Pump Up the Plant Volume

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Denise

I took this photo at an office plaza I worked near yesterday. I’m amazed that the rosemary was given this much leeway by the maintenance crew, which has no doubt been instructed to subjugate and six-pack the rest of the plantings into the usual rank uniformity seen here locally in public spaces. Maybe this dripping rosemary encroaching on sitting areas is a small act of defiance by the maintenance crew, who are possibly just as dispirited about the state of public plantings as I am. Rosemary is by no means a rarity in local public plantings, but allowing it to express its full botanical character in this way certainly is.

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In a mediterranean climate where so many coveted plants can thrive, and do so with minimal water, I might add, the lack of excellent public planting displays is really getting on my last nerve. I’m talking about encountering plants outside the many excellent botanical gardens in Los Angeles, which are usually at least a 30-minute car ride away from just about any point you start from. The winter-blooming aloes should be encountered on the way to the grocery store and not just sequestered at the Huntington Cactus Garden, and the aloes should be seen in concert with other plants to display their best features, in season and out of season. You know, garden design. And I’m starting a process to do something about it, tapping into the amazing local design talent (Dustin, can we talk?) and excellent regional plant nurseries. Stay tuned. And if anyone has any stories to tell of their public/private partnerships in furtherance of amping up the volume of local horticulture, I’m all ears.

And be sure to check out MB Maher’s updated website. There’s some familiar images from his work posted here on AGO but lots of new stuff too.

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Do Not Fill Angel Trumpets with Whipped Cream

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Denise

Amazing how fast plants cycle back into flower. This brugmansia had dropped all flower buds in response to high temperatures in September, and now this show in November, taken early this morning. These blooms on ‘Charles Grimaldi’ are a pallid impersonation of the color of its true self, a rich gold, but still a most welcome sight. Perhaps the cooler temperatures are affecting the depth of color. Seeing them this morning reminded me of a conversation I overheard at a public garden recently, in which a woman was enlightening her companion as to the culinary potential of these angel trumpets, about their being not just beautiful but useful too, for filling with whipped cream and such. Of course, all parts of the plant are poisonous. I was so startled at overhearing this toxic misinformation that I wasn’t able to form words fast enough before the pair had moved on. So I’ll say it here, in case the idea seems worth pursuing to that woman’s companion: Your friend is dead wrong. Do not fill angel trumpets with whipped cream. (And just how long have you known this friend, anyway?)

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Silver&Gold

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Denise


(I’m describing the slow accretion of the colors selected to surround me, practiced by me, a nonprofessional. An inattentive process of anti-design, if you will.)

It starts out with silver.

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Just silver.

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Silver came home first, in the form of all the Mediterranean shrubs and subshrubs that evolved this unique adaptation for drought tolerance.

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Stir in some gold because…well, it’s gold.

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Yep, silver and gold. Drawn to silver, equally drawn to gold, but initially separate impulses. Quietly, almost stealthily, the garden increases its shimmer quotient as I consistently bring in more silver and gold every time something becomes worn out or overgrown, in need of replacing. Unconsciously, I’ve built up a treasury of it, and now it’s silver&gold, the two together, inseparable, that’s got me hooked.

Add a dash of red in the stems of a kangaroo’s paw, and I’m done. Simply done.

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From The Guardian 4/14/10: “In a letter to his brother Theo in 1882, Van Gogh wrote: ‘There are but three fundamental colours, red, yellow, and blue; composites are orange, green, and purple. By adding black and some white one gets the endless varieties of greys; red grey, yellow-grey, blue-grey, green-grey, orange-grey, violet-grey. It is impossible to say, for instance, how many green-greys there are; there is an endless variety. But the whole chemistry of colours is not more complicated than those few simple rules. And having a clear notion of this is worth more than 70 different colours of paint because with those three principal colours and black and white, one can make more than 70 tones and varieties. The colourist is the person who knows at once how to analyze a colour, when it sees it in nature, and can say, for instance: that green-grey is yellow with black and blue, etc. In other words, someone who knows how to find the greys of nature on their palette.'”

The green-greys of nature exquisitely painted by Solanum marginata.

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And apparently this silver and gold fetish wasn’t just happening in the garden. I’ve had this bolt of fabric in a cedar chest for decades, stowed away for some forgotten rainy day purpose. Again, silver and gold. The mustardy Frankoma jug bought 20 years ago is also the color of the room I’m sitting in. And within a very few shades of difference, also the new color on the house. And the color of the new ceramic pots I bought after staring at the range of colors offered for a good 20 minutes. (Like I could actually come home with any other color.) Do I plan any of this? Absolutely not. Did I notice Colonel Mustard sneaking in to all the rooms, indoors and out? Not at all. It’s design by sleepwalking.

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Not everyone’s favorite colors. My husband calls the new house paint color “meconium.” If you’ve had kids, no further description is necessary. It kind of bugs him.

Am I buggin’ you? I don’t mean to bug ya…just a shout out for silver and gold.

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Longwood Gardens Miscellany

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Denise

Such an awful moment, when a recent vacation begins to drift off into the mists of long ago and far away. Only a couple weeks ago, but the travel mojo you came home with is already smothered under to-do lists.

Time to get out all the miscellaneous photos and attempt to recapture that feeling of wandering around a great garden as nothing more than a conduit for gorgeous sensations of pattern, shape, color. Isn’t that what gardens, great or small, do? Conduits are incapable of making to-do lists. Plant lists, yes, to-do lists, no. (Begging your pardon, Mr. Isherwood, but if you are a camera, I am a conduit. Or used to be, now on hiatus.)

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Dustin’s Ballsy Totems

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Denise

These stacked spheres are currently the stony exclamation points embellishing Dustin Gimbel’s Southern California garden/design laboratory/plant nursery.

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Dustin has described his fascination with the geologic anomaly of concretions on his blog non-secateur and how his obsession with them led him to a concretion homage, these spherical eruptions in the front garden, which he is experimenting with in anticipation of a coming project for a client.

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MB Maher visited earlier in the week, and then Dustin gave me a tour this afternoon and generously loaded me up with plants to take home. Don’t ever admire a plant in his garden unless you’re prepared to have it ride shotgun on the way home. Thanks, Dustin!

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Left foreground, Senecio anteuphorbium, with dark aeoniums behind.

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Dustin’s own gorgeous selection of the dwarf fountain grass, Pennisetum ‘Eaton Canyon,’ which he has named ‘White Dwarf,’ is destined to be a classic. Manageable size, great flowering, a beautiful landscape grass. Keep an eye out for this one at nurseries soon.

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Cascade of silvery leaves on the right is Acacia pendula.

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Echeveria gigantea

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And we can’t leave Dustin’s garden without another look at his now iconic variegated St. Augustine turf ottoman, which gives new meaning to “lawn furniture.”

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For those who feel they’re not quite ready to part with a lawn because they still need it under their back for an occasional bout of cloud gazing, perhaps a turf chaise lounge or ottoman would do just as well.

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Fall Salvias at Longwood Gardens

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Denise

Longwood was full of “firsts” for me: My first Dutch Elm, the last lone sentinel remaining of a row of elm destroyed by Dutch Elm disease. My first Cornus kousa.

My first Copper Beech, Fagus sylvatica.

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But amongst all these firsts were some familiar faces. For instance, the tender salvias that bloom in fall. Tender for Longwood, perennial for me in zone 10.
And here again Longwood surprised: I have never seen these salvias grown so well before.

Salvia elegans ‘Golden Delicious,’ a long double border of them. I wonder what summer offering they replaced and how large they were when planted out for this fall show. Lots of wondering going on at Longwood.

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Salvia van houttei or one of its cultivars, never an easy salvia to grow. For me, at least.

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It’s not just the blemish-free leaves, where no insect has ever clamped teeth. It was the uniformity in the size of the plants, the abundance of bloom, the clearly visible knowledge of when and how to prune, what time to plant out to achieve optimal results. This little courtyard with central fountain was planted entirely in deep reds, using the Salvia van houttei, claret and ruby-colored bedding chrysanthemums, burgundy-leaved coleus, and chased with silvery liriope. Some of my companions found it over the top and garish, but this is the kind of seasonal, bedding-out display that a garden with such horticultural skill and resources simply must do because they alone can do it. Personally, I’d ditch the mums and plant grasses with this spectacular salvia, but I have to admit this almost old-fashioned show of plantsmanship and rich concentration of color was thrilling. By daylight the courtyard did seem flat, but at twilight the deep reds smoldered. I had to be torn away from this little courtyard at closing time.

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Salvia involucrata, the rosebud sage. Never an easy salvia to grow. For me, at least.
There were yards and yards of these rosebud sages.
I always get massive amounts of leaf, sprawling growth, and little bloom that’s not molested by some budworm.

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Salvia ‘Mulberry Jam,’ an involucrata hybrid. Never an easy….etc.

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The familiar Salvia leucantha, familiar yet entirely new when backed by rusty-golden fall foliage.
This salvia is mostly poorly grown in Southern California, because rarely is it pruned back hard in spring but left to grow gangly and bare at the base.
Possibly a case of horticultural familiarity breeding contempt. Here at Longwood it is recognized for the treasure it is.

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Salvia leucantha again, with possibly Salvia guaranitica in the foreground and the plush leaves of tibouchina to the sides.
(The leaf seems too stiff for guaranitica, so I’m not sure at all about this ID. Seemed too short to be S. patens.)

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With tibouchina, agastache, and possibly veronicastrum in the background. Or maybe it’s vitex. I wonder if the tibouchina’s purple flowers failed to show.

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Flowers or not, the tibouchina’s big, felty leaves are safe harbor for the eye adrift in an endless sea of blue.

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Longwood Gardens

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Denise

Longwood Gardens is vast, over 1,050 acres, and also very old.

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From Wikipedia: “What is now Longwood Gardens was originally purchased from William Penn in 1700 by a fellow Quaker named George Peirce (1646-1734). Although it started as a working farm, in 1798 twin brothers Joshua and Samuel Peirce planted the first specimens of an arboretum, originally named Peirce’s Park, and has been open to the public almost continuously since that time. By 1850 they had amassed one of the finest collections of trees in the nation. Industrialist Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954) purchased the property from the Peirce family in 1906 to save the arboretum from being sold for lumber. He made it his private estate, and from 1906 until the 1930s, du Pont added extensively to the property.”

We had a laughably inadequate five hours to explore Longwood. The meadow alone requires at least 30 minutes to walk its perimeter paths. At a brisk pace.

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The tulip poplars, oaks, and maples were taking on brilliant fall color, but as everyone we met assured us, it was a relatively anemic performance compared to years past.

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The day began at 6:00 a.m., when we left relatives in Chicopee, Massachusetts, swung by New York to pick up a friend at the subway stop near The Cloisters, from there got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and arrived at Longwood around noon. We stayed until closing, 5:00 p.m., drove to Philadelphia’s Chinatown to meet friends for Burmese noodles at Rangoon, then returned to New York by 10:30 p.m. to check in at our hostel in Chelsea. Covering such distances is not out of the ordinary, coming as we do from Southern California, but locals thought our itinerary was absolutely mad. The distances were not the problem but, rather, the number of gardens we thought it possible to see in one day. In this we were seriously deluded, since we’d actually thought it possible to include Chanticleer on the same afternoon as Longwood! So close, but both so vast, with too much of interest to join in a single afternoon.

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I’ll have some of my own photos to post of Longwood later in the week.

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Dutch Wave Breaks Over New Amsterdam

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Denise

At the Battery, Piet Oudolf has written another glorious fall chapter to the story of the renaissance of urban gardens in New York City.
Here at the Battery Bosque, the emphatic sweep of plants is at times even more dramatic than the High Line, in deeper soil with broader planting beds.
With just these two gardens and now the new Goldman Sachs headquarters, the Dutch Wave gains force and continues to break over New Amsterdam.

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I had seen the prototype of the Statue of Liberty in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris years ago, but this was my first glimpse of this wonderful gift from France on her island home.

These World War II memorial pylons, rising out of a mist of Anemone japonica and grasses, align on an axis that leads the eye to Liberty Island.

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Surrounded by grasses bending and tossing in the winds blowing off the Hudson as it meets New York Harbor, the Battery is a splendid backdrop for ferry gazing.

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You will not find municipal plantings of the dwarf chrysanthemums seen elsewhere throughout the city in fall, but plants of great line, body, and character sheltered under plane trees.

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Weedy, Weedier, Weediest Mullein

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Denise

A white seedling of Verbascum phoeniceum is enthusiastically blooming away after the October surprise of early rains.

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It held on to its basal leaves in the sere gravel garden all summer in hope of some form of irrigation. Tough little mullein.
I’m never very excited to find self-sown seedlings of this particular verbascum of the dark green, nothing-special leaf.
But seeing it bloom now in late October makes me very glad to have left it in place. Tough, pretty little mullein.

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More Echeverias

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Denise

This mossed basket of various succulents failed to really gel over summer, no doubt from a bad habit of sticking in a hodge-podge of succulents that break off from plants in the garden and need a home to root in. So when I spotted these echeverias at a nursery last week, I reworked the basket to showcase these stunners.

Echeveria elegans giving off suitable chrysanthemum vibes for fall (without the dumpiness of show-bench mums, I might add). I should have been more careful in handling this one judging by the blemishing to the powdery veneer of its leaves.

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Echeveria pulidonis

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It was also the first time I’ve seen Senecio anteuphorbium for sale locally, which Dustin Gimbel identified when I blogged about this senecio’s inclusion in a local living fence. It reminds me of a spineless ocotillo.

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