[ Lost in the Landscape ]

dressed to weed

Sunny and warm: a per­fect morn­ing for cats and gar­den­ers. The cat had her chores, mainly to stare at inter­est­ing things in the gar­den, and I had mine.

Task #1 was to dead­head the arc­to­tis (African daisy) that has been bloom­ing for sev­eral months. This is the “before” on one plant…

…and the “after” on another. Arc­to­tis goes on bloom­ing regard­less of whether it’s been dead­headed or not. But the plants looked like they were wind­ing down for the year, and I was hop­ing to extend their sea­son a bit.

The plants are attrac­tive, but I thought the bucket of trim­mings was pretty cool, too.

Chore #2 was to weed one of the patches of bromeli­ads that we’d let loose in the back of a raised bed. The plant has rigid spines like teeth on a sharp saw blade, which makes weed­ing tricky, and forces you to ask your­self, “Do I really want to do this?”

John started on the task and ended up with bloody fore­arms. Not happy. He went for the pitch­fork, think­ing we could lift the clumps, weed under them, and then set the clumps back. These are plants with almost no roots, and that would have worked fine.

But I pro­posed another idea. I have these long cor­dura motor­cy­cle gauntlets that I use when I ride my scooter when it’s cold out. They pro­tect your hands, but also your fore­arms. Would those work for the gar­den, too?

I suited up, first a thick long-sleeved sweat­shirt, and then the gauntlets. Okay, it’s not par­tic­u­larly haute cou­ture, and it’s not a look I’d want to inflict on the world. But it worked.

Why all this effort? Well, the flow­ers are pretty stun­ning right now in an unre­strained, trop­i­cal way. And the plants are sur­pris­ing drought-tolerant.

Weed­ing around them seems to be the main chal­lenge. But now we’ve got an easy solution…

April 17 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: bromeliads • cats • deadheading • weeding | 6 Comments »

garden visits

While we were in L.A. we stopped by the houses of John’s cousin and aunt. Here are a few shots of some of their nice plantings.

First, pool­side at Cousin Chris and Susie’s house, was this nice South Seas look­ing com­bi­na­tion of leafy giant bird of par­adise (Stre­litzia nico­lai) with the jewel-tone foliage of Ire­sine herb­stii. The lat­ter plant has a few com­mon names like “beef­steak plant,” “blood­leaf” and–most unfor­tu­nate of all–“chicken giz­zard.” Gross. Who thought up that name?

One of Susie’s sis­ters is a land­scaper who was a final­ist on Home and Gar­den Television’s Landscaper’s Chal­lenge, and it was handy to have her sis­terly advice. But Susie made the plant selec­tions herself.

Then it was off to Aunt Barbara’s. One of her friends had hired a ser­vice that cleared and amended a bed, installed irri­ga­tion and then planted a warm-weather and then a cool-weather assort­ment of plants.

Bar­bara liked the idea of hav­ing lots of flow­ers with­out hav­ing to break her back putting them in, so she had the ser­vice do her own yard. Here are a cou­ple shots of the sum­mer mix, fea­tur­ing zin­nias, salvias, del­phini­ums, celosias, marigolds, por­tu­la­cas, lisianthus, plus some sun-tolerant vari­eties of coleus nearby.

But prepar­ing the beds and plant­ing the plants and installing a water­ing sys­tem isn’t all that’s required to keep these plants look­ing nice. When­ever she has a chance, Bar­bara takes a walk out to her plants and pulls off the spent flow­ers. By her care­ful dead­head­ing, the plant­i­ngs stay look­ing fresh many months after they’re set in the ground.

I’m sure she spends as much time tend­ing the plants as it took to put them in. Still, she’s a gar­dener and enjoys her out­door time. Some peo­ple might call it work, but I don’t think any of us would.

September 10 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: Aunt Barbara's garden • Chris and Susie's garden • deadheading • plant combinations | 5 Comments »

brown is in

Maybe I was inspired by the gar­den designs of Piet Oudolf. Maybe I was inspired by my recent trip to see things turn­ing brown in Los Peñas­qui­tos Pre­serve. Or maybe I’m just a lit­tle busy and/or slacker-ey in the dol­drums of summer.

What­ever the rea­son, I’ve decided to let the flow­er­ing heads on a lot of plants do their nat­ural thing and turn brown, to see what they look like. These are all exper­i­ments that I might develop into some­thing a lit­tle more fin­ished look­ing at some point. And all this is tak­ing place in the front yard, where appear­ance is every­thing. What will the neigh­bors say? Hope­fully they have a sim­i­lar sense of adventure.

The plant on the top of this pic­ture is a spi­raea I bought fif­teen years ago. This is before I started my plant data­base, and the label is long gone. I’m still work­ing on research­ing the species. Even the Cal­i­for­nia native Spi­raea dou­glas­sii likes a lit­tle bit of water, but this one in the front yard gets very lit­tle in the sum­mer. It’s even sur­vived six weeks or more with no irri­ga­tion. It doesn’t look the pret­ti­est that way, but it survives.

Here it is con­trasted against the almost-white foliage of com­mon dusty miller, Senecio bicolor subsp. cineraria, a plant usu­ally sold as an annual. But it’s hung on for well over five years in this tough spot. Looks pretty good most of the year, too.

Another plant with light-colored foliage is San­tolina chamae­cy­paris­sus, also called laven­der cot­ton, ground cypress, and a few other things. I like the swoop-ey rhythm of the dried flower heads and stalks. This is one of those plants I really hate in bloom. The yel­low against the gray foliage for two weeks in early sum­mer is unfor­tu­nate. And the flow­ers smell creepy, too–something between bad med­i­cine and paint remover. At least the plant stays a nice mound of gray­ish foliage most of the year.

And the last plant in this lit­tle gallery is some basic laven­der, con­trasted against the brown-red foliage and seed heads of red feather grass, Pen­nise­tum setaceum ‘Rubrum’. Some peo­ple dead-head their laven­der, both to lengthen bloom-time and to keep the plants tidier. I like the pointil­list bits of laven­der with the gray-green foliage and the brown of the dead flow­er­ing heads.

I’m not pos­i­tive that dead­head­ing the spent flow­ers off the laven­der does much to keep the plant bloom­ing: It looks good win­ter through about now, and then starts to slow down as my water­ing slows down. The san­tolina blooms once a year, dead­headed or not. And the spiraea…well, the thing that would perk it up the most would be some more water and not vig­i­lant remov­ing of its spent blooms. Poor plant. It had the sad for­tune of end­ing up in my yard as its adop­tive home. San Diego isn’t surf and fun and sun­shine all the time…

August 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: deadheading • drought-tolerant landscaping • dusty miller • lavender • Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' • Santolina chamaecyparissus • Senecio bicolor • spiraea | 2 Comments »

sharing with the birds

I don’t dead­head every flow­er­ing plant in the garden–That would drive me crazy! Besides there are plants that pro­duce seeds that keep the local bird pop­u­la­tion happy, and many of these plants are annu­als that would only come back next year from seed.

There are some let­tuce plants that I’ve been let­ting go to seed for the last decade or so. I put up with some slightly scrappy look­ing plants for a month or so. But there are some lit­tle yellow-green finches that descend on the veg­etable gar­den, mak­ing a most excel­lent squawk­ing racket. And when the weather turns cool again, there’s a nice lit­tle col­lec­tion of baby let­tuces, all from seed, some plants for the salad plate, some to make more seeds for the birds.

July 02 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: deadheading • lettuce • reseeding | 2 Comments »

deadheading, or, forever 21

You prob­a­bly know some­one like this: Through their young adult­hood, through the prime dat­ing years, they hit the gym hard, run, watch what they eat, and pay close atten­tion to styles so that they were always immac­u­lately dressed. But then they even­tu­ally meet a mate and set­tle down. As life’s other pri­or­i­ties take over, the for­mer jock or swimwear model puts on a few midriff pounds and stops being inter­ested in how they look to poten­tial suitors.

That’s the same phe­nom­e­non that hap­pens with a lot of flow­er­ing plants in the gar­den. Once they reach matu­rity, they go crazy putting out flow­ers to charm pol­li­na­tors. But before long, the plants have lit­er­ally gone to seen and start look­ing scrappy.

These are prob­a­bly plants that you invited into your gar­den because of their flow­ers, not because of their abil­ity to set seed. With many annu­als, shrubs and peren­ni­als remov­ing the spent flowers–deadheading– is a reli­able way to extend the bloom­ing period and keep the plants tidy.

Here’s a plant of the peren­nial blan­ket flower, Gail­lar­dia pul­chella, that I’ve been dead­head­ing reg­u­larly for the last two months. Left to its own devices it would set seed and bloom a lot less or not at all. The process isn’t dif­fi­cult and can be a relax­ing way to spend a few min­utes in the gar­den, clip­pers in one hand and a refresh­ing bev­er­age in the other.

Of course one of the most sat­is­fy­ing forms of dead­head­ing is to cut flow­ers with a bit of stem to bring inside and enjoy in a vase!


Of these two flow­ers, the one on the left is ready to be removed.

A week’s worth of spent flow­ers, ready for the recy­cling or com­post.


Here are some basic dead­head­ing guide­lines for a few other kinds of plants:

Many annu­als (marigolds, cal­en­du­las, cos­mos, zin­nias, gera­ni­ums, pan­sies, petu­nias): You can pinch off the old flower on most of these, or you can also use a sharp pair of pruners. For­tu­nately many annu­als are bred to be low main­te­nance, so they can look great for a long time even with­out the extra work. But a lit­tle atten­tion can keep them look­ing nicer, longer.

Plants with tall stalks of flow­ers (snap­drag­ons, flox­gloves, pen­ste­mons, some sages): Wait until the stem has fin­ished bloom­ing or has just a cou­ple of ragged flow­ers. Cut the entire stalk below where the low­est flower formed, and above a stem node.

Roses (most mod­ern hybrids): Cut the stems to just above a node where you see five leaves emerg­ing. Cut­ting higher may give you a few more flow­ers, but they’ll likely be smaller and on weaker stems.

Bulbs: Cut the flow­er­ing stem once the blooms have faded, mak­ing the cut towards the base of the plant. Even though bulbs gen­er­ally won’t rebloom the same sea­son after dead­head­ing, cut­ting off the devel­op­ing seed heads will allow the leaves to recharge the bulb for next year’s flow­er­ing instead of pro­duc­ing seed.

July 01 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: deadheading • Gaillardia pulchella • reblooming | 4 Comments »