[ Lost in the Landscape ]

interesting, challenging reading

This is a post for the reader who might enjoy an occa­sional book on gar­den­ing and land­scape archi­tec­ture that isn’t designed to sit on your cof­fee table or nightstand.

The British Library has recently unveiled EThOS, a por­tal to elec­tronic the­ses and dis­ser­ta­tions from the UK. If the the­sis has been dig­i­tized, it’s avail­able to you for down­load once you reg­is­ter. Reg­is­tra­tion is free, and so are most of the texts. If some­thing isn’t avail­able yet, you can request it to be dig­i­tized within thirty days so that you can down­load it. Once again, that process is usu­ally free.

Only a small minor­ity of the­ses and dis­ser­ta­tions writ­ten these days is on gar­den­ing of course, but there’s some great work being done on the topic in British insti­tu­tions, with the Uni­ver­sity of Sheffield lead­ing the way.

Do a basic search on “Sheffield” and “land­scape” and you’ll get titles like the fol­low­ing that are avail­able with­out wait­ing thirty days:

Wu, Jiahua. Land­scape mor­phol­ogy : a com­par­a­tive study of land­scape aesthetics.

Jor­gensen, Anna. Liv­ing in the urban wild woods : a case study of the eco­log­i­cal wood­land approach to land­scape plan­ning and design at Birch­wood, War­ring­ton New Town.

Alturki, Ashraf. Atti­tudes towards designed land­scapes in two desert cities : Med­ina, Saudi Ara­bia and Tuc­son, Arizona.

Zhao, Jijun. Thirty years of land­scape design in China (1949–1979): The era of Mao Zedong. (The abstract for this one out­lines some fas­ci­nat­ing ideas about designed land­scape and ide­ol­ogy: “[L]andscape archi­tects first emerg­ing in early twen­ti­eth cen­tury China con­cerned them­selves espe­cially with the design of gar­dens and parks. This sit­u­a­tion remained almost unchanged dur­ing the rad­i­cal social­ist rev­o­lu­tion, which resulted in the found­ing of the People’s Repub­lic of China in 1949 that was led by Chair­man Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Dur­ing the Mao era (1949–1979), the impact of the Chi­nese com­mu­nist ide­ol­ogy on land­scape was far-ranging and ground break­ing. Besides exten­sive devel­op­ment of pub­lic parks for social­ist edu­ca­tion as well as recre­ational pur­poses, cities were reshaped with large hous­ing areas cre­ated for workers–the pro­le­tari­ats, and urban squares play­ing a cru­cial role in exhibit­ing polit­i­cal power, while the coun­try­side was reshaped from a hier­ar­chi­cal land­scape with an exploita­tive nature to an egal­i­tar­ian one, where the broad masses were to ben­e­fit from improvements.”)

Alter­nately, try a search on “Sheffield” and “gar­den” and you’ll find titles like these, dig­i­tized and ready to download:

Gilberthorpe, Enid Con­stance. British botan­i­cal gar­dens in the 1980s : changes reflected by bib­li­o­graph­i­cal and social survey.

Kel­lett, J.E. Pub­lic pol­icy and the pri­vate gar­den : An analy­sis of the effect of gov­ern­ment pol­icy on pri­vate gar­den pro­vi­sion in Eng­land and Wales 1918–81. (Sheffield City Polytechnic)

…and then there are intrigu­ing titles like these that still need to be dig­i­tized though you could be read­ing them in not much more time than it takes for a book to be deliv­ered to your doorstep:

Qasim, Moham­mad. The poten­tial role of pri­vate gar­dens in devel­op­ing greater envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity in cities.

Can­non, Andrew R. Wild birds in urban gar­dens : oppor­tu­nity or constraint?

Be fore­warned. From the skim­ming I did, these texts read like…well, col­lege dis­ser­ta­tions. Even among the authors who write really clearly you sense a cer­tain amount of them play­ing aca­d­e­mic buzz­word bingo. After all, the authors have to tell their profs that they know the lit­er­a­ture and can use their lingo. In addi­tion, the pho­tos accom­pa­ny­ing the texts aren’t picture-book qual­ity the way they appear online. But once you get beyond that, you cross over to a world rich in ideas.

[ Elec­tronic The­ses Online Ser­vice ]

July 29 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: books • dissertations • Electronic Theses Online Service • EThOS • theses • University of Sheffield | 2 Comments »

exotic plant, exotic pest

The upper canopy of my two plants of Aloe bar­berae (aka A. Baine­sii). The left one is the larger, typ­i­cal form. The one on the right is the dwarf form from Mozam­bique. The one on the left is the one affect by aloe mite.

I’m heart­bro­ken that one of the two big tree aloe in the front yard is under attack by aloe mites, the scourge of many aloe grow­ers. The suc­cu­lent expert at one of my local nurs­eries just shook his head when I asked for any­thing that would make the mites go away. Of course I ran to the web for advice. Dis­cus­sions splat­tered all over the charts, from guard­edly opti­mistic to “throw the thing in the trash.” I started to uncover sev­eral ref­er­ences to the syn­drome that the aloe gall mites gen­er­ate as “aloe cancer.”

The best dis­cus­sion I encoun­tered I’ve seen so far is at Xeric­World forums, where the whole range of opin­ions gets expressed by a num­ber of experts. The thread has lots of pho­tos of infected plants and of the mites them­selves. Grow­ers expressed suc­cess with insec­ti­cides (even though mites aren’t insects). Oth­ers had zero results even with ded­i­cated miti­cides. Most peo­ple rec­om­mend plant-surgery, and one per­son treated affected areas with bleach.

A newly devel­op­ing gall.

One of the galls pro­duced by the plant in reac­tion to being attacked by Aloe mites.

Sun­bird Aloes, a com­mer­cial firm in South Africa, the land of aloes, rec­om­mends a com­pletely dif­fer­ent treat­ment: formalde­hyde applied to the gall.

There’s also an infor­ma­tive page hosted by Michael J. Green hosted at the Gates Cac­tus & Suc­cu­lent Soci­ety [ here ]. The author here points out that the gall is pro­duced by the plant in reac­tion to a chem­i­cal pro­duced by the mites, a com­pound sim­i­lar to 2–4-d, one of the main ingre­di­ents in the infa­mous Viet­nam War her­bi­cide Agent Orange.

Closeup of another of the galls on the trunk.

Most of the treat­ments are intended for spot treat­ments when only part of the plant is infested. But my poor plant has a major infes­ta­tion all over its main trunk, and that’s been affect­ing the growths far­ther up. It’s been in grad­ual decline for sev­eral years, but it’s going down­hill quickly. At first I thought it was gophers eat­ing the roots, or the renters next door stop­ping water­ing of their lawn and the aloe roots that extend under it. But I’ve finally fig­ured out the awful truth. Even the plant seems to real­ize its dis­tress since it’s start­ing to shoot new growths from near the base of the trunk.

I step back and try to be philo­soph­i­cal and maybe even mar­vel in my grief that such tiny, nearly microsopic crea­tures can take down such a large plant. It’s all a part of the cycle of life that we cel­e­brate with the sea­sons and the changes plants go through. Only with some­thing tree-sized I was hop­ing for some­thing that would out­live me, not a twenty-year rela­tion­ship that would end in tragedy.

The end of one of the leaves being pro­duced at the base of the plant. I’m not sure if this might be early signs of mite dam­age or a bad reac­tion to some of my dra­con­ian treatments.

If any of you have had luck with some­thing let me know! In the mean­time I’m try­ing a few treat­ments. As much as I try to avoid chem­i­cal nas­ti­ness in the gar­den, I’m des­per­ate. I’m remov­ing the galls and swab­bing the infected area with a 50% bleach solu­tion. I’ve applied the sys­temic insec­ti­cide imi­da­clo­prid at the roots, hop­ing that the insec­ti­cide won’t affect the ben­e­fi­cial bugs feed­ing on the plants nearby. Then I tried to spray just the affected plant–a big 12–16 footer–as best as I could with Bayer 3-in-1, which in addi­tion to imi­da­clo­prid con­tains the miti­cide tau-fluvalinate. I don’t know that these treat­ments will do any­thing other than relieve me of guilt that I didn’t try what I could to save the plant.

Wish me luck.

July 26 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe bainesii • Aloe barberae • aloe mite • aloes | 12 Comments »

are roses dead?

I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion a piece I read in the local paper a few months back. Dick Streeper, gung-ho local rose grower and one of the founders of the Inez Grant Parker Memo­r­ial Rose Gar­den in San Diego’s amaz­ing Bal­boa Park, men­tioned in his piece how “The world’s lead­ing com­mer­cial asso­ci­a­tion of rose pro­duc­ers, All-America Rose Selec­tions, in busi­ness since 1939, has recently lost about two-thirds of its mem­bers. That has caused a sub­stan­tial drop in rose sales and a drop in the num­bers of good new vari­eties being intro­duced. Iden­ti­fy­ing and buy­ing good, newly intro­duced roses is sud­denly more difficult.”

I won­der, though, if the drop in rose sales actu­ally led to the drop in AARS mem­ber­ships and not the other way around. There was a point a cou­ple decades back when the splashy hybrid teas and flori­bun­das with their rose-show flower shapes started to get passed over as peo­ple seemed to move towards the nos­tal­gic beau­ties of the David Austin roses, flow­ers that looked like old roses but had a lot of the mod­ern rose qual­i­ties of more reli­able repeat bloom­ing and some­what bet­ter dis­ease resis­tance. Other breed­ers par­tic­i­pated in this renais­sance and old timey roses were all over.

It’d be inter­est­ing to sales reports for all these plants. I won­der if we, the fickle pub­lic, just got tired of them. Or at least we didn’t see any­thing new and shiny to take their place and stopped buy­ing them in the same num­bers. Roses can live for a long time, and really, how many roses do you need to buy in a life­time? And for fickle gar­den­ers, has there been any­thing new and excit­ing to cause us to uproot some of the plants we have?

I’ve men­tioned before that I had over a hun­dred plants in the house where I grew up. My cur­rent liv­ing sit­u­a­tion is down to just one rose. And that one got dug up from its spot in the gar­den and plopped in a pot this past autumn. It’s one of the plants I planted at my parent’s house in the 1970s and the only plant that I brought with me. I hope it sur­vives the recent trans­plant. So far so good.

Open­ing Flower on Green Rose

Even that plant is the green rose, a vari­ety dat­ing to the early 1800s and pos­si­bly the 1700s. And the last rose I bought was one of our local species Rosa minu­ti­fo­lia (a rose which did not sur­vive an attempted trans­plant). So you can see I haven’t been doing much lately to sup­port rose breeders…

July 22 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: roses | 9 Comments »

agonizing over the right pot

I’m a lit­tle embar­rassed to admit that peo­ple often hate to go shop­ping with me. Plants, clothes, paint col­ors, cheese…it can some­times take me a long time to make up my mind. I admit that these aren’t life-or-death deci­sions I’m mak­ing. But as far as I’m con­cerned that’s no excuse not to pay atten­tion to the process. Some things in life are still very impor­tant.

Dur­ing last week’s plant shop­ping adven­ture I picked up three lit­tle aloes I wanted to pot up for the back patio. I was sur­prised by how quickly I was able to pick between all the cool offer­ings. Some col­lec­tors like one of every­thing that catches their eye. By con­trast I guess I like to col­lect one thing in depth. Accord­ingly I picked an inter­est­ing genus of plant (Aloe) and then decided on three con­trast­ing but com­ple­men­tary exam­ples. I was a lit­tle both­ered that two of the three were unknowns, but I don’t begin to con­sider myself an aloe col­lec­tor. They looked cool and the price was rea­son­able. Deci­sion made.

Then came time to select pots for the plants and for the loca­tion where they’d live. The local Home Depot had some func­tional designs but noth­ing that excited me. Then I was off to my favorite local nurs­ery. Even when I set some basic rules for myself (“noth­ing match­ing,” “a sim­ple design not detract­ing from the plant,” “earth tones or glazed blue for color”) I ended up with lots of work­able options. Since the nurs­ery has a good return pol­icy I picked six to take home to see how they looked on the patio and with the plants.

None of the pots were really pricey, but in all cases they were priced higher than the plants. A lot of the prof­its in the nurs­ery and land­scap­ing biz aren’t the plants them­selves, but all the stuff that goes with them.

So in the end I kept four of the pots and rejected the cen­ter and right of the largest pots in the first photo. The extra pot now houses a lit­tle divi­sion of Aloe mac­u­lata (a.k.a. A. saponaria) that I dug up from the front yard. It’s typ­i­cally an aggres­sive colonizer–the Matil­ija poppy of aloes–spreading under­ground via long stolons. I’m not sure how it’ll do in a pot, so this is an experiment.

Here’s part of the fin­ished edge of the patio. Clock­wise from the top: Aloe andon­gen­sis, A. saponaria, unknown red aloe.

And here’s the last of the aloes, yet another unknown, nearby in its new pot.

In my teen years I did some infor­mal study of Japan­ese bon­sai and ike­bana, the art of arrang­ing branches, leaves and flow­ers. Pro­por­tion pro­por­tion pro­por­tion were big themes in both, and one of the stan­dard for­mu­las was that the con­tainer should be approx­i­mately one and a half times the height of the plant mate­r­ial. In all my pots the plants seem too small, but as we all know plants do that amaz­ing thing: grow. Since some of these are unknown species I have no idea how much they’ll grow. But I hope they’ll come to look more at home in their new digs.

Okay, now it’s time to worry about the next big thing…

July 19 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: aloes • pots • potted plants • shopping | 5 Comments »

solana succulents

Indulge me, if you would, a quick return to last month’s San Diego County Fair. There, in the flower show going on in the botan­i­cal build­ing, I ran across this one class they had for “most unusual foliage.” Flow­ers are great, but so are leaves. This lit­tle dis­play included a few pretty spe­cial examples.

Here you see var­ie­gated milk this­tle and a fuzzy kalan­choe leaf, thick and rigid like many lay­ers of felt.

This was the win­ning leaf, from a suc­cu­lent echevaria. Not the pret­ti­est thing on earth, but it def­i­nitely fit the “most unusual” category.

While at the fair I ran across the dis­play I ran across the dis­play mounted by Solana Suc­cu­lents. The place has been around for a while, but I’d never taken the short trip to north county to check it out. This past week­end I took John up for a quick visit.

Head­ing north, once you clear the thin atmos­phere of Del Mar, you come upon a chain of fun, funky lit­tle beach towns on the way up the coast. A visit to Solana Beach and neigh­bor­ing Encini­tas will give you some com­fort that the 1960s never went away very far, though they did get a lit­tle rein­ter­preted and gentrified.

Solana Suc­cu­lents occu­pies the out­door spaces of a lit­tle house that’s been con­verted into a shop. I liked its tight, funky feel. You’ll find lit­tle suc­cu­lent gifts, big­ger land­scape spec­i­mens, as well as some wild curiosi­ties that’ll prob­a­bly keep a con­nois­seur happy. With so many pointy, sharp plants around, this is no place to take your tod­dler. But for two peo­ple who find suc­cu­lents totally cool it was a great way to spend part of an afternoon.

Here’s a brief gallery of some of the hun­dreds of neat plants there. I tried to get the names, but a few plants weren’t labeled. And beyond that there were some unknowns mixed into the offerings.

A cool red aloe or gaster­aloe hybrid.

Another aloe or aloe hybrid with cool red sum­mer coloring.

Aloe andon­gen­sis, a species with gen­tle spots and a dis­tinct gold aura.

The fuzzed flower buds of Aloe tomen­tosa. The plant is a pretty basic green aloe, but these woolly flow­ers make up for the ordi­nary plant.

Espos­toa lanata: Was it Freud who said, ‘Some­times a suc­cu­lent is just a succulent?’

One of the var­ie­gated forms of Agave lophan­tha, a nice lit­tle spiky bun­dle not much over a foot across at this point.

A nice boxed euphor­bia specimen.

Euphor­bia polyg­ona, one of many Old-World euphor­bias that mimic New-World cactus.

And a real New World cac­tus, one of the weirdly blue-colored species in the genus Pilosocereus. The owner needed to look up the exact species, but he said it wasn’t the more com­mon azureus.

I really flaked on the name of this one. Maybe one of the stapelia rel­a­tives? EDIT 7/16/2010: Thanks to Candy, who has iden­ti­fied this plant as Euphor­bia pug­ni­formis f. cristata.

There was this short lit­tle plant with a bul­bous, suc­cu­lent base. It had fewer than a half-dozen leaves. But what stun­ning leaves. I thought they had a great gold-dust effect to them. And then John sug­gested that I wipe the pot­ting soil off the leaves. Okay, no more gold dust effect, but still a great plant. Not all suc­cu­lents are squat, spiny, leaf­less lit­tle audi­tions for a hor­ror movie. This plant is proof. But I think a lot of the other plants I’ve shown are fur­ther proof of that.

July 16 2010 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: flower shows • San Diego County Fair • Solana Succulents • succulents | 9 Comments »

compost update

This is a quick update on the com­poster I picked up back in early May. Was eight weeks enough time dur­ing a cool spring to cre­ate a batch of usable com­post? I wondered.

Yes and no seems to be the answer. When to empty a com­post pile or bin is always a bal­anc­ing act. The most ephemeral scraps have long passed the point where they’re most ben­e­fi­cial. At the same time, the wood­ier clip­pings are only par­tially on their way to being ideal com­post. You can screen the com­post and use what will go through a half-inch screen. Or you can take the lazy way out and dump out most of what you have and pick out the egre­giously big chunks for fur­ther break­ing down.

I opted for the lazy/impatient method. A cou­ple weeks ago the pile had started to cool down, and I didn’t want to keep feed­ing the pile more scraps, only to have to wait addi­tional weeks to empty it. In total I net­ted about twenty gal­lons of gor­geously earthy-smelling black gold. I’m not sure how much I fed the com­poster, though I know I came close to fill­ing up the 80-gallon con­trap­tion at least twice, only to have the clip­pings com­pact as they broke down.

I emp­tied the buck­ets around var­i­ous veg­gie plant­i­ngs around the yard. At this point the com­post will serve as mulch, with some of the nutri­tion leach­ing into soil as the beds get watered. When it’s time for the late sum­mer changeover of crops the mulch will get worked into the soil and serve more as an amend­ment. By that time I hope some of the big­ger, crunchier bits of yard waste will have bro­ken down even further.

If you want fine com­post to mix into plant­ing mix or to start seeds, you’ll want it bro­ken down fur­ther than this, or you’d break out a screen to take out the big­ger chunks. But for how I used the com­post, this approach seems like it’ll work just fine.

Once I emp­tied the com­poster it was time to start the next batch, mix­ing some of the left­over scraps from the last batch with the new mate­ri­als. I kin­duv liked this photo with it perky col­ors and many lay­ers. (I think it’s worth click­ing on to expand.) Still I’m not the first one to turn a cam­era on a com­post pile: I linked back in Decem­ber of 2007 to Very Rich Hours of a Com­post Pile, a photo project by John Pfahl. It’s worth a look.

Fac­ing an empty bin I sud­denly felt the urge to do some tidy­ing around the gar­den if it meant that I’d be gen­er­at­ing yard wast that I could feed the com­poster. Stop num­ber one: one of the tow­ers of Echium wild­pret­tii that had col­lapsed spec­tac­u­larly over a walk­way and against the side of the house as it reached the end of its bloom­ing. I’d lived a cou­ple of weeks with the plant in this con­di­tion, step­ping over it as I went back to my stu­dio. But it was time. To avoid being inun­dated with hun­dreds of baby echi­ums, how­ever, I only clipped the lower part of the plant for my bin. The top, with its myr­iad seeds is now in the greens recy­cle bin, on its way to the city recy­cling facil­ity. The city facil­ity caught fire in the 1990s from the high heat in their com­post pile, so I have no doubt their facil­ity will be able to break down seeds like this.

Over­all, this has been a com­poster: it gen­er­ates no unpleas­ant odors, and being a tum­bling model it’s even fun to turn the drum a few rev­o­lu­tions to keep the clip­pings mixed. The last few days have actu­ally been warmer, so I’m hop­ing the next batch will cook even quicker than the first.

July 13 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | | 7 Comments »

colder than alaska

It’s been a cool sum­mer so far, fol­low­ing on the heels of a sunny but cool spring. I’ve been watch­ing the tem­per­a­tures in the paper for Fair­banks, Alaska, and most days the offi­cial San Diego report has been cooler. In fact it’s been cooler than almost any­where in the US except for maybe Anchor­age in Alaska. Brr.

At my July 4th party I was talk­ing to some­one there with ties to the Scripps Insti­tu­tion of Oceanog­ra­phy, and his thoughts were that this is typ­i­cal for an El Niño year. The phe­nom­e­non that the locals call “May gray” would be slow to get started (as was the case this year), and the dreaded sub­se­quent phe­nom­e­non the we call “June gloom” would drag on longer than usual. All that seems to be happening.

The gar­den natives don’t seem to be wor­ry­ing about the tem­per­a­ture as much as I’ve been. In fact the late-spring bloomers seem to be hav­ing a field day, extend­ing their bloom, look­ing nice at a time of year when they don’t always. Black sage is often done by this time, but there are a few lin­ger­ing flow­er­ing stems.

For stun­ning flow­ers, though, the black sage has passed the baton to Cleve­land sage. Here’s the com­mon and gor­geous cul­ti­var ‘Win­nifred Gilman.’

…and here’s Win­nifred in closeup…

One of local live-forevers, Dud­leya edulis, has had one of the more amaz­ing years that I can remem­ber. Here’s an 18–20 year old plant from above, all cov­ered with flow­ers. In this photo it’s sprawl­ing six feet across from one edge to the other.

The same dud­leya, viewed from ground level as it cas­cades over a short lit­tle retain­ing wall.

The San Miguel Island buck­wheat that I grew from seed two years ago, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, is finally hit­ting its stride, finally look­ing the pho­tos I’ve seen in books. Maybe the cooler weather will keep it look­ing nice longer.

Among the many non-natives that call my gar­den their home, this is Clero­den­drum ugan­dense, finally perk­ing up after look­ing like a twig until late in May. I think it’s been a some­what slow start for this plant this year, but it always waits until the weather warms to look like a plant you want to keep in the garden.

The com­mon orna­men­tal sage, Salvia ‘Hot Lips,’ is grown for its red and white bicol­ored blooms. I’ve heard that it blooms mostly with white flow­ers when weather turns cold. In the left photo these are the only two red and white flow­ers I could find on three plants. The rest of the flow­ers are white. In the depths of win­ter, how­ever, this plant is often com­pletely bicol­ored, so I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this color change rumor.

Some of the plants that I worry about the most are my Amer­i­can pitcher plants, these Sar­race­nia from the South, where the daily low tem­per­a­tures these days are often run­ning ten degrees above the San Diego day­time highs. For­tu­nately these plants seem to respond more to daylength than to tem­per­a­ture, and the plants look pretty good. Still, they might be taller by now where they originate.

Cool as the days may be, one thing told me for sure that I do not live remotely near Alaska. Mon­day night was the grand open­ing of the first giant bloom of this climb­ing cac­tus, prob­a­bly Hylo­cereus unda­tus. Even if it’s prob­a­bly been slow get­ting started this year, it’s prob­a­bly the best proof that I’m over­re­act­ing. Hardy to not much below freez­ing, one hit of arc­tic cold and you’ll freeze this plant’s tuchas off.

At eight to ten inches across, the only shy thing about this plant is that it only opens as dark­ness approaches. Peo­ple in cold climes covet being able to grow plants like this–or in fact many of our more ten­der Cal­i­for­nia natives.

That’s def­i­nite proof, Dorothy. We don’t live in Alaska. It just might feel that way these cool sum­mer days.

July 07 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: buckwheats • Cleveland sage • Eriogonum grande var rubescens • Hylocereus triangularis • in bloom • night blooming cactus • Salvia clevelandii • Salvia mellifera • San Miguel Island buckwheat • sarracenia • summer • temperature | 13 Comments »

almost red white and blue natives

We had some peo­ple over to view the local fire­works yes­ter­day. To mark the occa­sion I threw together some of the bloom­ing natives from the gar­den for a pas­tel ren­di­tion of the red, white and blue theme of the day.

White was the easy color. Sev­eral white buck­wheats were bloom­ing, and I picked some stems of the flat-top buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum. Its broad, open umbels also look a bit like fireworks.

For red, the dark rose col­ors of San Miguel Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum grande var. rub­sescens) pro­vided a rea­son­able stand-in. If I had some Del­phinium car­di­nale in the gar­den, it would have really pro­vided a bright scar­let kick. Maybe next year…

For blue, the pick­ings got pretty slim. The blue-violet whorls of Cleve­land sage (Salvia cleve­landii ‘Win­nifred Gilman’) were the clos­est I could come up with. As with the white buck­wheat, the struc­ture of the stems seemed a bit like fire­works, with whorls of lit­tle tubu­lar flow­ers explod­ing out from the stem.

The result was a lot less sub­tle than flo­ral fire­works, but I liked how it marked the occa­sion and cel­e­brated a South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sense of place.

Many of the peo­ple who showed up knew I was a plant nut, so two of the host­ess gifts were col­or­ful florist bou­quets. One of them marked the occa­sion by includ­ing red, white and blue flow­ers. But even florists with all their inter­na­tional resources some­times have prob­lems with the color blue. This florist’s solu­tion? Why not dye white flow­ers blue? The results don’t look much like any­thing in my Cal­i­for­nia gar­den so the gift flow­ers and the local posies weren’t inter­mixed, and the dif­fer­ent bou­quets have their own places around the house.

I hope you all had a great fourth!

July 05 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: cut flowers • dyed flowers • Independence Day • July 4 • native plants | 9 Comments »

fairly cool plants

On my recent trip to the San Diego County Fair the hor­ti­cul­tural dis­plays seemed to divide into two big cat­e­gories: exhibits that fea­tured cool designs (usu­ally entered by a land­scape design firm or indi­vid­ual) and those that fea­ture some pretty cool plants (mostly in exhibits assem­bled by spe­cialty nurseries).

I’ve talked enough about the cool designs. Here are some fairly cool plants. Some have been around for cen­turies, oth­ers are fairly new to our gar­dens. Hope­fully the new intro­duc­tions are fairly tame, oth­er­wise you might be see­ing here the new exotic weed pests that’ll be keep­ing us busy for the next hun­dred years.

Ptilo­tus exal­ta­tus \‘Plat­inum Wal­laby,\’ a plant that has been show­ing up in nurs­eries this past year.

Oh look: Another note­wor­thy plant, another ptilo­tus, Down Under.

Christ­mas in July? The Ecke poin­set­tia ranch folks who sup­ply a huge per­cent­age of the world’s poin­set­tias were show­ing off this new white vari­ety, Polar Bear. My county used to be poin­set­tia cen­tral for the world, but cheaper pro­duc­tion costs have dri­ven a lot of that to Cen­tral America.

Char­treuse, green, white and near-black: Lob­u­laria Snow Princes, two kinds of ipo­moea, with Coleus Col­or­Blaze Alli­ga­tor Tears.

Gera­nium crispum, var­ie­gated form. This is one of many foliage plants that have flow­ers that don’t seem to add much to the foliage.

Gosh, yet another note­wor­thy plant with a ‘Note­wor­thy Plant’ sign next to it. (Kin­duv reminds me of those turnoffs labeled ‘scenic view­point’ on high­ways through spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes, as if you needed the sign to tell you you were look­ing at some­thing scenic or–in this case–noteworthy.) This was labeled a ‘Pine Nee­dle Fern,’ but not with its species name. My quick web trawl didn’t turn up much with that name, only a fact that it’s con­sid­ered one of the more pri­mae­val kinds of fern. Very cool, what­ever it is.

Rice flower, Ozotham­nus dios­mi­folius, a plant drought-tolerant selec­tion that, like the ptilo­tus plants, comes from Aus­tralia. You’d think they’d have run out of their notable plant signs by now.

Men­tion the word suc­cu­lent and peo­ple have visions of a fairly desert-ey land­scape. Here’s a dis­play by Cor­dova Gar­dens that instead comes off as a really lush flower arrangement.

Deute­ro­coh­nia bre­v­i­fo­lia, a fairly amaz­ing suc­cu­lent. (Edit: this is actu­ally a bromeliad!)

Mam­mi­laria parkin­so­ni­ana, a fairly amaz­ing cactus.

A nice mixed plant­ing of cac­tus and suc­cu­lents at the Solana Suc­cu­lents display.

A gor­geous pur­ple prickly pear Opun­tia Santa Rita, part of the Solana Suc­cu­lents exhibit.

Agave victoria-reginae, a nor­mally prim lit­tle bun­dle of green and white botan­i­cal joy. Check out bloom stalk in the next photo, however…

OMG, when that thing blooms, stand back! This lit­tle two-foot plant has prob­a­bly pro­duced a twelve-foot inflo­res­cence. How do you design with this plant? Is it a fore­ground plant? Or some­thing for the back­ground? Not a bad quandary to be in.

July 03 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: San Diego County Fair • succulents | 7 Comments »