[ Lost in the Landscape ]

some garden-worthy local plants

There’s usu­ally a big dis­con­nect between going to a nurs­ery to look at plants and going out botaniz­ing to an open space pre­serve like the one I live near. The plants in a nurs­ery will likely be the usual gar­den store sus­pects, mixed in with new intro­duc­tions from all over the globe. But what plants you see in the wilds, except for escapees from res­i­den­tial gar­dens, usu­ally have noth­ing to do with what you see in the nurseries.

Gar­dens are of course arti­fi­cial places. Although peo­ple may feel con­nected to nature while tend­ing their per­sonal land­scapes, it’s too often a nature that exists only at their local plant nurs­ery and nowhere in the wild lands around them. My own gar­den has these same ten­den­cies, but I’ve been try­ing to coun­ter­act them with more native plantings.

Things have also been chang­ing in at least some of the nurs­eries around town, and there’s a grad­ual flow of plants from our wild areas into people’s gar­dens. Most of the larger nurs­eries offer at least a small selec­tion of natives, and the spe­cialty native plant nurs­eries can always be counted on for a selec­tion of plants that they feel garden-worthy.

Sun­day was cool but sunny, a per­fect day for a short walk through my neigh­bor­hood canyon pre­serve to see some of these plants in their wild state. And along the way I saw a cou­ple that I think peo­ple wouldn’t mind liv­ing with.

Tecolote Canyon–literally “Owl Canyon”–includes a city park of about 900 acres, most of it the slopes and bot­toms of a coastal canyon that were too eco­nom­i­cally chal­leng­ing to build on. Some of the park has been handed over to a golf course and some ath­letic fields, but a lot of it remains in some­thing approach­ing its nat­ural state.

The trail cuts through sev­eral stands of our coastal live oaks, shown here with lots of neon green (non-native) grasses. These oaks would be gor­geous in pri­vate gar­dens. Imag­in­ing open­ing the back door and step­ping out into this. But a fun­gus that was imported from Europe in a ship­ment of rhodo­den­drons is now mak­ing these dif­fi­cult to grow in all but the most dri­est gar­den spaces.

Dur­ing the win­ter rains a lit­tle stream runs through the park. It takes months for the water to dry up com­pletely, so every now and then you’ll find lit­tle water­ing holes like this one.

Lemon­ade berry appears fre­quently in native gar­den plant­i­ngs and is easy to find at native nurs­eries. The plants have been bloom­ing in the canyon for a cou­ple months, and they’re still bloom­ing. This species forms a large, tidy shrub that stays an attrac­tive dark green color year round. Later in the year it’ll develop orange-to-salmon berries in the place of the flow­ers. Def­i­nitely garden-worthy.

Lemon­ade berry per­forms best near the coast where heavy frosts aren’t a con­cern, but it can come back if frozen.

These aren’t flow­ers, but I think they’re pretty attrac­tive. The toyon, also called Chrsit­mas berry (Het­erome­les arbu­ti­fo­lia) still had its berries out. This is another plant that makes an attrac­tive large ever­green shrub in the home land­scape. The leaves on this are just a lit­tle lighter green than those of the lemon­ade berry, and the plant more densely branched.

Toyon is a fine native sub­sti­tute for holly, bear­ing these berries dur­ing the time of year when holly would. (And speak­ing of “holly would,” did you know that Hol­ly­wood got its name from big stands of this that grew on the hill­sides over­look­ing what’s now tin­sel­town?) This is also one of the eas­ier plants to find commercially.

I’ve writ­ten recently about a new ground­cover milkvetch that I was try­ing out. A dif­fer­ent species with some­what similar-looking flow­ers was approach­ing peak bloom in sev­eral spots in the canyon. There are over 1500 vetch species on earth and a half-dozen in the county, but I believe this one is Astra­galus tri­chopo­dus.

The flow­ers are small and intri­cate and appear on a plant that can approach three feet tall. This milkvetch dies back to noth­ing dur­ing the sum­mer drought, but I think it would look great when com­bined with selec­tions that have more sum­mer interest.

The canyon hill­sides are over­run with inva­sive mus­tard that is just now start­ing to put on its spring growth spurt. But this milkvetch gets going quicker, and actu­ally seems to stand a chance against the black mus­tard men­ace, unlike other natives that mature later. Here you see it grow­ing up through the trel­lis of dead mus­tard stems left over from last year.

Not hav­ing spent much time in Texas, it took me a while to fig­ure out that Texas blue­bon­nets were Texas species of what I’d been call­ing lupines all my life. Here’s a “Cal­i­for­nia blue­bon­net.” In this canyon they’re more of an occa­sional treat than a plant that col­o­nizes big spreads of hill­side. They’re ephemeral, but would be gor­geous in a garden.

Fuchsia-flowered goose­berry is a shoulder-high shrub with a long bloom­ing period from win­ter through much of spring. You can prob­a­bly see from the pic­ture that it is a lit­tle on the thorny side, some­thing like you’d see on Vic­to­rian moss roses. But the flow­ers make this a strik­ing plant in the right spot. The shiny green leaves will per­sist through­out the year if the plant is given an occa­sional sum­mer sip of water. And did I men­tion “hummingbird-magnet?”

There were other native plants in bloom, includ­ing the perky scar­let mon­key flower. But my trip was just a lit­tle early to catch the the peak flow­er­ing. I’ll post more as I take more trips.

And of course, in a park sur­rounded by human habi­ta­tion, you’ll find a healthy sam­pling exotic species. I’ll post next on a few of my inter­est­ing but less garden-worthy encounters.

March 11 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • landscape design • places • plant profiles | Tags: Astragalus trichopodus • Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry • Heteromeles arbutifolia • lemonade berry • lupines • milkvetch • native plants • Rhus integrifolia • Ribes speciosum • Tecolote Canyon • toyon | 5 Comments »

citrus birthday presents

My father’s 92nd birth­day was last week, and some of my fam­ily con­gre­gated yes­ter­day to cel­e­brate at his house in Ocean­side. He’s not one to make much fuss about his age, main­tain­ing he doesn’t ever feel old. I think he appre­ci­ated that we’d switched the dig­its on his birth­day candles.

His cur­rent house is on a res­i­den­tial lot planted with a guava tree and sev­eral kinds of cit­rus. When we left, we were sent home with a cou­ple bags of tan­ger­ines and tan­ge­los, sort of a reverse birth­day present. Here’s the counter this morn­ing, after we’d already helped our­selves to sev­eral of the presents.

Because of the warm win­ters, we strug­gle to grow cer­tain kinds of fruit–apricots, for instance–but at least cit­rus does well. Unfor­tu­nately, where my father lives, along with much of San Diego County, is under a cit­rus quar­an­tine against the Asian cit­rus psyl­lid that pro­hibits mov­ing plants around. [ My post on this last Octo­ber ]

For a while plants van­ished from the local nurs­eries while they were off get­ting “treated.” The plants returned with labels detail­ing their treat­ment, and ver­i­fy­ing that they were legal to sell. Also, there’s a require­ment that any com­mer­cially grown fruit must be cleaned prior to sale. But for­tu­nately there’s no restric­tion on trans­port­ing and shar­ing home grown fruit.

Unless you have a young or dwarf tree, shar­ing fruit is some­thing you almost have to do when the cit­rus trees do their thing. I was pulling grape­fruits off my tree this morn­ing, think­ing about doing some shar­ing myself, when I saw this unusual fruit in the mid­dle of the tree, cour­tesy the kids next door.

Dri­ving home from my father’s the after­noon ended with some birth­day bal­loons. Here are just a cou­ple of more than a half dozen that were air­borne for the sun­set rides they offer out of Del Mar. My father is a cau­tious human being and would never be caught dead in any­thing like a hot air bal­loon, but it seemed like they were help­ing him cel­e­brate his day…

March 08 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Asian citrus psyllid • birthdays • citrus | 3 Comments »

hanging garden

These are the last of my Chicago tourist archi­tec­ture pho­tos, all taken on the cam­pus of the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Technology.

One of the two build­ings we looked at in detail is the recently com­pleted Tri­bune Stu­dent Cen­ter, which is located directly under­neath the ele­vated rail that cuts through cam­pus. Most archi­tects would have con­sid­ered the site a dis­as­ter and likely would have shied away from the project. Rem Kool­haas, archi­tect of the Seat­tle Pub­lic Library and some other recent high-profile projects, took the loca­tion as a chal­lenge and swooped in with a solu­tion so amaz­ing it makes your head spin.

Noise and vibra­tion would be the worst part of liv­ing below the tracks. But what would hap­pen if you made a big bur­rito of the train by wrap­ping the rail over­head in steel and con­crete? And what if you put holes in the top of the tube to direct the noise up to the sky? Here’s a shot of the exte­rior show­ing the tube and one side of the stu­dent center.

Inside, the cen­ter is a busy con­cen­tra­tion of col­lid­ing lines and angles. And when a train passes over­head, you can still notice it. Only, it sounds more like a home heater turn­ing on instead of a jet tak­ing off.

One lit­tle piece of repose inside is what Kool­haas has dubbed the hang­ing gar­den. Part bridge, part green roof, this long rec­tan­gle planted with grasses brings light inside and intro­duces some nature into the dark world of indus­trial surfaces.

Green roofs are by def­i­n­i­tion on the roof, so you don’t usu­ally get to engage them as directly as you do here. Drop­ping the roof down like this was almost as bril­liant as wrap­ping the over­head rail­way in a tube. Unfor­tu­nately, this is the only part of the struc­ture that uses any­thing resem­bling a green roof.

Here you see the hang­ing gar­den hov­er­ing over the tables of the cafe­te­ria. It’s a lit­tle hard mak­ing it out in the pic­ture, but it’s also a lit­tle hard teas­ing apart all the angles when you’re there in real life. This isn’t an archi­tec­ture that’s all about clar­ity and purity and minimalism.

Although it isn’t remotely botan­i­cal, I enjoyed this other lit­tle detail. An entrance into the stu­dent cen­ter goes through this big por­trait of Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, mod­ern mas­ter of clar­ity and purity and min­i­mal­ism. To enter on this side, you approach the por­trait, the auto­matic sen­sor notices your pres­ence, Mies’s mouth opens to let you in, and then pro­ceeds to shut tight behind you to swal­low you whole. Yum yum. (I’m not sure Kool­haas thinks highly of Mies’s work…)

Here’s an over­head shot of the whole cen­ter, based on the aer­ial photo at Live Search Maps:

Return­ing to things def­i­nitely botan­i­cal, here’s a lit­tle plant­ing of birches next door to the Kool­haas build­ing, at Hel­mut Jahn’s stu­dent hous­ing struc­ture. Whether it’s a mod­ern plant­ing like this or a clus­ter in a res­i­den­tial front yard, there seems to be some­thing about birches that makes peo­ple want to plant sev­eral of them together. Why is that?

Would a sin­gle birch look totally wrong? Would it be ask­ing a sin­gle tree to stand in for an entire for­est? Is this one of our unques­tioned social con­ven­tions, or would a sin­gle birch sim­ply be too trans­par­ent to hold its own? I’ll have to pay more atten­tion next time I run across more birches…

While you’re pon­der­ing this ques­tion, check out the land­scap­ing done at Renzo Piano’s Rue de Meaux pub­lic hous­ing project in Paris which uses many oodles of birches in its court­yards. This design doesn’t clus­ter the trees by twos and threes, but it sure does use a small for­est of them. [ Image by lau­ra­knosp via Flikr ]

March 06 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: architecture • birch trees • Illinois Institute of Technology • Rem Koolhaas | 7 Comments »

a new groundcover

Here’s a look at a new ground­cover I’m try­ing out. The plant, Nuttall’s milkvetch (Astra­galus nut­tal­lii) is native to coastal Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia, and seems to be adapt­ing eas­ily to my coastal San Diego loca­tion–maybe a lit­tle too well!

Las Pil­i­tas Nurs­ery, who seems to be the only firm prop­a­gat­ing the species, esti­mates its height to be 3–18 inches and 18 to 36 inches wide. The plant went into the ground Octo­ber 12, and has topped out at a foot or so high–so far so good. But its spread, now at over six feet, has eas­ily hit more than dou­ble the esti­mated max­i­mum plant size. And that’s with no sup­ple­men­tal water­ing after the first cou­ple of months in the ground. We’ll see if it slows down as the weather warms and the ground dries out.

The milkvetch bore some of these small, ivory-white flow­ers on it in Octo­ber, and it’s never been with­out them in the inter­ven­ing six months. Now that the weather is warm­ing, the plant is get­ting even more inter­ested in flowering.

As much as I enjoy its flow­ers, my favorite thing about this milkvetch is its del­i­cate foliage. It’s fern-like, and so far has main­tained its clean, green-to-grayish green col­oration. I have the plant at front edge of the retain­ing wall next to the front side­walk, so it’s easy to get face to face with the flow­ers and leaves. A front of the bed loca­tion would also let peo­ple enjoy this del­i­cately tex­tured plant.

So, if you’d like a dis­tinc­tive, del­i­cate, low, mound­ing ground­cover for a dry spot in a zone 9 or 10 land­scape, this might be just the ticket, even if the plant might get a lit­tle wide and need to be cut back.

PS: I should also men­tion that one of this milkvetch’s com­mon names is “locoweed,” and the plant is sup­pos­edly poi­so­nous. I have no idea whether it’s in the cat­e­gory of night­shade or no more dan­ger­ous than tomato plants. Since I have no small chil­dren around or pets that get into any­thing other than cat­nip, I’ve never let an inter­est­ing plant’s sup­posed tox­i­c­ity stop me from grow­ing it. But you might con­sider that before plant­ing a cou­ple acres of it.

March 02 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Astragalus nuttallii • drought-tolerant landscaping • groundcovers • native plants • Nuttall's milkvetch | 8 Comments »

“drought emergency”">“drought emergency”

Our Gov­er­nor has declared a drought emer­gency for Cal­i­for­nia. The state rain­fall and snow­pack has been lower than aver­age for most of the recent years, and reser­voir reserves are dwin­dling. My county has been slightly over aver­age in its rain­fall this sea­son but most of our water comes from the Sierra snows and the Col­orado River. So this cri­sis is very real for us down here as well.

At this point we’re on call for a vol­un­tary water reduc­tion, but if the rains fail us peo­ple will be required to reduce their water use 20%, and then–if things get worse–by 40% or more. Since land­scapes con­sumes the major­ity of the water, our county water author­ity has started an adver­tis­ing cam­paign to deliver these water-overuse door­knob hang­ers with the Sun­day paper. It’s also avail­able online: here.

There are check­boxes for “Your sprin­klers are water­ing the pave­ment,” “Your sprin­klers were on dur­ing the rain,” “You have a bro­ken sprin­kler, and/or your irri­ga­tion sys­tem is leak­ing,” “Your sprin­klers are on every day” and “Your sprin­klers are on dur­ing the day.” My local shop­ping cen­ter is a huge offender in the first cat­e­gory and will be get­ting a hang tag from me.

But this pro­gram is mostly about sprin­klers and water­ing habits and doesn’t really address the under­ly­ing causes. There really need to be big boxes say­ing, “Your huge expanse of grass and water-thirsty plants are attrac­tive, but I’d like to show you how you can have a terrific-looking yard that requires almost no addi­tional water,” or “This extremely well-watered golf course has no place in the desert that is San Diego County.”

The very green golf course in the local canyon bot­tom would get a vio­la­tion tag if that were the case. At least, to their credit, they let the dri­ving range go brown with the end of the rains. Maybe in Cal­i­for­nia golf could morph into a sea­sonal win­ter sport, like ski­ing? Maybe I’m delusional?

March 01 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: drought • water conservation • water use | 5 Comments »