Tell The Story of Your Garden

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Denise

I suppose that’s one way to describe what bloggers are busy doing, to the best of our abilities. If blogging doesn’t quite suit your style, photographer Guy Hervais will tell the story of your garden and immortalize its horticultural splendors in your very own Garden Secret Book, which he will create for you, soup to nuts.

Photobucket

Browsing through the Garden Secret Books he’s already created for clients is not a bad way to spend a January evening.

Photobucket

The Style Saloniste has a wonderful interview with Mr. Hervais this January, drawing out his views formed through a lifetime steeped in visiting gardens, making his own garden in Provence, and practicing his art of exquisite landscape photography.

Posted in garden visit | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Deja Vu Plants

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Denise

In my garden, succulents are the deja vu plants extraordinaire. New acquisitions can look suspiciously familiar because, in fact, they have been brought home before. Maybe they became submerged under rampant growers, like the soft-leaved yucca I just unearthed when cleaning out some succulents, or malingered and withered away unnoticed in a pot. Whatever the case, after their disappearance or demise total amnesia sets in, just as it did with this succulent. Perhaps the amnesia is partially willful. Who can say? Not helping matters is the fact that so many succulents come without identification tags. Having a name for anything is an important step in forming a relationship. That’s my excuse, anyway.

To experience the excitement of discovery twice is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave one feeling sheepish when the buzz of acquiring something new eventually turns into a queasy flicker of recognition. Stranger, I’ve seen your face before.

Kalanchoe? Adromischus? Purchased nameless in 2010, lost and forgotten shortly thereafter. Found again at Terra Sol Garden Center this January, the first deja vu plant of 2011. No doubt there’ll be more.

Photobucket

Kalanchoe humilis ‘Desert Surprise’

Reading about Far Out Flora’s recent trip to Terra Sol Garden Center in Santa Barbara was all the encouragement I needed for a 2-hour road trip to Santa Barbara. The nursery is worth every bit of FFF’s praise. Before the engine was turned off, my blood was already up. Through the parking lot fence I could see an enormous Agave americana with unusual markings, A. americana var. striata. The blurred striping gives a softer, more painterly effect than the stark striping seen in the common ‘Variegata,’ a beautiful agave in its own right. But that soft, greyish effect had my heart aflutter even before stepping through the gate. If I’d ever seen this agave before, I’ve no memory of it. And I know I’ve never grown it before.

Photobucket

(Agave americana var. striata. Photo from the French palm brokers Palmaris.)

I was told it’s every bit as vigorous in habit as the species, if not more so. If it came in a size less than 10 gallons, I’d have bought it anyway. They did have a small pot of the legendary Agave desmettiana ‘Joe Hoak,’ which came home along with the deja vu succulent.

There wasn’t a tag on this succulent, or it’s possible I lost it in transit, so I called Terra Sol about a week after purchase and was kindly given its name, Kalanchoe humilis ‘Desert Surprise.’ I made a complete fool of myself over the phone trying to describe the color striations of its scalloped leaves. Not spots exactly, but not stripes either. Blotchy stripes? Richter scale-like zig-zagging? Bruised mottling? When I mentioned it was sitting next to the pink mother-of-thousands, Kalanchoe delagoensis x daigremontiana “Pink Butterflies,” an ID was finally made.

San Marcos Growers says this plant was introduced to nurseries in 2010, which coincides with when I first found this unnamed succulent at a local nursery. Deja vu all over again.

Photobucket

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, succulents | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Foliage Follow-Up January 2011

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Denise

I missed contributing to January’s Bloom Day, the 15th of every month, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, but can’t wait to check out the participating blogs, over 100 from all over the world. In my own zone 10 garden in Southern California, there could be a huge variety of plants in bloom, but my 800-square-foot back garden has little new to report for January. There are some blooms, like Begonias luxurians and hybrid ‘Paul Hernandez,’ that made the cut for this January bloom day, but not much else. Pam’s blog Digging hosts the Foliage Follow-Up on the 16th, which seems the closest fit for this post. Warm thanks to Carol and Pam for hosting these memes, which will provide lots of good reading for the upcoming week.

(For record-keeping’s sake, Salvia ‘Waverly’ has made every bloom day post, including January’s, but another photo seems wearily gratuitous at this point.
It’s a sad truism that good, dependable plants inevitably become boring, but constantly taking a chance on the rare and untried has more than once left me with a garden with not much thriving and lots of bare ground. And the hummingbirds would never forgive me if I gave this salvia’s place to anything else.)


Begonia ‘Paul Hernandez.’

Photobucket


Both of these large begonias were planted at the base of the southern boundary, a 6-foot cinder-block wall that continues to “grow,” aided and abetted by the creeping fig, Ficus pumila, previous owners planted to cover the wall. I welcome this extra privacy to an extent, but the wall has now reached an unruly height of 10 feet tall and is decidedly overdue for a winter trimming. I watched a possum snuggle into the fig’s maze of branches a couple mornings ago after a night out on the town, the urban equivalent of a hedgerow. The shade against the wall is almost too deep for the begonias, but increasingly I’m preferring to find homes for plants in the garden as opposed to keeping them in pots. Watering containers 12 months a year quickly becomes the worst kind of ball and chain. I may dig up both begonias for summer and give them seasonal cushy container quarters. The roots of the creeping fig are probably too much competition for them. Whether they stay planted or get potted again depends on how many other containers the terraces have to contend with this summer. (For reasons too tedious to untangle, I can’t bring myself to use the word “patio,” most likely because my parents had patios, but “terrace” does seem out of place for Los Angeles. What else can we call these places where people and plants sit during warm months?)

The corsican hellebores temporarily have the run of the garden. They’re all seedlings from one plant, providing ribbons of incredible acid-green coloring as if to taunt, “You want spring? I’ll give you spring! How’s that? Green enough for you?!”


Photobucket

Anigozanthos ‘Yellow Gem’ and Pennisetum spatiolatum. It’s time to cut this grass back, but it has such incredible energy, like little missiles being launched, that I’m enjoying it for as long as possible.

Photobucket

This young winter-blooming clematis, C. cirrhosa ‘Wisley Cream,’ threading through a coprosma, will probably sit out 2011.

Photobucket

Astelia chathamica ‘Silver Spear,’ silver pony foot, and Lotus berthelotii are suitably chilly for winter. I wonder if I’ll enjoy this pot as much in spring.

Photobucket


Posted in garden visit | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Pets on Mid-Century Furniture Contest

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Denise

I’m probably shooting myself in the foot, contest chances-wise, by blogging about this Modernica contest. God knows, you guys are probably breakfasting, lounging, and blogging on fabulous mid-century furniture as I type, incredibly photogenic pets at your side. But along with this being a naked pitch to grab votes for Ein, it’s also encouragement to participate and add your own photos. (Whoever wins, that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise, as C.C. Baxter/Jack Lemmon wisecracks in one of my favorite movies, The Apartment, a mid-century classic.) Hopefully, Ein’s photo will be added to the Modernica blog this week for voting, which is done in weekly elimination rounds. The contest is open through the 31st of January.

Our entry is “Ein on Thonet,” regal as always.

Photobucket

Winning Val Easton’s Plant Talk contest earlier in the year has me thinking I may be on a roll, luck-wise. I’m going for the George Nelson saucer lamp.
And, it goes without saying, all our pets are winners.

Photobucket

Posted in creatures | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Shocking Pink

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Denise

Sometime during the night, the buds of Pelargonium echinatum unfolded their cerise petals. The next morning, the intensity of the color was a shock to eyes grown accustomed to the restrained colors of winter.


Photobucket

Which is about the time I wondered: When did pink leave demure behind to become shocking? And when did those two words first become inseparable?

Photobucket

What’s amazing to me, number one, is there is an answer to be found to such idle questions of mine, and it can be unearthed in less than 10 minutes:
Pink first became shocking when the eponymous perfume Shocking was launched in 1937, the packaging designed by Leonor Fini for fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

Photobucket


Surrealist-inspired Schiaparelli — pardon the crude and class-divisive shorthand which was in use at the time — was the ugly aristocrat to Coco Chanel’s pretty commoner, Chanel’s designs as sedate as Schiaparelli’s were outrageously flamboyant, and the two were supposedly intense rivals. (Perhaps flamboyance comes easier to those with trust funds? Just wondering…) Legendary photographer Horst P. Horst, interviewed by Maureen Dowd for the New York Times in 1988, remembers: “Chanel so disliked the overpowering style of the shocking pink, Dali-sketched creations of Elsa Schiaparelli…that she always pretended to forget Schiaparelli’s name, referring to her rival as ‘that Italian designer.'” Horst royally ticked off Chanel by photographing Schiaparelli first, but Chanel apparently became mollified enough to later sit for Horst. (Is life still this exciting?)

Tiny copy of Horst’s portrait of Schiaparelli:

Photobucket

Horst’s portrait of Coco Chanel:

Photobucket

The women’s choice of head gear says it all.

Horst might be better known for this corset ad, re-enacted by a famous singer in her ’90s music videoVogue directed by David Fincher:

Photobucket


In remembering how she came upon the name for her perfume, Schiaparelli recalls in her autobiography Shocking Life: “The colour flashed in front of my eyes. Bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish in the world put together, a colour of China and Peru but not of the West’s shocking colour, pure and undiluted.”

Practically speaking, this little South African pelargonium is kept dry in summer, when it goes dormant, then erupts in impudent, shocking pink flowers after winter rains. Elsa would love it, a shocking color, pure and undiluted.

Posted in Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Los Angeles in January

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Denise

This was the scene from the 25th floor conference room I worked in today. Temps were in the mid 70′s.

Photobucket

That might as well be Janus doing the back stroke on this balmy day in the month of January, the month named for him, the two-headed Roman god of beginnings who looks simultaneously backward and into the future.

Posted in Ephemera, Occasional Daily Weather Report | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Rediscovering Agave guadalajarana

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Denise

My memory of the name of this agave planted years ago in the front garden went as far as guada-something. Easy enough to plug in a partial search string, right? Yet searches always narrowed down to the most likely suspect, Agave guadalajarana, with the images never quite matching when compared to my agave, so it remained a mystery. This morning’s search brought up the fact that the mature agave looks vastly different from the juvenile, something I’d never read before. The online photos were of the juvenile form, which lacked the slim, blue leaves of mine.

Distinction noted. Now we’re talking. (Thanks for the ID, Cactus Art Nursery.)

Photobucket

I really need to splurge on a good reference for agaves and the woody lily family in general. I counted the agaves in the front garden this morning. 18 in the ground, a few more in pots. Some of them still remain mysteries to me. Most of the agaves in the ground started out years ago as specimens for pots, became too large, then were planted out in the garden. A. guadalajarana probably looked like a different agave when first planted in the garden years ago. Has never suckered or produced pups either.

Identifying A. guadalajarana this morning had a peculiarly energizing effect on me. He’s been swamped by a ‘Sunburst’ aeonium…

Photobucket

and an Agave geminiflora planted too close, both leaning in on him, deforming his silhouette. The A. geminiflora’s wonderful sea-urchin symmetry was being ruined as well, and something needed to be done — but remained undone, oh, for about the past year.

Photobucket

All of these photos were taken after the plants were moved this morning. I was too ashamed to take “before” photos, but this photo I had previously posted on the blog (seventh from the top) shows a happier time, before the throttling and deformation began. Planting close is a terrible, shameful habit of mine, stemming partly from sheer plant greed, of course. But also from a disbelief that anything will thrive and increase to an unmanageable size. Kind of foolish considering I was born and raised in zone 10.

Photobucket

Also shown in the archive photo is the bank of Senecio vitalis behind A. guadalajarana that was removed this morning, which brings up a handy rule of thumb: Consider yourself warned when any plant carries the word “vital” in its name. A large clump of Senecio vitalis was left at the far end as a buttress to protect less vigorous plants from foot and paw traffic. It’s seen in the foreground in this photo protecting the barely visible Agave desmettiana ‘Variegata.’ I still love this shrubby senecio and wish I had much more room to give it.

Photobucket

The agave against the fence is A. celsii ‘Multicolor.’

Photobucket

The A. geminiflora was a bear to move, and for a moment it seemed I’d been bested by its roots and that one agave would have to be sacrificed to save the other. The realization caused a pang — typically, only briefly. There was a large reserve A. geminiflora in a pot in the back garden. A pot I’d rather not water so frequently anyway, which could be tucked into the spot I had in mind, just a few feet from where this one was being violently wrenched out of the ground. I like to place the slim-needled agaves next to chunkier-leaved kinds, so intended to shift the A. geminiflora just a few feet over. In the end, the A. geminiflora was pried out with a good rootball, the final tug requiring an extra pair of hands. The force when it let go threw me into Graptoveria ‘Fred Ives,’ the pink succulent shown below with Senecio mandraliscae. (Not too much damage.)

Photobucket

The agaves are probably still planted too close by most gardeners’ standards, but at least they are no longer crossing swords, as it were.

And it feels like there’s a brand-new agave in the garden.

Photobucket

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Temperatures to Chill a Damselfly

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Denise

The damselfly holding on tight, waiting for the morning sun to reinvent stained glass with its wings.

Photobucket

Seems like every pool of sunshine is spoken for these days. Cats are the undisputed champs at this, swiveling like satellite dishes as they methodically track the winter sun. Not even a true frost, just a couple nights in the high 30’s crisped some leaves on a brugmansia, finally mushed Musa ‘Siam Ruby’s’ leaves for the season, and have made limp most of the leaves on Euphorbia lambii, the tree euphorbia. But chlorophyll is definitely stirring. Tulips are nosing up.

Photobucket

Fresh growth on Salvia cacaliifolia.

Photobucket

Pelargonium echinatum is budding.

Photobucket

Hang on, little damselfly.

Posted in creatures | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The View From The Kitchen Window

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Denise

The New York Times has an ongoing series entitled “Windows on the World, a series in which writers from around the world describe the view from their windows.”

They haven’t asked anonymous gardeners to contribute, just famous writers, but I’m playing along anyway.

This photo approximates what I see when I stumble into the kitchen before coffee is made and the cats are fed. A rainy blur of tree trunks, coprosma, solanum, and sotol was my first glimpse of the world most of this past December.

Photobucket

The framing device of a window is a wondrous thing. The tumultuous world is fixed in manageable planes and angles, with enough variety of incident to keep it interesting. (As when a never-before-seen bird darts into the familiar frame.) Here is where the subjective cozily encounters the objective. Windows, the “eyes” of a home, sculpt, shape, and order the impersonal world outside. But the view onto a garden is different from a view onto open land or the open sea. A garden is its own metaphorical window on the world. Because I suppose, in a sense, gardens too are a selective frame superimposed on the natural world. (Which is possibly why, as an obsessed gardener, I’ve never desired an ocean view.)

“For our house is our corner of the world…It is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Although I don’t specifically plant the garden for views from inside the house, the windows over the kitchen sink look out on a good bit of the back garden. No curtains on the windows either; the back garden is completely private. The view through the kitchen window lures me out of bed every morning. (Never the front windows facing the street.) It’s always interesting to see what shapes and colors wash up against the glass depending on the season. The tops of the palms and cypresses rising up from the street behind the garden are old friends. Disappearing old friends. Three palms were visible when we moved in, now just one remains.

Paintings can fix an emotional response in time; the views out windows, like the vanishing palms, like the garden itself, grow old and change with us. Is there a painter who’s painted more views out windows than Matisse? And is it the gardener in me that wholly responds to, and is slightly envious of, such timeless framing devices?

Photobucket

Interior With a Goldfish Bowl 1914

Photobucket

The Window 1916

Posted in Ephemera | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Bold Succulents at the Seashore

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Denise

Out for a walk at the beach with the corgi today, these imposingly tall jars of succulents on a porch caught my eye across four lanes of traffic. (There’s always ample opportunity to survey the surrounding area when walking Ein, whose outings we jokingly liken to walking a sack of rocks.) The jars were simply planted with just a few kinds of succulents, mostly aeoniums, echeveria, and the “elephant food” Portulacaria afra “Aurea.’ But all dramatically spilling Senecio radicans, the fish-hook scenecio.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Sometimes the mesmerizing geometry of succulents inspires fussy, complex arrangements, but with a good eye for the play of shapes and contrasting forms, they handle the bold gesture equally well.

Posted in garden ornament, succulents, The Hortorialist | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments