[ Lost in the Landscape ]

too late for sunset

Day­light goes quickly this time of year. Last night I grabbed the cam­era, think­ing I’d catch sun­set from the roof deck. But thirty sec­onds later the sun van­ished into this sticky cloud­bank set­tled on the water. So, if by “sun­set” you mean watch­ing the sun do a slow swan dive into the drink, I missed it.

My week­end read­ing has been Annie Proulx’s amaz­ing novel, The Ship­ping News. The book vibrates with a sense of place (New­found­land) and has descrip­tions more vivid than the things them­selves. Early in it she describes a sun­set as “a flock of birds on fire.” My sun­set was noth­ing like that, but still worth the haul up to the deck.

While I was up there I snapped this shot of the progress of the trio of new plants that I put up there in August, Euphor­bia cotini­fo­lia, Kalan­choe pro­lif­era, and Loman­dra longi­fo­lia. The euphor­bia has sur­vived the occa­sional water­ing lapses and is col­or­ing up this gor­geous wine red color.

The kalan­choe is begin­ning to put up its bloom spikes for the win­ter and is show­ing an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the red color on the mar­gins of its leaves.

And the loman­dra looks like it did in August, only bigger.

I was hop­ing for a con­tainer plant­ing that had sea­sonal interest–something other than liv­ing ver­sions of plas­tic plants that looked the same year-round. So far I’m pleased.

Last month I decided those three plants needed some com­pany, and so they now have a new res­i­dent nearby. This is Galvezia juncea ‘Gran Cañon’, Baja bush snap­dragon. It’s green and archi­tec­tural right now. But soon it should small scar­let tubu­lar flow­ers to coax some hum­ming­birds up to the deck. With a big selec­tion of nectar-rich salvias down below, how­ever, the hum­mers might be a hard crowd to motivate.

No sounds of birds up on the deck, only the sound of the sunset…

December 01 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Euphorbia cotinifloia • Galvezia juncea • Kalanchoe prolifera • Loma • potted plants • roof deck • sunset | 3 Comments »

three new plants

The roof gar­den now has three plants I’ve never grown before. I tried to pick plants that were tough sun-lovers that required almost no atten­tion and not much water. While I don’t like to write about plants I don’t have any expe­ri­ence with, I thought this might be an oppor­tu­nity to take you along for the ride as I try these out.

The first new plant is Loman­dra longi­fo­lia ‘Breeze,’ a dwarf mat rush. I’ve always liked spiky grass– or flax-like plants, and this stopped me with its dra­matic long, nar­row leaves. It’s listed as matur­ing to about 30 inches high and wide, though will likely be a tad smaller in a con­tainer. The plant is being mar­keted as a good plant for traf­fic medi­ans. I’m hop­ing that will mean that it will require lit­tle care–though that may just be a mar­ket­ing ploy to sell more plants. Another part of the sales pitch is that it should be extremely drought-tolerant once estab­lished. Look­ing around the web I found a list­ing for it that went on to say that pot­ted ver­sions of the plant will require reg­u­lar water. Well, it ain’t gonna get lots of water up there on the roof, so we’ll see how well it’ll do. At least its new con­tainer is four times the size of the nurs­ery pot and should dry out a lot slower.

New plant num­ber two is Kalan­choe pro­lif­era, a suc­cu­lent from Mada­gas­car. It’s def­i­nitely an archi­tec­tural plant that to me it looks a lit­tle like an over­scaled, car­toon ver­sion of a bam­boo, with its thick trunks and chunky leaves. The pic­ture here shows the light green freck­les on the trunk of the plant, mak­ing it a good plant to enjoy up close after you’ve oohed and ahed over its sil­hou­ette. Size could be a prob­lem, with some list­ings say­ing that it can get to ten feet when it flow­ers in the win­ter. But then it dies back and starts all over again. Another exper­i­ment for sure.

I picked the final plant, Euphor­bia cotini­fo­lia, partly because I wanted some­thing with inter­est­ing red foliage. Then when I saw the genus name I was think­ing “slam dunk.” Great leafy foliage and extreme drought tol­er­ance because euphor­bias as among the camels of the plant world, right? Well, not so fast, because it turns out this is one of the euphor­bias that actu­ally likes fairly reg­u­larly water. Groan. It was a big plant and I wasn’t look­ing for­ward to tak­ing it back to the nurs­ery, let alone hav­ing to spend another half day try­ing to find some­thing I liked only half as much.

Then, research­ing it some more, I read that it’s actu­ally extremely drought tol­er­ant after all, but that it will drop its leaves in response to drought. Okay, it’s worth a try, I thought. Exper­i­ment num­ber three. Placed in the largest of the large con­tain­ers it’d stand a chance of stay­ing watered enough to hold on to its leaves dur­ing the warm part of the year. (It’s nat­u­rally decid­u­ous dur­ing cold weather.)

So I’ve ended up with three very dif­fer­ent look­ing plants. The loman­dra should stay green and grassy year-round. The kalan­choe will shoot up to some impres­sive height, flower dur­ing the win­ter, and then die back to start all over. And the euphor­bia should be a warm, reddish-purple pres­ence much of the year, only to shed its leaves when the kalan­choe is get­ting ready to show off. It should make for an inter­est­ing, ever-changing show.

August 11 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Euphorbia cotinifloia • Kalanchoe prolifera • Lomandra longifolia • potted plants | 2 Comments »