[ Lost in the Landscape ]

agave update

We inter­rupt our series on the gar­dens at the Hunt­ing­ton Library with this quick update on the progress of the bloom spike of my Agave atten­u­ata.

At this point there flow­ers have opened on about three feet of the spike. The low­est ones are begin­ning to wither.

So far the blooms are prov­ing to be extremely pop­u­lar with the hon­ey­bees. (Notice the bee on the flower and ignore the bright red car in the back­ground. Thank you.)

In this last image you can even see the pollen that the bee has attached to its back legs for trans­port back to the hive.

Thanks for your patience. With the next post we return to the gar­dens at the Huntington…

Pre­vi­ous posts on this plant:
One agave, eight ways (Decem­ber Bloom Day)
When plants collide

December 31 2009 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Agave attenuata • bees • succulents | 6 Comments »

the huntington’s japanese garden

After vis­it­ing the dense and some­what fre­netic new Chi­nese Gar­den at the Hunt­ing­ton I was feel­ing like I needed to unwind a bit. For­tu­nately a short walk at the Hunt­ing­ton deliv­ers you from the Chi­nese Gar­den to the Japan­ese Gar­den.

Along the way, before you get to the gar­den itself, as if in a cal­cu­lated attempt to tran­si­tion the viewer from one gar­den to the next, you pass a cou­ple bloom­ing plants that have “Japan” in their species name. Although most of the camel­lias in bloom were the sansan­quas, a few of the Camel­lia japon­ica plants were start­ing their bloom.

And there was this perky yel­low species, Far­lugium japon­icum–with a plant label (Thank you!–I love my plant labels).

One of the first details that I noticed in the Japan­ese Gar­den was this walk­way edge detail con­sist­ing of lit­tle loops of thin bamboo.

Whereas many of the hard­scape ele­ments in the Chi­nese Gar­den seemed to be built to last for the centuries–this photo shows one of the edg­ing details there–the frag­ile lit­tle detail in the Japan­ese Gar­den appeared to be set up to cel­e­brate the ephemeral.

All the approaches to the gar­den deliver the vis­i­tor to high van­tage points over­look­ing plant­i­ngs around a small pond. A moon bridge pro­vides a focal point.

A recre­ated tra­di­tional upper-class Japan­ese home occu­pies the high­est spot in the garden.

Its doors slide open so that the view from the house is of this gar­den. Stand­ing out­side, you can peer in and get a sense of how life indoors would look like and feel. This struc­ture was moved to this site in 1912, so it and the gar­dens have been around many more years than the Chi­nese Gar­den next door.

Steps from the home lead down and then back up to a walled garden.

A broad walk­way divides the gar­den into two parts. To one side is a sym­bolic gar­den of stones and raked gravel, or Kare­san­sui.

To the other side is a sim­ple plant­ing of clipped aza­leas, ginkgo trees and what I’m guess­ing is lawn. The lawn and the tops of the aza­leas mounds, how­ever, were cov­ered with fallen leaves off the ginkgo trees. I loved this space in its sim­plic­ity and could have spent hours there.

A very few of the ginkgo trees still held on to their star­tling yel­low leaves.

But most of the leaves on the ground were pro­gress­ing from bright yel­low to tan to brown.

Here’s a sug­ges­tion for the Hunt­ing­ton: How about set­ting up a ginkko hot­line or RSS or Twit­ter feed? Desert parks com­monly offer wild­flower hot­lines to alert you of peak flow­er­ing. Some­thing sim­i­lar to let you know when the falling leaves would be at their most spec­tac­u­lar would be great too. Still, it was a gor­geous effect, and it high­lighted the nat­ural process of bright yel­low leaves aging into less col­or­ful ones.

After the walled gar­den is a bon­sai court con­tain­ing some spec­tac­u­lar spec­i­mens in a sim­ple, rus­tic set­ting. The Hunt­ing­ton is in the process of enlarg­ing the dis­play area to make room for more bon­sai.

My last shots from the Japan­ese Gar­den are of two gor­geous stands of bam­boo. A small grove adja­cent to the “model home” has a small wooden path­way through it.

A more mas­sive stand occu­pies a spot at the edge of the gar­den.

Inside the dark thicket Camel­lia sasan­qua blooms.

What is it about a grove of bam­boo that dri­ves vis­i­tors to carve their ini­tials into the culms? Grrrrrrr.

A final look at the rhythms and con­tra­pun­tal inter­play in the bamboo…

December 30 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: bamboo • bonsai • Ginkgo biloba • Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens • Japanese gardens • those autumn leaves • walled gardens | 9 Comments »

framing the garden view

Here are just a few more pho­tos left over from my post yes­ter­day on the Huntington’s recently-opened Chi­nese Garden.

I men­tioned how there were many lay­ers to the spaces there. The fol­low­ing are some of the doors and win­dows in the gar­den that help to frame the views and con­tribute to the sense of layering.

Leaf-shaped win­dow near the Stu­dio of Pure Scents.

Stacked por­tals of the Ter­race of the Jade Mirror.

These last two win­dows in the out­side wall, the Wall of the Col­or­ful Clouds, are inter­est­ing in that they’re not per­fect squares. The top, left and right sides form part of a square, but their bot­tom sides par­al­lel the con­tours of rolling ground where the wall is sited. Even though you’re look­ing at an ele­ment in the human-created hard­scape, this tech­nique acknowl­edges the earth where the wall stands.

Yet to come: posts on the Huntington’s Japan­ese Gar­den, Con­ser­va­tory and Desert Gar­den.

December 29 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: Chinese gardens • garden walls • hardscape • Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens • views | 5 Comments »

new huntington chinese garden

On the way up to Los Ange­les we had a chance to make a quick stop at the Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tion and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in San Marino. Their Chi­nese gar­den, Liu Fang Yuan, the Gar­den of Flow­ing Fra­grance, opened to the pub­lic just last year. Fund-raising is ongo­ing for a sec­ond phase of con­struc­tion, and the plants that are there are still on the young side. Still, it’s not too early to take a look at what’s being billed as the largest gar­den of its kind out­side of China.

Two stone lions guard one of the alter­nate entrances into the garden.

Hand-carved stonework and elab­o­rate hard­scape details fig­ure promi­nently in the garden’s design. It’s worth tak­ing your time to appre­ci­ate the details close up.

This walk­way resolves to the adja­cent plant­ing in swoop­ing tiled edges.

Pat­terns made from peb­bles fixed in cement take sev­eral forms. Here’s one design.

…And a detail of another designs…

…And an overview of yet another of the pat­terns using pebbles.

These hard­scape details are dense and busy. Plant­i­ngs are also fairly dense, with many kinds of plants used in a small space. Move a few feet in any direc­tion and your view of the gar­den changes radically.

The over­all effect is kalei­do­scopic, and the gar­den encour­ages active engage­ment with the space.
con­tinue reading »

December 28 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: Chinese gardens • hardscape • Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens | 11 Comments »

a little palm springs hike

The hol­i­day break begins with a quick trip to visit an old friend who’s vaca­tion­ing in Palm Springs. I seem to bring warm weather with me: the days are in the upper 70s and the air is desert-dry. The local weather report whines about only “par­tially sunny” con­di­tions, though the only clouds I see are thin white veils high in the atmos­phere. Good hik­ing weather, I think. My friend is just a lit­tle equiv­o­cal but he finally caves. “OK, but noth­ing too strenuous.”

The North Lykken Trail is picked for its easy prox­im­ity to where we’re stay­ing and its promise of nice aer­ial views of the Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Val­ley. The online writeup calls it “mod­er­ately stren­u­ous,” as does Philip Ferranti’s 140 Great Hikes in and Near Palm Springs. It seems doable and fun, so off we go.

Bloom­ing chu­parosa (Jus­ti­cia cal­i­for­nica, this first image) is every­where. And where there’s chu­parosa, there are hum­ming­birds and buzzing clouds of bees feed­ing on its nectar.

Plants of brit­tle­bush (Encelia fari­nosa) are every­where too, but most are just leaf­ing out from their long dry sum­mer­time coma. Soon they’ll be cov­ered in bright yel­low daisies. This plant usu­ally calls dryer areas home but can be found all the way to the coast, and it’s used a lot in land­scap­ing projects.

Here’s a bar­rel cac­tus (Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus) with an awe­some view of the city.

Maybe we’re dis­tracted by the view or I’m too focused on the plantlife, but by about now we’re scram­bling over piles of rocks, in and out of drainages, look­ing for the trail. If we were deep some­where in the wilds with­out a map we might be get­ting con­cerned. But how can you say you’re lost when there’s a big city grid down below as a ref­er­ence point? Okay, we’re not really lost, but some of this is on the stren­u­ous side of “mod­er­ately stre­nous.” But not for too much longer. We find some other hik­ers off in the dis­tance and get back on the trail.

With the trail securely under­foot it’s eas­ier to take in the great rock for­ma­tions and enjoy more of the views.

It’s a bit away from peak bloom but there are a few other things to see. This is one of the desert plants I’ve always found pretty inter­est­ing, whether it’s in bloom or not. Desert trum­pet or pipe­weed (Eri­o­gonum infla­tum) is an unmis­tak­able buck­wheat that usu­ally has flow­er­ing stems with a fat trum­pet­ing pro­tu­ber­ance below the nodes of its bloom spikes. Often it’s a lot more pro­nounced than in these two photos.

Some­times, though, you find a plant that pro­duces stems that are wiry and del­i­cate, with none of the bulging that you see here. Some botanist had some fun nam­ing that one: Eri­o­gonum infla­tum var. defla­tum.

Look­ing at views and plants is hard work, so we take a num­ber of brief breaks, this one in Chino Canyon. (That’s me to the right, the slavedriver ready to move on to the next ridge.)

This is a hike that makes you hyper-aware of the edges where the desert ends and irri­gated human habi­ta­tion begins. Even though the plants used in this home’s land­scap­ing may say “desert” to you, you can see that the real desert here isn’t one that stays palm-tree-green year-round.

Even a col­lec­tion of dry­land plants can require water to keep look­ing good when they’re planted closer together than you’d find them in nature. Also, some of these plants–particularly the palms–would be only found in more ripar­ian desert habi­tats, not here where the home­owner wanted them. Check out the drip-irrigation octo­pus in the lower right corner.

But I sup­pose it’s hard to resist the temp­ta­tion to land­scape with the plant that’s in your city’s name. Now we’ll just have to work on the “springs” part to make sure all the palms have enough water to sur­vive this chal­leng­ing piece of desert.

So by now you’ve prob­a­bly guessed that at least one of us sur­vives the hike. We both do, actu­ally, but are a lit­tle sore the next morn­ing. That’s where the arti­fi­cial springs–the bur­bling hot tub, in this case, in the semi-shade of the palm trees–comes in handy.

And then my lib­eral guilt kicks in. As a tourist am I per­pet­u­at­ing a dou­ble stan­dard, expect­ing water and shade be pro­vided me, when I might expect the peo­ple liv­ing here to make do with less? Okay, if I had to choose, I really could do with­out the hot tub. But the hike was great.

December 21 2009 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: desert plants • desert towns • hiking • native plants • Palm Springs | 8 Comments »

one agave, eight ways (december bloom day)

For Decem­ber 15’s Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day I’m try­ing some­thing new. Instead of show­ing you all the almost ever-blooming things in the gar­den I’m high­light­ing a sin­gle plant, the fox­tail agave (Agave atten­u­ata) that’s finally bloom­ing after a decade and a half in the ground. I posted before on how the mon­ster bloom spike has col­lided with some some nearby plants. Over the week­end the thou­sands of buds on the spike began to open.

In homage to artists who take one sub­ject and try to make it inter­est­ing in mul­ti­ple ways, here are some of the first pho­tos of the plant in bloom. I’m not sure which is my favorite photo so far. Maybe the fourth? Maybe the fifth?

Still, it’s hard to begin to do jus­tice to an awe­some plant.

A few other things are bloom­ing, but it’s Decem­ber and the pick­ings are slim: a cou­ple of Cal­i­for­nia natives, some late-season blooms on Santa Cruz Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum arborescens) and first-of-the-season blooms on the desert mal­low (Sphaer­al­cea ambigua).

Oxalis pur­purea, early in the morn­ing, before it’s fully expanded…

Leono­tis leonorus com­ing back into bloom…

When so lit­tle is in flower, you might pay atten­tion to some of the less sig­nif­i­cant flow­ers on plants that are grown pri­mar­ily for their foliage and struc­ture. These three senecio species would only win “nice per­son­al­ity” in a flo­ral beauty pageant (Senecio cylin­dri­cus, S. artic­u­la­tus, S. man­dralis­cae).

In fact, the agave I showed ear­lier is a plant that’s most often used for its ter­rific archi­tec­tural struc­ture, in part because it flow­ers so infre­quently. But when that one blooms, there’s no ignor­ing it.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Bloom Day!

December 14 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Agave attenuata • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd | 23 Comments »

tomatoes are carnivorous plants?

One of the car­niv­o­rous plant lists I’m on has been buzzing a bit lately about an arti­cle that appeared in the Botan­i­cal Jour­nal of the Lin­nean Soci­ety, “Mur­der­ous plants: Vic­to­rian Gothic, Dar­win and mod­ern insights into veg­etable car­nivory.” (See the abstract: here.) What really got things going was a sen­sa­tion­al­ized story in the Lon­don Tele­graph, with the catchy title: “Toma­toes can ‘eat’ insects!” (The excla­ma­tion point is mine, but it seemed right for many titles pub­lished by the Tele­graph.)

The basic premise is that hairs on tomato plants can catch and kill some small insects. The dead insects fall to the ground and nour­ish the plant. The botan­i­cal tech­nique is called “pas­sive car­nivory,” in oppo­si­tion to the active car­nivory prac­ticed by plants like sar­race­nia that have means to both cap­ture and digest prey.

It’s kin­duv a stretch, pulling a num­ber of plants into what before was a select club of car­ni­vores. The Tele­graph arti­cle men­tions “petu­nia, orna­men­tal tobacco plants, some vari­eties of pota­toes and toma­toes, and shepherd’s purse, a rel­a­tive of cab­bages.” The Lin­nean Soci­ety abstract goes on to men­tion plants “such as Sty­lid­ium (Sty­lidi­aceae), some species of Poten­tilla (Rosaceae), Pro­boscidea (Mar­ty­ni­aceae) and Gera­nium (Gera­ni­aceae), that have been demon­strated to both pro­duce diges­tive enzymes on their epi­der­mal sur­faces and be capa­ble of absorb­ing the products.”

That got the car­niv­o­rous plant folks to stretch the def­i­n­i­tion fur­ther. What about New Zealand’s bird-eating para ara tree? Maybe even the Cal­i­for­nia fan palm with its haz­ardous saw­tooth peti­oles? While I’m at it I might as well add one of my own nom­i­na­tions: euca­lyp­tus, the Aus­tralian widow-maker. After our wind­storm Mon­day night I noticed all sorts of euca­lyp­tus branches on the ground. If you were around when some of the eight-inch-thick branches fell off, you’d be on your way to being nour­ish­ing com­post for the plants!

December 12 2009 | Categories: gardening | Tags: carnivorous plants • science | 11 Comments »

birthday seed-card

A card showed up at my desk, a few days early for my offi­cial birth­day. Some peo­ple can restrain them­selves from open­ing cards until the appointed day, but I’m not one of them!

The card was one of those that has wild­flower seeds incor­po­rated into the paper’s fibers–Maybe you’ve seen them? The basic idea is that you can enjoy the card, and then plant the pieces of paper and end up with flow­er­ing plants as the seeds ger­mi­nate and grow. I really like the idea.

Tree-Free Greet­ings of Swanzey, New Hamp­shire made the card, and the back of the card lists the species of seeds: sweet william, pinks, rocket lark­spur, can­dytuft, baby blue eyes, corn poppy, forget-me-not, wall­flower, columbine, zin­nia, lemon mint, five spot, catch­fly, Eng­lish daisy, sweet alyssum, spurred snap­dragon and black eyed Susan. At least two of them I rec­og­nize as being Cal­i­for­nia wild­flow­ers, baby blue eyes (Nemophila men­ziesii) and five spot (Nemophila mac­u­lata).

After my real birth­day, I’ll plan on cut­ting up the paper con­tain­ing the seeds, putting a small piece in each of sev­eral lit­tle pots, cov­er­ing the paper with a fine layer of seed mix, water­ing them in, and see­ing what comes up. I’ve always won­dered what effect paper-making–a wet process–has on the via­bil­ity of the seeds that are incor­po­rated into the pulp. By now you prob­a­bly know how much I like lit­tle exper­i­ments and adven­tures like this. This should be fun–I’ll keep you all posted!

December 11 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: birthdays • greeting cards • seeds | 4 Comments »

my carnivores in december

As win­ter approaches many of the plants in the bog gar­den are start­ing to retreat into dor­mancy. Sun­day I filled part of a bucket with the trim­mings from the bog and two trays of pot­ted car­niv­o­rous plants.

I have mostly Amer­i­can pitcher plants, sar­race­nia, and I’ve been start­ing to learn the rhythms of the dif­fer­ent species and hybrids. Many put out their main flush of growth in the spring and look pro­gres­sively scrap­pier and scrap­pier as spring turns into sum­mer, and sum­mer into fall. Many of these are now tidied up in the bot­tom of this bucket.

Oth­ers sync up with hur­ri­cane sea­son, pre­sent­ing their most spec­tac­u­lar pitch­ers in late sum­mer and fall when heavy rains can be expected in the Amer­i­can South­east. The white-topped pitcher, Sar­race­nia leu­co­phylla, is the most charis­matic of these. At least two clones have been tissue-cultured and are com­monly avail­able, ‘Tarnok’ (to the left) and ‘Titan’ (to the right). In spring, a mature Tarnok will pro­duce big red dou­ble pom­poms of ster­ile flow­ers that will per­sist long into the year. The flow­ers being ster­ile, this could be con­sid­ered a culti­gen, a plant inca­pable of repro­duc­ing itself except by seduc­ing mem­bers of the human species to keep it alive via divi­sion or cloning. ‘Titan’ is sup­posed to have the unusual abil­ity to pro­duce pitch­ers over three feet tall, though in my too-dry, less than ideal con­di­tions, it’s not as good a grower and clumper as Tarnok.

‘Judith Hin­dle’ is another tissue-cultured, com­monly avail­able plant. I called this Sar­race­nia Trader Joe’s for a year because that’s where I bought this no-label plant. But I’ve decided it’s Judith Hin­dle because there was a whole big dis­play of plants that looked just like this one, and I’m fairly cer­tain that it’s the only hybrid that’s been tissue-cultured that looks and behaves like this. Like its leu­co­phylla grand­par­ent, it gives up its best pitch­ers in the fall.

Another plant that’s still got a few nice pitch­ers this late in the year is this red-lidded ver­sions of the species S. alata.

And this hybrid, ‘Super Green Giant,’ seems to be doing well late in the sea­son, though I’ve only had it since August and can’t vouch for what it’ll look like the rest of the year. Also, it’s lived a cod­dled life in a pot stand­ing in water, not one loosed in the out­door bog with these other plants.

Not every­thing is pitcher plants. This is the very easy-to-grow (some would say “weedy”) Drosera capen­sis, red form, a sun­dew from wet spots in South Africa. If you let it flower it will set seed. And if it sets seed, it can spread through­out your col­lec­tion. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out which of the bog plants can get by with less than boggy con­di­tions. So far this is one of them.

In addi­tion to the bog gar­den, I have two tubs of water with other plants. A very few are still look­ing pre­sentable this late in the year. Three hybrids in this tub com­bine to make a lively red-and-green dis­play: ‘Mardi Gras,’ ‘W.C.’ and a pri­mary hybrid, x mitchel­liana, made by Jerry Adding­ton of Court­ing Frogs Nurs­ery and retailed by Karen Oudean of Oudean’s Wil­low Creek Nurs­ery. All of these hybrids are one half or at least one quar­ter leu­co­phylla, so they retain some of its abil­i­ties to look nice in the fall. They also involve other species that tend to have a stronger year-round pres­ence instead of retreat­ing to a rhi­zome for the winter.

These trays of plants have moved from the unheated green­house, hope­fully to trig­ger the dor­mancy that most of these plants needs to thrive. Another hope is that they’ll get a taste of rain and not yet another drench­ing of reverse-osmosis water. After many weeks with noth­ing, they finally got treated to our first big storm of the sea­son. When I came home last night the trays had almost three inches of water in them. Real water. Free water from the sky. At last!

December 08 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: bog garden • bog plants • carnivorous plants • Drosera capensis Red Form • rain • sarracenia • Sarracenia alata • Sarracenia Judith Hindle • Sarracenia leucophylla | 5 Comments »

house project update

We’re just about done with the exte­rior paint­ing of the stu­dio. Ear­lier I’d asked peo­ple for their opin­ions for plant-friendly col­ors to use. Town Mouse and Coun­try Mouse each weighed in for lighter, warmer col­ors, partly in reac­tion to my say­ing I was lean­ing towards a dark urban gray. Bar­bara sent this link to a house (here, this first photo–this is not my stu­dio) that had been painted a dark gray that had me kin­duv excited. And Greg offered his idea for a bold color choice: lavender!

I was all set to go with the gray in the end, and then decided that it might be wise to try some big swatches against the gar­den. So I painted a panel with a sam­ple patch of a color called “pen­cil point.” And while I was in the paint aisle I grabbed a cou­ple of lighter col­ors to try for con­trast, a pale faded green called “wasabi pow­der” and a light putty-gray-green called “organic field.” (How’s “organic field” for a color name that exploits today’s eco-consciousness?)

Here’s the final color test of pan­els laid up against the stu­dio behind a bloom­ing camel­lia and some emerg­ing nar­cis­sus. I was hop­ing the plants would pop against the dark gray color, but was dis­ap­pointed that they seemed to recede into the gray dark­ness. The lighter col­ors seemed to show off the plants bet­ter. Even the light­est gray-green didn’t seem to be too harsh in the way plants showed up against it.

I ended up lik­ing them all, and after some con­ver­sa­tions that went on for sev­eral days, John and I decided to use them all. Why choose?

This is the west side, the only side that will have plants against it, a com­bi­na­tion of wasabi pow­der below and organic field above.

This is the south side, pen­cil point below, organic field above.

East side, pen­cil point and organic field. The greens don’t clash so badly in real life as they appear to in this photo taken in the tawny light right after sunrise.

…and finally the north, all organic field. (The door has just been painted gray, not shown here.)

Okay, it’s all almost a bit much. As Tim Gunn has said on Project Run­way, “It’s a whole lotta look.” We’ll live with a while and use one of these col­ors for the fas­cia trim instead of the dark olive we used to tie it together with the main house in front. But there’s still a patio cover to rebuild, which will bring in another oppor­tu­nity to tie things together.

Every time I get over­whelmed with what’s left to do I can pull out one of the early “before” pictures–this one of the south side. I’d call it progress.

And now back to things more botan­i­cal for a piece of trivia. The first photo has a shot of a young bloom­ing Camel­lia sasan­qua ‘Cleopa­tra.’ A lit­tle detail on this species of camel­lia ver­sus the other com­monly grown species, C. japon­ica, has stuck in my brain ever since I read it in Jake Hobson’s Niwaki: Prun­ing, Train­ing and Shap­ing Trees the Japan­ese Way:

The most notice­able dif­fer­ence between the two lies in their flow­ers: C. sasan­qua flow­ers drop petal by petal, while C. Japon­ica flow­ers drop off whole, which–as every Japan­ese per­son will tell you–made them unpop­u­lar among the samu­rai class, who were put off by the sim­i­lar­ity they saw between the flow­ers and their own heads.

December 07 2009 | Categories: my garden | Tags: remodeling • studio | 6 Comments »