[ Lost in the Landscape ]

hydrate!

Sum­mer heat finally arrived–in Sep­tem­ber. Two hours north, Los Ange­les hit 113 degrees on Mon­day, a degree hot­ter than Death Val­ley. At least one San Diego County town hit 109 on Mon­day, though down here near the coast it didn’t get much more than the low 90s. Still, really hot by what we’re used to.

Now that it’s turned hot I feel like as pun­ish­ment I need to write on the chalk­board two hun­dred times:

I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold summer…

It was so hot that the con­tents of the snack bot­tle of vit­a­min Cs (aka choco­late chips) were turn­ing into choco­late goo. John’s emer­gency response to stick them in the fridge averted disaster.

Over the week­end, know­ing it was going to be a stretch of hot weather ahead, I tried to give a seri­ous soak to the plants most sus­cep­ti­ble to dry­ing out. Any­thing in a pot got a good drink–a les­son I learned in August when we had two sur­prise days of hot sum­mer sum­mer weather. In August this Cean­othus lleu­co­der­mis that I’d care­fully prop­a­gated from seed didn’t sur­vive the hot spell to be planted this fall.

In addi­tion to the pot­ted plants, a small group that was new in August got an extra water­ing out of the weekly cycle. And the remain­ing zones of water-intensive plants and bogs got the extra soak.

Some plants didn’t seem to be both­ered by the heat or dry­ness. This native blad­der­pod (Iso­meris arborea) has been one of the most reli­able gar­den plants, expand­ing and bloom­ing like crazy in a spot where it has shaded roots. Another blad­der­pod in a more exposed loca­tion sub­sists on a sim­i­lar amount of water, though it’s just one third the size of this plant.

The non-native Solanum pyra­can­thum is another plant that gets by with close to zero added water in a semi-sheltered spot near the first blad­der­pod. It has a much longer bloom sea­son than my native night­shades, and it has the added bonus of a row of dec­o­ra­tive orange spikes that dec­o­rate the cen­ter of each leaf.

A pot­ted Stapelia gigan­tea also seemed to enjoy the hot weather. You can tell by the burned stems that this plant prob­a­bly doesn’t get enough mois­ture. Still, it sur­vives and blooms.

In my last post I men­tioned a dif­fer­ent stapelia species that stinks like car­rion and is pol­li­nated by flies. This S. gigan­tea has the same charm­ing trait. The fifty pound pot­full of stinky plant lives out­side the win­dow to my stu­dio work­sta­tion. Like most peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood we don’t bother with air con­di­tion­ing, so work­ing in my stu­dio has been an…interesting olfac­tory expe­ri­ence. At least the stink is only really bad when you get close to the flower.

With heat often comes fire. Two recent evenings had extra-fiery sun­sets. What looks like col­or­ful sun-lit clouds in this photo is actu­ally smoke from a 500-plus acre fire in Mex­ico that made it over the bor­der. For­tu­nately the fire got extin­guished and didn’t develop into another of the mon­ster con­fla­gra­tions we’ve expe­ri­enced twice in the last seven years.

The rest of the West Coast seems to be shar­ing this same heat­wave. The worst seems over, but there are prob­a­bly more warm days ahead. So stay cool as possible–and remem­ber to hydrate.

September 29 2010 | Categories: gardening | Tags: fall • heatwave • September • summer • watering | 12 Comments »

roadkill flower

When I got home Mon­day it was almost dark, one of the sure signs that sum­mer is over. Out in the gar­den a pot of Stapelia get­tl­ef­fii was show­ing off its first flower of the sea­son. It was dark enough that I had to use the cam­era flash.

I’ve only had this South African plant for a few months and this was its first bloom for me. Elab­o­rately striped and fuzzy with hairs that look like fur, I’m try­ing to decide whether the flower is “pretty” or not. It’s def­i­nitely in the weird and won­der­ful cat­e­gory, though. The flies like it too, mainly because it’s gen­tly fra­grant like some­thing that’s been run over on the interstate.

I’ve grown another of these car­rion flow­ers, Stapelia gigan­tea, for a few years now. That plant has flow­ers that last for just a day, and I was expect­ing the same thing with this species. But when I went out ear­lier today that first flower was still open, draw­ing a small crowd of ador­ing flies. (They got camera-shy for this shot.)

This is a frost-tender plant, so it’d work only if you brought it indoors for the win­ter in regions colder than zone 10. I’m not sure I’d want this as a house­plant when it’s flow­er­ing, but it for­tu­nately blooms before it gets so cold out­side that you’d have to bring it inside.

Pretty or not, it’s def­i­nitely a conversation-starter.

September 24 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Stapelia gettleffii • succulents | 9 Comments »

a palm garden takes shape

I’m sure I’m not the first to have noticed the irony: The main approach to Los Ange­les County Museum of Art takes you through the BP Grand Entrance. The back way in takes you through the La Brea Tar Pits.

When I took the pho­tos on the last day of July crude oil was still gush­ing into the Gulf of Mex­ico, and the irony was heavy like the odor of tar com­ing from the fenced-off pits where archae­ol­o­gists were work­ing behind the museum on extract­ing crit­ters and plants that got caught in the ances­tral goo.

Here, junior’s ball has some­how made it over the fence around one of the pits. You could maybe res­cue it with a stick…or you could wade through the tar and hope that you don’t get caught, only to be dis­cov­ered by archae­ol­o­gists a few mil­len­nia down the road.

We arrived at the museum an hour before it opened, via the back entrance, so we had a chance to spend some time with Robert Irwin’s Palm Gar­den Instal­la­tion. I posted [ before ] on the ear­lier stages of the gar­den, and it’s still not com­plete. But by now you can really make out many more of the ele­ments of what the final gar­den will look like.

There are many palm species used in the gar­den. A num­ber of them are planted in a lawn, inside planter boxes that mimic the wooden planter boxes the trees were grown in. But unlike the wooden tem­po­rary planters, these per­ma­nent homes are made out of thick steel plate–the “it” mate­r­ial of the moment for well-financed mod­ern gardens.

A closer look at the planter box…

In a back cor­ner you could see a col­lec­tion of palms in pots, and in this photo you can get a bet­ter idea of the kind of planter box the steel ones are meant to suggest.

Another look at some of the palms in tran­si­tion… In this instal­la­tion some of the plants are rotated out accord­ing tot he sea­son. I’m not sure whether these are headed in or out.

LACMA was about to open a new facil­ity, the Resnick Pavil­lion designed by Renzo Piano. As the build­ing nears com­ple­tion more ele­ments of the Palm Gar­den Instal­la­tion are being planted. In addi­tion to palms it includes sev­eral of the non-palm species. These are some spec­tac­u­larly var­ie­gated agaves plants of a fur­craea, pos­si­bly Fur­craea foetida ‘Mediopicta’–Thanks for the cor­rec­tion, Loree!

The way the plants have been shaped, with the low­est leaves removed, made them look like var­ie­gated New Zealand flax (phormi­ums) until you got close to them. It’s not a bad look. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see if these agaves fur­craeas are kept pruned this way or whether they’ll be allowed to grow into the rosettes that agave fur­craea grow­ers are used to see­ing. This is in no way a nat­u­ral­is­tic gar­den, so my guess is that the agaves plants will be kept this shape. Besides, how do you mow around them with­out run­ning over the leaves?

Another of the non-palm species: this cycad devel­op­ing this really cool cone. It’s prob­a­bly some­thing like three to four feet long.

A bench and real palms out­side the Resnick pavilion…

The sin­gle most dra­matic ges­ture is the place­ment of this palm with a thickly bul­bous trunk that’s been planted in a tight open­ing that leads two sto­ries down into a park­ing garage. The effect is like star­ing down into a North Dakota Min­ute­man mis­sile silo. It’s more than a tad unset­tling, and asserts that garden-making can be about more than design­ing pleas­ant, unchal­leng­ing spaces.

Say “Los Ange­les” to some­one and ask them what comes to mind. Palm trees would prob­a­bly be one of the first things the per­son might bring up, even though the city’s offi­cial tree is the coral tree is and the offi­cial flower the bird of par­adise. “Cars” would prob­a­bly be another. Here palms and cars come together, with a short arcade of the trees lin­ing the dri­ve­way down into the park­ing garage.

I’m not any­thing remotely resem­bling a palm expert, so I can’t tell you what species this is. But I can show you that it has amaz­ingly sculp­tural trunks.

Look­ing up into the fronds gives you the sen­sa­tion clos­est what you get from many of the art­works Robert Irwin did before he designed gar­dens. The fronds fil­ter the light in inter­est­ing ways, and two or more lay­ers make things darker than just a sin­gle layer. If you stand in the dri­ve­way and look straight up the neg­a­tive space of the sky reads like a bright zigzag between the del­i­cate lay­ers of palm.

If you’d like to com­pare the effect of the palm fronds to an ear­lier Irwin piece, here’s a cor­ner of his Run­ning Vio­let V Forms, a piece that I walk around and under at least twice a week. In this 1980s piece pan­els of violet-colored mesh turn light or dark, depend­ing on the num­ber of lay­ers, and the mesh turns opaque or trans­par­ent depend­ing on how the light is strik­ing it. The mesh inter­acts with views of the euca­lyp­tus grove where it’s placed. I’ve loved this piece ever since the day it went up. You can read my love story with this piece [ here ].

Artists often com­plain that big muse­ums don’t pay enough atten­tion to local artists in their scram­ble to show off big-name artists from the other coast or another coun­try. This sum­mer day LACMA had sev­eral gal­leries devoted to the the pho­tographs of Cathy Opie, and work of other local artists could be found the walls of sev­eral of the gal­leries. But I didn’t iden­tify any plant species used in this gar­den that came from within a thousand-mile radius.

Word is that Robert Irwin is design­ing yet another gar­den, this one for a new fed­eral cour­t­house here in San Diego. Wouldn’t it be great if he could use some of our Cal­i­for­nia species in the project? What about some of our del­i­cately trans­par­ent plants like deer weed or broom bac­cha­ris? Or what about some of the many plants that undergo stun­ning trans­for­ma­tions as the sea­sons change? To see an impor­tant new, high pro­file gar­den com­prised of local natives would be such an amaz­ing opportunity.

September 07 2010 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: British Petrolium • La Brea Tar Pits • Los Angeles County Museum of Art • palm trees • Robert Irwin | 9 Comments »

california native plant week

You may have heard already, but if not I wanted to relay some great news about the pass­ing this week of ACT 173, a bill that would declare the third week of April Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Week. The leg­is­la­ture has been dead­locked over the state bud­get and I was wor­ry­ing this bill would get stalled along with every­thing else. But such was not the case–Yay!

If you’re into read­ing doc­u­ments con­tain­ing lots of “whereas-es” you can view the full res­o­lu­tion [ here ].

April is high bloom sea­son for a lot of the natives, so it should be a great time of year to spread the word about Cal­i­for­nia natives.

September 03 2010 | Categories: gardening | Tags: native plants • politics | 7 Comments »