Inter-City Cactus Show & Sale

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Denise

I went to the show, had my mind blown, took some pictures. In other words, a typical succulent show…except that I introduced myself to a best-selling author on succulents in the landscape and containers and then gushed and fawned and stammered and…oh, the shame!

But the plants loved being fawned over. What utter showboats.

I’m always surprised to see lush leaves and delicate flowers springing from a bloated, contorted, caudiciform base, as in Stephania venosa.

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Evem common sempervivums and aeoniums strut and preen like show dogs. That glow is all in the grooming and staging.

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Aloe ‘Coral Fire,’ a Kelly Griffin hybrid.

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Agave stricta. Brown pot, brown leaf tips. Sometimes it’s best not to overanalyze and go with uncomplicated.

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Or there’s always the baroque approach. Succulents on a clamshell.

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Euphorbia poissonii. Really makes you wonder what defenses a plant could possibly have to merit this name in a genus well-known for its caustic, milky sap.
From Wikipedia: “The most active toxin…binds to pain receptors…It stimulates the neurons to fire repeatedly, causing pain.” I note the Wiki photo looks like an entirely different plant, but image searches also show the euphorbia depicted in this photo:

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The dyckias were ravishing.

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Sometimes it’s hard to imagine living with these show plants on a day-to-day basis. Having a quiet breakfast on the sun porch among your treasures — wait a second. Wasn’t the abromeitiella on that table last night? And who took the sports page? C’mon ‘bro, give it back.

Abromeitiella brevifolia.

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I think I’ve seen this enormous Moringa ovalifolia in the several shows I’ve attended this summer. Just wheel him in and hand the ribbon over.

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Succulent shows are where horticulture definitely veers off into the fetishistic, obsessive, hobbyist realm, which might make garden designers uncomfortable, but there’s an incredible amount of cultivation knowledge to be gained, and each plant arrives pre-Photoshopped for your contemplation of its ideal state. A succulent show is an unapologetic plant zoo.

The show will also be held today, August 14, 2011, at the LA Arboretum, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Arguing With A Bad-Tempered Gardener

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Denise

What an odd concept, to separate enjoyment of gardens from the process of garden-making. A garden magazine article a couple months ago introduced me to this astonishing notion, when it profiled the owner of a complex garden who spoke intelligently about his garden, knew every inch of it, but had it all designed, constructed, planted, and maintained by someone else. Shocking. Yes, all these years, and that particular idea had never occurred to me. What a revelation. And then a book is published this spring by an Englishwoman living in Wales, Anne Wareham, entitled “The Bad-Tempered Gardener,” in which she declaims “I hate gardening.” Hates it, yet spends a good part of her adult life imprinting the landscape with patterns such as this:

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Photograph by Clive Nichols

Finally, a garden book I had to read.

Continue reading →

Posted in design, essay | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

Devils in the Details

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Denise

I’ve been pestering MB Maher to shake loose some more video work, and he keeps telling me the coffers are empty at the moment, that he’s hard at work on a new series on designers tentatively titled Field Studies. However, he agreed to make a trailer for AGO readers of a piece in this series on Reuben Munoz, who channels the salvage instincts of Derek Jarman and combines them with the theatricality of Tony Duquette, but with a shamanistic inflection that his uniquely his own.

So, without further ado, a glimpse of the work of the brujo in residence at Rancho Reubidoux.

Field Studies – trailer from MB Maher on Vimeo.

Posted in Cinema Botanica, design, garden visit, MB Maher | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Begonia partita

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Denise

The begonia genus is so vast, that the best approach is to find a guide or mentor to help wade through the many species and hybrids to find the really interesting plants and those most suitable to your tastes and growing conditions, whether those conditions might be outdoors year-round or must necessarily include spending winter indoors or under greenhouse care. I haven’t found a guide yet, or joined the local begonia society, or taken even the small amount of trouble to buy a book, so my lazy approach has been hit-and-miss. I blame this slothful, indiscriminate approach on living in zone 10, knowing that at the very least, whatever cultural mistakes I may make, any begonia I trial will be in no danger from frost. As far as parameters, I’m more interested in the leaves than flowers, with one of my few guidelines being to avoid altogether begonias with pink flowers. The trifecta of white petals, yellow anthers, and green leaves to me is botanical perfection. As in Japanese anemones, calla lilies, regal lilies, Magnolia grandiflora, Romneya coulterii, Carpenteria californica, Cistus ‘Bennett’s White,’ and so on. None of which I grow at this time. But I do grow Begonia dregei var. partita, which came labeled as Begonia partita, a South African species which carries these bracingly clean colors on a plant whose dainty charms are always a challenge for me to convey via photos.

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Although my zone 10 is as good a place as any to grow begonias, it’s only been the past few years that I’ve really started paying attention to this genus. And while the selection at local nurseries is slowly improving, it’s still mostly the common bedding forms, the semperflorens or “wax” begonias, that get most of the bench space, when the protean world of begonias has so much more to offer. As with agaves, the really great plants are to be found with specialist growers. (Kartuz Greenhouses has a wonderful selection.) There’s the fantastical hybrids of the rhizomatous begonias, tuberous begonias like B. boliviensis, sutherlandii, and the relatively hardy B. grandis. Species like B. luxurians, the Palm-leaf begonia, and its hybrids like ‘Paul Hernandez.’

The hit-and-miss approach does turn up some losers, but as luck would have it I have stumbled onto what’s turned out to be not just a good begonia but a very good garden plant, Begonia partita, which is both evergreen, not requiring a dormancy period, and doesn’t mind conditions on the dry side, as occasionally can happen with a slightly haphazard summer watering regimen. What I didn’t know when I bought it, being more attracted by the tiny, ivy-like leaves, was that this begonia is caudiciform, forming a swollen base or caudex, and for this reason is often grown as a bonsai specimen. What this means to me is that it’s an amazingly tough plant for summer containers. Closeup of swollen stems:

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Also known as the Maple-leaf Begonia, it flowers prolifically and spills and mingles nicely amongst other summer growers in containers.
I doubt I’ll ever give it the full bonsai treatment, though, highlighting the swollen stems and caudex, but that water-retention strategy makes this dainty number amazingly easy to grow. Which gives me a boost of confidence as I dabble in this huge genus, knowing it contains gems like Begonia partita.

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Succulent Experiments: A Tutorial

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Denise

What a surprise that Apartment Therapy liked the hanging planters for succulents I blogged about recently. The ones made from…um…car jack stands. Which we just happen to have in abundance here at home because there’s a couple 1970’s Volkswagen vans in the driveway that require frequent maintenance up on the jack stands. All work supervised by the VW engineer in chief.

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Here’s one of the planters with Crassula expansa subsp. fragilis, with the photo from the original post.

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Apartment Therapy said they “would love to see a tutorial.”
That’s all the encouragement MB Maher needed to create a little video on the improbable subject of turning car jack stands into succulent planters.

There’s very little useful instruction happening and really just a lot of silliness but, hey, it’s my first how-to. And, yes, I forgot there were eyeglasses on top of my head. A couple important points I neglected to mention: The excess window screen is eventually cut off, leaving maybe an inch to roll and fold down and tuck in about even with the top of the jack stand. And if you use smaller plants, they can be arranged around the central hanger. The method depicted in the video was chosen because I wanted to start with a bigger, fuller plant.

Car Jack Stand with Succulent, an Anti How-to from MB Maher on Vimeo.

Warm thanks to Apartment Therapy and MB Maher.

Posted in Cinema Botanica, Department of Instruction, MB Maher, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Tropicalissimo Redux

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Denise

Anybody remember “tropicalissimo”? In gardening, it references a word used maybe a decade ago for the then-shocking innovation of incorporating tropicals in summer borders and containers. A fairly mundane practice now. Somewhat counter-intuitively, I’ve found these plants, the alocasia, colocasias, xanthosomas and many more, far easier than summer-flowering annuals to grow in containers, stay fresher longer with much less effort, and the thick leaves withstand the vagaries of irrigation far superior to, say, thin-leaved coleus. In fact, this year, other than succulents and a couple big containers with a mish-mash of begonias, pelargoniums and cordylines, the tropicals are what’s growing in pots for summer, taking center stage. Just a few containers produce a big impact for surprisingly little care, the plants reveling in mid-summer heat and humidity.

Colocasia esculenta ‘Diamond Head’ with Xanthosoma ‘Lime Zinger’ in the background.
(The dust from ongoing house repairs evident on the dark leaves.)

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Colocasia esculenta ‘Mojito’

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Xanthosoma ‘Lime Zinger’ producing a weird, “Two-Face” bifurcated leaf.

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In my zone 10 I overwinter these outdoors, tipping the pots on their sides during dormancy to keep rain out. (Gardeners in colder climates avail themselves of basements, garages, etc., with or without grow lights. It’s quite an impressive undertaking and requires dedication but is very doable, even for neophyte gardeners. A good place to start researching strategies for a particular climate zone is the Tropicals forum on Gardenweb.) The lime-green xanthosoma in particular is amazingly robust and would dearly like a bigger pot to explode upwards to as much as 5 feet. Gardeners in colder climates seem mesmerized by the size tropicals can achieve in one growing season with regular applications of fertilizer, but other than mixing in some organic fertilizer with fresh potting soil in spring and then renewing a bit more in July, I don’t indulge their robust appetites. I’m not after size, just those gently swaying tropical leaves.

Plant Delights has a very good selection.

Posted in design, pots and containers | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Blue Bottle & Finial

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Denise

I cleaned out my garden shed the other day and found this blue bottle buried under twine and dirty garden gloves dried into angry fist shapes. There was apparently attraction enough at one time for me to squirrel the bottle away into this very tiny shed, the door clasp of which has long since buckled under the strain imposed on such a magpie’s closet. Maybe at some point I was thinking of building a bottle tree. I did throw out a lot of the junk in the shed, but hesitated with the cobalt blue bottle. I didn’t put it back in the shed, but left it out on a table, hoping to force a final decision. Then, ahem, out of the blue, it occurred to me that the rusty finial lying around with the wine cork shoved into it for a previous incarnation as the crowning glory to a candelabra might just fit in the bottle. And so it did.

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There would seem to be a resident flying squirrel in the garden, judging by the reflection in the bottle just under the neck in the photo below. Or, to indulge in a paranoid cliche, possibly a UFO silently glided over the garden when the photo was taken. Or, as a smarty pants in the family opined, it has something to do with a parabolic effect. I’m going with the flying squirrel. I like the M.C. Escher funhouse distortion in the bottle, the bowed ribs of the pergola against the blue glass sky.

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The perfect fit of the bottle and finial started a binge into blue which was to last the next few days. Because didn’t I have some tumbled blue glass somewhere in the garden brought home from Building REsources? Yes, indeed, which I had used to outline nerine bulbs, so I wouldn’t inadvertently stomp on the bulbs in their dormant phase. I checked the gravel garden, and sure enough, there was a scattering of blue glass shards, no longer in neat outline around the nerines but strewn about and half buried in gravel. I picked up every shard and gave them a good wash. In my defense, I plead summertime. It’s long, it’s hot, and it can make eccentric activities seem like seriously worthwhile pursuits.

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The blue glass mulch was left soaking in water for several days on a table in the kitchen, with no greater purpose or plan in mind. Then I became distracted redoing some plantings in the front gravel garden, moving agaves a few feet over, removing the one-off succulents and adding bigger swathes of a particular favorite, the Mexican Snowball, Echeveria elegans. For a fresh gravel surface, I cheaped out on the gravel, which is approximately the same light grey as the echeverias instead of the pricier warm buff color I had used in the past. All that work for a fairly disappointing result. Something else was needed to draw definition to the white echeverias against the grey gravel. Which just happened to be soaking in a bowl in the kitchen, freshly washed, bright and shiny.

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Once the echeverias grow in a bit more, the blue glass will disappear, so it is a bit of mid-summer silliness. I do know it’s not easy to throw away a cobalt blue bottle. I couldn’t do it. But for the sake of blue glass mulch, I’m glad not everyone squirrels bottles away in their garden sheds.

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Posted in design, garden ornament, succulents | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Occasional Daily Photo 7/29/11

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Denise

Echeveria ‘Afterglow’ and Allium senescens. This little mid summer-flowering onion is sweet consolation for an allium-less garden up to this point.
Unlike me, the early-blooming, flamboyant drumstick alliums don’t enjoy a zone 10 garden and prefer chillier winters. And although echeverias don’t need to be kept in pots and can be grown outside year-round by the coast here in Southern California, it’s always nice to have a few in containers to force some interesting companionships between pots and garden. The allium in the garden in bloom, no more than a foot high, becomes borrowed scenery on a miniature scale for a study in pink. Icy starbursts wooing fleshy rosettes. Being a busybody matchmaker is perfectly acceptable with plants.

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Posted in design, Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , | 2 Comments

San Marzano Tomato Taste Test

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Denise

After maligning the San Marzano tomato in my last post, an update seems in order.
Following a thorough and deep watering, the vine may not have tomato blight or cucumber mosaic virus or whatever ailments a tomato succumbs to. My mom may have simply neglected to water deeply. Time will tell. In the meantime, a few green ones were picked and ripened in the kitchen for a few days.
MB Maher did the photographic honors and insists the tomato taste test turned into a pretty peppy party, if not an alliterative disaster.

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Bred for sauces rather than for eating fresh, San Marzanos typically have fewer seeds and are meatier, less juicy.
Indeed, not a drop of tomato juice was spilled.

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Some devotees of the San Marzano tomato claim that its unique flavor cannot truly be replicated outside of its native volcanic soil near the village of San Marzano in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

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With no basis for comparison, and not having been blessed with the most refined palate, yet even I noticed the unmistakably sweet rather than typically acidic tomato taste. However, the round shape is atypical compared to photo references of the San Marzano, which shows a more elongated, cylindrical shape. Also famed for being easy to peel, I completely forgot to do a peel test and ate every last slice.

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If the rest of the crop makes it, there will be sauce!

Posted in edibles, MB Maher | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Summer’s Bounty

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Denise

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Man cannot live by tomatoes alone. (The first dahlia opened today.)

There’s no way I’m going to keep the garden moist enough simply for a few dahlias to thrive, but I’d hate to face August and September without them. So this year I planted my one dahlia tuber in a 5-gallon nursery can in March, amping up the potting soil with lots of compost. The container was then plunged into the garden, hidden from view behind some grasses but still in full sun and easily accessible for watering. This prestidigitation with containers, popping them into the garden in season, whether tulips, lilies, or dahlias, keeps things interesting, and has the added benefit of allowing the water runoff from the containers to go directly in the garden’s soil. Checking the blog, I find this dahlia was bought in 2009 at a garden show, and I neglected to note the name.

As far as tomatoes, so far it’s been a disaster, and I’m miserable about it. 2010 was a raging success. Never having had a garden before, my mom was thrilled with her daily summer bounty of tomatoes and zucchini from the 5X8 foot raised bed we built off her patio, and probably has the world’s unofficial record for number of zucchini breads baked by one woman in a 3-month period, which she froze then gave as holiday gifts. I knew the first year of living alone after my dad died would be difficult and, of course, my predictable solution was to plant a garden for her. I can’t help it. My mind finds the solution to all problems at the end of a garden path. (If the U.S. Congress can’t get this debt ceiling debate reconciled, they should be made to tend the White House vegetable garden in the sweltering heat of August and September, and then distribute the vegetables among the Capitol’s needy. And with their paychecks suspended in limbo.)

This year for her raised bed I foolishly chose a San Marzano tomato on a whim, knowing nothing about this legendary sauce tomato from the Campania region of Italy. As a sauce tomato, it doesn’t crop like tomatoes grown for the table, and while her friends are boasting of the ripe tomatoes they’re picking, she’s had zip. Right now it’s loaded with huge, bright green tomatoes, but over the past week the vine looks to have become diseased. I wouldn’t know cucumber mosaic virus if it bit me on the ass, but I’m guessing this is the affliction.

My mom is heartbroken. After her happy, carefree foray into vegetable gardening in 2010, except for the surprise success with Persian cucumbers, this year is all confusion and pain. Which is a common state of being for vegetable gardeners, something I’m trying to explain to my mom. But she just thinks she’s done something wrong, when the fault is all mine for choosing a late-cropping, finicky variety meant for sauces and not eating fresh.

Today I’m running to the local nursery to find a run-of-the-mill, dependable tomato to plant in a large container for her. There’s plenty of time left in our long growing season to turn this sad tomato situation around. Wish I could say the same for any prospect of turning this sad political season around as well.

Posted in Bulbs, edibles, pots and containers | Tagged , | 9 Comments