Dear AGO

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Denise

“Hi there, I love your blog..it is super informative and I am really impressed with it!
I have a question, my boyfriend bought me this plant and I have no idea what it is. I live in California but am not even sure if it is indigenous to this state.
Please help me…photo attached.

Krissi”

Photobucket

****

“Hi Krissi —

Love your ring!

Looks to me like your nice boyfriend bought you an iresine maybe. For a reference, compare it to some of the iresines on this page.

Whatever it is, it looks tropical and probably can’t take frost.

Thanks for your kind words about the blog.

Happy spring.”

****

“You are so sweet, thank you so much for your help!

So, last night my boyfriend spent about 3 hours trying to identify the plant…and became very excited after he discovered the zebra plant, thinking it must be ours. However, now that you are sending me this link, it could very well be an iresine. Do you know any way to be sure? What seems to be unique is this plant’s trunk, it is like a miniature tree because it’s base is brown and as thick as a finger.

Confused”

****

“Krissi, I’m going to post this mystery on my blog, with your photos and questions, later this week. Maybe we’ll get some more clues to its identity.

Hoping to banish confusion,

Denise”

****
And that’s the end of the email exchange. But what a boyfriend, bringing home a plant and then researching it for three hours! He’s a keeper for sure, Krissi. And I think aphelandra, aka The Zebra Plant, is a very good possibility, especially due to the thick trunk. If anyone can confirm or deny, please do.

Posted in Plant Portraits, shop talk | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Foliage Follow-Up March 2011

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Denise

Hosted by Pam at Digging, getting things going with a shout-out for a luscious trifecta of agaves on her blog today.

My contribution today is a variety of the Heavenly Bamboo, Nandina domestica ‘Filamentosa,’ the first nandina I’ve ever purchased. (Nandina is a much-abused local landscape shrub.) And I’ve been inclined to think it was a silly purchase, but now I’m not so sure. It’s been bulking up over winter, the filigree leaves coloring and reddening. Also called Thread-Leaf Nandina. Planted under tetrapanax with golden carex and bergenia, with a couple Aster divaricatus included just this spring. All should be tough enough to contend with the tetrapanax. This nandina is slower growing and smaller than the species.

Photobucket

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Bloom Day March 2011

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Denise

Carol at May Dreams Gardens hosts this exciting monthly event, inspired by garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence’s urging that “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” Some days are so bleak, it seems astonishing that flowers could bloom at all, but indeed they always do. Some newer things in bloom in my garden here in Southern California, zone 10, a mile from the Pacific Ocean:

Geranium maderense ‘ Alba’ opened its first flowers this Bloom Day morning.
Photobucket

Variegated Solanum rantonnetii, now pruned into a standard, to cram more plants under its skirts. Amazingly long-blooming shrub.
Photobucket

Euphorbia mellifera
Photobucket

Shrublike Impatiens sodenii, flowers so sugary sweet they make my teeth ache. Bit of overkill by Mother Nature.
Photobucket

Anigozanthos, a good winter bloomer, with new blooms still coming for spring
Photobucket

Not in full bloom yet, just this one inflorescence on Echium gentianoides ‘Tajinaste.’ I shouldn’t have moved it a month ago. Oh, well.
Photobucket

Self-sown Nicotiana langsdorffii, seedlings found mostly in dry paving, where I pry them up and plant in the garden.
Photobucket

Ein passing by the poppies near the porch, Papaver setigerum
Photobucket

Thanks again to Carol and all the bloggers participating in this Bloom Day, whose blogs I’ll gratefully read while toggling back and forth between news reports about the crisis in Japan.

Dedicating my Bloom Day post to the good people of Japan.
(Huntington Botanical Gardens, Japanese Garden, photo from HBG site)

Photobucket

Posted in Bloom Day, Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Denise

Good fences do make good neighbors. Good fences also make good plant barriers.
In this wisteria’s case, I doubt anyone can be held accountable for planting this mighty vine. I think the birds accomplished that for us.
My job is to keep it out of the smoke tree ‘Grace,’ full-time employment all summer.
Strategically seeded in a corner where four gardens intersect, the location of its main trunk a perpetual mystery, one neighbor keeps it out of his citrus, another from eating the shingles on his garage roof. And still another neighbor works tirelessly to keep it out of his tool shed.
I hope they’re not cursing me as they cut back its sneaky tendrils twice a week in summer. I did not unleash this vegetative behemoth.

Photobucket

Fences are the best defense, visually and physically, against a neighbor’s ill-chosen plants, amongst a laundry list of unsightly stuff. Including laundry.
(We do our laundry outdoors, as does our neighbor to the east. Our neighbor to the west moved his kitchen outdoors, not a satellite trophy kitchen for entertaining, but the main kitchen. The most amazing aromas of Vietnamese cuisine waft over that fence. I have no idea what the neighbors on the southern boundary are up to behind the 8-foot, creeping-fig covered wall, which is as it should be. As we clipped that fig-covered wall yesterday, the two of us attacking our side, the neighbor working on his side, a disembodied arm helpfully passed a beer over the top of the wall to speed us on our work. Good neighbor.)

Photobucket

Posted in shop talk | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Occasional Daily Photo/Geranium maderense ‘Alba’ 3/12/11

Posted on March 12, 2011 by Denise

Any day now.

Photobucket

Geranium maderense ‘Alba’ from Annie’s Annuals.

Continue reading →

Posted in Occasional Daily Photo | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Tulip Report/Queen of the Night

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Denise

Sounds less zombie-ish in French: Reine de la Nuit

Photobucket

Amazingly long stems, over 2 feet, planted in a shallow bowl.

Photobucket

With ‘Double Beauty of Apeldoorn’

Photobucket

This will most likely be my final tulip report. A couple pots of bulbs had deformed flowers, short stems.
So the winners this year for tulips amenable to forcing, undergoing 6 weeks of prechilling for this zone 10 February/March display are:
Queen of the Night, Brown Sugar, and Double Beauty of Apeldoorn.
Mail-ordered from Bluestone Perennials in summer of 2010 for delivery in fall. Good price, excellent quality. Order in summer, July/August, for the best selection.
Upon arrival, stash bulbs in an empty vegetable crisper in the fridge. I always plant the bulbs the day after Thanksgiving, an easy date to remember.
The stunted losers were a grab bag of mixed bulbs bought at a local nursery, an impulse buy. An impulse to be resisted next year.

Cheap, easy fun, like doodling with crayons.

(Edited to add: ‘Apricot Beauty’ forces well, too, just wasn’t a personal favorite.)

Posted in Bulbs | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Smellovision

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Denise

Here it comes…

Photobucket

Did you get a whiff? No? Maybe scoot your chair just a bit closer.

Photobucket

Smellovision didn’t work so great in 1960 either. I cut this bunch of sweet peas last night from my mom’s first garden, a single raised bed we keep planted for her. Fresh spinach from the little garden for dinner too. The sweet peas were sown last fall, just a couple plants. (At age 82, my mom’s first sweet peas. I felt awful for selfishly prying this bunch away from her but recovered nicely as the scent filled the car on the ride home.) From a mixture by Renee’s Garden “Early Blooming Velvet Elegance,” a day-length neutral blend. They’ve been in bloom for over a month. The bi-colored lavender was a nice surprise.

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Hortus Obsessus

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Denise

Spring planting must be on just about everyone’s minds now, right? I shop at Annie’s Annuals all the time, fill my cyber basket to overflowing, then walk away from the computer. The walking away is pure character building.

At least that was my m.o. until local nurseries started stocking AA’s plants. Aaaagh…Now I routinely come home with such judiciously selected purchases as this Puya chilensis, armed to the teeth, destined to grow 15 feet wide, taking as much as 15 years to bloom.

Annie, have mercy!

Photobucket

A smaller Puya mirabillis would have been a much better choice for my tiny garden. But so hard to walk away when confronted with a plant in glorious leaf and spine, not just pixels. I’ve been longing for a new puya, these exotic but tough terrestrial bromeliads. A flourishing Puya alpestris planted not far from this P. chilensis, near a pathway edge, died last summer, never having bloomed. A mysterious death. I can still vividly recall that unique smell — the word putrefaction barely conveys the odor of its death throes. So my gravel garden may have some obscure anti-puya attitude. A soil pathogen? Too crowded? I pulled out a big swathe of the beautifully easy calandrinia for the new guy, whose mature size of 15 feet wide makes him more a contender for a botanical garden. Or maybe the hell strip? What a hellish thought — I couldn’t do that to my neighbors.

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Tulip ‘Double Beauty of Apeldoorn’

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Denise

This is some of what I’ll be spending my tulip money on next year.

Photobucket

This is the second year in a row I’ve purchased and prechilled this flamboyant double tulip. What a fine Easter present (to me).
Maybe fewer bulbs to a pot for next year. These flowers are huge.

Photobucket

Photobucket

It’s probably not necessary to write that there are no big spring bulb displays in Los Angeles.
In fact, many Southern Californians only know spring as the time of year to retrieve their flip-flops from under the bed.
I like the way these tulips announce spring, loud and gaudy.

Posted in Bulbs | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Warming Up

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Denise

Colors to take the chill out.

Arctotis
Photobucket

New leaves on cotinus

Photobucket

Angelica stricta ‘Purpurea’ in pot with bromeliad Aechmea recurvata ‘Aztec Gold’

Photobucket

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments