[ Lost in the Landscape ]

…and some not so garden-worthy

You could prob­a­bly gather together six gar­den­ers and get six dif­fer­ent opin­ions of what would make a plant garden-worthy. But I sus­pect there might be some­what more agree­ment on cer­tain other plants that prob­a­bly shouldn’t be included in a gar­den. Here are some encoun­ters from Sunday’s trip to Tecolote Canyon that would fall eas­ily into most people’s less-than-desirable category.

I’ll have to admit to actu­ally lik­ing this plant to the right. Dur­ing the win­ter it drops its leaves and is an attrac­tive thicket of upright or sprawl­ing branches. This time of year it starts new growth that has this warm red-brown col­oration. It’ll flower soon, and then set some loose clus­ters of white berries. Pretty, yes, and native, and impor­tant to wildlife. But this is poi­son oak. Maybe not the best choice for small back­yard gardens…

Most of the rest of my list below is com­prised of exotic plants that have staked a claim for them­selves at the expense of the native species. Dif­fer­ent loca­tions have their own list of inva­sives, so what you see below is tai­lored to South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Some of these plants could be good choices for other loca­tions. Oth­ers would be trou­ble almost any­where you grow them.

[ At this point I’d like to ded­i­cate the rest of this Fri­day the thir­teenth post to Out­of­doors, who last month devoted her Fri­day the thir­teenth post to inva­sive plant species. ]

I won’t go into too much detail about this trou­ble­some trio. Peo­ple have been work­ing hard to get the word out on pam­pas grass, green foun­tain grass, and ice­plant. The grasses, in par­tic­u­lar, can be gor­geous things in gar­dens, wav­ing in the breeze and lend­ing their dra­matic form to groups of softly mound­ing land­scape shrubs. You can see why peo­ple want to grow them. But are they garden-worthy in South­ern California?

All three of these quickly check out of people’s gar­dens and make for the wilds. I found both grasses and plenty of ice­plant escaped into the canyon, here on this hill­side and in other spots. So, as pretty as they can be–and I con­sider this drift of foun­tain grass in the sec­ond photo to be par­tic­u­larly poetic–these three would be bet­ter left in their native lands, or grown in cli­mates where the weather might limit their spread.

This is the first flower I saw this sea­son on the local plants of onion weed (Aspho­delus fis­tu­lo­sus). The first time I saw it I thought it was a wild­flower and wanted some for my gar­den. In full bloom the stalks of white flow­ers are an impres­sive sight. But they do spread like crazy. Not a good choice for the garden.

This com­bi­na­tion of plants looks as impres­sive as any plant­ing assem­bled by prac­ti­tion­ers of the New Peren­ni­als gar­den move­ment. But once again, the plants aren’t really wel­come addi­tions to the canyon. In the fore­ground is teasel (Dip­sacus sp.), a plant with excel­lent year-round archi­tec­tural struc­ture but hav­ing inva­sive ten­den­cies that are con­sid­ered “Mod­er­ate” by the Cal­i­for­nia Inva­sive Plant Coun­cil (Cal-IPC). Here it’s set against a back­ground of last season’s black mus­tard, a prob­lem in these parts since it was intro­duced by the Span­ish in the eigh­teenth cen­tury. The Cal-IPC only con­sid­ers the mustard’s rangi­ness to be of “Mod­er­ate” con­cern, but also states: “Pri­mar­ily a weed of dis­turbed sites, but can be locally a more sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem in wild­lands.” I’d say it’s a more sig­nif­i­cant pest locally.

Fen­nel can be attrac­tive in the herb gar­den, but like the rest of the inva­sives in this post, this is another plant that gets around. Its over­all unde­sir­able impacts are con­sid­ered “High” by the Cal-IPC. If I see fen­nel offered in the local nurs­eries it’s usu­ally the bronze col­ored strain. It’s less vig­or­ous, but all forms are con­sid­ered inva­sive. I do wish this were a bet­ter choice for gar­dens because it hosts swal­low­tail but­ter­flies, but at least there’s plenty of swal­low­tail food out in the local canyons. The but­ter­flies won’t starve. Okay, I’ll pass.

Say “Old Cal­i­for­nia” to any­one who’s lived in these parts for long, and this plant will prob­a­bly come to mind. The Brazil­ian Peru­vian pep­per tree forms a gor­geous tree with long, del­i­cate leaves that move any time there’s a breeze. But unfor­tu­nately the plants develop berries that the birds find irre­sistible. While the Cal-IPC con­sid­ers their threat to Cal­i­for­nia to be only “Lim­ited,” there are plants that would be bet­ter choices.

The Aus­tralian pep­per­mint wil­low (Ago­nis flex­u­osa), although not a native plant, is a good drought-tolerant sub­sti­tute that looks a bit like the pep­per tree but doesn’t share its inva­sive ten­den­cies. If you must have a del­i­cate weep­ing tree that says “Old Cal­i­for­nia” but don’t mind a lilt­ing Aus­tralian accent, this would be a bet­ter choice–and you can get vari­eties with either green or dra­matic black foliage. Or you could give up alto­gether on the colo­nial look and go in for any of the truly native trees. It doesn’t get any more “old Cal­i­for­nia” than that.

As I reread this post I’m struck that I’m prob­a­bly not doing a par­tic­u­larly good job of dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from grow­ing these plants. I keep going back to the beau­ti­ful redeem­ing qual­i­ties of these inva­sives, and I guess that’s why they con­tinue to be such a prob­lem. The mind tells you they might be bad news, but some­times it’s hard to say no.

With this last image I leave the plant king­dom and turn to another species that’s native to the local canyons. This one I think you’ll def­i­nitely agree you wouldn’t want around. I won’t assume that you like snakes any more than I do, so if you want to see the pic­ture you’ll have to click HERE.

Still, who among you doesn’t think baby ani­mals are just the cutest things? Now, every­body, say “awwwww”… This is a lit­tle baby south­ern Pacific rat­tler, prob­a­bly no longer than my fore­arm and too young to rat­tle. I’m deathly afraid of snakes but man­aged to fend off the fear to snap the pic­ture and watch the snake as it coiled itself defen­sively and make like a sidewinder, slid­ing back­wards into the grasses.

I have to respect these ani­mals since they do won­ders to keep down the rodent pop­u­la­tion. And they’re every bit as native as the poi­son oak I showed ear­lier. But after hav­ing had one of these in the back­yard fac­ing off against my cat, I’ve def­i­nitely decided this is another species that’s not garden-worthy, at least in my enclosed lit­tle space.

I admit it, I’m a wimp. Nature isn’t always con­ve­nient is it? But throw out the rat­tlesnakes and pam­pas grass and black mus­tard and fen­nels and you’re still left tens of thou­sands of cool and friendly selec­tions to invite into the garden.

March 13 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • landscape design • places • plant profiles | Tags: Agonis flexuosa • Asphodelus fistulosus • black mustard • Brassica nigra • Dipsacus fullonum • fennel • invasive plants • onion weed • pampas grass • pepper trees • peppermint willow • snakes • teasel | 4 Comments »

deciding on a small tree

The record heat in Octo­ber and Novem­ber finally did in the Aus­tralian tree fern that I’d been nurs­ing. The plant grows in full sun in its native envi­ron­ment, and was sup­posed to be able to sur­vive full sun in coastal Cal­i­for­nia. But two months of the hottest and dri­est weather this past year took care of what lit­tle will to live the plant had left.

The fern served as a focal point in the gar­den, and its pass­ing left a big void and a sad stick of dead trunk. It doesn’t help that the neighbor’s bas­ket­ball back­board lines up almost per­fectly with the dead trunk.

We toyed briefly with train­ing a small vine up the dead trunk, cel­e­brat­ing life and death and renewal and all that, but we couldn’t think of some­thing that would look great as the main focal point of the space. So we were faced with com­ing up with a suit­able replacement.

We started with some basic requirements:

• The tree should max out in the 12–20 foot range and be not too broad–There’s a young tan­ger­ine tree nearby that we wouldn’t want to shade.
• Some plants imme­di­ately nearby would appre­ci­ate some shade, but oth­ers are quite happy with close to full sun; a tree that could be trained to have an open branch struc­ture would work well.
• Some­thing with a grace­ful nat­ural form would be terrific–no big green popsicle-looking shade trees, please.
• The plant should be pretty easy to find locally, and couldn’t cost too much.
• This being drought-prone Cal­i­for­nia, a tree that would be able to get by with much lower water require­ments than orig­i­nal the tree fern would be a must.
• The “look” of the tree would have to com­ple­ment Mediter­ranean, trop­i­cal or just plain odd-looking plants.
• Though not an absolute require­ment, a native plant would be nice.

The short list came down to four trees or large shrubs.

Ginkgo biloba
Pros: Both John and I have always loved gink­gos, par­tic­u­larly their dis­tinc­tive foliage and incen­di­ary yel­low autumn col­oration. And their his­tory of being a liv­ing fos­sil is cool. There are strains that range from lit­tle round shrubs to mas­sive shade trees, with a cou­ple options in the 12–20 foot range that could be trained with mul­ti­ple trunks. Though not desert plants, they can make do with fairly low amounts of water.

Cons: Avail­abil­ity, mostly. Local sources carry the itty bitty bonsai-friendly sub­jects or the big shade trees, noth­ing in between. The tree grows really slowly, so get­ting a spec­i­men of the small vari­eties would be a chal­lenge. The final look of the plant, too, might not be per­fect for the location.

Black pep­per­mint wil­low (a.k.a. Aus­tralian myr­tle wil­low), Ago­nis flex­u­osa ‘Jervis Bay After­dark’
Pros: Strik­ing dark dark dark pur­ple (almost black) leaves, and a neat weep­ing habit. The bark is shaggy and attrac­tive. Rapid growth to its tar­get size. Drought tolerant.

Cons: The plant seems to develop a dense shade-tree look as it matures–maybe too dense for the spot. The lit­er­a­ture says this form only gets to six­teen feet or so, but it’s only been around for a decade. Call me dis­trust­ful, but I’m just sus­pi­cious that it could be more main­te­nance than I want to sign up for to keep it small. Mature trunks seem large in scale to the plant. There’s a bam­boo nearby, and it might be just too much wispy, wil­lowy foliage.

[ Image from Metro Trees ]

Crape myr­tle, Lager­stroemia x fau­riei
Pros:Sev­eral clones are avail­able locally in boxed spec­i­men size for not too much money–instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion! Gor­geous sum­mer­time flow­ers. Inter­est­ing exfo­li­at­ing bark. The fau­riei hybrids resist mildew bet­ter than the pure species.

Cons: Their col­ors would look really sim­i­lar to a pair of nearby bougainvil­leas. The rigid forms of the trees would def­i­nitely pull the gar­den in a for­mal Mediter­ranean direction.

Dr. Hurd man­zanita, Arc­tostaphylos x ‘Dr. Hurd’
Pros: Per­fect even­tual size (ca. 15 feet). Fairly fast-growing for a man­zanita (though no speed demon). Dra­matic red-brown stems with large light green leaves. Drought-tolerant, but also more tol­er­ant of gar­den water than most man­zan­i­tas. Flow­ers in the winter.

Cons: Spo­radic avail­abil­ity locally, and pos­si­bly only in small sizes. I’m wor­ried that the spot might be just a lit­tle over-wet for even this manzanita.

[ Image from San Mar­cos Grow­ers, who grew my plant ]

So what was the deci­sion? I put a five-gallon man­zanita on order and it hit the nurs­ery a few days later. It’s more of a Char­lie Brown shrub at this point and will take some patience and a few years to get to its final size. If it sur­vives the amount of water it gets, if it attains the size I want, if it behaves well with its neigh­bors, it could be the per­fect plant for this loca­tion. Check back in five years and I’ll tell you how it’s worked out…

Coin­ci­den­tally Saturday’s Los Ange­les Times had a whole page spread on man­zan­i­tas a full eight days after I put mine in the ground. I felt so much ahead of the Times…

February 02 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Agonis flexuosa • Arctostaphylos x Dr. Hurd • crape myrtles • Ginkgo biloba • Lagerstroemia x fauriei • manzanitas • trees | 9 Comments »