Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Denise

With salvias planted just a few feet away from windows and doors, humans and hummers are in constant close proximity here. This is by necessity, the constraints of a small garden, rather than by design. The fact is, hummers and I both happen to be crazy for salvias. It makes for some interesting encounters, spilt cups of coffee, and cats rudely awakened from a dozy afternoon nap. Who wouldn’t be enchanted by these little guys darting in several times a day for a quick nip?

Right now, the salvias and verbenas outside the office are a big draw. When I hear a hummer come skidding in for a landing, I make a grab for the camera but always come up empty. Doesn’t help that they’re green. Today the blur of speed materialized out of pixels into barely recognizable shape. Although my best photographic attempt thus far, this hummer’s name must be Waldo, as in where the heck is Waldo in this photo? Squint and focus on the far left verbena, just to the right.

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Friends and family assume that because I garden I am a de facto font of wisdom regarding the natural world. It shames me to admit that I’ve just recently learned that Southern California is one of the few places blessed to have hummingbirds year-round. I’m just as bundled up in my own little world as everyone else, and mostly step outside my kitchen door assuming that the world that greets me also greets everyone else in much the same form, with a few superficial details altered.

Again Waldo, the little Anna hummingbird:

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I’ve even become able to recognize certain hummers by the distinct thrum of their wings. One little guy makes a a poker cards-in-bicycle-wheels racket when he wings in. Several years ago, there was a hummer who demanded face time, literally flying in inches from my face and hovering for a few seconds before heading off to the flowers. This became an everyday custom for a whole summer season, but hasn’t been taken up yet by another hummer in subsequent years. I miss the face time and that little guy’s chutzpah. Yesterday a hummer bathed in the jet of water from the hose, which I then took pains to keep a soft spritz, not the “power cone” setting, to keep him from tumbling out of the sky. I still haven’t decided if they are the most sociable bird since the chicken or if it’s just me in my usual state of anthropomorphic overdrive.

See you around, Waldo.

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Spring?

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Denise

Seems impossible that just two days ago I was having that tender moment about spring.

Yesterday and today heat records were broken, and now everyone is grousing that it’s hotter than Jakarta (really only mid 80’s but we’re a delicate bunch, donchaknow).

So instead of spring ephemerals, we’re grinding gears a bit to shift to singing the praises of the stoic heat lovers, fennel, Phlomis italica and Prostranthera ovalifolia ‘Variegata’

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And So It Begins Again

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Denise

Yes, phrases do bubble up from the depths unbidden until I find myself saying them aloud on a day such as this, about 75 degrees, neither cold nor warm, more like an amniotic bath, birds and insects attending to their business while I can’t attend to mine, hopelessly distracted by such a fine spring day.

And so it begins again. Another spring.

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Groundwork

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Denise

Great name for a garden blog (or coffee house, dance company). The term has stuck with me since first
reading it used by Gertrude Jekyll in her color theories for gardens.

I can’t locate my Gertrude Jekyll compendium at the moment, but I believe she used the term
“groundwork” in a painterly sense, as in to lay a foundation of grey and glaucous foliage against which
other colors will always reap the benefit by juxtaposition.

Jekyll’s exhortation to lay down a good groundwork is never far from mind when I look at the blue-grey
leaves of the succulent Senecio mandraliscae, the Blue Chalk Sticks, in the front gravel garden. It is
pure balm for the eyes, which want to linger on its soothing, icy blueness. Focusing on another color
after drinking in that cool blue gets the color receptors, rods and cones, firing on every cylinder. For
sun, this senecio is a very worthwhile plant getting lots of use here in zone 10.

Both senecios mentioned here would make great components for containers of mixed succulents in
colder zones, filling out quickly to contrast with slower growing rosette types (but watch out for vigor
matching vigor).

There no longer seems to be much need for convincing astute gardeners of the value of leaves when
planning their garden. Many of us have so absorbed this truism that our little gardens can look like
contenders for permanent installations in the hubba-hubba spring flower shows now opening across
the temperate world, where every leaf is a rich flambe or brulee, melba and bordeaux. Horticultural
appetites are in danger of being whipped up into a constant craving for dessert in the garden. And
who doesn’t love dessert? In zone 10, where tender succulents are grown outdoors year-round,
available in every color and shape imaginable, it’s easy to overindulge. I like the way a simple swath
of blue can cleanse and refresh an overstimulated palate. Remember, we live with these plants
all year, unlike colder zones who can take a breather and put the display to bed for the winter.

Though I’ve never grown a hosta in my life, I imagine the blue-leaved types would make good
groundwork, as does Festuca ‘Elija Blue’ for sun. Crambe maritima, too, if you can keep the
snails away, though more of a specimen than a carpet. Helicotrichon, Nepeta, and Stachys,
the lamb’s ears, are also appreciated for their recruitment as groundwork.

Okay. Ready for a little experiment? Blink and clear the cones with this:

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Now slowly scroll to this deep orange gazania:

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Any tingles? The succulent two photos above is Senecio vitalis, Narrow Leaf Chalk Sticks, which is more blue-green
and of a shrubby growth about 2 feet high. Both these senecios want to cover a lot of ground in frost-free zones but
take cutting back well, which thickens them up. Both are excellent “groundwork” succulents against which to show off
prized agaves, echevarias, crassulas , and make a wonderful background for the flowering iceplants when in bloom or
gazanias, arctotis, osteospermums.

S. mandraliscae in back, Graptoveria “Fred Ives,’ and Oscularia deltoides.

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Where’s a photo stylist when you need one to handle snail-eaten leaves and jacaranda tree debris? This particular
northwest location has every advantage for good strong growth, except for the tree litter constantly raining down.

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Boundaries

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Denise

I’m constantly accused of not respecting boundaries, of letting plants take over spaces which some
people feel should properly remain under the control of humans and not the plant kingdom. That
a sight which gladdens my heart, a pathway seeded with Spanish poppies, should be considered by
others a weedy, unkempt nuisance takes me by surprise — every year (ha!)

Papaver rupifragum lighting up the pathway at dusk:

In spring I always welcome the Last Days of Pompeii look, that teetering on the edge between control and
disorder, cultivation and neglect, which to my eye infuses a timelessness that’s otherwise not always easy
to attain. By early summer, I’m wondering where I left my machete.

Agave ‘Mr. Ripple’ broods over this eternal conundrum.

(Photos by MB Maher.)

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Type G Personality

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Denise

Although the science behind the Type A and B personality theory seems to have become largely discredited,
I believe there is a strong case to be made for the Type G personality. (Type G’s, you know who you
are. Don’t make us examine your fingernails.)

When my Type G personality is in the ascendancy, I can come up with some really odd stuff for the garden.
For the last few years, I’ve been playing with height. Since I’m no artist, the results can be disappointing.
In fact, I’d largely given up and had taken most of the experiments apart. I wanted no more hanging
baskets to knock my head into and keep watered. I craved simplicity again, a trait that runs counter to the
Type G personality, so it’s a continual see-saw between the two.

Moss was a big part of these experiments. I had mossed hanging orbs planted in succulents that proved too
difficult to keep moist. There was candelabra and crystals and whatnot. For me, it is very difficult
to see the line where a project crosses over from the sublime to the silly. And too many projects in a
small garden can be a simple case of overegging the pudding.

One hanging basket with aeoniums, sedum, and Santa Barbara daisy was taken down and plopped in exasperation
on the top of a wrought iron plant stand. The stand is about 5 feet high and has about five pockets, including
the top-most shown, to hold pots. At one time, it held five pots of Sedum ‘Angelina.’ So hard to keep small
pots watered, though. I tried mossing the pockets and planting directly into the moss. More watering issues, as
the moss tends toward impermeability once it’s dry. So the wrought iron stand has been left vacant, a difficult
state for the Type G personality to endure for very long.

Even though just a temporary solution for the aeonium basket, I noticed how the ribs in the basket mirrored the
wrought iron ribs and liked the effect, so it’s stayed in place all winter. I’ve had a pot metal finial kicking around
used in various iterations of Type G projects, tried it the center, and didn’t hate that either.

Now with the daisies blooming, I’m liking it even more, and have seeded the Purple Bell Vine, rhodochiton, in the ground
at the base, for this vine’s amazing ability to drape and swag. It just needs the aeoniums to fill out a bit, don’t you think?

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The Jasmine and the Snowman

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Denise

After working in front of a computer 40 hours the last four days, I was in desperate need of a walk.
Coat, coffee money, and a camera were found and I headed out the door.

Reading other garden blogs, I’m beginning to realize there’s no place like home.
I mean, really, there’s no place like Southern California.

This snowman was framed in an archway of jasmine, which is now in bloom all over town, but
you’ll have to take my word for it. I was nearly hit by a car trying to get both jasmine and
snowman in the frame.

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You have entered the land of the overgrown houseplant.
The raw materials for a great garden are everywhere.
What would be escapees from Logee’s Greenhouse in colder climes lurk on every porch
and in every garden the year-round.

All the coveted cordylines and phormiums, agaves and succulents of every stripe, camellias and
bougainvilleas, mostly grown in a careless jumble. Aloes squished up against chainlink fence.
These may be the cosseted darlings of gardeners in single-digit zones, but here in zone 10 they
meet indifference and even abuse. Plants elsewhere prized for their structural qualities are
thoughtlessly strewn about, and gardens may sometimes seem to have more in common with
an overturned jewelry box. It can be a very disordered horticultural universe.

But everywhere is evident the fact that people seem to be compelled to grow plants, no matter how
haphazardly or with how much or little forethought, and interesting things do happen.
For example, check out what this Ficus repens is up to in this alley.

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I startled a passerby by gasping out loud at the sight of a potted 8-foot tall sansieviera,
the mother-in-law tongue, seen through the window of a violin shop.

And here’s Cuphea and Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ collaborating for hedging.

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Salvia ‘Mystic Spires’ oblivous of his fall-blooming status in other climates.

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I glanced at a New Yorker article this morning about the exotic animal species proliferating in Florida,
and the same is true for plant species in Southern California. And I don’t mean in the sense of being
overrun by exotic species, though that is sometimes the case and a genuine cause for concern. I’m
talking more in an aesthetic sense, the tumultuous confusion of bloom and leaf from all over the world.

On this half-hour walk today I found in bloom:

Abutilon, aloes, azaleas, brugmansias camellias, ceanothus, cuphea, euphorbia, euryops, hollyhock,
jasmine, justicia, lavender, rosemary, osteospermum, roses, salvias, strelitzia.

I try to look at all this plant wealth through the eyes of someone who has endured a real winter,
through plant-starved eyes, not my own that have become so accustomed to such a surfeit of
riches that it takes something more to arouse them.

And occasionally I am stopped in my tracks. Look at what someone has set in motion on their
porch with an urn and some succulents, made sublime by California’s native ceanothus now in full bloom.

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More plants and people finding each other. And so it goes.

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Dog’s Breakfast

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Denise

British slang dating to about the 1930’s, meant to convey an unholy mess of dribs and drabs, a hodgepodge. Although
origin is uncertain, it seems likely to have dated from the morning someone, possibly slightly hungover, dumped last night’s
fried rice and then their breakfast of left-over scrambled eggs into the dog’s bowl, uttered those fateful words, and then
headed back to bed, their place in history now secure.

See where this is headed? Yes, it’s that kind of post, dribs and drabs. But there will be a dog making an appearance, a
rather in-need-of-a-bath dog, who in keeping with our theme has actually eaten the cats’ breakfast. Here he’s taking a deep
sniff of some basil Pesto Perpetuo, possibly as a chaser to the bland kitty pate.

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After that deep draught of basil, he will elegantly back up out of that tight spot without knocking over a watering can,
and then immediately scan the garden for the whereabouts of Joseph, the alpha male cat, his nemesis, seen here making
ready for ambush.

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My garden is the perfect size for corgis and cats, and it’s always satisfying to watch them meander down its paths.
Garden paths are ideally able to accommodate two people walking abreast or one person pushing a wheelbarrow.
In my garden, a person and one corgi can comfortably navigate some paths. Other paths are for solitary use
only.

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Every morning we fan out into the garden, each in pursuit of something unknown to the other. Our paths criss-cross
as we respectively track color and spoor. For me, it was the cobalt blue of Salvia cacaliifolia. What did they find, I wonder.

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Waking Up to White

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Denise

Sometimes I seem to be sleepwalking when planning the garden. For example, how could I not have noticed this build-up of white-flowering
plants?

White valerian, agrostemma, diascia, Geranium maderense, arctotis, gaura, foxgloves.

True, it surprised me this morning doing a tally, but I know it’s really not so much a choice as just an avoidance of the pink varieties of these plants.

I find a lot of my color choices are arrived at in just such an oblique fashion, more out of avoidance than preference. In a small garden
such as mine, color selection will involve a lot of compromise, what you can get away with, what your zone and soil and proximity to other colors
will actually allow. Far better to worry over shape, volume, movement and, in such a long growing season, leaves.

But for summer, for now, it’s still about flowers. First and foremost, it’s about finding your indispensable flowering plants. In my zone 10 garden,
the crocosmias, coreopsis, verbascums, alstroemerias, kniphofias and gaillardias are indispensable for summer, and these plants are predominantly
orange and yellow, hence the avoidance-of-pink strategy.

I am well aware that this runs counter to many other gardeners’ approach, that many actually practice an avoidance-of-orange
strategy(!) There might be a bit of orange avoidance in my dim past as well. But truth be told, there simply aren’t any pink-blooming plants
that are as worthwhile in my garden. For example, those stalwarts of summer borders, echinaceas, don’t perform well here, and spring does not
arrive in a delicate pink haze of dogwoods, spiraeas, dicentra, weigelas, deutzias or what have you. Zone 10 likes its colors hot.

The strong magentas I don’t mind as much with orange and yellow, but never a soft pink. And I’m not entirely sure I could do without the
mule kick magenta gives anyway. So is that the real reason why I’ve resolved not to mind the clash with orange?

I”m not sure I want to probe that bias any further. Because your own garden is the one place to flaunt your bias, isn’t it?
Especially when truly hideous mistakes can be buried before the year’s out. But I have no quarrel with colors matched in saturation, such as
strong oranges with deep pinks. And deep blue, purple, burgundy, chartreuse, gold — all to my eye are happy with orange and yellow.

The inclusion of the robust Waverly salvia in the garden is on again/off again as I experiment with other salvias, but for amount of
bloom there really is none better, and this year there are two big clumps. More white. And there’s the Orlaya grandiflora
I’ve been writing so much about, an annual umbellifer beloved for it’s small stature and long bloom season. More white again.
So all in all, that adds up to a lot of white.


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Add in the three Buddleia ‘Silver Anniversaries’ I’ve dotted through the border, which bloom in, of course, white,
and it’s going to be a chilly garden this year. Even though unplanned for, it’s kind of exciting to contemplate.
Heck, every spring is exciting to contemplate.

And even with all this white, there’s lots of color. For example, the dusky bracts on the Waverly salvias
blooming amongst potted agaves.

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And as for pink, I like it strong anyway, such as the vivid pink in Salvia chiapensis, shown below obscuring Evie’s pretty face.

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This is one of the best sages for me, and I wouldn’t be without it, no matter what its color.

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But it’s going to be difficult keeping track of Evie this summer with all that white.

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Pelargonium ‘Chocolate Mint’

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Denise

For eating, it’s dark chocolate, please, and hold the mint.

For the 5×5 plot of ground under the Chinese Fringe tree, Chionanthus retusus, this Chocolate Mint will do.

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Thought to be a sport of P. tomentosum. The small white flowers have been sacrificed, since I’m already
snipping the ends off runners to keep it from becoming scraggly and to contain it in its allotted space.
That remarkable dark splotch will probably fade once the fringe tree has leafed out and cast its shade
and the cooler weather gives way to the warmth of summer.

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But what’s really remarkable is that I’ve let one plant, and an ordinary one at that, do the job and have not
sandwiched ten in that small space to fight and cancel out each other’s potential. This burly pelargonium
has grown up and through the carpet of leaves left in situ and will manage through the minimal irrigation it
will receive in summer, a Persian carpet of green and red. The air space between the pelargonium and the
bottom of the tree canopy is a sculptural prize not to be ruined by the intrusion of fussy planting.
(It wouldn’t hurt to remove the Christmas lights now either.)

At one point, I had two roses, ‘Mme Alfred Carriere’ and ‘Elie Beauvillain’ to climb up the tree, bulbs, heucheras and
who knows what else. The outline of the tree was ruined, and it was a ghastly mess of ripening bulb foliage and
small-leaved plants that couldn’t compete with the fringe tree’s leaf litter. (Full disclosure: There remains a
golden-leaved silver lace vine, Polygonum aubertii, planted under the tree, at the fence line. And that’s it, I swear.)

I think I just may be getting the hang of this gardening thing. It’s a matter of simple math. Divide desire by ten.

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