Category Archives: pots and containers
abandonment issues
With just one week until we depart for Oregon, the Long Beach garden has finally taken a shape that feels horticulturally logical to me, according to my tastes and the slim resources it will have available in my absence. A … Continue reading
touring summer gardens
Lately I’ve been dipping more and more frequently into photos taken while garden touring last summer with the Garden Fling, a highly recommended garden tour group. Compared to what’s being reported in this crazy news cycle, making and caring for … Continue reading
winter-blooming aloes go about their business
Returning from a 10-day trip over Thanksgiving, the garden buzzed with energy from emerging aloe flowers. Seeing the refreshed garden after the weeks of cleanup in October/November was a pretty special homecoming. Catching the aloes starting their winter bloom cycle … Continue reading
Posted in plant nurseries, pots and containers, succulents
8 Comments
fence project status
(A quick recap. Creeping fig, Ficus pumila, covered the south CMU wall of the back garden since we bought in ’89. Clinging tightly, it grew tall and thick and provided excellent evergreen privacy. A couple years ago, the neighbor on … Continue reading
caudiciform plants for the win
I confess the loss of Beaucarnea ‘Gold Star’ was one I dreaded the most during our extended absence. It was one of the first plants I rushed to check upon return. Survival of caudiciform plants was a theme. Right up … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, journal, pots and containers, succulents
10 Comments
taking stock of the runaway garden
I know “runaway garden” is an oxymoron, but even so the SoCal garden (zone 10) seems to have been on a journey without me, cycling through various caretakers, some benign, some less so. The last few days have been the … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, journal, pots and containers, succulents
11 Comments
my own private tulipomania
There’s a lot of the traditional horticultural canon that can be grown well here at the moist Oregon Coast in zone 8b/9a that I’m skipping so far– hellebores, roses, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, hostas, maples, Oriental poppies, peonies, clematis to name a … Continue reading
Posted in Bulbs, Oregon garden, pots and containers
5 Comments
checking in on the zone 10 garden
The Long Beach, CA zone 10 garden had a caretaker in residence for almost a year while we’ve been on the Oregon coast. I think they may have been watering the containers before decamping in July, but I’m not really … Continue reading
coastal PNW gardens late July
Driving north on Highway 101 now is a very different experience than just a few weeks ago. The roadside attractions are no longer mauve foxgloves, which seemed to go on forever, but now mauve fireweed, Chamerion angustifolium (formerly Epilobium angustifolium), … Continue reading
Posted in garden visit, journal, Oregon garden, Plant Portraits, pots and containers
6 Comments
the summer I planted pale yellow snapdragons
A farm stand was selling six-packs for $3 of these pale snapdragons, bordering on chartreuse. All wonky and swaying, not ramrod straight. Never having grown snaps before, I’m unclear if a lack of basal growth is normal or just a … Continue reading
Posted in journal, Oregon garden, Plant Portraits, pots and containers
7 Comments