[ Lost in the Landscape ]

some garden-worthy local plants

There’s usu­ally a big dis­con­nect between going to a nurs­ery to look at plants and going out botaniz­ing to an open space pre­serve like the one I live near. The plants in a nurs­ery will likely be the usual gar­den store sus­pects, mixed in with new intro­duc­tions from all over the globe. But what plants you see in the wilds, except for escapees from res­i­den­tial gar­dens, usu­ally have noth­ing to do with what you see in the nurseries.

Gar­dens are of course arti­fi­cial places. Although peo­ple may feel con­nected to nature while tend­ing their per­sonal land­scapes, it’s too often a nature that exists only at their local plant nurs­ery and nowhere in the wild lands around them. My own gar­den has these same ten­den­cies, but I’ve been try­ing to coun­ter­act them with more native plantings.

Things have also been chang­ing in at least some of the nurs­eries around town, and there’s a grad­ual flow of plants from our wild areas into people’s gar­dens. Most of the larger nurs­eries offer at least a small selec­tion of natives, and the spe­cialty native plant nurs­eries can always be counted on for a selec­tion of plants that they feel garden-worthy.

Sun­day was cool but sunny, a per­fect day for a short walk through my neigh­bor­hood canyon pre­serve to see some of these plants in their wild state. And along the way I saw a cou­ple that I think peo­ple wouldn’t mind liv­ing with.

Tecolote Canyon–literally “Owl Canyon”–includes a city park of about 900 acres, most of it the slopes and bot­toms of a coastal canyon that were too eco­nom­i­cally chal­leng­ing to build on. Some of the park has been handed over to a golf course and some ath­letic fields, but a lot of it remains in some­thing approach­ing its nat­ural state.

The trail cuts through sev­eral stands of our coastal live oaks, shown here with lots of neon green (non-native) grasses. These oaks would be gor­geous in pri­vate gar­dens. Imag­in­ing open­ing the back door and step­ping out into this. But a fun­gus that was imported from Europe in a ship­ment of rhodo­den­drons is now mak­ing these dif­fi­cult to grow in all but the most dri­est gar­den spaces.

Dur­ing the win­ter rains a lit­tle stream runs through the park. It takes months for the water to dry up com­pletely, so every now and then you’ll find lit­tle water­ing holes like this one.

Lemon­ade berry appears fre­quently in native gar­den plant­i­ngs and is easy to find at native nurs­eries. The plants have been bloom­ing in the canyon for a cou­ple months, and they’re still bloom­ing. This species forms a large, tidy shrub that stays an attrac­tive dark green color year round. Later in the year it’ll develop orange-to-salmon berries in the place of the flow­ers. Def­i­nitely garden-worthy.

Lemon­ade berry per­forms best near the coast where heavy frosts aren’t a con­cern, but it can come back if frozen.

These aren’t flow­ers, but I think they’re pretty attrac­tive. The toyon, also called Chrsit­mas berry (Het­erome­les arbu­ti­fo­lia) still had its berries out. This is another plant that makes an attrac­tive large ever­green shrub in the home land­scape. The leaves on this are just a lit­tle lighter green than those of the lemon­ade berry, and the plant more densely branched.

Toyon is a fine native sub­sti­tute for holly, bear­ing these berries dur­ing the time of year when holly would. (And speak­ing of “holly would,” did you know that Hol­ly­wood got its name from big stands of this that grew on the hill­sides over­look­ing what’s now tin­sel­town?) This is also one of the eas­ier plants to find commercially.

I’ve writ­ten recently about a new ground­cover milkvetch that I was try­ing out. A dif­fer­ent species with some­what similar-looking flow­ers was approach­ing peak bloom in sev­eral spots in the canyon. There are over 1500 vetch species on earth and a half-dozen in the county, but I believe this one is Astra­galus tri­chopo­dus.

The flow­ers are small and intri­cate and appear on a plant that can approach three feet tall. This milkvetch dies back to noth­ing dur­ing the sum­mer drought, but I think it would look great when com­bined with selec­tions that have more sum­mer interest.

The canyon hill­sides are over­run with inva­sive mus­tard that is just now start­ing to put on its spring growth spurt. But this milkvetch gets going quicker, and actu­ally seems to stand a chance against the black mus­tard men­ace, unlike other natives that mature later. Here you see it grow­ing up through the trel­lis of dead mus­tard stems left over from last year.

Not hav­ing spent much time in Texas, it took me a while to fig­ure out that Texas blue­bon­nets were Texas species of what I’d been call­ing lupines all my life. Here’s a “Cal­i­for­nia blue­bon­net.” In this canyon they’re more of an occa­sional treat than a plant that col­o­nizes big spreads of hill­side. They’re ephemeral, but would be gor­geous in a garden.

Fuchsia-flowered goose­berry is a shoulder-high shrub with a long bloom­ing period from win­ter through much of spring. You can prob­a­bly see from the pic­ture that it is a lit­tle on the thorny side, some­thing like you’d see on Vic­to­rian moss roses. But the flow­ers make this a strik­ing plant in the right spot. The shiny green leaves will per­sist through­out the year if the plant is given an occa­sional sum­mer sip of water. And did I men­tion “hummingbird-magnet?”

There were other native plants in bloom, includ­ing the perky scar­let mon­key flower. But my trip was just a lit­tle early to catch the the peak flow­er­ing. I’ll post more as I take more trips.

And of course, in a park sur­rounded by human habi­ta­tion, you’ll find a healthy sam­pling exotic species. I’ll post next on a few of my inter­est­ing but less garden-worthy encounters.

March 11 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • landscape design • places • plant profiles | Tags: Astragalus trichopodus • Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry • Heteromeles arbutifolia • lemonade berry • lupines • milkvetch • native plants • Rhus integrifolia • Ribes speciosum • Tecolote Canyon • toyon | 5 Comments »

in the garden

I’ve been work­ing on print­ing some of my Yel­low­stone pho­tographs. While I wait for the scan­ner to scan and the printer to do its thing it’s a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to step out­side and snap some ran­dom pic­tures of what’s going on in the garden.

The first Chero­kee Pur­ple tomato, grown from seed saved from farmer’s mar­ket toma­toes last year: I’ve been watch­ing it turn color for a week now, and I thought it was finally time to pick it. It’s smaller than most of the other fruits on the plant, but I’m guess­ing it’ll be pretty tasty…

Peru­vian daf­fodil (Hymeno­cal­lis fes­talis): John’s sis­ter sent down a lit­tle pack­age of presents the last time she vis­ited over ten years ago. A bulb of this plant was in that pack­age. That one bulb has mul­ti­plied all over the place, some in places where we put it, oth­ers in places where soil with the some bulb off­sets was moved to. And some are even com­ing in places–like the lawn–where it prob­a­bly have only arrived via seed.

This plant clearly has a life wish. No prob­lem. We like it. It’s happy with lit­tle or heavy water­ing, dap­pled shade to full sun. And it smells great.

A moth that died in the arms of Drosera dichotoma ‘Giant,’ a car­niv­o­rous sun­dew in the bog gar­den: When I first put out some car­ni­vores I was think­ing, “Ooh cool! Bug-eating plants!” Now that I’m start­ing to see all the carnage–this moth, plenty of gnats, and a beau­ti­ful orange dragonfly–I’m start­ing to worry about my ethics. I’m a veg­e­tar­ian, so why can’t the plants be too? Still, I guess it’s some sort of karmic pay­back: I eat veg­gies, so some of my veg­gies eat meat.

The flow­er­ing stem of another car­ni­vore, Drosera x ‘Marston Dragon.’ Droseras have a rep­u­ta­tion for reseed­ing like weeds. No weeds spot­ted so far, but it’s early yet in the season…

This sad lit­tle lupine is the descen­dant of a pack­age of seeds that were given out at a wed­ding we went to on the Olympic Penin­sula in Wash­ing­ton State. There was a bare spot in the yard, so the pack­age got emp­tied into it. But there was a rea­son the spot was bare: The area got almost no water and even weeds had a hard time get­ting a hold. The lupines never have attained much size–this one is less than four inches tall–but enough keep com­ing back to remind us of that misty sum­mer day.

And oh yeah, here are a cou­ple of the images I’m print­ing up. The first one: Undine Falls, Yel­low­stone National Park. The sec­ond: Tower Falls View­point, Yel­low­stone National park.

July 27 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: carnivorous plants • Cherokee Purple tomato • Drosera dichotoma • Drosera Marston Dragon • Hymenocallis festalis • in bloom • lupines • Peruvian daffodil • Tower Falls • Undine Falls • Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »