[ Lost in the Landscape ]

our big food swap

Some folks in my office orga­nized an event where we’d bring in our excess fruits and veg­gies and do a big exchange for some of the other things peo­ple brought to share.

My main time of hav­ing excess food in my gar­den is around March, when the grape­fruit tree goes crazy. Now in the late throes of sum­mer, the gar­den basi­cally had herbs to share–I didn’t think the figs would make it intact in a tight back­pack as I scootered to work. So here’s my lit­tle pile of offer­ings: rose­mary, pars­ley, lemon­grass and rose gera­nium. Peo­ple weren’t con­vinced that rose gera­nium was edi­ble, so I also brought a cou­ple recipes. [ Here’s one of them. ]

I didn’t feel so bad that my figs didn’t make it in. Some­one had three trees of green figs, all of them ripen­ing at the same time.

We have another gar­den­ing artist in the build­ing. He had some pot­ted toma­toes and sweet pep­pers to share. I helped myself to one of the pep­pers, Doux Long d’Antibes, a long sweet pep­per from up the coast from Cannes.

And here’s this glo­ri­ous col­lec­tion of hot pep­pers. I love my hot pep­pers, but being fairly coastal I have a hard time grow­ing them. This gar­dener lives inland a few miles, so the lit­tle bit of extra warmth helped her get this great crop. So of course my haul included a few of these as well.

This was the first time that this food swap was tried at the office, and I’d def­i­nitely call it a suc­cess. You reach a point where even neigh­bors and fam­ily don’t want to see you headed their direc­tion with a bag of fruit.

I’m hop­ing we can do this again, maybe in the late win­ter, when I’ll have kale and chard to spare, along with a tree full of amaz­ing grapefruit…

August 27 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: food exchanges • summer • vegetables | 8 Comments »

summer at last

Sum­mer finally arrived last week. A humid mass of high pres­sure from Mex­ico hopped the bor­der fence and gave us some hot days and tropical-looking morn­ing clouds that lit up bril­liantly as the sun rose.

After almost four months with a total nat­ural rain­fall of .05 inches much of the gar­den has been head­ing into its defen­sive dor­mancy. But a few plants seem to be rev­el­ing in the arrival of some real sum­mer heat. Top of the list is this Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, the ‘Route 66′ cul­ti­var, which opened its flow­ers to coin­cide with the hot weather. Some Epi­lo­bium species and clones have fairly small, gray-colored leaves, but this is one of those where the leaves a smidge larger and greener, a bright con­trast to the scream­ing orange flowers.

Desert marigold, Bai­leya mul­ti­ra­di­ata, has been bloom­ing away with the help of a lit­tle addi­tional water, but not much.

In the bed that gets some irri­ga­tion the gin­gers are the cur­rent stars of the show. Coin­cid­ing with the Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia was this kahili gin­ger, Hedy­chium gard­ne­r­i­anum, a plant that I’ve been grow­ing since my early teens, a hand-me-down plant from one of my mother’s gar­den­ing friends. Sit­ting in the back yard after sun­set is a treat with this insanely fra­grant gin­ger nearby.

Of course sum­mer isn’t all about the flow­ers. The fig tree is hit­ting its peak fruit pro­duc­tion this week. It’s the vari­ety ‘Brown Turkey,’ which is sup­posed to do well with less heat than what most other vari­eties require. This has been one its best years ever for me. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what went right this year, and I’m think­ing the suc­cess has some­thing to do with water. This past win­ter and spring actu­ally deliv­ered a slightly-over nor­mal rain­fall that was spaced evenly through­out sev­eral months. Also, last year I applied some water-conserving wood­chip mulch over the bed that con­tains the fig. And John’ has made a point of water­ing the zone around the fig every other week or so. I hope to be able to repeat the suc­cess next year, which accord­ing to the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors could be a drier than aver­age La Niña year.

The gar­den herbs are doing well. A six­pack of pars­ley sev­eral months back is turn­ing out to be way more than two peo­ple who use pars­ley once or twice a week. At least it’s a pleas­antly tex­tured plant for the front of a border.

A six­pack of basil, how­ever, hasn’t seemed to pro­duce nearly enough. Maybe the basil will pick up with the warmer weather.

Sur­pris­ingly the trop­i­cal lemon­grass plants (both the East– and West-Indian ver­sions) haven’t been sulk­ing and are over­pro­duc­ing just like the parsley.

Adding to the pile of edi­bles, our neigh­bor Olinda stopped by with her grand­son. It was all she could do to carry this giant water­melon. John was impressed with its size and sug­gested I weigh it: 30.8 pounds.

It’s one of the with-seed vari­eties that stores these days don’t seem to stock much any­more. Stun­ning rind, don’t you think? One of the many things we’re los­ing in part because of big agra.

I was hop­ing to save the water­melon for a day or two, until we had room in the fridge, but I was a lit­tle clumsy pho­tograph­ing its cool rind in detail. Now I know what a melon dropped 3 feet off a table onto a brick patio does. It stays in one piece, but you have to deal with it right away.

High sum­mer also means the best can­taloupes of the sea­son. This is Scooter help­ing us out by fin­ish­ing a cou­ple of half-melons we had for break­fast. The melon came from the local hybrid grocery-farmer’s market.

And so our sum­mer begins: a lit­tle too much melon and a gar­den peak­ing with fruit and herbs. Life is good.

August 23 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fruits • herbs • native plants • summer | 10 Comments »

scrub your air

This was fun: I opened up the Museum of Mod­ern Art gift cat­a­log yes­ter­day and saw this on page 2, the Andrea Air Puri­fier. Instead of fil­ters or elec­tric charges, Matthieu Lehanneur’s machine from 2007 uses a live plant.

Once again I get the feel­ing that gar­den­ers are way ahead of the curve. Plants to clean the air? Who’d have thought such a thing was possible?

And then there’s the mat­ter of the price tag $199, plant not included. Yikes. But the man­u­fac­turer makes some claims about how the gizmo is lots more effi­cient than tra­di­tional puri­fiers or even plants:

Based on exper­i­ments per­formed by RTP Labs, Andrea improves the effi­ciency of formalde­hyde removal from the air rel­a­tive to plants alone by 360%. Rel­a­tive to HEPA and car­bon fil­ters, com­par­i­son between the RTP Labs data and lit­er­a­ture data show an improve­ment in formalde­hyde fil­tra­tion effi­ciency of 4400%. These data con­firm that while plants alone in an inte­rior set­ting are more effi­cient than HEPA and car­bon fil­ters at remov­ing toxic gases from the air, they are sig­nif­i­cantly less effi­cient than Andrea. Even more impor­tant, the rate of gas removal by Andrea is, accord­ing to the RTP Labs data, over 1000% faster than for plants alone.

Much of the tech­no­log­i­cal magic appears to be due a fan that cir­cu­lates air around the plant and then into the room–something that you could prob­a­bly rig up in the pri­vacy of your own home. (Be pre­pared to water your plant more often.) As a fun piece of con­cep­tual art that was part of MoMA’s Design and the Elas­tic Mind show, the price wouldn’t be that out­ra­geous. But as a func­tional appli­ance I’d prob­a­bly opt for a few lit­tle green machines, grow­ing and pho­to­syn­the­siz­ing and bloom­ing through the win­ter dol­drum months…

August 17 2010 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: air purifiers • air quality • shopping | 7 Comments »

bloom day: natives at home and in the wild

This is why I enjoy grow­ing native plants: On a quick hike through my nearby Tecolote Canyon Nat­ural Park there were a few plants bloom­ing away, hardly aware it’s mid­sum­mer and three months since the last real rain. And when I came home some of the same species were bloom­ing just as exu­ber­antly in my gar­den. That’s a great sense of con­nec­tion with the wild, and I get a sense that parts of my gar­den are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ti­nu­ity of nature.

The com­mon Cal­i­for­nia flat-top buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum:

In the wilds (actu­ally a reveg park­ing strip) with sea­side daisy (Encelia Californica)

At home, one the eas­ment slope gar­den, doing bat­tle with the neighbor’s sacred iceplant

Blad­der­pod, Iso­meris arborea, with its bee-magnet yel­low flowers.

Trail-side

At home, in a mixed plant­ing of natives and exotics

The totally awe­some sacred datura, Datura wrightii.

In the wilds, the form with a pale laven­der edging

Also in the wilds, the all-white form

…at home, also on the slope garden

Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna (“naked ladies”) is native to South Africa, but there were two lit­tle clus­ters in the canyon. They don’t really col­o­nize the canyons and gen­er­ally aren’t con­sid­ered inva­sive. They were a sur­prise and I won­der if some­one planted them here. And at home I also hap­pened to have the first of them bloom­ing in the garden.

One of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…another of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…and the amaryl­lis back home, in the garden

In the canyon there were a few other things going at it:

Blue elder­berry blooms and fruit (Sam­bu­cus nigra ssp. cerulea, for­merly Sam­bu­cus mex­i­cana)

Oenothera elata, a prim­rose that blooms on tall spires

Lau­rel sumac, Mal­osma laurinia

Coy­ote melon (Cucur­bita palmata). It’s gen­er­ally con­sid­ered ined­i­ble. I tried one once. I agree.

Nes­tled in the dead stems of the inva­sive fen­nel is this other non-native. It looks like some sort of gar­den nicotiana

Your basic Rosa cal­i­for­nica flower…

…and pods

The very cool fiber optic grass, Isolep­sis cernua

And at home were some Cal­i­for­nia plants that either weren’t bloom­ing in the canyon or aren’t native to this area:

Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astra­galus nut­talii, with its noisy rattle-like pods

Cal­i­for­nia sealaven­der (Limo­nium cal­i­for­nicum) the only sta­t­ice native to California

Cleve­land sage at the end of its sum­mer bloom­ing, with the gor­geous grass, pur­ple three awn (Aris­tida pur­purea)

San Diego sun­flower (Bahiop­sis lacini­ata), not look­ing great, but con­sid­er­ing it’s bat­tling ice­plant on the slope gar­den and hasn’t been rained on or watered in over three months, it’s not doing that badly

The desert mal­low (Sphaer­al­cea ambigua) could prob­a­bly stand being cut back a bit, but it still has a small few blooms on its almost leaf­less stems. I’m really com­ing to enjoy the light green, slightly yel­low color of the plant, a great con­trast against sil­ver or dark green foliage

If the naked lady amaryl­lis weren’t porno­graphic enough, here are some of the non-natives bloom­ing in the gar­den right now. It’s August, and the flower count isn’t what it was three months ago.

Salvia Hot Lips and a big pink bougainvillea

Closer view of Salvia Hot Lips. As the weather warms, this one of three plants is show­ing more red with the white in the flow­ers. The other two plants are still mostly white

A really fra­grant gin­ger, Hedy­chium coc­cineum ‘Tara’

Soci­ety gar­lic (Tul­baghia vio­lacea) is a com­mon xeriscape plant, but it’s so adapt­able that it’ll grow with its roots stand­ing in water, as you see here in the pond. It has as much of an aroma as the gin­ger, but I wouldn’t exactly call it fragrant…

But­ter­fly bush, Clero­den­drum myri­coides. The flow­ers are nice, but peo­ple don’t talk enough about how pleas­ant the plant smells when you touch it

…and under­neath the but­ter­fly bush, this tidy lit­tle lead wort or dwarf plumbago (Cer­atostigma plumbagi­noides). It does fine in dap­pled sun­light with very lit­tle added water

A cac­tus and some suc­cu­lents drap­ing over a wall. Bloom­ing is Cras­sula fal­cata, in the same big fam­ily as all the Cal­i­for­nia Dud­leya species

…and a closeup of the Cras­sula flow­ers, show­ing the red petals and lit­tle gold shocks of the sta­mens. This one’s worth look­ing at up close

These last plants def­i­nitely aren’t Cal­i­for­nia natives, but they’re native to some­where. If I lived in those places, I’d prob­a­bly want them in my garden.

Check out the other gar­den­ers around the world par­tic­i­pat­ing in this month’s Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing this event.

August 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • hiking • native plants | 16 Comments »

my haul

In the spirit of the “haul video,” the art form in which a fashion-conscious usu­ally young con­sumer describes his or her lat­est finds from the last shop­ping trip to the mall–a video in which the word “cute” has to appear at least four­teen times–let me show off my lat­est finds on my recent excur­sion to the Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion. (You didn’t think I’d go there and only pick up a cou­ple plants for Aunt Bar­bara, did you?)

This first photo, a dark-flowered selec­tion of desert wil­low, Chilop­sis lin­earis, is a plant I did not buy. But if I man­age to kill of one of my exist­ing large shrub-sized plants in a spot that receives some sum­mer water, this plant will be near the top of my list.

I also didn’t picky up any of the cool selec­tion of pots.

But I did buy a few plants, including:

Ver­bena lilacina ‘Paseo Ran­cho,’ a light pink selec­tion of the usu­ally laven­der Cedros Island ver­bena. You might call its color a lit­tle on the pale and insipid side, but it’s dif­fer­ent from the other clones in my gar­den. Insipid but dif­fer­ent, and maybe just a lit­tle cute. Rea­son enough to have it.

Cliff let­tuce, or Dud­leya cae­spi­tosa. Cute, huh? Ever the col­lec­tor, I think it might be fun to explore some of the dozens of Dud­leya species that grow in California.

Coast buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum lat­i­folium. I don’t really know this plant–which is some­times rea­son enough to try to get to know it bet­ter. It’s been described as being sim­i­lar to San Miguel Island buck­wheat (E. grande). To me it looks like the leaves are a lit­tle more deluxe, thicker, fuzzier.

This plant, along with the pre­ced­ing two selec­tions, isn’t native to my imme­di­ate area. But being coastal or island plants, I’m hop­ing they’ll like what I have to offer them. The rest of my haul, how­ever, con­sists of species that grow in my county, some of them not far from me.

San Diego rag­weed, San Diego ambrosia–whatever you want to call Ambrosia pumila. The leaves are really del­i­cately cut, like some artemisias, and I think this diminu­tive plant really does qual­ify as “cute.” This is a species that’s listed on the CNPS list of rare plants and pro­posed for the Fed­eral Endan­gered Species list. It’s weird to travel 140 miles to get a mile that grows nearby, but that’s the respon­si­ble thing to do. Our local CNPS plant sales also have offered this plant. Yank­ing these up out of the ground where they grow nearby would be grossly tacky and totally illegal.

San Diego wil­lowy monardella, Monardella linoides ssp. viminea, is another local plant that’s listed by both the state and fed­eral agen­cies as endan­gered. It’ll have del­i­cate whorls of laven­der flow­ers when it blooms. But like most (or maybe all?) monardel­las it has intensely fra­grant leaves that I can enjoy right now.

And finally, one of my favorite of the softly del­i­cate grasses, Aris­tida pur­purea, pur­ple three awn. It’s slightly more coarse than the pop­u­lar Mex­i­can feather grass that’s non-native and start­ing to look like it’s inva­sive. But it moves just as amaz­ingly in the wind, and has a del­i­cate pur­ple tinge part of the year, some­thing feather grass doesn’t offer.

August isn’t high sea­son for plant­ing, but with this cool summer-that-never-was I fig­ured I could get away with it. And really, here, not that far from the coast, the main issue with many plants is water.

I hate to show newly installed plants before they have a chance to fill in, but here’s the fin­ished bed where all of the plants except for the monar­das went into. These Cal­i­for­ni­ans should be bet­ter choices for this exposed, dry spot than some of the exotics that I had in there before. Not shown in this photo is a very happy Cleve­land sage and some ecsta­tic pur­ple three awn plants that I grew from seed.

I haven’t counted all the “cutes” in my writeup. I know I’ve failed mis­er­ably, partly because I really dis­like the word unless I’m dis­cussing my extremely cute cat. I will try to do bet­ter if I decide to com­mit my shop­ping trips to video.

August 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: native plants • shopping • Theodore Payne Foundation | 5 Comments »

but what would aunt barbara like?

A lit­tle over a week ago we went up for a long week­end to visit Aunt Bar­bara in LA’s San Fer­nando Val­ley. The Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion, one of the Southland’s major sources of Cal­i­for­nia native plants was only half a dozen free­way exits away. I’ve mail-ordered seeds from them but I’d never been to the nurs­ery. Mid­sum­mer isn’t high plant­ing sea­son. Vis­it­ing to buys plants might not be the best idea. Still, alright, you know where this is headed…

Bar­bara was busy with a friend, but John and I took the trip to Sun­land, the com­mu­nity sit­u­ated near where the Val­ley reaches toward the Los Ange­les River and meets the San Gabriel Moun­tains. Urban sprawl quickly gives way to large, dusty lots. Man­i­cured land­scap­ing starts to fade away as the look and smell of the foothills blows in from the east. What a great loca­tion for a native plant nursery.

The perky Baja fairy duster, look­ing a lot like many Aus­tralian plants South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­ans are used to seeing

The Matil­ija pop­pies were past their peak, but there were still a few around

Late July isn’t high sea­son for native flow­ers. The last of the season’s Matil­ija poppy flow­ers (Rom­neya) appeared here and there on the nurs­ery grounds and Baja fairy duster (Cal­lian­dra cal­i­for­nica) pro­vided some blooms next to the park­ing lot. (Inter­est­ingly, accord­ing to the Tree of Life Nurs­ery, Theodore Payne–the per­son, not the foundation–was respon­si­ble for dis­cov­er­ing and intro­duc­ing the ‘White Cloud’ cul­ti­var of Rom­neya that is so often grown.)

Some­thing else that was bloom­ing: Den­drome­con harfordii

Also in bloom: Salvia pachy­phylla with its gor­geous pink bracts against the vio­let flowers

A lit­tle trail leads to the lit­tle rise of land over­look­ing the nurs­ery. The sign points to “Wild­flower Hill.”

This time of year it’s pretty much Cal­i­for­nia Flat-Top Buck­wheat Hill, which isn’t at all a bad thing. It’s a sub­tle and gor­geous plant. But if you came expect­ing Butchart Gar­dens, well you’d be dis­ap­pointed. Of course, if a taste of wild Cal­i­for­nia is what you’re after, this is your place.

Of the three retail native plant nurs­eries I’ve been to over the last sev­eral years, this one is prob­a­bly the wildest and the least “garden”-like. There are pock­ets with benches and pic­nic tables, but the main nar­ra­tive here is that you’ve stepped over the edge into wilder­ness. Shut your eyes and you hear birds every­where. Look away from the build­ings and you could eas­ily feel that you’re far­ther than four blocks from the sub­urbs. (By con­trast, San Juan Capistrano’s Tree of Life Nurs­ery feels the most nur­tured, tended and garden-like. The Escon­dido branch of Las Pil­i­tas Nurs­ery falls some­where in between.)

We were stay­ing with Aunt Bar­bara, and I wanted to go back with a cou­ple plants that might fit com­fort­ably into her gar­den, both in the way it looks and the way she waters it. To give you a taste, here’s a shot of her front walkway.

…and here’s another shot at the Payne Foun­da­tion grounds, of the beau­ti­ful spires of spent sage against the brown­ing land­scape. This kind of scene gives me a real sense of nature’s sub­tle cycles, but I had a feel­ing Aunt Bar­bara wouldn’t go for it. What plants would rec­on­cile the deep divide?

The short list of the nursery’s many selec­tions included sea­side daisy (var­i­ous cul­ti­vars of Erigeron glau­cus), bush snap­dragon (Galvezia spe­ciosa), Cal­i­for­nia aster (Aster chilen­sis) and maybe even one of the Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sias. Bar­bara men­tioned lov­ing the flow­ers of Matil­ija poppy, but that’s a plant pur­chase I think a per­son needs to make for them­selves, after they’ve seen how vig­or­ous it can be and how un-cottage gar­deney it starts to look this time of year.

The win­ners?

The only flower on the Vene­ga­sia carpe­sioides that I picked out for Bar­bara. I wished that it had a few more.

Canyon sun­flower (Vene­ga­sia carpe­sioides) and the ever-popular Pen­ste­mon Margerita B.O.P. I planted them before we left, and I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed that they A) sur­vive, and B) show Bar­bara that there are some natives that would fit eas­ily into her Cal­i­for­nia cot­tage gar­den. What other plants would the rest of you sug­gest for all the Aunt Barbara’s out there? What plants would you pick that could mix fairly eas­ily with exist­ing gar­den bor­ders and bloom much of the year?

And some of the flow­ers on the Pen­ste­mon Mar­garita B.O.P.

August 11 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden • places | Tags: native plants • Theodore Payne Foundation | 11 Comments »

getty garden, light and shadow

I try to stop by Robert Irwin’s Cen­tral Gar­den at the Getty Cen­ter when­ever I’m nearby. This early august day was bright but cool, a per­fect day for a stroll through the gar­den to see what new things I’d find.

If you’ve never been to the gar­den, it divides into two large parts: a cen­tral bowl hold­ing a maze of two col­ors of clipped aza­leas and its sur­round­ing plant­i­ngs, and, above it, a straight water­course that is shaded all along its length by Lon­don plane trees, a cousin of the Amer­i­can sycamore.

This trip I was con­cen­trat­ing on how the idea of light and shadow, dark and light played out in the over­all design and plantings.

To expe­ri­ence the upper water­course, you fol­low a path that zigzags back and forth. It takes you in and out of the shade and shel­ter of the trees, let­ting you expe­ri­ence the bright Los Ange­les sun­light and how it con­trasts with the dap­pled light the trees pro­vide in the spring, sum­mer and fall.

The water­course near the top of the Cen­tral Garden

The water­course, the shel­tered core of this top gar­den, changes from a noisy stream with large stones in its path at the top, to a water­way that glides qui­etly over a tex­tured streambed down below.

The effect of the dap­pled sun­light is repeated in the plant­i­ngs. Dark, almost black-leaved, plants alter­nate with light-colored ones. In this photo it’s almost hard to dis­tin­guish the alter­nat­ing light and shadow of the trees above from the dap­pled plant­i­ngs below. It’s a lit­tle con­fus­ing, a tad dis­ori­ent­ing. And if you’re fas­ci­nated with the effects of light and shadow as I am, you might find it a qui­etly thrilling experience.

Even this lit­tle detail, a plant­ing of suc­cu­lents, plays with con­trasts, light and dark. It’s a lit­tle cor­ner that would look great in a home gar­den, and here it fur­ther helps to rein­force the vibra­tions of light and dark in the upper garden.

When I first saw the gar­den I thought the plant­i­ngs were a lit­tle chaotic. All this light and dark, all this con­tin­ual con­trast­ing of col­ors and plant shapes seemed rest­less. Small doses would look great as perky lit­tle con­tainer plant­i­ngs, but it seemed way too much of a good thing. It seemed like a lit­tle Eng­lish cot­tage gar­den doped up on steroids.

But I’ve been chang­ing my mind. All this crazi­ness rein­forces the intense vibra­tion of con­trasts that you expe­ri­ence walk­ing the zigzag path.

Once you make your way out of the upper por­tion of the gar­den you’re set free into the rel­a­tive calm of the lower bowl. There’s no more zigzag­ging in and out of the shade, there’s no more quick shift­ing from light to dark. Still, the sunken design of the lower gar­den ensures that one of the sides will expe­ri­ence shade dur­ing most of the day. And the plant­i­ngs down here, still alter­nat­ing dark and light, tell you that you’re still in the same garden.

Yes, each trip here I see some­thing new. But I also real­ize that mak­ing this kind of gar­den hap­pen is such an extreme com­mit­ment of resources and labor.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out a way to pho­to­graph the cap­i­tal out­lay it takes to keep this gar­den look­ing great. But I’d like to end this post with a trib­ute to the heroes, those ded­i­cated gar­den­ers who make this place a gar­den worth vis­it­ing sev­eral times a year.

Thanks, guys!

August 07 2010 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: J. Paul Getty Museum • light and shadow • Robert Irwin | 8 Comments »

tulip mania paintings

Here’s a really inter­est­ing paint­ing that I encoun­tered Sun­day while I was vis­it­ing the Getty Museum. It’s “The Tulip Folly,” by the 19th cen­tury French aca­d­e­mic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, who was hav­ing a big show in one of the gal­leries. (The paint­ing was on loan from Baltimore’s Wal­ters Art Museum.)

The scene takes place dur­ing the 1630s tulip mania and shows a sol­dier guard­ing a pot­ted tulip, while other troops stomp out fields of flow­er­ing bulbs. The piece was painted in 1882 dur­ing a time of eco­nomic dis­tress around the Paris Bourse Crash, a time even more eco­nom­i­cally unset­tled than our own. Gérôme was paint­ing tulips and the tulip folly alright, but he was also com­ment­ing on his own day, which saw a great stock mar­ket crash three and a half cen­turies after the col­lapse of tulip values.

While look­ing for images of this paint­ing I ran across a cou­ple other inter­est­ing depic­tions of the tulip mania. Both were painted by Dutch artists closer to the actual tulip mar­ket crash, and both paint­ings reside in Haarlem’s Frans Hals Museum.

Hen­drik Ger­ritsz Pot painted an alle­gory of Flora’s Wagon of Fools around 1640. This paint­ing shows a cart­load of tulip-deranged wackos lead­ing the com­mon work­ers into the sea. Sub­sti­tute Wall Street bankers for the tulip-snorting loonies and I think it has spe­cial res­o­nance for us today.

Jean Brueghel the Younger’s Satire of the Tulip Frenzy is even unkinder towards the par­tic­i­pants in the frenzy. They appear in the paint­ing as mon­keys. Smack!

As unflat­ter­ing as the spec­u­la­tors appear, in some ways the pre­vi­ous image of Flora’s wagon comes off as being a stronger indict­ment of the dam­age done to a gen­eral pop­u­la­tion by a mon­eyed elite. Still, Brueghel’s mon­keys are pretty wild and I like his work bet­ter as a painting.

Some­times I feel a lit­tle silly chas­ing after an unusual plant that I absolutely must have. (If you hear of a land run on San Diego rag­weed, I might have some­thing to do with it…) Maybe these images, com­bined with the expe­ri­ence of our cur­rent eco­nomic times, will slap a lit­tle bit of san­ity into me.

August 04 2010 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: economics • Hendrik Gerritsz Pot • Jean Brueghel the Younger • Jean-Leon Gerome • tulip mania • tulips | 7 Comments »

art from potatoes

The Los Ange­les County Museum of Art is cur­rently fea­tur­ing a series of instal­la­tions and exhi­bi­tions look­ing at notions of food, cul­ture and art. The pro­gram, Eat­LACMA, is co-curated by the col­lec­tive that goes by the name of Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young) along with LACMA cura­tor Michele Urton.

Åsa Son­jas­dot­ter has con­tributed The Way Pota­toes Go, a vaguely California-shaped planter con­tain­ing soil, potato plants, plant labels and straw mulch. In the piece she explores the 10,000 years of his­tory and cul­ture asso­ci­ated with pota­toes, one of the plants with the longest and rich­est narratives.

From the artist’s state­ment: “The vari­eties exist as a result of coin­ci­dences, acci­dents, plan­ning, vio­lence, and care­ful cus­tody over thou­sands of years. Through trac­ing their dif­fer­ent back­grounds a his­tory of human desire appears.” Go to [ http://eatlacma.org/gardens/ ] and click on The Way Pota­toes Go on the map for details on the varieties.

If you can’t check out the piece in per­son here are a few ran­dom details of it:

You can also click [ here ] for fur­ther infor­ma­tion on how the artist got inter­ested in this, one of the most pri­mal of foods.

Over the sum­mer this gar­den of his­tor­i­cal pota­toes will be viewed by tens of thou­sands of peo­ple. Although many gar­den­ers will already be famil­iar with some of the rich his­tory of pota­toes, this instal­la­tion will bring that knowl­edge and appre­ci­a­tion to a wider audi­ence. And the artist’s story is a com­pelling read.

August 02 2010 | Categories: art • gardening | | 2 Comments »