Just two weeks’ shy of the last post on the poppies’ progress as they colonize the little path off the kitchen porch, and they’ve at least tripled in size.
The trip to the laundry shed is now a short walk into spring.
winter walkabout
Les of A Tidewater Gardener frequently posts some of the most beautiful landscape photography to be found on garden blogs. On his blog you may be introduced, as I was, to John Irving-esque names of natural phenomena like The Great Dismal Swamp and canoe rides a la James Fenimore Cooper down local waterways. Through Les’ eye, the environs of Norfolk, Virginia, look like some of the most beautiful land and waterscapes on earth. For the second year running, Les has challenged bloggers to a Winter Walk-Off, wherein we step out our front doors carrying nothing but a camera. No car keys, just walking shoes, to document “what can be seen within walking (or biking) distance of your home.” Les is accepting entries through March 19. And there will be prizes!
Right off the bat, I have to admit we fudged and therefore forfeit any prizes. We drove. Time constraints and all. Plus, although we have walked the mile or so to this bluff overlooking Long Beach’s commercial harbor, the corgi would have been wiped out by the time we arrived, and this morning’s walk was mainly for the corgi. (He had his teeth cleaned recently and a tooth pulled, but I digress.)
Ready?
One of my favorite houses on the street opposite our bluff walk. Yucca rostrata, butterfly chairs, and George Nelson bubble lamps.
Note glimpse of baby blue piano through the window.
Different house. Some of the largest furcraeas I’ve ever seen, as big as the Agave americanas further down.
Same house, a little further down from the furcraeas are sotols, agaves, rosemary, and fiery arctotis.
In bloom in a cutting garden in a parkway/hellstrip were these ranunculus, along with Dutch iris, stock, anemones, sweet peas.
From the same hellstrip, Salvia spathacea.
From the bluff, coast prickly pear, Opuntia littoralis.
Coral aloe, A. striata, from the mid-century modern/blue piano home.
One of a trio of urns planted with lemon trees flanking the stairway of an apartment building.
It may not be The Great Dismal Swamp, but hey, it’s home. Thanks, Les!
blue/yellow/green
Where were we? I’ve been working at the day job like a navvy, trying to clear some time for spring garden visits, shows and whatnot. But the garden in March initiates a measured sequence of distractions, which can really mess with the most resolute work ethic. (I think “resolute” was a one-word self-description used by one of the Republican primary candidates but now can’t remember which. Romney? Strange how none of them used the one-word descriptors that are always at the tip of my tongue for them.)
Back to the much more important business of gardens. I’ve recently discovered that a good part of the front gravel garden has been planted almost exclusively in blues, greys, and yellows. Yes, at one time I apparently mustered some self-restraint.
It’s mostly succulents, grasses, and small evergreen shrubs, very few perennials except the self-sowing Spanish poppies. The orange blooms will get a fantastic backdrop here. I don’t remember consciously planning this blue/yellow-only business. I’ll have to search the back pages of the blog.
March’s Garden Design features an interview with landscape architect Andrea Cochran. The interview was emphatically not plant-driven, since landscape architecture, not horticulture, was under discussion, but this quote was a compadre thrill:
“I’m a sucker for anything in the blue-gray family…If you go blue-gray with chartreuse: home run.” To have anything in common with Ms. Cochran’s taste I count as a personal home run.
More chartreuse from Agave attenuata ‘Kara’s Stripes.’
The gravel garden now has some of the nicest looking agaves, including ‘Blue Glow’ in the first photo and a powder-blue A. potatorum below. The attenuatas can really look beat up, but ‘Kara’s Stripes’ has if anything improved over the winter.
The opposite end of the gravel garden by the driveway doesn’t continue the blue/yellow-only theme. There’s lots of breakage and damage at this end, and ad hoc replacements are made on the fly.
Recent death of a large agave provided an opportunity to try out Sideritis syriaca* here. I haven’t been this smitten with a plant since my first ballota.
Very easy on the eyes, this blue/yellow/green.
*Reddish stems on this one makes it more likely Sideritis cypria.
el greco sky
It’s not too much to ask of February/March to deliver a hometown sky equivalent to a View of Toledo, is it?
Just once or twice, instead of day after day of vapid blue sky? It is winter, after all.
How about an occasional, teensy, triumphal shaft of light piercing roiling thunderheads? A little heavenly drama, please.
Image found here
I do crave drama, the quick change artists, the rhythm of surge and collapse. Show your colors, stretch your neck out.
Thank heavens for tulips in February and March.
poppies, a minor obsession
Newt is taking time out of her busy day to helpfully point out where the poppies will be blooming this year.
Last year’s runnel of poppies was in the crevice along the back porch, but this year they’ve jumped a few feet over and have self-sown into crevices in the dry-laid bricks. These are again the Poppy of Troy, Papaver setigerum, which is a nicely compact, breadseed-type poppy, a single with pale lilac-colored petals surrounding a central dark blotch. There are scads of species and breadseed varieties to try that improvise on the timeless poppy theme, a performance that never grows stale. A solitary bud peeps out of the leaves, dangles demurely as the slim stalk elongates, until all pretense of shyness is abandoned as sepals burst and fall, revealing impossibly silky, translucent petals. It always strikes me as a sly wink of nature to imbue a plant with such captivating drama and energy as well as deadly soporific properties. (Annie’s Annuals & Perennials has by far the best selection known to mankind and is the original source of my self-sowing poppies.)
While visiting the Bay Area a couple weeks ago, I was introduced to a marvelous source of salvage and cast-offs, a huge warehouse devoted to recycling and repurposing in Berkeley called Urban Ore, where I found a pair of botanical prints, one of plants from the malvaceae family and this one of papaveraceae, both now hanging in the bath house. Botanical prints can lead one down a chintzy path I generally try to avoid, but I just couldn’t walk away from these poppies.
If I lived nearby, I’d check out Urban Ore frequently. The best stuff disappears within hours of arrival.
Posted in design, plant nurseries, Plant Portraits
Tagged Annie's Annuals & Perennials, Papaver setigerum, poppies, Poppy of Troy, recycling, Urban Ore
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the children’s garden at the Huntington
The last time I visited the Huntington Botanical Garden a few weeks ago, the prevailing theme for the day was kids in the garden. Moms with toddlers and strollers were everywhere. Field-trip kids in the cactus garden trudged along the paths like it was the Bataan Death March. I couldn’t tell if these young elementary school kids were being sarcastic or not, but they were pleading, “Water! Water!” as they shuffled chain-gang style past barrel cactus, and I also heard a lot of, “Where’s the bus?!” Their teachers always maintained that amazingly chipper tone of encouragement, “Just a bit further! Look, here’s a bench where we can rest.” I know that relentlessly chipper tone well, having used it myself with my kids when visiting public gardens.
As I was coming up a steep path out of the Australian garden, a young mother with a toddler in one hand and pushing a stroller in the other was heading down the path, which immediately aroused deep sympathy. She looked lost, and sure enough, as we passed each other, she asked, “Where’s the Children’s Garden?” I pointed her in the general direction, which was quite a distance away, but told her the trek would be worth it, that it shouldn’t be missed. As soon as I spoke those words, an older woman marched up to us and demanded to know what’s not to be missed. Possibly she thought the amorphophallus was in bloom or some other momentous botanical happening. I told her we were talking about the Children’s Garden, at which point she said witheringly, “Oh, the Children’s Garden,” waved her hand dismissively, and marched off in search of more rarified botanical pursuits. Which is a shame, because the Children’s Garden is a marvelously enjoyable, fairly new addition to the Huntington. Watching people and especially families explore this garden has become a not-to-be-missed part of my trips to the Huntington.
On this last visit, I spent a lot of time peering through the windows of the teaching greenhouse that anchors one side of the Children’s Garden. Aside from being naturally drawn to any greenhouse, the space was unusually animated with personal touches and vignettes, like in this photo from The Los Angeles Times. There was a strong, idiosyncratic presence that animated the greenhouse.
I have since learned that the animating force in the teaching greenhouse and creator of those vignettes was Jeff Karsner, the director of the Children’s Garden, who passed away on January 30, 2012.
Past vice president of the Los Angeles Cactus & Succulent Society, board member of the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry, Mr. Karsner’s legacy includes one of the busiest, noisiest gardens at the Huntington, well worth a visit by all who attend the HBG, whatever their age.
Hazel White: Aesthetics of Inundation
UC Berkeley Botanical Garden’s symposium “Natural Discourse” held February 10, 2012, has been constantly in my thoughts this past week, whether riding the train, driving freeways, staring at the garden. I’d never visited UCBG before and found the physical location enthralling. I’ve been starved for rain, and a small rainstorm obligingly followed me up the coast, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and rained off and on most of the weekend. For me, mist and rain always increases a place’s allure, and that day the canyon with its meandering creek and trails was magical.
Associate Director of Collections and Horticulture Chris Carmichael described this contemplated collaboration with artists as a new direction for this predominantly teaching-based botanical garden in an effort to broaden its appeal as part of an ongoing struggle to attract and connect with new visitors. This is an entirely new direction for UCBG, which dates its inception as a teaching adjunct to the university back to 1890. This “living museum” is a member of the Berkeley Natural History Museums Consortium and has only been open to the public since the 1960s. Bringing artists into this hallowed botanical garden to render site-specific works has not been accomplished without some gnashing of teeth by all involved, but like all of us, new survival strategies must be pursued in these tumultuous times, and botanical gardens are no exception. Despite the joking and joshing, deep affection and respect was readily apparent among all involved. A brief interlude to present Richard Turner with a Monkey Puzzle Tree, Auricaria araucana, in honor of his retirement from Pacific Horticulture, was a wickedly funny touch.
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, design, essay, garden travel, garden visit, MB Maher
Tagged "Natural Discourse", "Peril As Architectural Enrichment", A Pattern Language, Berkeley Natural History Museums, California College of the Arts, Chris Carmichael, Christopher Alexander, Hazel White, Isabelle Greene, Jay Appleton, Kelsey Press, Luis Barragan, Mary Anne Friel, MB Maher, Pacific Horticulture, Paul Licht, Personal Helicon, Richard Turner, Saxon Holt, Seamus Heaney, Shirley Watts, UC Berkeley Botanical Garden
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Foliage Followup February 2012
Pam at Digging hosts this sequel to Bloom Day on the 16th of each month, a chance to stand up for photosynthesis and plead a case for the slighted leaf, doomed in most gardens to forever playing second fiddle to the alluring procreative strategies of plants.
The adaptive strategies of leaves are equally compelling, and I offer Exhibit A, Portulaca molokiniensis, a Hawaiian succulent, which has the distinction of being my first smart-phone purchase. Being one of the gazillions that got an iPhone for Christmas, I was able to check my blog to confirm this portulaca’s desirable status as a Future Plant Purchase, which seemed weirdly momentous at the time.
A strong Exhibit B would be the spiral aloe, A. polyphylla, photo taken at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden by MB Maher.
Note the setting for a happy spiral aloe, grown at an angle for perfect drainage. Summer moisture, light shade.
(I’ve only killed two so far. )
Leaves or flowers? Dean Martin or Jerry Lewis? Harpo or Groucho? Holmes or Watson? No need for false choices — it doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. UCBG was selling one of my favorite daisies, attractive in leaf and flower, Argyranthemum haouarytheum, which I haven’t seen on offer in many years, surprising since it’s so easy from cuttings. Very similar to A. foeniculaceum, which is probably what I’ve grown in the past. From the Canary Islands, part of Macronesia (Greek for “islands of the fortunate”).
Bloom Day February 2012
February is a very exciting month. So much to take note of, I rarely make it through a hot cup of coffee on a February morning. The anigozanthos is growing in leaps, now almost chin-high. This is ‘Yellow Gem.’
Tulips started to bloom over the past couple days. But tulips don’t impress Evie; birds impress Evie.
Love having the pots of tulips sited next to Sedum nussbaumerianum, now blooming too, with pearly white broccoli florets.
The six-pack of linaria was a solid winter investment. Ditto Pelargonium echinatum for intense pink.
Not as much of a craving for pink in summer as in winter, though.
Red-flower Russelia equisetiformis continues in bloom, though a yellow variety took the winter off.
Lots of other odds and ends in bloom, including aeoniums, euphorbias, salvias, S. macrophylla, chiapensis, karwinskii, wagneriana. This silvery-leaved Lotus jacobaeus from Annie’s Annuals & Perennials continues to impress. Its cascading habit would be seen to great advantage draped over a retaining wall. Here it leans on an aeonium.
For spring bulbs, snowdrops and crocuses, camellias, and who knows what else this warmish winter, check Bloom Day’s host site, Carol’s blog May Dreams Gardens, for a peek at what February brings to gardens all over the world. The new hardiness map should make this Bloom Day interesting, as more gardens are carved off into alphabetical subgroups. Over and out from zone 10b.
long weekend in San Francisco
I took precious few photos over the long weekend I spent in the Bay area.
And not because there wasn’t the usual excess of riches to see and do.
There were acacias in bloom, these cutleaf acacias seen at Flora Grubb Gardens.
The UCBG symposium “Natural Discourse” on Friday had the unintended effect of decoupling the camera journaling habit I’ve acquired. I managed only a single photo at UCBG, of these cat tail aloes, Aloe castanea, as we were leaving.
It was a heady day. I admit to sometimes wondering if an obsession with gardens and plants might be too narrow a path upon which to fully explore and engage the world. Now I wish every spring could begin with a symposium like this, not the how-to’s but the whys and wherefores of the ongoing discourse among people, plants, and site that is a garden. Poets, artists, and scientists have quite a lot to say on the matter, and thanks to UCBG and curators Shirley Watts and Mary Anne Friel for giving them this opportunity to let us know what’s on their minds. I have no doubt that it will be a very exciting year at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden as this discourse continues.
Posted in design, garden travel, journal
Tagged Aloe castanea, UC Berkeley Botanical Garden
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