garden visits

While we were in L.A. we stopped by the houses of John’s cousin and aunt. Here are a few shots of some of their nice plantings.

Poolside plantings at Chris and Susie's

Pool­side plant­i­ngs at Chris and Susie’s

First, pool­side at Cousin Chris and Susie’s house, was this nice South Seas look­ing com­bi­na­tion of leafy giant bird of par­adise (Stre­litzia nico­lai) with the jewel-tone foliage of Ire­sine herb­stii. The lat­ter plant has a few com­mon names like “beef­steak plant,” “blood­leaf” and–most unfor­tu­nate of all–“chicken giz­zard.” Gross. Who thought up that name?

One of Susie’s sis­ters is a land­scaper who was a final­ist on Home and Gar­den Television’s Landscaper’s Chal­lenge, and it was handy to have her sis­terly advice. But Susie made the plant selec­tions herself.

Then it was off to Aunt Barbara’s. One of her friends had hired a ser­vice that cleared and amended a bed, installed irri­ga­tion and then planted a warm-weather and then a cool-weather assort­ment of plants.

Mailbox planting

Mail­box planting

Bar­bara liked the idea of hav­ing lots of flow­ers with­out hav­ing to break her back putting them in, so she had the ser­vice do her own yard. Here are a cou­ple shots of the sum­mer mix, fea­tur­ing zin­nias, salvias, del­phini­ums, celosias, marigolds, por­tu­la­cas, lisianthus, plus some sun-tolerant vari­eties of coleus nearby.

Aunt Barbara's front walk

Aunt Barbara’s front walk

But prepar­ing the beds and plant­ing the plants and installing a water­ing sys­tem isn’t all that’s required to keep these plants look­ing nice. When­ever she has a chance, Bar­bara takes a walk out to her plants and pulls off the spent flow­ers. By her care­ful dead­head­ing, the plant­i­ngs stay look­ing fresh many months after they’re set in the ground.

I’m sure she spends as much time tend­ing the plants as it took to put them in. Still, she’s a gar­dener and enjoys her out­door time. Some peo­ple might call it work, but I don’t think any of us would.

September 10 2008 04:47 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • •

5 Responses to “garden visits”

  1. Nancy Bond on 10 Sep 2008 at 6:38 am #

    Ah, the plant­ing in that last photo is won­der­ful. It’s all lovely, but I really like the color com­bi­na­tion there.

  2. Joe on 10 Sep 2008 at 2:20 pm #

    I want a plant called fried chicken gizzard…

  3. Angie Graeber on 10 Sep 2008 at 5:20 pm #

    The last two pho­tos were quite charm­ing. So well put together and laid out.

  4. lostlandscape on 10 Sep 2008 at 6:25 pm #

    Nancy and Angie, I’ll pass your com­ments on to Bar­bara who’ll be glad to hear that her gar­den made peo­ple happy.

    Joe, I’m sure the giz­zards would look cool with Jenny’s can­nas! Mix­ing chicken giz­zards (the plant) with live chick­ens might be an inter­est­ing con­cep­tual pairing…

  5. Greg on 13 Sep 2008 at 11:26 am #

    Chicken giz­zard. What a bizarre name for a plant! Is there some rea­son behind this, or am I just hop­ing in the dark…?

    Barbara’s garden’s look pretty nice. Dead­head­ing is so key…sometimes I want to stop and do it in strip mall marigold plant­i­ngs around here. I’m sure she appre­ci­ated not hav­ing to choose and actu­ally plant, but I find that so much of the fun. The irrigation’s nice, though, that’s for sure.

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