brown is in

Maybe I was inspired by the gar­den designs of Piet Oudolf. Maybe I was inspired by my recent trip to see things turn­ing brown in Los Peñas­qui­tos Pre­serve. Or maybe I’m just a lit­tle busy and/or slacker-ey in the dol­drums of summer.

What­ever the rea­son, I’ve decided to let the flow­er­ing heads on a lot of plants do their nat­ural thing and turn brown, to see what they look like. These are all exper­i­ments that I might develop into some­thing a lit­tle more fin­ished look­ing at some point. And all this is tak­ing place in the front yard, where appear­ance is every­thing. What will the neigh­bors say? Hope­fully they have a sim­i­lar sense of adventure.

SpiraeaThe plant on the top of this pic­ture is a spi­raea I bought fif­teen years ago. This is before I started my plant data­base, and the label is long gone. I’m still work­ing on research­ing the species. Even the Cal­i­for­nia native Spi­raea dou­glas­sii likes a lit­tle bit of water, but this one in the front yard gets very lit­tle in the sum­mer. It’s even sur­vived six weeks or more with no irri­ga­tion. It doesn’t look the pret­ti­est that way, but it survives.

Here it is con­trasted against the almost-white foliage of com­mon dusty miller, Senecio bicolor subsp. cineraria, a plant usu­ally sold as an annual. But it’s hung on for well over five years in this tough spot. Looks pretty good most of the year, too.

Santolina after flowering, with dried flowersAnother plant with light-colored foliage is San­tolina chamae­cy­paris­sus, also called laven­der cot­ton, ground cypress, and a few other things. I like the swoop-ey rhythm of the dried flower heads and stalks. This is one of those plants I really hate in bloom. The yel­low against the gray foliage for two weeks in early sum­mer is unfor­tu­nate. And the flow­ers smell creepy, too–something between bad med­i­cine and paint remover. At least the plant stays a nice mound of gray­ish foliage most of the year.


Lavender, spent flowers, and pennisetumAnd the last plant in this lit­tle gallery is some basic laven­der, con­trasted against the brown-red foliage and seed heads of red feather grass, Pen­nise­tum setaceum ‘Rubrum’. Some peo­ple dead-head their laven­der, both to lengthen bloom-time and to keep the plants tidier. I like the pointil­list bits of laven­der with the gray-green foliage and the brown of the dead flow­er­ing heads.

I’m not pos­i­tive that dead­head­ing the spent flow­ers off the laven­der does much to keep the plant bloom­ing: It looks good win­ter through about now, and then starts to slow down as my water­ing slows down. The san­tolina blooms once a year, dead­headed or not. And the spiraea…well, the thing that would perk it up the most would be some more water and not vig­i­lant remov­ing of its spent blooms. Poor plant. It had the sad for­tune of end­ing up in my yard as its adop­tive home. San Diego isn’t surf and fun and sun­shine all the time…

August 20 2008 04:41 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: • • • • • • •

2 Responses to “brown is in”

  1. Greg on 20 Aug 2008 at 8:55 pm #

    Oh, you are a cruel gar­dener, aren’t you? ; )

    Actu­ally, we have some plants in com­mon here, tho I am lack­ing the dusty miller and lavendar…both sad­nesses, but I’ll rem­edy that some­time in the future.

    The spirea is deep inside the bor­der and hard to reach for dead­head­ing. Nonethe­less, it’s con­tinue to present fur­ther lit­tle pink flower clus­ters through­out the season.

    I’m actu­ally sorry my san­tolina hasn’t bloomed yet. It is an odd scented plant, isn’t it? Love the foliage tho. I won­der if it is get­ting too much water that is pre­vent­ing bloom­ing. Those yel­low flow­ers really roast yer chest­nuts, don’t they…

  2. lostlandscape on 22 Aug 2008 at 4:09 pm #

    Looks like your gar­den isn’t lack­ing for yel­low, tho, even if your own san­tolina can’t be both­ered to do any­thing other than grow foliage. Think of the bright side: no dead­head­ing of those hun­dreds and hun­dreds of lit­tle itty bitty flowers…

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