Anatomy of a Pot of Tender Plants

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Denise

There’s some great names in the plant world, and Cussonia is up there with some of my favorites.
And for pure enjoyment, no history of the name is necessary, just an appreciation for vowels and syllables.
Also lends itself to a good name for a cat (Pussonia?). And then there’s the visual enjoyment they provide.

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Some scant history. Small evergreen trees from South Africa. Right there you know they’ll be tender, but still eminently desirable for containers. Members of the Araliaceae family, another name with a good complement of vowels. I’m hesitant to write their common name, Cabbage Tree, since it might then be confused for an edible, which it emphatically is not. Don’t you dare go near this with a dinner fork.

From plantzafrica, describing C. paniculata: “The name Cussonia was given by Carl Peter Thunberg to commemorate the French botanist Pierre Cusson (1727-1783).”

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I have a small, struggling pot of Cussonia paniculata, but these photos are of the splendid Cussonia gamtoosensis, or Gamboos Cabbage Tree, which has done the most rewarding thing any plant can do, and that is to seem genuinely glad to be under your care. C. gamtoosensis has flourished, zooming ahead of C. paniculata in leafage and trunk. Purchased from a local nursery spring 2011. I had passed it by in autumn 2010, but noted the exuberant little guy again the following spring, after it had spent the winter sitting in an aisle of remaindered plants, now offered at discount. My Cussonia paniculata is such a malingering, cranky, trouble child that I hesitated briefly on bringing home another, but this Gamboos Cabbage Tree’s vigor and lust for life after a long winter in a gallon can solidly won me over.

Since Pam/Digging has declared this Support Your Independent Nursery month, a nod is in order to this great local nursery, International Garden Center & Floral Design and their amazing selection of pottery, succulents, water plants. I pop in every time I work near the airport/LAX. (The grower of this cussonia was Northern California’s Annie’s Annuals & Perennials.) Both these cussonias I’m discussing are caudiciform, growing from a swollen stem or caudex, but this is only apparent on my C. paniculata. The gamtoosensis shows no caudex at all. But that tells you how tough and drought tolerant these little trees are, which makes them perfect candidates for container culture.

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Which brings us to the succulents planted at the base of the cussonia, Delosperma sphalmanthoides, bought from another wonderful independent Northern California nursery, Cottage Gardens of Petaluma. This little succulent was growing in a gorgeous display garden at CGP. One of the very helpful nurserymen led me to it and pointed it out as his favorite. Also known as the Tufted Ice Plant, High Country Gardens lists it for zones 5-9, so this little one is not tender at all.

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flowers for tori

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Denise

A single nerine stem of congratulations for being the first woman artist whose new album simultaneously listed in the Top 10 of Billboard’s alternative, classical, and rock categories. A listen to the new Night of Hunters can be found at that link.

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Because I find Tori Amos one of those nourishing artists, along with Bjork, PJ Harvey, who on first listen you wonder, Where does this come from, these sounds and words? Always the start of a great relationship between artist and audience. In Tori’s case, for me many of the words never do become very clear, but just enough syllables (and especially long e’s) gleam through to create incantatory songscapes.

Liquid Diamonds is one of my favorites from 1998’s From The Choirgirl Hotel. (I drove my then 15-year-old son and a girlfriend and dropped them off to see Tori at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, part of her tour for this record in 1998. It was his first “date.”)

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winter whites

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Denise

I know it’s only mid-October, but I’m already dreaming of winter whites.
Evie sports her winter coat year-round and so is always exquisitely attired.

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And frosty astelia gets the juices flowing for more winter whites. But the winter whites I’m referring to are not fetched from a wobbly wardrobe kept in the attic, which would be violative of the ancient “no whites after Labor Day” rule I’ve read about, nor does it refer to any specific weather condition. It’s more a state of mind here in Southern California. What the concept of winter whites really means is there will be more roasted vegetables for dinner. More books will be read. Skin will feel chilled again and have to be covered in something warm and plush. Long walks can be had without breaking a sweat. Soup! To-do lists freshened up and reprioritized. Tulip bulbs potted up in December. Really hot baths again. The muffled sounds of foggy mornings. (Soup!) Imaginary gardens built and torn apart. Seeds to be sown. Becoming reacquainted with the delicious sights and sounds of rain.

And almost as significant, Downton Abbey returning in January.

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In every home winter whites arrive in the most amazing packages.

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Bloom Day October 2011

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Denise

The highest temps all summer hit last week, an unwelcome intrusion into fall planting season. Limbing up the big smoke tree a few weeks ago allowed a lot more light into the back garden, setting in motion some deadly domino effects when the mercury rose. Such an unlikely candidate to suffer from too much sun as a large, established echium fried in the heat wave. The ‘Tajinaste’ echium’s leaves had become accustomed to a much gentler sunlight all summer. Along with more sunlight flooding in through the smoke tree canopy, the echium’s neighbor, the big Solanum marginatum I removed, also had provided a measure of cover. (I took cuttings of what I could this morning and removed the echium’s carcass.) An Agave attenuata lost a couple leaves from the searing sun, but no other lasting damage. The potted tropicals reveled in the heat.

Otherwise, the garden is in the same holding pattern bloom-wise as September, with the salvias still in bloom as well as Persicaria amplexicaulis, shown here with a truss of Salvia canariensis.

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The persicaria again with a Ricinus communis seedling just making size this fall.

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There’s now three big castor bean plants, which is all this little garden can handle. Salvia madrensis in background.

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The same ricinus with Rudbeckia triloba, just planted in August, brought home from a visit to Digging Dog Nursery in Mendocino County, California.
(Kathy at Garden Book just attended Digging Dog’s fall plant sale and has some stunning photos of her visit.)

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This Selinum wallichianum also comes from my visit to Digging Dog in August.

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The dahlia ‘Chat Noir’ staggered in the high temps but regained composure, showing some new blooms this morning.

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Nerines in the front gravel garden are establishing good clumps (all year-old gifts from Matt Mattus/Growing With Plants)
I believe these are all N. samiensis. A deep orange in bloom this morning.

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This Orange Clock Vine turned up at a local nursery this fall, Thunbergia gregorii, one I’ve long wanted to grow.
Pure orange blooms, no contrasting dark eye. The thunbergias do amazingly well in Southern California year-round.

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Many succulents are in bloom. And I don’t think Grevillea ‘Superb’ has been without a bloom all summer.

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Check out Bloom Day hostess Carol’s Indiana garden at May Dreams Gardens, with links to all the gardens participating this October Bloom Day.

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the gardening beatle

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Denise

I think it was George’s son Dhani Harrison who let slip in the Martin Scorcese documentary “Living in the Material World,” (last week on HBO) that the family sometimes called George “Capability,” jokingly comparing George to the great 18th century English landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. At age 27, George bought the derelict property Friar Park. His second wife Olivia moved in later. Dan Pearson describes visiting Friar Park and talking with Olivia about its evolution in an article for The Guardian entitled “Magical Mystery Tour“:

“We never set out to make the garden a restoration, we were just doing it for the joy of it…You don’t have to know anything or everything to make a garden and George set out quite independently to do it his own way. ‘It’s amateur hour’ was a mantra and clearing away the dark Victorian palette of laurel and yew and overgrown box was key to being able to move the garden forward. Beth Chatto’s visit to the gardens proved key as a confidence-building exercise. With typical practicality she had said: ‘You know, George, if you had an old sofa in your house that you didn’t like you’d throw it out!’ The comment was a liberation and that was how they began to lift the gloom to make way for a new layer.”

From the dearth of photos available of the gardens at Friar Park, it would be hard not to conclude that this was a very personal endeavor, rarely shared with the public. Image found here:

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In 2008 an exhibit was entered in the Chelsea Garden Show entitled “From Life to Life; A Garden for George.”

I forget who in the documentary commented that George had the most extraordinarily disparate groups of people visiting Friar Park. Along with the pantheon of musicians he hung out with, as a producer of the Monty Python movies and Withnail & I, George’s guests could include Terry Gilliam, John Cleese and the Python gang, as well as Eastern mystics, Rhavi Shankar, visits by Dan Pearson and Beth Chatto. The house and gardens obviously sheltered a rich, layered life. I have to admit to not being much of a Beatles fanatic though consider myself passably knowledgeable on Beatles lore, but watching the documentary unwind the songwriting attributions to George of such songs as “Something” caught me by surprise. I knew it, of course, but had forgotten I knew it. George’s son told a lovely story of his father out in the garden until midnight, running around with a shrub in his hand, trying to find the perfect spot for it, so I’ll end with — what else? Here Comes The Sun.

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Sedum & the Summer of Neglect

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Denise

A tale of invincibility.

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The sedum, with the survivability of a cockroach, has been performing every trick I’ve asked it to.
Way back in January I planted up these hollow flues pried out of our chimney when some repairs were made.
Reusable shopping bags were stuffed into the hollow core as an insert to hold the soil. A very shallow insert not holding much soil mass at all.
Checking on the sedum and keeping it watered and happy was not a priority this summer. Let’s be honest; they were pretty much ignored.

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A shrubby little pea family/Fabaceae member, Dorycnium hirsutum hoisted its leaves up against the concrete.
It’s this tracery and pattern against the concrete that finally drew my interest back to this sedum experiment.
(What a great family of nitrogen-fixing plants is the Fabaceae, including baptisia, lespedeza, Hedysarum coronarium, Trifolium rubens, and on and on.)
The bright green leaves are Orbexilum pedunculatum, aka, ˜Sampson’s Snakeroot,’ another member of the pea family native to Texas.
Purplish flowers, from what I remember, since it hasn’t bloomed this summer.

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Wreath of Asarina

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Denise

Now that it’s October, the grapevine wreath I hung on the fence mid-summer doesn’t seem half as silly.
The pink flowers are from a nearby Asarina scandens, which has been galloping over the fence.
The wreath is one I made for a Christmas past from the grapevine on the pergola.
In combining the two, asarina and grapevine wreath, I had vague ideas of encouraging a living wreath. And so it is.

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The asarina is grown as an annual elsewhere, but can be (and has been) perennial here.
It has an amazingly loopy and arabesque-making habit of growth, creating natural swags.
Never one to have much pink in the garden or get heavily into seasonal/holiday decorating, this is definitely a passing fancy.
The asarina also comes in purple and white forms, either of which I’d prefer to this pink asarina.
The asarina has become a short-timer now that it’s starting to crowd the Monterey cypress.
The three Cupressus macrocarpa ‘Citriodora’ are now past fence height and ready to take over responsibilities as a privacy screen next year.

Summer foolishness turns into a ripening display of the changing seasons. Proving again that context is everything.

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Occasional Daily Weather Report 10/9/11

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Denise

After last week’s day of rain, the sidewalk’s warming up again. High 70’s and low 80’s for the next few days.
(A favorite spot to warm up and also cuff the corgi’s tail-less bottom as he passes through the feline gauntlet.)

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As sometimes happens with this breed, the corgi Ein was born tail-less, or “naturally docked.” The cats had nothing to do with that.
I should keep the steps free of hidden pouncing opportunities, but I love the way the plants drape, and cats and plants love the sun here in winter.

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(Strangely enough, there is a song about tail-less creatures, which can be adapted to sing to Welsh corgis.
My husband taught me the song, but I see Wikipedia dates it to 1907. The following is the only part of the song I know.

The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga

Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails,
They were bitten off by whales,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga.)

I won’t even list the cats’ names because they’ll only change them tomorrow. Yes, the cats change them, not me.
Which sets up supreme humiliation at the vet’s office, when you present the tabby cat you call Joseph, and their records have him as Jones.
Next time at the vet’s you present the tabby cat known to you as Prof. Joe. B. Tiger, and their records have him as Joseph, etc., etc.
The vet’s office records have the white one as Evie, but I think she goes by Chizzy these days.

The vet’s office records have always shown this one’s name as Newt, but her records have changed in other ways.
Due to a nerve injury, she had one of her fore legs removed a few years ago — its absence outlined by the negative space on the left in the photo.

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Thank goodness for the relative stability of plant names. Everyone seems to just be ignoring aster’s new name, symphicotricum, and for good reason. Rudbeckia triloba, bought and planted late in summer, responding to warmer days.
If it’s truly a biennial as I’ve read, this sweet little performance will be all the plant will give.
Rumored to be prolific at reseeding, though. I certainly hope so.

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The autumn air smells fantastic.

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Color is deepening purple on the tips of this tiny Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’ still in a 12-inch pot, where it will remain for the foreseeable future.
All space for trees currently taken.

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Not a very professional weather crew, it’s true. All we really know is fine weather makes us frisky and happy.
But never less wary of the next pounce.

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“Gardens: An Essay” by Robert Pogue Harrison

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Denise

Strange how, even in the most unlikely places, thoughts can still turn to gardens. Jury duty last week had me confined for a good part of Friday in a large, drab room full of strangers, all of us potential jurors awaiting selection for a trial. 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., lunch break until 1:00 p.m., finally excused at 2:30 p.m., my juror services ultimately never required. I had expected to be there until 5:00 p.m., so when early dismissal was announced I practically skipped down the courthouse hall. Expecting a long, chair-ridden, time sinkhole of a day, I had grabbed a huge amount to read, including The New York Review of Books of October 13, 2011. (Seems I rarely read entire books anymore, just reviews.) Sometime mid-morning, deep in a review of the Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom’s latest book, “The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life,” the writer of the review was so impressive and his bio in the NYRB so brief that I had to google him on the courthouse’s computers. (Thoughtfully, the courthouse had provided five computers for potential jurors to share.) Among many scholarly works, Robert Pogue Harrison, Professor of Italian Literature at Stanford, published a book in 2008 with the intriguing title “Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition,” and an excerpt from this essay subtitled “The Vocation of Care,” could be brought up on the courthouse computer (found here). The long day was now whizzing by in a gluttony of reading, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since my last plane or train journey. In this essay Prof. Harrison explores the myths of Eden and how they drive our age and history. He feels that faced with the prospect of living forever in paradise, as Odysseus was on the island of Kalypso, humans would wish desperately to return to their homes and care-ridden lives, “For unlike earthly paradises, human-made gardens that are brought into and maintained in being by cultivation retain a signature of the human agency to which they owe their existence. Call it the mark of Cura.”

Prof. Harrison recounts the parable of Cura, or Care:

“Once when Care was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. Care asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this, and demanded that it be given his name instead. While Care and Jupiter were disputing, Earth arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter, and he made the following decision, which seemed a just one: ‘Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since Care first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called homo, for it is made out of humus (earth).'”


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image found here


“While care is a constant, interminable condition for human beings, specific human cares represent dilemmas or intrigues that are resolved in due time, the way the plots of stories are resolved in due time…in general human beings experience time as the working out of one care after another.

“Here too we find a correlation between care and gardens. A humanly created garden comes into being in and through time. It is planned by the gardener in advance, then it is seeded or cultivated accordingly, and in due time it yields its fruits or intended gratifications. Meanwhile the gardener is beset by new cares day in and day out. For like a story, a garden has its own developing plot, as it were, whose intrigues keep the caretaker under more or less constant pressure. The true gardener is always ‘the constant gardener.'”

Yesterday I found this audio clip of Prof. Harrison ruminating on the jacaranda tree in the quadrangle outside his window at Stanford, and how “cultivation” is an apt word for expressing the kind and depth of attention required to sustain a garden, an education, a democracy. So far, I’ve only listened to this part 1 of 4 and will catch the rest this weekend.




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Rained Out

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Denise

Unlike a sporting event or outdoor concert or meal, a Southern California garden that’s rained out in early October is cause for rejoicing.

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And to really intensify the blissed-out experience of the first seasonal rains, just the day before you must have tucked in some new plants.

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Along with the Salvia farinacea ‘Texas Violet’, two Agave parryi var. truncata have also left their long-time homes in containers to manage independently in this very hot, dry strip, which they will handle beautifully. An enormous, woody ‘Waverly’ salvia needed pruning off the bricks, where it had bulged at least 3 feet outward from the garden, and then after pruning looked so misshapen it was removed entirely. (There was a small incident, a minor trip-and-fall over the plants spilling onto the brick patio outside the office, with some mild bruising. Accusations flew, and to keep the peace the only solution was a bout with the pruning shears.) Though there’s plenty of other winter salvias to bloom, I was worried about my hummingbird friends so used to having a nip from salvia flowers in this part of the garden. Amazing how their interests and mine coincide so nicely! These two salvia should keep them happy until cut to the base later in winter, that is if these Texas natives like the conditions. Read San Marcos Growers’ description of this salvia here. Some eyebrow grass (wouldn’t ‘Andy Rooney’ be a better cultivar name than ‘Blonde Ambition’?), Bouteloua gracilis, are getting a tryout here too. Drumstick alliums, A. sphaerocephalum, were interplanted among the grasses and salvia. (Tulips and alliums arrived in the mail yesterday. Exquisite timing. The tulips and other alliums requiring a chill went into the fridge until after Thanksgiving.)

I’ve noticed once agaves edge a planting with newly disturbed soil, the cats stay out.

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It’s all part of the creeping agave syndrome the back garden has been experiencing. Slowly, imperceptibly the garden is readying itself for less and less irrigation. Last year the first agave, a large Agave bovicornuta, was slipped from its pot and planted in the ground.

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And some Agave ‘Blue Flame’ were planted in the back last year too.
Although the front garden has been full of agaves for years, the agave creep in the back garden is a new phenomenon.

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But such concerns as possible diminished precipitation in the future fly out the blurry window on a rainy day, which are also the rare occasions I’m actually glad for a small garden. The back pressed against the surrounding walls only allows for tight shots, but today the shelter of the eaves is a welcome spot for keeping the camera dry. The house or garage or boundary walls are always just 3 or 4 feet away. (Hence, the disputes over plants spilling onto walkways.) The burgundy grass is the pennisetum hybrid ‘Princess Caroline,’ which looks to be a strong grower. A gallon was split into two clumps mid-summer. All the old anigozanthos bloom stalks were cut away, this sole new bloom in bright yellow pushed horizontal by the rain.

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The watering can has been handed over once again to more capable hands than mine.

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Now that the baton has been passed, the dahlias will be so pleased and may just make it to November.

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