Le Prince Jardinier

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Denise

Véritable chaise des jardins parisiens restaurée.

Google translation: “Chair of the true Parisian gardens restored.”

The Parisian shop Le Prince Jardinier is mentioned by Natalia Hill in her piece “Get Stuffed — The Animal Wonderland of Deyrolle,” found on the Huffington Post. I never pass on an opportunity to read about this fabled Parisian taxidermy/natural history shop dating back to 1831, which was nearly lost in a devastating fire in 2008.

Photo of interior from Deyrolle found here.
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In her article, Ms. Hill mentions that a garden shop, Le Prince Jardinier, is on the ground floor of Deyrolle and gives a brief history of the chairs:

“These garden chairs adorned the grounds of the famous Luxembourg, Tuileries and Palais Royal gardens for over 80 years (1923-2005).
Parisians over generations would have enjoyed their use. In 2005, the chairs were mostly in disrepair and about to be thrown away.”

It was Prince Louis-Albert de Broglie, who bought Deyrolle in 2001, who also stepped in to restore the Parisian park chairs.

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“CUSTOM Available only in the color of your choice: black, dark green, green amazonite, chrome, blue, yellow, red, pink … Transport costs on request.
(Disponible SUR COMMANDE uniquement dans la couleur de votre choix: noir, vert foncé, vert amazonite, chrome,bleu, jaune, rouge, rose… Frais de transports sur devis.)”

Simone de Beauvoir (“I wanted to talk about these things. I wanted to talk about all sorts of things with people who, unlike Jacques, wouldn’t let their sentences trail away at the ends.” Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) probably talked up a storm in one of these chairs. Supply the name of your favorite writer, painter, poet, philosopher, and they’ve probably passed away an afternoon in a chair very similar to this.

And then there’s what photographer Andre Kertesz did with the chairs at the Luxembourg Gardens. Like a gardener, a photographer never actually sits in a garden chair. Not for long. Which is probably why I don’t hanker after pricy chaises and oversized lounge furniture for the garden, which only steal precious space from plants, but hard, expressive little chairs like these.

Photos from Chasing Light
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The Bee Report

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Denise

Plenty of bees on these poppies.
(You weren’t expecting hard science, I hope. )

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But this is a subject too serious for flippancy. The short version is that bees are still in serious trouble (and by symbiotic association, so then are we), their numbers drastically reduced since Colony Collapse Disorder was first identified in 2006. Neonicotinoids seem to be generally implicated, along with mites:

“Beekeepers are treating chemically for varroa mites, but when bees leave the hive and encounter agricultural insecticides, we see lethal synergies between the bee hive chemicals and the agricultural chemicals.”

Neonicotinoids have yet to be banned in the U.S. but are presently banned in France, Germany, and Italy.

Workable theories are still evolving, as illustrated by another quote from the article quoted from above: “One of our biggest frustrations has been defusing the expectation for ‘a cure’ for CCD. The answer, when it comes, will be a knowledge-based enterprise, not a product-based enterprise. The answer will be messy.”

(A messy situation that could inspire a dark sci-fi film treatment in the 1950’s Ed Wood style, directed by Tim Burton:

Pollinators are disappearing, including the heavy hitters, bees and bats. Human population soaring. Jobless and soaring. Humans sign up to be trucked around to agricultural sites to pinch hit as pollinators for meager wages, wearing specialized proboscis masks, work now considered coveted employment, with riots breaking out to fill vacant pollinator positions. The poor diet and working conditions of the “drone” humans, along with chronic exposure to agricultural pesticides, exacerbates paranoid violent tendencies. These “drone” humans begin to feel their meager subsistence as pollinators is threatened by local, organic market gardeners. Much conflict and sci-fi violence ensues, until The One (The Beeity), made part bee/part human by synergistic effects of pesticide cocktails, is able to communicate between bees and humans and unite both species. Vested interests, of course, seek to destroy the truth-telling Beeity, played by Tilda Swinton, hovering on lovely gossamer wings, etc, etc.)

What do you think? Pass the popcorn? So eerie when life imitates a plot from cheesy ’50’s science fiction movies.

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The early morning hours around this 4-foot stretch of poppies sound like a saw mill. Zzzzzzz, zzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzz.
I find that sound very comforting.

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Some Plants to Forget

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Denise

You won’t be rushing home from work to check on how these plants are holding up on a hot, dry summer day. Just forget about them.

Aeonium with a nice, snaky curve, ballota, sedum, golden sedge, and a little pelargonium with tiny white flowers, similar to the scented geranium known as the “nutmeg geranium,” really all species pelargoniums. New purchase from Robin Parer’s nursery Geraniaceae, Pelargonium x fragrans ‘Joanne’s Spring Clover.’


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These little scented pelargoniums are as tough (but as tender) as succulents.

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The woody undergrowth of this old stand of ballota (top photo, on the left) was cleaned out last fall and just a few rooted stems left in place to rejuvenate the evergreen planting. There’s a non-plush, pale green variety called ‘All Hallows Green’ (now Marrubium bourgae) selected by Valerie Finnis that’s just as wonderful as a small, textural, herbaceous evergreen, or subshrub as they’re often referred to. I’ve always thought my ballota was B. acetabulosa, but I think it’s sold interchangeably as B. pseudodictamnus. Photo references seem to show the same plant, the Grecian Horehound or false dittany. Hardy to 0-10 F.

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Man-Eating Corydalis

Posted on April 3, 2011 by Denise

There’s a man-eater loose in the neighborhood

Image found here.
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Not a tawny blur of shadowy stripes, but a flutter of ferny glaucous leaf, 4X4 feet. Big enough for a tiger cub to hide behind.

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Corydalis heterocarpa, Corydalis heterocarpa var. japonica, Japan Fernleaf Corydalis.

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Perhaps arrogantly, I feel I’ve tamed this man-eater, but beware of letting this invasive fumitory stalk your zone 10 garden.
However, this fast-grower would probably make an easy, lush, scene-stealing exotic for summer containers in colder zones.

Seeds are available from B&T World Seeds and Plant World Seeds.

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Occasional Daily Photo

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Denise

California poppies and agave at sunrise in an Altadena, California garden designed by Sue Dadd.

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Gladiolus communis ssp. byzantinus

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Denise

Some byzantine glads opened while I was out of town a few days. Flowers have that unerring sense of timing, don’t they?
As I’ve written before, these bulbs are an inferior strain, in that they are not the desired deep magenta, but they’ve reproduced so prolifically there’s probably no turning back or chance of bringing in a better strain. I think it was Beth Chatto who likened the soil of her garden to a fruitcake, densely packed as it was with the years’ accumulation of odds and ends of bulbs turning up in every trowelful of soil, with some bulb or other always getting speared when digging. My soil seems to be reaching fruitcake level, too, and I toss unearthed mystery bulbs onto the paths as I work, too many to care about, whether crocosmia, Dutch iris, allium…only when it’s a lily I inadvertently dig up does recrimination grip my heart.

Whatever the depth of its color, this glad is self-supporting, takes up little room, competes well with grasses, and seems determined to stay. But I may order a few bulbs from one of the better bulb houses like Old House Gardens this fall and segregate them in a pot, just to find out what I’m really missing and if it’s worth the trouble to rogue out this wan impostor. Kind of slouching toward the real G. byzantinus. Naturalizes in the South, hardy to zone 6.

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Marina District, San Francisco

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Denise

There’s a particular pet-friendly motel we like in this district near the Presidio in San Francisco, the Marina Motel, which is where we stayed for the recent garden show.

Ein with his garden show face on.
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Plants are a big part of this little motel’s appeal. This brugmansia was in bloom in the courtyard, which is lavishly planted with fuchsias, geraniums, abutilon.

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Through the little kitchenette’s window from our upstairs room was a view of this private garden. I tried not to look too often. Really, I did.
And, anyway, no one ever came to sit in the chairs at the table. An empty garden is…mesmerizing.

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The secret language of gardeners permeated the entire trip. These banners were flying on nearby Chestnut Street, announcing Amy Stewart’s upcoming exhibit at Golden Gate Park.

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Sloat Garden Center, just off Chestnut at Pierce Street, looked like a fantastic neighborhood nursery. I popped in for a few photos, meaning to go back for a thorough browse, but the weekend flew by and I never did make it back. But it was just enough time to grab this little Trifolium repens ‘Dragon’s Blood.’ (Rainy Weekend Sale 20% Off. I wonder how many rainy weekends ago that sign was posted.)

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Such is the mercurial nature of city neighborhoods, the Marina District now seems to appeal more to the boomer crowd, reflected by the long line I saw waiting for Sammy Hagar to show up for a book signing at the local book shop and the nonstop foot traffic at the yoga center, but it does have relatively quiet streets perfectly suited for late-night dog walks, some good groceries and bakeries and a couple movie houses, and is just minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. (Which is another reason why we started staying here years ago, for easy access to the plant nurseries in Marin and Sonoma Counties just over the Bridge, like the now defunct Western Hills.) The Mission district is where all the new restaurants are opening, and we did eat at Frjtz’s on Valencia in the Mission Saturday night, known for its frites and huge variety of dipping sauces. Perversely, I ordered mussels, washed down with Belgian beer, Lindemans Framboise Raspberry Lambic. My husband said the mussels smelled like cow dung. I admit, they weren’t the best mussels I’ve ever had, but I thought that smell was briny, not Bandini Mountain. A brief walk through the Presidio, which left military jurisdiction in 1994, opening up over 1400 acres to mixed commercial and public use overseen by the Presidio Trust, was the highlight of the trip for Ein. Exploring this enormous old military base at twilight, the pungent scent of eucalyptus underfoot and in the air was unmistakable, overpowering.

Just some quick travel notes.

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Wyatt Ellison Metal Work

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Denise

Somebody sign this man up now to do whatever he wants with an exhibit at a 2012 garden show.
Flora Grubb Gardens currently has a good selection of his work, where I snapped these photos over the weekend.

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Images frrom the website Wyatt Studio:

Geometric globes
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Morocco totems
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Tetris nesting tables and Chaos sculpture
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Poppy
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Garden Show Road Trip 2011

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Denise

Smashing two of my fingers in a car door just before leaving San Francisco hasn’t helped to speed up the process of posting a few measly photos from the show. Not quite the airtight excuse, since having two fingers turning gothic shades of purple and inky blue didn’t prevent me yesterday from planting nearly the entire flat of plants brought home from the show and several nurseries we visited. (I highly recommend making little protective condoms from rubber gloves to protect injured digits while planting. And this year I will get a tetanus shot.) There is an excellent little video by Cindy McNatt and MB Maher making the rounds, and Floradora’s posts are very comprehensive, with the added bonus of getting a designer’s point of view. As for me, it seems I did nothing but buy plants and, judging by the meager output of photos, paid very little attention to the exhibits. The exhibits were all solid, beautifully executed, not ground-breaking, but the show overall had great fizz to it, a good layout with lots of outer buildings and tents to ease the claustrophobia of the crowds in the main hall. And lots of great plants for sale. Geraniaceae and Digging Dog are where I parted ways with most of my plant show money.

I did admire the streamlined elegance, the utter scientific cool of the UC Berkeley hydroponics exhibit.

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Hanging glass has been on my mind for this summer. I keep this tear sheet handy, a photo by MB Maher of a friend’s studio.
Maybe using distilled water will keep the nasty calcification crusting from rimming the glass. Any excuse to play with glass beakers and flasks.

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Back to the show. This rusted bedspring would be just as cool hanging on a wall, filled with tillandsias and Spanish moss.
By Quite Contrary Garden Design:

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Shimmering Acacia craspedocarpa against corrugated fencing. Poor photo of a wonderful acacia.

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Tierra Seca’s “Golden State of Mind.” Exquisitely stacked stone walls and Southern California river rocks on pikes.

Photo by MB Maher

Although Brian Swope intended these floating rocks to illustrate that anything is possible in California, levitating over an “energy field” of plastic sheeting, I can see them used also as an inverse visual pun, floating over rushing water, over rivulets of succulents. I much preferred Swope’s stylistic treatment to the naturalistic use of rocks in some of the exhibits, which struck me as jarringly out of place in so artificial an environment. (I cringingly introduced myself to Mr. Swope as a “minor blogger.” Sometimes the words that spill out of my mouth….)

Photo by MB Maher
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From Gold Medal Winner Jeffrey Gordon Smith’s “Pi R Squared,” black plastic culverts planted with succulents, an exhibit he first built as a temporary installation on sustainability for the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. A wood-fired heater warms the water for the tub then roasts the veggies while you soak. Sustainable decadence.

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One of the living walls from Filoli’s dovecote.

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Studio Choo’s florals in repurposed wooden dynamite boxes in Star Apple’s edibles tent. Possibly from being visually saturated by succulents and livings walls, I was riveted by these Flemish Old Master tableaux vivants with crown fritillaries, tulips, and ranunculus in astonishing Persian carpet shades of russet, raw sienna, mahogany.

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That’s probably enough flower photos. Congratulations to the hard-working people behind the SFFGS for a fine 2011 show,
a successful inauguration of garden road trips 2011.

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Posted in design, garden travel, MB Maher | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Do You Groupon?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Denise

Current rainwater catchment system:

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Desired rainwater catchment system, available now, half-price, through Groupon.

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We’ve been dithering for some time over how to incorporate into a small lot what have been up to now bulky rainwater collection systems.
The size, the modularity, the ease of fitting into the slim, unused spaces against the garage, everything about this system speaks to us.
My plan, once the 150 gallons of rain water is used up sometime in summer, is to fill maybe just one of the tanks for disaster water supplies.
(In Southern California, we’re talking earthquakes.) Use that water on the garden in fall before the winter rains, refill with winter rain, then repeat the usage cycle.

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