Clematis viticella varieties involves pruning back to a couple strong buds in January/February leaving about 12-18 inches of vine. Rather than planted directly in my clayey garden soil, ‘Betty Corning’ is growing in a tall, terracotta pot placed directly on the soil adjacent to a climbing rose, which also acts as its trellis, the pot filled with fluffy, nicely aerated potting soil and lots of compost. Growing the clematis in a pot also has the advantage of keeping me focused on a regular watering schedule, like I would any summer container, with the benefit that water runoff goes back into the garden soil, and the clematis roots can wander through the drainage hole to find a deeper root run as the vine matures. I’ve been situating summer containers of tropicals this way, too, directly on garden soil, so there’s no water runoff waste. As with most clematis, it takes at least three years for them to make the leap from cranky malingerer to one of the most elegant flowering vines one can grow. I bought Betty in 2008 when the late, lamented Chalk Hill Clematis had a going-out-of-business sale.

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Joy Creek Nursery has a wonderful clematis list, including lots of interesting species, and they currently carry stock of ‘Betty Corning’ as well as many other viticella varieties.

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