tuesday clippings 4/1/14

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I sat down Sunday to write about the flu, earthquakes, and plant shows, but the blog server was down, so Sunday’s clippings has become Tuesday’s. And with the building I worked at today undergoing a bomb threat, I can’t remember any of what I intended to write on Sunday evening. That’s got to be the worst kind of April Fool’s tomfoolery, requiring me and an emptied-out building to stand outside sniffling in the cold wind for an hour while firefighters search for explosives.

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Echeveria agavoides ‘Ebony’ from 2013

But I see I took a photo of the ponytail palm I bought at the Orange County Cactus & Succulent Society show on Saturday, so we’ll start there. The big news is that Echeveria ‘Ebony’ is finally making the rounds at plant shows this spring. Small and expensive, about $40 in a 2-inch pot, but at least there’s been tissue culture in sufficient numbers to finally outstrip the insatiable demand of Korean collectors. I get lots of inquiries about this echeveria, so that’s your best bet for now. Get thee to a succulent show this spring. I’m going to update the Dates to Remember this week with details of upcoming shows, but for now there’s a general CSSA calendar that has upcoming dates.

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We are slightly less ramshackle now that the creeping fig-covered wall has been given its annual clipping, one of those hate-filled chores that brings so much pleasure when done. There’s certainly no pleasure in the doing, which is a dusty, spidery business in which someone always nips their fingers with the clippers instead of a branch. This year it was Marty, not me, and thankfully not very deep. At least I think the photo above is post-clip. Slightly less shaggy than normal anyway. What to do with all the wall clippings means the compost pile has to be sorted out, so three bins were filled with the lovely stuff from the bottom of the heap, and plants that love a rich life are gorging on it. The wall clippings went through the chipper first, an old steam punk Sears model that fired up on the first pull after sitting for a year. Things like that make Marty unspeakably happy. A tidy compost pile, one I’m no longer afraid to approach, does the same for me.

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The orb has been updated with another tillandsia from the show, T. fasciculata on the left

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The garden is still deep in its poppy phase, with every morning bringing more and more. So many more that I’ve had to start pulling them so summer plants like eryngiums aren’t crowded out. There are some wild and untamed blooms not meant for vases, and that would be poppies. Sure, you can take a match to the stems of Iceland and Oriental poppies for a short vase life, but there’s nothing like a little meadow of them in spring. Papaver setigerum is still my favorite for its compact and uniform size.

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With all the bee activity on the poppies, and the butterflies and hummingbirds on the fern-leaf lavender, the newly engineered digiplexis is conspicuously of no interest to pollinators. Instead of ‘Illumination Flame,’ a more suitable name might be ‘Rachel,’ the beautiful, memory-implanted android in Blade Runner that thinks it’s human. I will say that I’ve never seen a plant proceed from rare to available at your local big box store with such speed as digiplexis. Whether it melts away in summer’s heat remains to be seen.

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Graptopetalum superbum

One of the most stunning succulent displays I’ve seen recently was surprisingly not at the show but at my mom’s mobile home park. Succulents are a favorite in the small, tidy lots available only to the over-55 crowd, and the plants are left alone to mature into nice specimens, like the graptopetalum above, with its remarkable inflorescence, an airy branching superstructure surrounding the rosettes. If I was a plant broker, a fantasy I occasionally indulge in on annoying days like today, I’d knock on some of these doors.

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compound interest

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Image found here


I don’t have a lot of botanical vocabulary at my fingertips anymore, but I do know a compound leaf when I see one*, since I’ve always had a pronounced weakness for them. If you’ve got a potted Fatsia japonica tucked in against the baseboards near a south-facing window, chances are you do too. A compound leaf guarantees a lushly dramatic presence. Aralia, tetrapanax, angelica are some examples that come quickly to mind, all with great shaggy leaves that unleash heaps of transverse, horizontal energy into the garden. I’ve got some good examples at the moment, three that I’ve planted almost on top of each other.

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Palmately compound Not compound, but palmate leaves of tetrapanax with that jagged, horizontal energy I was trying to describe.
Edited to add: See Saucydog’s comment below.

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Tetrapanax overhanging melianthus, starting to invade each other’s spatial planes

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Pinnately compound, Melianthus major ‘Purple Haze’**

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And completing the compound trifecta this spring, an umbellifer from Maderia, Melanoselinum decipiens, its trial run in the garden this year.
(All those umbellifers we love to cut for vases, like Queen Anne’s Lace (Ammi majus) are characterized by compound leaves.)

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For floating, hovering, shadow-making mystery suspended mid-air, go compound.

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Dustin Gimbel brought his buddy, photographer Joshua McCullough, over recently, and as we both stood before the melanoselinum, or “Black Parsley” as it’s also known by, I mentioned, possibly a little nervously, that I hear it gets pretty big. Joshua responded that he’s seen it growing in the wild, and big might be an understatement. Huge would be getting somewhat closer to the truth. I’ve already started removing some of its lower leaves to reduce some of the congestion and crowding as it flings those great leaves wide.

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I keep the tetrapanax limbed up, too, so I can plant every square inch around its trunk.

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The filtered light is perfect for things like bromeliads.

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If I had a larger garden, I doubt I’d choose to plant this much complicated, jagged beauty in such close proximity.
But I really don’t think it’s possible for a garden to have too much compound interest.



*except not really. See Saucydog’s comment re tetrapanax’s palmate leaf, not palmately compound leaf.
**(And I just noticed another example, the golden tansy Tanacetum vulgare ‘Isla Gold’ in the lower right.)

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onesies (Stachys ‘Bella Grigio’)

I had the best time nursery hopping over the weekend, looking for my mom’s summer tomato plants and gleefully indulging in a practice we’re always sternly advised against:
Never buy one of this and that. Always plant in threes and fives. Make sweeps, make waves, go big or go home, etc., etc.
Well, I had a sweep of agastache, but one plant didn’t make it through winter, leaving a hole for a onesie. That’s the excuse I’m sticking with, anyway.
Besides, somebody has to trial plants for those eventual great sweeps, right? So you’re welcome.


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And what a onesie it is. Stachys ‘Bella Grigio.’

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At the nursery it drew me in from quite a distance, the slim, tapered, silvery leaves fooling me for a moment into thinking a New Zealand celmisia like C. densiflora had wandered into a Los Angeles nursery. Fat chance. I haven’t seen a celmisia since Dunn Gardens in the Pacific Northwest and won’t likely see another until a return visit to the PNW. This stachys would seem to be a sure bet for sun and dry soil, a new tissue-culture lamb’s ears, tallish to a foot and a half. And if it’s as vigorous as its reputation, I’ll have a sweep out of this onesie in no time.

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Alstroemeria ‘Rock & Roll’ (consider yourself warned)

A mind-numbing, eye-hemorrhaging, variegated alstroemeria has been unleashed at Southern California nurseries this spring.
I reached for the camera phone when I saw big displays at two nurseries over the weekend.
Alstroemeria ‘Rock & Roll.’
The tag predicts that it will be “Sure to attract attention.”
Ya think?

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But I suppose if we can’t grow those crazy, high-contrast hostas, why not a variegated alstroemeria? This one needs a frost-free winter to be happy; otherwise, container culture only.

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It’s not like I’m immune to the charms of the variegated. Alstroemeria psittacina spent some time in my garden in years past.

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Introduced by Tesselaar International of Victoria, Australia, in 2011, for sale at local nurseries under Monrovia’s label.

If you dare…


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colors of Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.” — John Ruskin

Such solemn earnestness was a hallmark of the Victorian age and much lampooned, but you won’t find me arguing with those sentiments.


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Lots of good reading on the Metro yesterday from the April issue of The New York Review of Books, including Garry Wills’ piece on a new exhibit in Ottawa of the paintings and drawings of the eminent Victorian, John Ruskin, “Ruskin: The Great Artist Emerges.” Mr. Wills describes Ruskin’s preoccupation with color, quoting from the Elements of Drawing: ‘He said there is no such thing in nature as a solid color, but colors are ‘continually passing one into the other.'”

And the slate/blue/purple/grey/pink Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’ obligingly illustrated Ruskin’s observations on color just before sunset last night.

There is a website devoted to Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing, for anyone itching to get their pencils and sketchbook out today. I’ve got a fishing tackle box filled with mine around here somewhere.

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the desert gardens of Steve Martino


I’m checking the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days website daily now, anxiously awaiting full publication of this year’s schedule. I’m expanding my radius to include Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, Palm Springs, California, New Mexico, anyplace I’ll be likely to find some inspiring desert gardens. I’m hoping gardens designed by Steve Martino will be included on the tour. Here’s why:


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From Mr. Martin’s Palm Springs Garden Pinterest board.


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Meet The Midge

I don’t know about you, but my thoughts in spring typically turn to…tables. Chairs, too, always chairs, but that’s another post.
But I have enough big tables. I just had this discussion with Marty at the flea market last Sunday when I spied a fantastic German beer garden table and benches. Slim, narrow, with a deep orange top and long slender benches. What a cool and potentially raucous table/seating arrangement to end a long summer day. I hovered, I asked the price, I lingered, I sighed, I walked away. I regretted. But, seriously, where would I put it? Nowhere, that’s where. It’s a sad day when you come face to face with the realization that you’re out of space for beer garden tables.

What I really need…

Oh, hello!

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Leave it to Potted to anticipate what I really need this summer. The Midge.

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So very Potted. Modern slouching into boho, with the subtle gleam and pattern of glass tiles. It is for this very reason that I’ve never acquired a shoe habit. Two pairs of uncomfortable shoes or a Midge? Um, no contest.

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The Midge Table was designed by Annette Goliti Gutierrez and Mary Gray, the co-owners of Potted, who’ve brought us such new classics as The Circle Pot, The City Planter.

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And Annette and Mary really have our number, the bespoke one that loves the unique but hates the DIY mess. They’ve given us the option to customize Midge with contrasting “pixels.” I know they’re looking forward to our endless deliberations on building and pixelating the perfect Midge. Can the inner row be orange pixels, the outer row grey? No, wait, reverse that. Okay, that’s my projection on customer relations. Potted’s version is girls going shopping. They are the nicest, friendliest, cleverest, most helpful, ship-it-anywhere, yes-it-can-be-orange duo you’ll ever have the good fortune to know.

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Potted resolutely insists that their designs be made in the U.S. and that they never be something you’d even think of stowing in the garden shed at the end of summer. You’ll bring them into your bedroom, your bathroom, your living room. Maybe your Midge never makes it outdoors at all.

We believe outdoor living is as important as indoor living. We are committed to seeking out and designing products that embrace this attitude and bring it home to your garden.”

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It’s been such a thrill to watch how Annette and Mary have taken the energy and enthusiasm for good design that blossomed in California mid-20th century, channeled it, personalized it, and focused it on the garden. Their little shop in Atwater Village has now become one of the biggest and best sources for the well-designed garden.

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Beer garden table? What beer garden table? Hello, Midge…

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young grasshopper

Helping himself to a serving of Aeonium ‘Cyclops.’ I admit to being just ever so slightly phobic about grasshoppers. I have no idea why. No other insect rattles me like these. This one’s tawny color and freshly minted exoskeleton drew me in, and for a brief moment I forgot to be repulsed. Shedding one’s skin obviously builds a keen appetite.

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Bloom Day March 2014

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Typical for March, the reseeding poppies are the biggest showboats in my garden at the moment.

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Anticipating where and against what backdrop another loopy-necked bloom will open each morning is a huge part of their appeal.

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Summer-dormant Pelargonium echinatum has been so easy to rouse from its dormancy. Always in a pot, I keep it dry from late spring/early summer until around Novemberish.

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No blooms here, but to me it’s just as exciting to see the manihot leaf out again in March.

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Long, pale green, fading to buttery yellow stems send out these shocking pink flowers. Silky petals against furry stems, the rat-tailed cactus really nails it for me.

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Two of the three clumps of the digitalis/isoplexis union, Digiplexis ‘Illumination Flame,’ are throwing rainbow sherbert-colored spikes.
This summer will be the first garden trials for those of us plant geeks enthusiasts who chased down this literally brand-new perennial.

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A self-sown Solanum pyracanthum wintered over and is early to bloom.

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One of the three Phlomis lanata I planted in fall.

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After seeing a photo by Andrew Lawson of Tom Stuart-Smith’s use of phlomis at Broughton Grange, I knew I wanted phlomis back in the garden. I’ve tried lots of kinds of phlomis over the years, and if this P. lanata lives up to its reputation for compactness, it just might be the one. Bigger gardens than mine can tackle the oversize, leafy ones like russeliana and fruticosa.

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But Phlomis lanata doesn’t grow up, it grows out, bulging sideways as much as 4-6 feet across while topping out at about 2 feet in height. (Maybe I’ll eventually need just one of the three I’ve planted…)

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I think it’s no secret that we’re all attracted to Pelargonium ‘Crocodile’ because of those gold-fretted leaves and not its flowers.

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But I suppose the flowers are tolerable when there’s not much else blooming. And blue oat grass in the background makes anything look good.

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A lot of the self-sowers like Orlaya grandiflora are just getting revved up.

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Nasturtiums are mostly pulled out and composted to give some of the other volunteers runnning room.

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Not for lack of trying, but this is the best photo I could get of a very promising salvia, what Annie’s Annuals & Perennials sold as Salvia flava. The photo on her website is much better. I really, reeeally hope it likes my garden.

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The front garden has very little but dyckias in bloom, which is actually reassuring since if any of the agaves bloom, it means their demise isn’t far behind.

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For the butterflies, Verbena lilacina

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Euphorbia rigida, claiming quite a bit of the roadway just outside the kitchen door, also claims all the bees’ attention. Always lots of good bee watching here.

We have Carol at May Dreams Gardens to thank for inducing us to keep these monthly records of our gardens. I can now easily check back to March 2013 and see what plants I’ve since killed or evicted, not to mention potentially discover some sort of pattern to the erratic blooming habits of Scilla peruviana, which seems to have taken this year off after blooming in 2013.

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soon now

Some visual encouragement from my garden today and gardens I’ve visited in the past. Just in case spring still seems impossibly far away.


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private garden, Los Angeles

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private garden, Los Angeles

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private garden, Los Angeles

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private garden, Los Angeles

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private garden, Los Angeles

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private garden, Los Angeles

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