Tulips Can Be Had Cheap

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Denise

It takes a flower of infinite grace to withstand being turned into a potted ubiquity at every neighborhood nursery, grocery store, and florist shop, which is where I’m bumping into tulips this month. Growing them for myself is an intensely personal experience, one that exists outside the bounds of commerce. Nothing can cheapen it. And of all the plants that we bemoan have seen ruination from hybridizers (like the “falls” of irises that antithetically stand out straight from the bloom like propellors), the more outre tulips become, fringed and doubled, the more we covet them, such a long association have tulips and people had interfering in each others’ lives.

Last year it was a couple pots, this year five. Next year, double that.

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Eryngiums, House & Garden

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Denise

Sometimes the house quietly slips into a “Grey Gardens” mode, such as when a vase full of eryngiums turn spidery and dessicated, and I still can’t bear to throw them away. These were bought at Christmas, when I splurged on cut flowers. Hard to imagine they were once shiny metallic and intensely blue.

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This is one of those infuriating plants that rightfully should grow in my garden but so far has refused. Maybe Ms. Willmott never discreetly scattered seeds of the eryngo bearing her name on heavy clay like mine. (The story, possibly apocryphal, is Ms. Willmott flung this seed out of her pockets while you weren’t looking, because she felt this plant would improve anyone’s garden. The ghostly progeny appeared next spring, causing you much consternation as to how it came to be in your garden. What a prankster!) But this winter there’s strong basal growth on one eryngo out of three I planted in fall, just your garden-variety Eryngium giganteum/Miss Willmott’s Ghost, which is, take your pick, biennial or perennial, depending on who’s doing the talking. In any case, this could be the year eryngos take off. (How many times have I said that, I wonder.) I’m sure once a single eryngo shakes its copious seed into my soil, a couple seeds will find some spot to their liking. Just as the poppies prefer seeding into the pavement around the back porch, not in the garden. I’m flexible and have my priorities straight. Plants first. But it’s like pushing a boulder uphill to get a known prolific self-seeder to get comfy in the garden.

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That Corsican Hellebore

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Denise

I hope I’m not becoming too tiresome about this hellebore…

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I may have mentioned it four times in the past two months, but I just cannot say enough good things about Helleborus argutifolius, zoned 7-10.
Some resources zone it even to 6. From Corsica and Sardinia, so definitely of a maritime temperament.
In late fall it launches a campaign of chartreuse enchantment that lasts all winter long.

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No flaming picotee edge or blooms stained the deepest, darkest red. But it does possess a wonderful counterpoint of leaf to flower, something that isn’t always true of hybrids that sacrifice this balance in pursuit of extravagantly colored but demurely nodding blooms that require one to bow down on cold knees to gain a glimpse of the drooping, flower-like sepals. There’s nothing demure about this outsized swashbuckler. And, yes, it’s certainly true that it will seed about, with ambitions to conquer your garden like that other famous Corsican.

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Portrait by Jacques-Louis David

It wants no part of the show bench displaying the endless variety of the many exquisite interspecies hybrids, a competition which would be this rugged hellebore’s Waterloo. The rough-and-tumble winter garden is where it reigns, in part shade or more sun than you’d think wise for a hellebore, the perfect consort for phormiums, astelias, grasses, the bulbs of spring. Amazingly drought tolerant in summer. It lends a hydrangea-esque fullness to my winter garden, for which I am its devoted subject.

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Landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power does list my humble Corsican hellebore as one of her favorite perennials in her book “Power of Gardens,” but I’m not sure it rates as high for her as strelitzia, the Bird of Paradise, or Agave attenuata, since I haven’t found any photos of this hellebore in her book so far. (You can browse through some of the book’s photos courtesy of Garden Design here.)

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The stinking hellebore, H. foetidus, also doesn’t mind the mild zone 10 winter and is a lovely plant, though it doesn’t have the size and landscape impact of H. argutifolius. The H. argutifolius hybrid ‘Silver Lace’ has been a dumpy disappointment, no more than a foot high, flowers buried under its pale leaves. What is the point, I ask you, when the species can make muscular, evergreen mounds of serrated, tripartite leaves up to 4 feet high? Loyal to the Corsican, I’ve never been inclined to collect the myriad crosses, some including H. niger (nigercors), since I simply can’t imagine anything better than the species.

This simple, shrubby, robust Corsican has made a complete and utter conquest of my heart.

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Yuccas Do

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Denise

And how. Then keep on doing some more.
Agaves get all the love, while yuccas just quietly get the job done.

Yucca filamentosa, probably ‘Golden Sword,’ name tag lost long ago. Hardy to zone 5.

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Habituation

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Denise

Every so often I come across a word that tunnels straight into the murky recesses, boring into that dank station in the brain where rusty thoughts rumble around and bang like aimless cars in a railyard. Thoughts with otherwise no timetable for arrival, no destination known. Just knowing such a word exists is enough to set one of those idle railcars in motion, rumbling down the track and into focus

An opportune moment to pause for a photo of The Atocha, Madrid’s astonishing, jungly, former railway terminus, from “The Ten Most Impressive Railway Stations.”
I could plan entire trips around gardens, railway stations, and libraries.

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As I was saying before risking derailing this little narrative with that glorious photo, which incidentally does serve to illustrate my point of seeing things in new ways, like envisioning a railway station as a gigantic tropical conservatory….

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Last week the word was “habituation.” It has a specific scientific meaning and usage, but what appealed to me was the scientist, Jonathan Schooler’s quick sketch of the word for the lay person in the magazine article:

“Habituation is why you don’t notice stuff that’s always there. It’s an inevitable process of adjustment, a ratcheting down of excitement.”
(12/13/10 The New Yorker, “The Truth Wears Off,” by Jonah Lehrer.)

And, no surprise, I’m relating habituation to making gardens, our own personal gardens to be exact. The inevitable “ratcheting down of excitement” that comes from having only one garden to view day after day, and sometimes becoming numbingly acclimated to it. Traveling, visiting other gardens, whether in blogs, books, magazines, or in person, are time-honored habituation busters, a means to see anew and clarify what the heck it was you set out to accomplish in the first place. You’d think we’d be weepy with disappointment from too much garden visiting, but my little garden never pleases me more than when I compare it to others, even gardens far superior, because at such moments I feel the most intensely connected to the ageless tradition of garden making. Being a participant in that tradition is literally and figuratively the ground under my feet.

Another disrupter of habituation is the camera. This morning I was surprised by a couple different views when trying to make the most of an early misty light rinsed in fog. One unseasonal bloom of Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’ changed everything.

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Photographing the salvia from the back of the garden made me take notice of the drama of kangaroo paws against a solid backdrop.

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I know, kind of anticlimatic after that train station photo (from Wikipedia). For another good dose of anti-habituation, if you have a half hour to spare this Sunday I’d recommend watching Carol Klein’s Life in a Cottage Garden. There are some annoying ads to contend with, but Carol’s tour of her garden is just what’s needed for those of us habituated this February to our personal garden scenes of unremitting snow, mud, or just the same-old/same-old.

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Plants That Bear Watching

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Denise

Every garden probably has a few. Not exactly weeds, but tending toward the weedy, yet something about them holds you in thrall. Keeping these plants in the garden is flirting with disaster, but still you just can’t break it off. Maybe these exuberant, sassy, lust-for-life types are a bracing contrast to those plants perpetually teetering on the verge of fainting dead away. They’re dangerous, yes, but also a quick source of cheap thrills. In my garden, the following four easily fall into the PTBW category, all deserving extra vigilance for their great foliage, which is evergreen here in zone 10:

So far, tetrapanax seems reasonably well behaved. Far better manners than, say, acanthus. Maybe my heavy clay soil keeps the infamous running roots in check, but it’s only been a year, so too soon to tell. (Edited April 2011: Runners found 2 feet away.)

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Bronze fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, on the California invasive plant list. Robust and feathery, I’ve kept just one plant, don’t let it set seeds, and haven’t had any seedlings yet. So far so good, but not to be grown near wild, open areas.

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Castor Oil Plant, Castorbean, Ricinus communis, ‘New Zealand Purple,’ holding on to a few leaves through the winter. It just occurred to me that the castor oil tablets my mom gave us as kids come from this deadly plant. Weird. An escaped weed in Southern California and also meriting a spot with fennel on the California invasive plant list. No seedlings from this cultivar so far. (Edited April 2011: One seedling found and carefully transplanted. Just one.)

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Corydalis heterocarpa. Probably no more prolific than C. lutea, with similar yellow flowers, but since it grows as big as rhubarb the scope for trouble is that much greater. Truthfully, this plant has passed over into the weed category, and I no more “keep” it than one “keeps” ants in the garden, but easy enough to hoe out the seedlings. Each year the fresh leaves in spring win me over again.

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I appreciate these hooligans for keeping the garden lively, but like all hooligans, they straddle a very fine line between lively and obnoxious.

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A Smausian Water Garden

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Denise

Looking into the future of newspapers, there’s nothing but thick fog concealing possible total shipwreck. Looking to the past can seem like a golden age, especially for garden writers. In Los Angeles, we’re lucky to have the amazing Emily Green as the Los Angeles Times garden editor, but at many newspapers that chair is empty. (Let’s face it, the chair has been entirely removed, along with the desk and the slim column of numbers in the newspaper’s annual budget for garden reporting.) In the ’90s, the LAT garden editor was the inimitable Robert Smaus, a man seemingly born curious about everything horticultural, whether ornamental or edible, and possessing the rare gift for communicating what he discovered. These photos are taken from his website, but I had the good fortune of seeing his garden in person when he taught horticulture classes through a local university extension program. I’ve got water gardens on the brain lately and have been thinking about modeling one on Smaus’ simple water tank made of cinderblocks then smoothly plastered.

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I get a cheerful reminder of Smaus’ old garden now whenever I visit Jenny’s garden through her blog at Rockrose, on my blogroll, where she similarly deploys sheets of flowers among pavers in her garden.

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Robert Smaus writes about leaving his garden here.
The Smausian style of garden writing: “There’s a new coreopsis named ‘Limerock Ruby’ that I planted as a little slip early last spring, and it grew and grew like credit card debt until it burst into mind-numbing bloom.” Bob’s book, “52 Weeks in the California Garden,” is still in print.

(Edited to add: I wrote in haste and incorrectly gave Emily Green the title of garden editor for the LA Times, when her own site, Chance of Rain, lists her as a garden columnist.)

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Vacuuming the Sotols

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Denise

Elsewhere February seems determined to be one for the record books. Added to worries for family and friends all over the country, there’s now anxiety for the gardens and their owners all over the world I’ve come to know through the Internet, through blogs. (Never another gardener to be found on our own street, we have to search the world to find each other.) Take the greatest care for your safety, please. Last night my mom described news reports of the building of enormous snowmen with traffic cones for noses, fire-breathing Godzillas made of snow. Mustering such amazing panache in the face of winter fully baring its teeth, we salute you!

Temps did drop down to 37 last night, no worry for any garden, and this Dasylirion longissimum, aka Mexican Grass Tree, Longleaf Sotol, Toothless Sotol, can handle temps to 15 F. Taxonomically, this sotol has recently left the Agavaceae and joined up with nolinas in the Ruscaceae. Taxonomists do nothing but break up families, the busy little home-wreckers. The leaves of the Desert Spoons have that widening at the base that gives them their common name. This base with the intricate cross-hatching of leaves is also where all the trash and debris builds up. (Never park a dasylirion in autumn under a deciduous tree.)

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Like having a party when the house is clean, after a good vacuum, the sotol is ready for its closeup.
See the spoon-shaped swelling of the leaves where they meet the base? And notice how clean and free from debris it is?

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Faster growing than a cycad, which isn’t saying much, I’ve had it for many years, though it’s never flowered. Unlike most agaves, which practice the religion of Monocarpism, this dasylirion will flower and live to tell the tale. This year I’ll begin stripping the lower leaves away from the base, allowing its distinctive caudex to shine.

Once the trunk starts to form, there’ll be less and less opportunity for debris to catch at the base. I don’t own much garden equipment, certainly nothing with a motor like a leaf blower, so had no bigger plan other than idly picking at the debris caught in the interstices with my fingers or using chopsticks, a safe if ineffective approach with this spineless sotol. Talk about futile. Yesterday a tire pump air compressor was suggested as a solution and, zut alors! the problem was solved. I also used the compressor to spritz a couple of nearby agaves suffering from the same problem. We might be incapable of building eccentric snowmen in February, but by god, we can keep the sotols vacuumed.

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Lobelia tupa/Yo-Yo Gardening

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Denise

I’ve been in a digging mood, which probably dates back to this draft of a post I wrote but never posted on December 28, 2010. A brief shower last Sunday has been the only rain since the December storms, and I can’t help wondering if we’ve now entered the drought the experts said was in store for us this winter before that Pineapple Express upended their predictions and roared into town. My 30-gallon rain barrel from that storm is already empty.

From the AGO archives, December 28, 2010:

“As I wrote a couple days ago, the recent rains have set Oxalis vulcanicola on the move again.

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Oxalis advancing towards Lobelia tupa, pictured below. If you squint really hard, you might possibly be able to make out a naked stem of the lobelia.
I’ve been squinting a lot at this lobelia. Muttering some harsh words at it too. I must’ve left the pottery shard to mark its spot so I wouldn’t plant over it.

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It’s the lobelia that has been the problem child, not the oxalis. In fact, a couple mornings ago, the lobelia was destined for removal to a pot. Bought at a mature size in a gallon container, it’s occupied this sunny spot for at least a year, to the general misfortune of the garden overall. It requires a large amount of space, but refuses to take ownership of that space. Not much basal growth, just disheveled, naked stems snaking out a couple feet with a miserable poof of leaves at the end of the stems. This fall new acquisitions were planted closer and closer to the lobelia, which isn’t helping matters, but overcrowding can sometimes reflect, as in this case, a lack of respect for a plant that fails to thrive.

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Researching the lobelia on the computer, I found this wonderful entry on Lobelia tupa from The Patient Gardener’s Weblog. If there’s any chance at all my lobelia might grow to resemble that beauty, I’m leaving it alone, tracing a bright Maginot line of pottery shards in the soil over which no oxalis shall be allowed to advance or new acquisitions be planted.

More encouragement comes from photos of the Lobelia tupa grown at Mesogeo Gardens, Bainbridge Island, Washington. I’m guessing the Patient Gardener and Mesogeo’s Gardens are in a much cooler, moister zone 8, and maybe the spot I’ve given this Chilean lobelia is in too much sun.

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I’m granting the lobelia a one-year grace period, at which point it gets moved to a pot, where I can wheel the invalid around to wherever suits it best. Maybe somewhere deep in the garden if it persists in this ugly phase. (Making threats is a time-honored gardening technique. There is a theory among avid rose growers that simply placing a shovel near an under-performing plant will produce astonishing vigor in a weak grower essentially threatened with the dreaded “shovel pruning.”)

Later that day…

Despite that upbeat and sensible plan, as often happens when I get a shovel in my hand, the day took a different turn. I should have paid closer attention to all those military metaphors, drawing Maginot lines and such. Clearly, a destructive mood was taking hold, one I get nearly every winter when exasperation with my tendency to overplant overwhelms common sense. No sooner had I typed the last line was a shovel grabbed and the afternoon spent removing a considerable amount of biomass so the lobelia could be transplanted to a shadier spot. One removal led to another, until the final tally of victims from overplanting included: (a) a 4X4 foot Teucrium fruticans azureum, (b) 3X3 foot Ballota acetabulosa, leaving a small rooted remnant; (c) a 6-foot tall leptospermum standard; (d) a 5X3 foot mass of Cobaea scandens, piling in on itself tendril upon tendril to become a free-standing, viney column, leafy on the surface, slimy underneath.

And rather than waiting a year, as I prudently wrote earlier in the day, the Lobelia tupa was dug and moved to the newly opened, slightly shadier location. A couple clumps of languishing ruby grass/melinus were moved here as well. (The soil was still surprisingly light after all that rain, for we all know that one NEVER digs in excessively wet soil. The day of solid rain following the transplanting makes digging ill advised for at least a couple weeks.)

What started out as a few snips of oxalis turned into a full-blown demolition session, which always seems to follow the busy fizz of the holidays. I can try to talk myself out of this impulse, but when my hand touches a shovel mid-winter, anything goes. What sounds chaotic and irrational is just a continuation of the 22-year conversation I’ve had with this garden — overplanting then the inevitable thinning out, craving the excitement of new plants but not having the necessary space in which they can mature, the garden equivalent of yo-yo dieting. After the thinning, hellebores grown against the back wall, previously concealed by the cobaea in front, joined the garden again, along with a newly revealed phlomis and some salvias hidden behind the standard leptospermum. The garden once again looks lean and sleek with about as much winter bareness as I can tolerate.”

Today, February 2, 2011. In its new location in deeper, richer soil, the Lobelia tupa currently is budding leaf growth along its stems but otherwise looks as inert as ever. Below is a summer 2010 photo of the Teucrium fruticans azureum that was removed in late December. So pale and ghostly beautiful but grows like a tumbleweed. (Some of the purplish bloom belongs to a solanum, which was disentangled from the teucrium and pruned into a standard. Not sure if I like this formality or not, but if the ruby grass and euphorbias I’ve also moved here thrive under the solanum’s canopy, I just might leave it alone.)

The golden blur in the distance, a duranta over 8 feet tall, has also been removed this winter.

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The canna and tibouchina were untouched and will be back in summer 2011.

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So to those who might be inclined to believe all is luxuriant ease in a zone 10 garden, let mine be the cautionary tale. When a garden is workable nearly 12 months out of the year, there is scope for some serious mischief and yo-yo gardening. It says a lot about my patience as a gardener that, rather than worrying over the nonperforrmance of the lobelia for another year, I plopped a couple of the Agave attenuata and shawii hybrid ˜Blue Flame™ in its spot. Nothing to worry about there.

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Journal February 1, 2011

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Denise

February is about the time of year when the little reminder notes really start to pile up, when sending a barrage of e-mails to myself seems an inefficient system compared to the search capabilities on my blog, a feature I use constantly. So just a warning that any future posts labeled “Journal” will most likely be scattershot to-do lists, seed orders, and garden musings of a very narrow range, applicable to my little zone 10 garden. Planting ideas I’m working out, etc. Of course, any and all input is more than welcome.

Ready, Evie?

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1. Ongoing investigation, no verdict yet, on pairing cannas with the big, winter-blooming salvias, like S. iodantha, wagneriana. The idea is cannas for summer, cut back in fall, when the salvias will take over for late winter/spring. Water, compost, and light needs similar. Looks like S. iodantha just might bloom in February before the Bengal Tiger canna takes off, fingers crossed. It’d be better if these two were further apart, something to consider if the salvia doesn’t bloom. (First salvia bloom noted 2/5/11.)

2. Keep an eye on interplanting kangaroo paws with sedums, grasses, and slim, tap-rooted eryngiums. Not sure if anigozanthos wants to get this chummy. Moved a couple Sedum ‘Frosty Morn’ from too much shade to this sunny spot this morning. Interplanted small cuttings of tansy ‘Isla Gold.’ No more plants here.

2a. Remove some bricks and pavers under pergola for more planting space?

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3. Planted Gloriosa rothschildiana at base of grapevine yesterday. Grapevine may be too vigorous. Watch for snails.

4. Dicentra scandens climbing up fatshedera — flowers too subtle for impact here?

5. Water garden research. Would still like to corral summer tropicals in one tank. Get to Echo Park for lotus bloom this year/onion soup at Taix. (‘Michael O’Brien, landscape architect and certified arborist, says that the lotus of Echo Park Lake are not the same as the Egyptian plants and are not water lilies. “Nelumbo nucifera,” he says, “is native to South Asia to Australia and is grown in tropical climates around the world.”)

6. Bulbs from McClure & Zimmerman:
Iris versicolor var. Gerald Darby (thank you, Nan/Hayefield!) Maybe for the water garden?
Gloriosa lily ‘Wine & Red’
Tropaelum tuberosum ‘Ken Aslet’

7. Still need seeds for Ammi visagna. J. L. HUDSON carries it and Atriplex Magenta Magic and Purple Savoyed.
(Ebay has sellers for both too). No self-sown orach coming up yet.
Also need seeds for Celosia argentea. Why does one source never carry all desired seeds?

8. More agapanthus research, maybe ‘Graskop’?

9. Start seeds of Mina lobata. Will it really climb through Verbena bonariensis here and not just for the magicians at Great Dixter?
9a. Geranium harveyi under tetrapanax? — something needed under rice plant’s skirts.

10. Watch germination of Crambe maritima sown 1/30/11.

11. Planted Melianthus ‘Purple Haze’ yesterday deep in the back of the border among the cannas and grasses. Selection of Roger Raiche/Planet Horticulture, the leaves do have a lavender wash to them. Said to be more compact than the species, lower growing.

12. Clean/rake out feather grass in parkway.

13. Both Cotinus coggyria and ‘Grace’ already leafing out. Scilla peruviana under ‘Grace’ in bud by early March last year.

14. Zillions and zillions of Helleborus argutifolius seedlings coming up and not a bit of room left for another plant. In old age, make a garden of this hellebore for winter, agaves/aloes, perovskia and grasses for summer.

15. Dormant tropicals showing growth, tipped pots up and watered lightly yesterday.

16. Tulips almost here!

17. Interplant Aster divaricatus with Scilla peruviana (added 2/5/11)

18. Interplant Allium cernuum with golden carex (added 2/5/11)

19. Belamcanda or Blackberry lily (Growing With Plants 2/5/11)

20. Alliums and wood aster available from Barry Glick/Sunshine Farm & Gardens (ordered 2/12/11)

21. Iris x robusta ‘Dark Aura’ (Plant Delights/Iris City Gardens) – similar to ‘Gerald Darby.’ Best of the xrobustas with dark leaves.

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