It’s a cold, blustery day, as Pooh would say, and I’m trying like mad to mentally recreate the scent of Michelia doltsopa from yesterday’s visit to the Los Angeles Arboretum. But, poof, it’s vanished beyond memory, just as it’s probably vanished from that little courtyard in today’s high winds and rain. Raw, windy days like today are kryptonite to scent.
Michelia doltsopa, from the magnolia family, native to Nepal, for zones 9 to 11. Discovered by Scottish physician Francis Buchanan-Hamilton around 1803 near Kathmandu, while he served in the Bengal Medical Service. (There’s not enough hours in a lifetime to read about all these intrepid, multi-hyphenate British scientists/explorers/physicans/zoologists/botanists. Dr. Buchanan-Hamilton also found the time to run the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814.) I can’t tease apart the scent’s various notes, but can confirm that it is freely borne, almost overpowering. Mood-altering, in fact. I’ve only encountered the scent of Michelia figo before, the Banana shrub. That scent is fairly straight-forward, as the name suggests.
The courtyard has several Michelia doltsopa, the tallest probably 15 feet high and covered in flowers pouring out this heady perfume. 25 to 30 feet is about the norm for these trees in cultivation, though in the wild they can reach 90 feet and are used for timber. For LA locals, it’s very much worth a special trip to inhale that complicated scent and reap the benefits of an exotic, in-situ aromatherapy, redolent of bygone explorers and forests filled with “a more beautiful tree than any magnolia.” (Or so says Frank Kingdon-Ward, another of that rare breed of explorer born from the British Empire.)
the scent of Michelia doltsopa
another look at James Griffith’s Natural Selection series
I wrote about artist James Griffith’s Natural Selection series here, as he was preparing for that show, and have heard now that he’s off in a new direction for a show to be held sometime in 2014. Something to do with glass perhaps? Very intriguing. Still, I can’t quite let go of the Natural Selection series and wanted to grace the pages of the blog again with a few of those images. Must be infuriating for artists to have their audience cling to old work (“Why don’t you paint another Starry Night, dude?”)
“Now, as I paint images of contemporary nature in a medium such as tar, the image is re-framed with an awareness of this moment’s ancient provenance. It underscores its place in time. The ‘painted moment’ can be seen as a brief segment in a vast fluid process we call Nature.”
— James Griffith, “Natural Selection”
Dark Wings – Finch, Tar on Panel
Crow and Tool, Tar, copper sulphate on panel
Young Crows – Natural Selection, Tar, Pollen, Human Ash
For information on future work or availability of paintings from the Natural Selection series, contact James Griffith at james.griffith4@gmail.com.
Posted in artists, creatures, science
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finishing up a westside garden tour
The second garden we toured with Lili Singer on 1/24/13, through the Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden’s series “Thursday Garden Talks with Lili Singer.” The first garden toured can be seen here.
The description of the second garden from the handout:
“The youngest of the three gardens we’ll visit, this family- and dog-friendly landscape in Santa Monica Canyon includes colorful fragrant natives and other mediterranean-climate plants, permeable paving, drip irrigation and smart controllers. Edibles and ornamentals abound, along with birds, butterflies and other beneficial wildlife. Designer Fleur Nooyen will be our guide. She began the installation in 2011 and still works with the owner (an enthusiastic new gardener!).”
12-year-old lab Sadie in a rare state of repose. She greeted everyone individually, graciously welcoming each of us into her domain. Sadie runs this garden. Runs it, squashes it, tramples it, digs it. The owner has the good sense (and warm heart) to design around the challenges posed by Sadie.
An avid lounger on plants, the sticks are intended as Sadie deterrents. The turquoise blue fountain stones are from Arizona.
A young Arbutus ‘Marina.’ Stunning showboat of a tree to shade the seating area off the back of the house.
A fascinating provenance for this madrone is given by San Marcos Growers at the link. “Marina” refers to the Marina District of San Francisco. Legendary plantsman Victor Reiter, founder of the California Horticultural Society, is involved in the account:
“Mr. Reiter had acquired his plant in 1933 when he was allowed to take vegetative cuttings from a boxed specimen that was at the Strybing Arboretum. The Strybing Arboretum, under director Eric Walther, had purchased the boxed tree from the closing down sale of Western Nursery on Lombard Street in the Marina District. Charles Abrahams, the owner of Western Nursery, was thought to have taken cuttings from trees that were sent from Europe for a 1917 horticultural exposition, one of which was probably this beautiful tree.”
Dining area with herb garden. Weber kept in handy proximity.
Luminous bright leaves in the herb garden are, I think, Cuban oregano, Plectranthus amboinicus Plectranthus neochilus ‘Mike’s Fuzzy Wuzzy’
A row of Salvia leucantha is planted in a narrow border alongside the table. When this salvia is strictly cut back hard each year, as is done here, it is marvelous. When not cut back, it’s a twiggy, leggy, obnoxious mess.
The herb garden, with Salvia leucantha in the foreground. Stairs lead to…
The hot tub
Coming up the driveway, the fence is planted with privacy vines, ceanothus, abutilon
Ceanothus ‘Frosty Blue’
Luscious flowering maple. I asked the designer Fleur Nooyen about the scale insect problem that always afflicts any abutilon I try to grow. Not a problem here so far. Fleur said that other than applying dormant oil, there’s not much remedy for bad scale infestations. Don’t I know it!
Looking back at the house, photo taken from an unseen lawn of Carex pansa, a lawn substitute that doesn’t require mowing. The entire back garden is built for water permeability to avoid wasteful runoff, with pathways of decomposed granite and terraces of unmortared, dry-set stone.
Some of the carex visible in this photo. The large swath of Carex pansa surrounds another terrace topped by an arbor. Keeping track of the blues?. Blue fence, blue stones, and now blue Adirondacks. The blue doors are a design deception that lead nowhere. Clever trick for breaking up a long, adjoining garden wall.
The blues in the garden tie in with the trim on the Spanish-style house
Little orbs on the light strings woven from grapevine
Just one of the many benefits of bringing in a designer is that every detail is planned and built in from the get-go. How many years has it taken to get around to building your potting area? 24 years here, and still counting.
One more angle of the madrone and its gorgeous bark. Another of its names is the Strawberry Tree.
Thanks to Lili Singer, the owner, and designer Fleur Nooyen for the tour of this personal, intimate garden designed for long outdoor meals, filled with natives and aromatic herbs that are easy on the water bill. Sadie is one lucky dog.
One more to go. The designers’ briefs for the first two gardens revolved around family, pets, native plants, edibles, permeability. The designer of the last garden is pedaling like mad to keep up with the owner’s enthusiasm for garden antiques. She keeps a personal warehouse container at the ready at Big Daddy’s, which I’ve written about here. lord, have mercy! I’ll have that post up later this week hopefully.
Photos 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 by MB Maher.
Posted in design, driveby gardens, garden visit, MB Maher
Tagged Arbutus X 'Marina', Big Daddy's Antiques, California Horticultural Society, Carex pansa, Ceanothus 'Frosty Blue', garden designer Fleur Nooyen, Lili Singer, Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Garden, Plectranthus amboinicus, Salvia leucantha, San Marcos Growers, Santa Monica Canyon, Southern California, Victor Reiter
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admiring the lines (Euphorbia lambii)
First it was the lush, wavy growth and strong limber lines Euphorbia lambii acquired this winter that I stopped to admire just as the sun was coming up. Euphorbia lambii is another one from the land of all things tender and exquisite, the Canary Islands, zoned for 9-11.
The so-called tree euphorbia, I used to dislike it for the very reason I now love it, the trunks and tree-like shape. Tastes change [shrugs].
Once the eye starts tracing lines, it quickly becomes a game of visual pickup sticks. Following the trunk of the euphorbia led to the pattern of lines in a nearby chair, the original Homecrest and the reason for recently acquiring another pair.
And then I noticed the beehive pot was getting in on the action too. Plant, chair, pottery — the important things in life.
Acanthus, thistle, iris, papyrus — plants are the graphic bible of pattern, the visual codex we’ve all been studying for millenia —
okay, admittedly some people more than others.
stealing the sun
and selfishly hoarding it all to myself
a single cut flower can convince me I’m guilty of doing just that
The long neck of this aloe bloom had been gradually listing, leaning, until it made a full, graceless face plant, of no more use to the garden or pollinators, but still a fine thing for a vase in early morning eastern light.
Posted in Occasional Daily Photo, succulents
Tagged Aloe capitata var. quartzicola., cut flowers
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driveby garden; 1/31/13
Do you consider the color of your house and its role as a backdrop/canvas for the garden?
I can’t believe the luscious, creamy, chlorophylly color on this house was an accident.
The plants are positively strutting and preening against it.
Both siding and trim echoed in one plant. Possibly Opuntia monacantha var. variegata.
Just try to convince me that’s an accident.
scenes from Versailles
As promised, photos of the gardens of Versailles, the apogee of the French formal garden style, designed by landscape architect Andre Le Notre for King Louis XIV of France (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715). With itinerant photographer MB Maher in town briefly for a friend’s wedding, I was able to shake his coat upside down and turn the pockets out for photos from his recent travels. He’s already back to England, then again to France, so do contact him here for any inquiries or just to chat about projects, or if even just for a drink in the local tavern, where he’ll probably leap over the bar and take over mixology duties. He’s an omnivorous fellow interested in just about everything.
Ready for a stroll? Properly attired, bewigged, perfumed, and powdered? Ladies should be outfitted something like this, give or take a few decades in the evolution of costume:
Glenn Close, Dangerous Liaisons, image found here.
Cue the rustle of satin and taffeta swishing over gravel walkways, the whispered plans for afternoon trysts, the rhythmic, metallic clipping and snipping by fleets of gardeners as they maintain the miles of hedges and topiary (presaging a somewhat more reactionary use of sharp cutting instruments to be used upon Louis XIV’s descendants).
Prepare to be awed at what the Sun King has wrought.
“By the beginning of the seventeenth century, with a Medici as Queen of France, the royal palace gardens in Paris were largely Italian in plan.”
— Hugh Johnson, The Principles of Gardening
winter veg
This is my first winter in a new community organic garden. The first summer, which was 2012, was so dreadful that I couldn’t bring myself to post about it. I’ve participated in community gardens in the past, got too busy, dropped out. And there’s no rule that you have to grow vegetables. The first time I saw a baptisia bloom, Hedysarum coronarium, catanache, echinops, so many others, was in my first community garden, when my apartment offered no such opportunities. But the key word for vegetables is s-o-i-l. Loose, free-draining, compost-enriched soil.
The location of our community garden, a former railway easement, was previously the site of a year-long public works project, digging up the easement to vast depths to lay enormous new sewage pipes underground. What the gigantic, earth-moving equipment did to that clay soil will take more than a season to repair.
Everyone gave it their best. We brought in mountains of compost. One gardener double dug the concretized, compacted clay of his plot with a pick ax, until only the top of his head could be seen as he worked in the grave-like ditch. The results were uniformly, miserably the same: nothing flourished. Raised beds might have had slightly more success, but not much.
That’s when things turned a little ugly. By early summer, some gardeners were accusing others of surreptitiously watering their neighbors’ plots without permission, because the soil was always a soggy, gluey mess, the drowning plants stunted. I was certain there was a water leak under mine, because I never had to irrigate, and this was during the rainless season. Many people believed that the compost a lot of us brought in was to blame, that it was “bad” somehow. The fees suddenly seemed exorbitantly high ($40 a season). There was grumbling, self-doubt, even paranoia — raw emotions were riled. (I’ve always felt Downton Abbey was remiss in not portraying the garden staff. Plenty of good drama there. People don’t check their weaknesses and doubts at the garden gate.) Most plots were abandoned and uncared for by August. I left mine mulched and didn’t return until the weather cooled in October. When I saw it again, it was a rippling sea of blue morning glories, covering the trellises, the ground. It’s the devil in a blue dress when it comes to garden weeds here.
My “garden shed.” I repainted the wooden box which delivered my brother’s holiday gift of wine.
By the end of summer, after comparing notes, we were all relieved to find out that everyone’s plot had suffered from the same poor soil problems, that it was nothing more complicated than that. The new gardeners’ nerves were calmed, and the pride of the most skillful, experienced gardeners soothed. What stretch of urban land wouldn’t be a challenge? In fall, winter, and spring, we could try again with the leaf crops, lettuces in all their colorful variety, spinach, kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, peas, fava beans. Root crops will have to wait for the soil to loosen up and come around a bit more.
Good soil practices will inevitably restore the tilth and friability. This winter is already showing huge improvement. I saw my first earthworm in my plot a few weeks ago. The soil is slowly coming back to life.
Tuscan “dinosaur” kale
All these plots had to be measured and bordered, the paths mulched, tool shed and benches built, compost piles maintained, which easily fills up the required six hours of community garden time per season per member.
Any surplus is donated to a local food bank.
The only photo from my 10 X 10 plot is the fava beans above. All other photos are from my neighbors’ gardens. Fava beans, like all legumes, are capable of the neat trick of converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form that makes it available to plants. As well as eating the beans, the plants make a good “cover crop,” a technique to improve soil fertility and structure that involves chopping the plant down just as it’s about to bloom and letting it decompose in the garden, releasing valuable nitrogen. I’m also growing kale, spinach, broccoli raab, snap peas, and a few sweet peas and ranunculus.
I love touring the garden to discover the kitschy personal touches owners add, which speak of the emotional attachment these little plots of earth hold for their caretakers. A woman told me she had been on this waiting list ten years! Soil issues aren’t going to dampen that kind of longing to make a garden.
Posted in edibles
Tagged community gardens, cover crops, nitrogen fixation, winter vegetables
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comparative aeoniums
One of the perks of winter in a Mediterranean climate is stooping over plants, cup of coffee in hand, hair spangled and frizzed with rain, inspecting the beneficent aftermath of the previous night’s rainfall on the garden. Which are some of the loveliest effects to be had anywhere. Growth, succulence, life. A dry summer is guaranteed in a Mediterranean climate, but winter rainfall can often be disappointingly less than our average of 15 inches.
Aeonium arboreum hybrid
Last fall I gathered up a bunch of aeoniums in my garden, five different kinds, most of them sporting their shriveled, end-of-summer, traumatized look, and plopped them into a bed right off the back porch steps in anticipation of their winter show. Though many aeoniums will continue to grow and hold it together in summer, the cool temperatures of a zone 10 winter are what really make them fat and happy. (I don’t know about happier, but I can identify with the effects of winter relative to the former.) Since they’re already overcrowded, I’ll dig them up for summer again and probably move them back into pots, but for the winter, their best season, I wanted to keep these hypnotic rosettes close at hand.
Aeonium arboreum hybrid, less red to the leaf except for a thin edge
For comparison, a different Aeonium arboreum hybrid with red smearing out from the margins and suffusing the leaves
100 percent positive this is Aeonium balsamiferum
There’s not a dramatic dark red one in the bunch, just subtle differences in the leaf shapes, edging, and shades of green. I often buy them unnamed.
But now that they’re plump and gorgeous, it’s bugging me that I don’t know their names. As opposed to when they were shriveled and gaunt in summer, when I didn’t care.
Aeonium percarneum? Aeonium lancerottense?
It definitely has a bluer cast to the narrow leaf, with a delicate pink edge. The color of the flower will help with identification.
This one is bright green with a carmine edge extending in a faint stripe down the middle. Possibly the common Aeonium haworthii?
I bought it as Aeonium rubrinoleatum but can’t confirm the name.
And I suppose the name isn’t really all that important anyway, because there’s no such thing as an ugly aeonium.
Posted in succulents
Tagged Aeonium arboreum hybrids, Aeonium balsamiferum, aeoniums, Mediterranean climates, succulents
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1/24/13 Thursday Garden Talk with Lili Singer
I had the belated, long-postponed, very intense pleasure of attending one of Lili Singer’s Thursday Garden Talks held by the Los Angeles County Arboretum, a tradition going back ten years. Lili Singer has long been so embedded and enmeshed in everything that is good about Los Angeles gardens and garden making that it’s impossible to untangle a first awareness of her. I know of Lili primarily from her public radio broadcasts on KCRW called simply “The Garden Show,” which spanned the years 1982 and 1996. Her Thursday talks at the arboretum never jibed with my work schedule, but I kept abreast of the talks through The Los Angeles Times weekly Datebook, serene in knowing that such fine things were taking place. And then The Los Angeles Times cancelled the wonderful Datebook section, and that news blackout startled me into action, a bleak reminder to take advantage of the good things while they last.
Yesterday’s Garden Talk took the form of a tour of three Los Angeles area gardens. Photographer MB Maher is in town briefly and tagged along on the tour as chief photographer and navigator. Rain had caused the freeways to spasm and seize up, so we shamefully straggled in five minutes late, which turned out to be earlier than most of the other attendees who were also caught up in rain-panicked traffic. Lili said this was the first time in ten years that one of her field trips saw rain. Nothwithstanding the atrocious traffic, I loved it. January rainfall in Los Angeles means all is right with the world.
This landscape was designed to soak up every precious drop.
From the handout, a description of this Brentwood garden:
“Simplicity and clean lines define this Southern California part-modern, part-Japanese, part-woodland landscape with good ‘old bones.’ Situated on a well-traveled Westside street, the outdoor spaces surrounding the Mid-Century Modern residence are carefully studded with ornamental and edible plants from continents near and far. The eastern redbud and western sycamore will be bare, but the ancient camellias will be showing some color. Ryan Gates and Joel Lichtenwalter of Grow Outdoor Design, who updated the landscape in 2008, will join us on site.”
Taking shelter under the carport. One of the garden designers from Grow Outdoor Design, Joel Lichtenwalter, with umbrella.
Acacia iteaphylla the lacy-leaved shrub in the background
Not often seen in local gardens, the marbled leaves of Arum italicum ‘Pictum,’ an enthusiastic spreader, with asparagus fern, euphorbias, and oakleaf hydrangeas sprawling at the base of a privacy screen.
The privacy screen
Leafless Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy,’ one of several throughout the landscape, and front driveway.
Around the corner into the back garden, past the twisted trunk of a magnolia gleaming dark from the rain against what looked like a Mexican Weeping Bamboo, Otatea acuminata aztecorum, but I didn’t verify the name.
The decomposed granite pathway had already soaked up all the overnight rain.
The back garden was sleek and simple, a retreat designed to honor existing trees and the needs of a growing family, with the central area kept mown lawn, a glimpse of which can be seen here, bounded by the encircling walkway of decomposed granite.
The power of restrained use of ornament: The owner’s brilliant choice of ceramic tiles by Sam Stan Bitters, which deftly emphasize the orange culms of the towering bamboo growing behind the fence in the neighboring property, claiming ownership and inclusion of a “borrowed” view.
I wish I could provide a website for Mr. Bitters’ work, but none could be found.
The owner’s choice of chairs was equally inspired.
The weight of just one of these chairs was more than I could single-handedly support.
The owner’s penchant for Mid Century Modern design is also evidenced by the choice of the Circle Pot, designed by Mary and Annette at the Atwater Village shop Potted.
The garden designers worked closely with the architects, continuing the architect’s use of concrete as the medium for the steps descending from house to garden.
Chatting about plants and design is the perfect use of a drizzly January morning. So very, very glad I finally decided to attend one of Lili’s Garden Talks. From now on, I’m hoping to make it a standing Thursday appointment.
More photos of this garden can be found on the website of Grow Outdoor Design.
Posted in design, driveby gardens, garden visit, MB Maher, pots and containers
Tagged Acacia iteaphylla, Arum italicum 'Picturm', Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy', Circle Pot, Grow Outdoor Design, Joel Lichtenwalter, Lili Singer, Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, mid century modern, Potted gifts for the garden, Ryan Gates, Stan Bitters
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