A Growing Obsession

plants and rocks; the basics

Posted on August 31, 2019 by Denise

photo i-c2WHz4s-X2.jpg — plants naturalized in cliff face in the Peloponnese
photo by MB Maher

If your idea of a good life means being surrounded by plants, chances are you love having a few rocks around too, even if only in a haphazard, barely intentional way. Perhaps small rock mementos from travels naturally seem to congregate indoors in bowls on shelves or outdoors in pots in the garden. Boulders, pebbles, crushed rock, gravel, we all have some form in our gardens, whether native rock (lucky you!) or imported, which apart from sheer usefulness and relative affordability also taps into an intuitive kind of garden sense, for rocks are the literal building blocks of soil. (And yes, there is an acronym for soil formation, CLORPT; Climate, Organisms, Relief (topography), Parent Material (rocks & sediment) and Time.) And when you bring a rock home or dig one up in your garden, there it will remain until you either move it again or someone else moves it after you’re gone. That paradoxical combination of permanence and transience continually inspires garden makers and artists like Andy Goldsworthy (see Walking Wall).

photo i-fpBLVkn-X2.jpg — Ever notice how plants want to grow in the crevices and seams created by driveways and walkways (where we call them weeds)? A sunny exposure with a cool, moist root run and perfect drainage is what they’re after, rock gardening 101 exemplified by a stone stairway in the Peloponnese, photo by MB Maher

We’ve been relying on the ubiquity and indestructibility of rocks as a building material since forever. In gardens rocks are a malleable material, forming walls, walkways, modeling space, used as mulch and to create drainage in gardens where none existed, and building habitats for plants and creatures. But there’s a whole other level of wonder when plants grow among rocks, spreading and clinging and making it their home like undersea creatures colonizing a reef. Recreating such habitat is what consumes rock gardeners, and I saw some wonderful examples recently in Denver.

photo IMG_2623.jpg — rock garden at the Gardens at Spring Creek, Fort Collins, Colorado.

The North American Rock Garden Society has an invaluable archive of articles and an amazing seed list to begin or further your obsession with this kind of garden. (See also recently published “Rock Gardening; Reimagining a Classic Style” by Joseph Tychonievich.)

photo IMG_2628.jpg — Fort Collins, Colorado, Gardens at Spring Creek botanical garden

photo IMG_2766.jpg — Carol and Randall Shinn garden, Fort Collins, Colorado
a looser composition of rocks and plants, which love to seed into gravel.

photo IMG_2708.jpg — acantholimons in the rock garden of Jan Devore, Fort Collins, Colorado

photo P1010140.jpg — Crevice garden at Denver Botanic Garden May 2017. The DBG has one of the largest collections of alpine plants in the country.

photo IMG_1103-001.jpg — Kaufmann house, Palm Springs, Calif. showing the many faces of rockwork with a privacy screen, boulders lining a path of stepping stones on a base of decomposed granite. Landscape design recently updated by Marmol Radziner.

Growing high altitude alpine plants in Los Angeles’ zone 9-10, with their imperative needs for snow cover and/or winter dormancy, is not where we should direct our energies (and plant lust). Succulents, of course, are wonderful among rocks, and we can grow many small native iris and eriogonum, dianthus, erodium, flowering oreganos, sedges, nepeta — there’s lots of scope for experimenting.

photo IMG_1092-001.jpg — Heroic use of boulders at the Kaufmann house, designed by Richard Neutra, plantings recently updated by Marmol Radziner. Not a hand-built landscape but one requiring the use of heavy machinery

Rocks are a classically integral component of dry gardens, and locally they seem to get the most sensitive and respectful treatment in desert gardens.

photo IMG_1096-001.jpg — building mass and scale with rocks at the Kaufmann house, Palm Springs, Calif.

photo i-7V85pFd-X2.jpg — Gravel as mulch with larger rocks outlining plantings in Raymond Valentine’s Los Angeles garden
photo by MB Maher

photo 1U6A5212.jpg — Agave ovatifolia in California Central Coast garden designed by Jarrod Baumann
photo by MB Maher

Photobucket — Agaves nestled into rock at the Sherman Library and Gardens
Corona Del Mar, California

photo IMG_1295.jpg — rocks massed in wire cages for a low gabion wall, Hessing garden, Altadena, California

photo 1-P1010060.jpg — Sometimes a rock is also a planter if you’re handy with a drill as in the former garden of Reuben Munoz. Concrete pavers set in gravel provide smooth contrast to the planters (and sure footing)

In the work of some artists, rockwork upstages plantings.

photo C26T2850-5.jpg — garden designed by Shirley Watts, flagstone with metal letter inserts
photo by MB Maher

photo C26T2867-7.jpg — garden designed by Shirley Watts
photo by MB Maher

photo i-bdnCGRR-X2.jpg — Greece, photo by MB Maher

Next time you’re hiking in the Southern California foothills or Greece or the Sierras or the Rocky Mountains, see for yourself what plants and rocks are up to, because gardens can get really interesting when we understand how well they play together.

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, climate, creatures, design, essay, MB Maher, succulents | 5 Comments

suburbitat

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Denise

“Formed in 2001, HPEC has grown into a multifaceted organization that works to create sustainable landscapes, restore native plant communities and provide habitats for birds, butterflies, and other wildlife amid development.”

Back in June a bunch of garden bloggers visited a place in Loveland, Colorado that embodies so many principles commonly held to be diametrically opposed that I’m still trying to understand how it all fits together. Profit/nonprofit, housing/open space, development/habitat restoration, private/community — The High Plains Environmental Center chooses to ignore these binary boundaries and looks for on-the-ground solutions so that human pursuits (housing, businesses, schools) and wildlife habitat can gently occupy the same land. It is an intriguing idea that has been put into practice in the 3,000-acre Lakes at Centerra mixed-use community. It’s an ambitious, master-planned community on former farmland that integrates housing among the habitats of countless plant and wildlife species (suburbitat!)

“Community Gone Wild — The Lakes is home to a non-profit organization — the High Plains Environmental Center — dedicated to the idea that backyards, schoolyards, office environments, community gardens, parkland and other community spaces can become habitat for native wildlife. And since almost 150 different species of birds, mammals, reptiles and fish have been observed at The Lakes, it seems the experiment is working. In fact, The Lakes is the only place in Colorado designated by the National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat.” (HPEC takes up roughly 76 acres on the site, not including 3 miles of trails and the man-made lakes.)

We met at the HPEC Visitor Center, near the native plant nursery, orchard, and community garden, but after a long bus ride I felt like a walk so struck off for the nearby neighborhood nestled into short-grass prairie and wetlands. (While checking out the display gardens at the Visitor Center, I saw my first kestrel — North America’s smallest raptor. The bird life here is phenomenal.)

This is a challenging climate for native plant restoration work, averaging 16 inches of rain per year. (Snowfall averages about 46 inches a year.) Technically, habitat and ecosystem engineering seems more apt than “restoration,” because what was here when the project started back in 2004 was weedy agricultural land. While developing the site, non-native plants slipped in here and there, but in 2008 all the non-native plants were removed. Some of the newly chosen western native plants may have never grown in this particular stretch of Colorado but are “locally collected ecotypes that are particularly valuable for restoration projects.” What HPEC feels it is building here is a “botanic garden of the wild.”

photo Lake-Centerra-LP-Map2_large.jpg — The existing manmade lakes and former agricultural canals are critical components of new wetland strategies, along with planned stormwater ponds — “a large-scale constructed wetland habitat”

photo IMG_2588.jpg — fees from Centerra building permits help fund HPEC’s activities

photo IMG_2591.jpg — It was incredibly quiet walking the paths, and I couldn’t help wondering how quiet it would be in winter, covered in snow, and how the birdcalls would sound against that hushed background

photo IMG_2589.jpg — Centerra is an experiment in what I’d call a mixed-habitat community, homes for people and wildlife

photo IMG_2599.jpg — The land is managed by HPEC for the benefit of the residents and wildlife

photo IMG_2601.jpg — “This symbiotic relationship between economic and environmental interests provides a hopeful vision for conservation in the 21st century focused not on conserving wild places that already exist but on restoring habitat for wildlife within the neighborhoods that we design and build.” — Jim Tolstrup

photo IMG_2609.jpg — “nature in your backyard” — what would a suburbitat look like in Los Angeles or maybe your town?

I had a million questions after exploring, which a young docent pursuing environmental studies helped to answer. And back at the Visitor Center, the site of so many school field trips, Jim Tolstrup, executive director of HPEC, presented the full High Plains Environmental Center Story, which you can read here. It is a fascinating story of the work being done at this habitat laboratory, a “botanic garden of the wild” that aims big, partnering with businesses by incorporating horticulture, land management, urban studies, conservation, nature-based learning to address habitat loss…seed by seed, problem-solving a way forward in confronting some of the biggest issues of our time. Because HPEC knows avoidance just isn’t a strategy.

Posted in climate, creatures, design, garden travel, plant nurseries, science | Tagged High Plains Environmental Center | 9 Comments

friday clippings 8/16/19

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Denise

photo P1010260.jpg — Mangave ‘Tooth Fairy’ from the August Inter-City sale.

The LA Times wrote a glowing review of the recent Inter-City Cactus & Succulent Show & Sale, and it was my impression as well that this event was an enormous success over past years. I was told by a cashier that three people on Friday earned a free T-shirt — free if you buy over $1,000 of plants. And on Sunday, attending a talk by Woody Minnich at South Coast Botanic Garden, he also expressed elation over the show’s success this year. The demographics at these shows seem to be undergoing rapid change, most likely driven by the exposure succulents are getting on social media, which the LA Times’ article alludes to as well. So there’s one good thing social media has done! I’m sure there are others…

I missed a Bloom Day report on the 15th, so here’s some quick August garden updates. I’ve cut away most of the sprawling branches of horned poppy, and now Agave celsii var. albicans gleams again like an albino artichoke. I’m always surprised it handles full sun so well.

August is when the slipper plant’s leafy growth erupts, the flowers open, and the hummingbirds stake their feisty claims. I love this late-summer lushness. All those leaves will drop over the winter, and its presence will become almost reed-like. Pedilanthus bracteatus is becoming one of my favorite plants in the garden, a slim, tall, “see-through” succulent.

photo P1010162.jpg — Pelargonium ‘Queen of Hearts’ has been in bloom since purchasing it in May

photo P1010254 1.jpg — Dianthus ‘Single Black’ is reblooming in August

A couple Origanum laevigatum ‘Gentle Breeze’ were planted a few weeks ago and have a wonderfully uniform and upright habit of growth. And the bees are crazy for it. Which causes me to wonder why I stopped growing the ornamental oreganos, which are so good in late summer. Were they awful sprawlers? Here’s a partial answer I found from July 2016 regarding Origanum ‘Rosenkuppel’: “The oregano is a demure evergreen mat all winter but leaps into alarmingly expansive growth in summer. It suffocated a grevillea and threatened to do the same to other neighbors. Like first world problems, similarly, these issues get filed under small garden problems.” Sounds like I ripped it out in exasperation. Of course this new one’s compactness and uniform habit of growth is quite possibly due to its small size and the commercial grower’s skill, so it will take at least another year to see how it reacts to conditions in my garden. I’m hoping growing it drier among succulents makes a difference.

photo P1010206.jpg — Sesleria ‘Campo Azul’ is the perfect scale for growing among succulents (and flowering oreganos)

photo P1010215.jpg — Miscanthus ‘Silver Sceptre’ *slowly* gaining size, unusual for miscanthus in my garden

photo P1010222.jpg — An asteroid belt of Eryngium pandanifolium’s tiny blooms

photo P1010262.jpg — Grevillea ‘King’s Fire’ has looked like this for months

photo P1010245.jpg — Grevillea ‘Moonlight’ — unseen in the photo is how Passiflora ‘Flying V’ has threaded itself through the shrub, an effect I love while warily anticipating the other shoe to drop. Vines inevitably drop the other shoe.

photo P1010226.jpg — Berkheya purpurea peeks out over an agave

It’s been cooler, and Sunday is predicted to be cool enough to contemplate a visit to the Long Beach Flea Market. (Because of the huge asphalt surface, it always feels at least 20 degrees hotter there, so I rarely go in August.) There’s a plant vendor who comes up from Oceanside for the flea with an amazing selection of bromeliads for full sun, and I’ve been trying to inveigle an invite to his growing grounds down south — hope he’s there Sunday.

I told Marty I was booking a flight for Windcliff’s open garden days today and tomorrow, just to get a reaction, but not much surprises him anymore…

Have a great weekend!

Posted in clippings | 6 Comments

Scott Deemer’s dreamscape of rocks, fire, water

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Denise

Scott Deemer keeps it elemental with the landscape design at his home in Niwot, Colorado not far from Denver, especially in the back garden. The front garden is more manicured, but in the back garden there’s a strong fantasy at play of wandering through a meadow and discovering a rocky pool — which for me evoked summer vacations in Three Rivers, Calif., near Yosemite, where that was the day’s sole agenda, just meandering through meadows alongside the river and periodically plunging into rocky pools to cool off.

And you’ll just have to join in my fantasy, too, of slow meadow walks, lazing on warm stone, the shock of cool water on sun-warmed skin, and an outdoor fire at the end of the day. Because I pretty much ignored everything else about the house and garden.

The incredibly engineered rockwork that is the stock in trade of Scott’s company Outdoor Craftsmen hews to the back of the house like a bulwark, smoothly handling the many changes in elevations, carving out terraces and an epic fireplace fabricated in situ that is contiguous with the biofiltration pool.

photo IMG_3082.jpg — Stone and steel, Rosa glauca, ceanothus on the right, irises on the far left

Sitting at the fire, there’s a powerful alchemy of warmth, shelter and an open prospect.

Steps lead into the meadow on the left, the pool extending off to the right.

The planting around the pool is stylized, almost Japanese in feel, but not overwhelmingly so, with appreciable restraint in maintaining a balance between enclosure and sky-filled reflections and open views.

photo IMG_3062.jpg — Weeping Purple Beech, with dark-leaved sambucus in foreground

The multi-level house sits on the land like a lodge built into a rocky outcropping, overlooking the pool just feet away from the back door.

The view, and I suppose the fantasy too, changes depending on the vantage point (and the viewer).

A fantastical turquoise siren leads one down intricate rockwork of steps planted with grasses and small treasures like sea thrift to the lowest level of the house.

A landscape both hyper-natural and elemental that for me unlocks memories, daydreams, reveries of wild places I’ve known. Thanks to Scott and Paula Deemer for welcoming garden bloggers this past June to their dreamscape.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

views of August

Posted on August 9, 2019 by Denise

Continuing with the year-to-year comparison…

I love plant-intensive gardens, planning them, planting them. I’ve learned a lot about spacing and air flow over the years, so the garden isn’t as dense as in previous Augusts, but I’m still just as plant crazy after all these years.

photo IMG_3692.jpg — the tetrapanax in 2019 tops the pergola. Evergreen fernleaf acacia replaced Cotinus ‘Grace.’

photo IMG_3695.jpg — 2019, kangaroo paws replaced with the slipper plant, Pedilanthus bracteatus, with most of the planting reworked. (Wire baskets are used to protect young plants, in this case a small Aloe tomentosa.)

photo IMG_3651.jpg — I’m not exactly practicing minimalism in 2019 either

photo P1010071.jpg — New addition to the pergola, Passiflora vitifolila ‘Scarlet Flame,’ a hybrid by the mysterious Patrick Worley, who’s responsible for another passiflora in the garden, the late-summer blooming ‘Witchcraft’

I still have the tendency to up-end things and throw a wrench in the garden, like a passion flower reputed to grow to 20-30′ — I’m hoping to train it up and then across the horizontal beams of the pergola, so the flowers dangle at eye level. But I’ve also developed more of a feel for a zone 10 garden that doesn’t slight the remaining months of the year in favor of one season over another.

photo P1018237.jpg — August 2013, perennial knotweed Persicaria amplexicaulis in the garden, that rare perennial that thrives in zone 10. Native to the Himalayas…

I was crazy about knotweeds for quite a few years. Still am, actually, but I no longer grow them or many other perennials in the garden.

photo P1017824-1.jpg — August 2013, a Southern Californian take on the plant-intensive “new naturalism”
Helicotrichon, anthemis, agastaches, persicaria, yarrow, crithmum. Along with other big grasses, that’s a Giant Reed, Arundo donax ‘Golden Chain,’ in the left background that we removed in the nick of time. So beautiful, so treacherously invasive.

Occasionally, like in 2013, the garden was very summer-forward. Working out the longest perennial show possible in zone 10 was incredibly absorbing but still left seven or eight months of nice weather with lots of bare ground.

photo P1010085.jpg — August 2019, annual knotweed Polygonum orientale (in a container)
Thank you for growing this rarely seen annual, M&M Nursery in Orange, Calif.

I still like to try out summer stuff in containers though.

photo P1010060.jpg — dark-flowered Thunbergia alata getting trained up fishing wire.

photo P1010141.jpg — Senecio confusus requires a little more intervention to train up fishing wire but I’ve got high hopes

photo P1010130.jpg — Then as now, manihots make lush growth for the dry garden

photo P1010067.jpg — ‘Lime Zinger’ 2019. In August the leaves develop more substance and become extra-velvety

photo P1010065.jpg — Thinking small helps — a single pot of coreopsis can stand in as a microcosm for summer daisies

Apart from garden styles and trends (“the new naturalism”), in a little home garden, balcony, sunny window, there is a wonderful freedom to simply celebrate that emotional connection to the plants themselves.

photo P1010108.jpg — Calif. native Eriogonum giganteum var. compactum

photo P1010068.jpg — Another agapanthus planted in July (the hottest month on record), ‘Purple Delight’

Living surrounded by these once-in-a-universe masterpieces is a privilege that just never gets old. Hope you’re getting lots of garden time this August.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

revisiting the class of July 2014; (where are they now?)

Posted on July 30, 2019 by Denise

I love massing one kind of echeveria in pots and letting them multiply like crazy. Echeveria lilacina has completely filled in at the base of the shaving brush tree, Pseudobombax ellipticum. One E. liliacina in bloom is a novelty; over a dozen in bloom is an event.

photo P1019647.jpg — Pseudobombax ellipticum in July 2014

I instagrammed the blooming echeveria and was asked about the tree. Which got me wondering about the age of the shaving brush tree, which led me to this post “Back on the Home Front” in July 2014. (The tree bloomed this year, an event also noted on Instagram.) I’m still unsure about the exact age of the tree, now with an over 8-foot trunk, but the earliest entry I could find was 2014. Looking at the rest of the post, July 2014 struck me as a fairly ambitious month in the garden, a time when I was working on more color for summer, whereas the 2019 garden has grown shrubbier, with more aloes and agaves grown among sesleria and horned poppies/glaucium. And since I often feel that followup on all the plants I talk about over the years can be somewhat inconsistent, it seemed like a good opportunity to revisit some of the plants grown in July 2014. Where are they now?

photo P1019541-001.jpg — July 2014
“Really brightens things up. Corokia virgata ‘Sunsplash'”

Continue reading →

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, journal, pots and containers, succulents | 5 Comments

formal wear for the summer garden

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Denise

photo IMG_1920.jpg — I sensed a New Orleans influence — which is weird since I’ve only visited NOLA once. Credit goes to the owner’s skillful transposition of childhood memories

I toured this garden designed by Judy Horton back in May as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days for Los Angeles and recently uncovered just a few photos, not really enough for a proper blog post as far as overall layout and flow. But looking at the photos in late July, I’m struck by how the garden makes the barest nod to spring, choosing instead to enfold its owners in vines, hedges and lacy tree canopies, the OG counterpart to living walls and green roofs inspired by the owner’s childhood in New Orleans. This garden takes the long view, practicing in spring the cool look it will need for a hot summer, a balmy fall, a barely there winter (15 inches of rain in a “normal” year), and so back to spring. Formal gardens, after all, are an ancient design strategy for hot, dry places, dating back to the Egyptians, when it’s thought the genesis of the geometric grid layout began with following the axis of irrigation canals.

photo IMG_1947.jpg — the “Tree Room” under a Chinese elm, with acanthus in bloom, potted nicotianas, tropicals in Versailles tubs, topiaries on tables. Throughout the garden there’s an insistence on clarity in the modeling of spaces.

It’s a disciplined garden far removed from my own small plant collector’s jumble — but then the portraits that gardens provide of their owners are one of the key pleasures of visiting them. The rigorously clear design intentions hinted to me of a fastidious sensibility that looked outside California for inspiration, and I wanted to know more. (Links provided at end of post). What really fascinates me is that this design, purposely drained of most colors but green, was pondered over a dozen years by the owner, the interior designer Suzanne Rheinstein, and is an aesthetic choice as much as a response to a mediterranean climate: “Part of my garden was inspired by Nicole de Vesian, the head of design at Hermes for many years, who had an extraordinary garden in Provence that I was so fortunate to visit. She used a lot of gravel in her gardens, which was also a perfect solution to gardening in our Southern California climate.” (Nicole de Vesian began her influential garden at the age of 70: “She had a feeling for space just as a musician has a good ear.” Modern Design in Provence by Louisa Jones)

photo IMG_1951.jpg — Garden designer and friend Judy Horton was handed “*all the magazine clippings I had been saving over many years and brought them to life*.” Hedges conceal the pool and lounges with black-and-white striped canopies, with a garden room off to the right.

The function of hedges is often viewed as the mute, utilitarian backdrop to floral exuberance, in conciliatory climates like those of England and Holland. As the Sissinghurstian trope goes, formal layout, informal planting. In this summer-dry garden, the importance of hedges is moved from background to foreground, their clipped geometry providing volume, scale, enclosure, and soothing studies of shadows and green. And the cooling abilities, bird cover, and pollutant-trapping powers of all those small leaves are not to be underestimated either. (“Plant hedges to combat near-road pollution exposure.”)

photo IMG_1949.jpg — The seedheads possibly belong to the South African bulb Veltheimia bracteata, which blooms in late winter

photo IMG_1968.jpg — “I knew I wanted a green garden, because for me that was so reminiscent of the gardens I grew up with in New Orleans. I believe it all starts with the green architecture, and then things just happen to flower.”
Small panels of lawn surround a small pool with bubbler. Other surfaces are gravel, bluestone, brick.

photo IMG_1914 1.jpg — the Tree Room is opposite the house’s deep porch

photo IMG_1930 1.jpg — Pots of nicotianas (lime green, of course!) were interspersed throughout the garden. Behind the hedge is an enclosed potager with espaliered figs, vegetables and flowers

All quotes from the summer 2011 issue of Flower, found here. The Rheinstein garden is included in Outstanding American Gardens; A Celebration: 25 Years of the Garden Conservancy

Posted in climate, design, garden travel, garden visit | 3 Comments

occasional daily weather report; got shade?

Posted on July 25, 2019 by Denise

photo IMG_1432.jpg — Shade structure at Theodore Payne Foundation in April

Cooler with some moisture: I haven’t done an ODWR in quite a while, but today inspired me to file a report. The pavement was wet this morning. Wet I tell you! Enough drops were falling to drum some spare syncopation on the pergola’s corrugated roof. The fleeting tap-tap-ping! concert was enjoyed while sitting on the bench under the pergola with the first cup of coffee. And with the moisture-saturated air, it’s noticeably cooler. Supposedly we’re going to drop out of the 90s today. Yes, Long Beach is technically a beach city, but we’re always the hottest beach city in Los Angeles County. And the overall climate? Heat records breaking all over Europe. Political climate? Cowardice/avarice at the highest levels of U.S. government prevail regarding mitigating the effects of heat-trapping emissions. Facing an epic failure of leadership at the national level, I just have to bring up trees again, and this piece deserves a spot on your reading list: How Trees Can Save Us: “A tree is a piece of equitable green infrastructure…For some people, having access to trees can be a matter of life and death.”

Find some shade and stay cool!

Posted in Occasional Daily Weather Report | 2 Comments

Yucca rostrata goes with everything

Posted on July 24, 2019 by Denise

Just something I’ve observed about Yucca rostrata. Whether it’s MCM, Spanish Revival, Craftsman bungalow, Streamline Moderne, you can’t go wrong with this yucca, native to Texas and Mexico. Seen here standing tall amid a privacy buffer of crassula and foxtail agaves between two properties in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

photo IMG_2127.jpg — Personally, I’d love to jackhammer some permeability into my own driveway

Wisely, the architecture is left to shine and not obscured by heavy foundation planting. There’s a tracery of vine, cycads, and that limbed-up shrub I couldn’t ID from the sidewalk.

photo IMG_2134.jpg — dymondia is achieving champion coverage

Most of the houses on this street are Spanish/Mission Revival with the occasional chateauesque property as seen looming in the background.

photo IMG_2132.jpg — I wouldn’t mind my own Yucca rostrata privacy screen

I took these photos back in April. Along with the yucca in bloom, you can see star jasmine in bloom just about mid-photo. So this is one example of what a “spring garden” looks like in Los Angeles, with succulents, cycads, yuccas, agaves, dymondia, decomposed granite mulch.

photo IMG_2128.jpg — And throw in a couple Dasylirion longissimum for good measure

In truth, this is a dry garden that mostly ignores the seasons and will change very little throughout the year. It will effortlessly shrug off this week’s temperatures in the high 90s. In this neighborhood back in April, there were also front gardens in profuse spring bloom from California natives and dry garden exotics, and I’m a fan of those as well — especially if they sneak in a Yucca rostrata or two or three…because they really do go with everything.

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, design, driveby gardens | 3 Comments

hungry eyes, busy hands; Colorado garden of Dan Johnson & Tony Miles

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Denise

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom…You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” — William Blake

What I really enjoyed about one of the gardens I visited recently in Colorado was that it was a small garden that wanted it all and refused to say no to any of it. After a long winter, spring in this garden emerges unbowed, with a pronounced strut and swagger. Saturated colors, silky petals swooning against rusted metal, gnarled driftwood sinuously threading itself alongside narrow footpaths pressed on all sides by a profusion of flowers and emphatic spikes, with no opportunity to plant treasures among the rocks and stones left unturned. The owners are clearly having a blast and their enthusiasm is entirely infectious. Exuberant, maximalist, raucous, it was difficult to point a camera without interrupting a sight line or industrial salvage vignette.

This garden flamboyantly courts excess like poppies shamelessly court honeybees. And it’s obvious this is not mere cheerful naivete at play. There’s a knowingness to the extravagance, the profligate gestures. For one thing, the command of the planting was first rate — irises, oriental poppies, Shirley poppies, California poppies, alliums, larkspur, columbines, all the sexpots of spring were here, all doing precisely what they had been asked to do. One of the owners, Dan Johnson, has spent his lifetime in gardens, the last 22 years with the Denver Botanic Gardens. Home is clearly where he lets his hair down.

“Curator of Native Plants and Associate Director of Horticulture, [Dan] has been at the Gardens since 1996. Though much of his focus is on xeric and native plants and naturalistic design, his work has included all corners of the Gardens. He has been involved with Plant Select since its debut in 1997. His horticultural exploration has included all four of the world’s Steppe regions and beyond, including the western US, South Africa, Argentina, Spain and Pakistan. Publications include the revised and expanded “Meet the Natives” wildflower guide, “Steppes” and many articles in gardening periodicals.” DBG Horticulturalist’s Bios

Sounds like a sober, all-business, scholarly type of fellow, right? If so, the garden completely blows that cover.

photo IMG_3372.jpg — purple wall and Homecrest chairs to match in a patio at the bottom of the back garden

photo IMG_3392.jpg — the narrow front garden is bounded by a low wall. The rose reminds me a little of ‘Zephirine Drouhin’

photo IMG_3315.jpg — view from the tour bus window — I started taking photos as soon as we pulled up

photo IMG_3331.jpg — glimpse of front garden patio in the background

photo IMG_3378.jpg — front and back gardens were entered through elaborate archways

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely feeling a southwest influence too, in the paint colors, stucco walls, the sotols and agaves…

photo RGSW-July1-Denver3_CourtesyofDanJohnson-700x504.jpg — the stream at the bottom of the back garden, photo by Dan Johnson via Fine Gardening
(paywall protected)

I found a reference in a Fine Gardening article that there is (or was) a garden in Tucson, Arizona too. A single reference. And now I can’t stop imagining what a Tucson garden by these two must look like…

( garden visit made possible by one of the best garden tours around, the Garden Bloggers Fling)

Posted in climate, garden visit | 8 Comments