that’s sooooo 1970s

A house down the street has had a contractor’s truck parked out­side of it for a while now. The owner said she’s remod­el­ing the kitchen and bath. Not any time too soon, accord­ing to John, who dur­ing our last time in the house noticed that those rooms oozed the stuff that 1975 was made of: fab­u­lous 70s mod­ern appli­ances, wood­grained formica, beige tile floors. There’s noth­ing wrong with any of these mate­ri­als, but the rooms looked like they were sealed in a time cap­sule, an easy thing to hap­pen to rooms that are so expen­sive to remodel.

Some gar­dens around town seem to have the same aura about them. You sense that the gar­den was planted all at once–probably by a pickup truck landscaper–from what was avail­able and fash­ion­able and con­sid­ered reli­able at the time. Decades later the plant­i­ngs will look untouched–the same plants in the same places (often planted too close together or too near a house). Things might be pruned a lit­tle, or there might be a mature row of some­thing with a miss­ing plant. But oth­er­wise untouched.

so-1970s-ez-lube

I tend to think of gar­dens as evo­lu­tion­ary projects, espe­cially when they’re in the hands of curi­ous gar­den­ers. It’s always a bit of a shock to see one of these botan­i­cal time cap­sules. Com­mer­cial plant­i­ngs seem to be the worst offend­ers. Here, to the right, is a lovely pair­ing of melaleu­cas with ice­plant at the local EZ-Lube that seems pick­led in about 1983.

So which plants shout that they’re from a cer­tain decade? I tried to sort that out based on what you see in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. (Other cli­mates will have their own char­ac­ter­is­tic plants.)

This is just a quick and impres­sion­is­tic draft that’s based on when plants were cheaply avail­able and most pop­u­lar, not nec­es­sar­ily when they were intro­duced. Many of them are still com­monly avail­able today and are hardy, worth­while choices for the gar­den. Oth­ers have turned out to be inva­sive dis­as­ters that have prompted nurs­eries to stop car­ry­ing them.

I’m sure I’ve mis­placed a few plants by a decade or two. You must have addi­tions of your own!

1960s
so-1970s-junipers

  • Hol­ly­wood Twisted Juniper (Junipe­rus chi­nen­sis ‘Toru­losa’). “Hol­ly­wood” and “twisted” some­how seen to go together nicely… My mother cov­eted them, and I still think they’re pretty wild and crazy plants. Of course in the 1960s and 1970s, the junipers were a lot smaller than this.
  • Ital­ian Cypress (Cupres­sus sem­per­virens). The house my par­ents pur­chased in 1968 had two lit­tle plants of these flank­ing a win­dow. When we moved out of that house they weren’t so little…
  • Arborvi­tae (Thuja sp.)
  • Japan­ese Pit­tospo­rum, Japan­ese Mock Orange (Pit­tospo­rum tobira)
  • Japan­ese Gray-bark Elm, Japan­ese Zelkova (Zelkova ser­rata). These go back years, but there were lots of street plant­i­ngs in 1950s and 1960s suburbs.


so-1970s-zelkova

And speak­ing of zelko­vas, my neigh­bor­hood had hun­dreds of them as street plant­i­ngs. Even­tu­ally they began lift­ing the side­walks, and then grew up into the power lines. One by one the own­ers took out the trees. Then, the city took out the power lines and put them under­ground, about the same time they repaired the side­walks. We have a few of the trees left.

so-1970s-oleander

1970s

  • Ole­an­der (Ner­ium ole­an­der), shown here in a free­way plant­ing down the hill from me. They’re hardly ever planted any­more. Although drought-tolerant, they can get bad scale infes­ta­tions. The nail in the cof­fin for this plant, though, was the fact that they’re poi­so­nous if ingested or burned.
  • Natal Plum (Carissa macro­carpa)
  • Ice­plant (var­i­ous species), some are con­sid­ered inva­sive in South­ern California
  • Var­ie­gated Japan­ese Euony­mus (Euony­mus japon­i­cus ‘Aureo-marginatus’)
  • Melaleuca, Paper­bark Tree (Melaleuca quin­quen­ervia), now on the fed­eral inva­sive plant list and the scourge of many states


so-1970s-bank

Here’s a tran­si­tional 1960s-1970s plant­ing at the bank down the street. More twisted junipers, paired here with natal plum.

1980s

Invasive fountain grass

  • Foun­tain Grass, Green Foun­tain Grass (Pen­nise­tum setaceum), the Cal­i­for­nia Inva­sive Plants Coun­cil lists these as “Invasive–Do Not Plant–Invasive” (hmmm, they might be inva­sive…) on their web­site.

    Photo by Car­olyn Mar­tus from the Cal-IPC site [ source ]

  • Red Foun­tain Grass, Pur­ple Foun­tain Grass (Pen­nise­tum setaceum ‘Rubrum’)–I still have three in the front yard and love them. Unlike the above, they’re ster­ile and don’t sow them­selves every­where. [ Edit June 11, 2010: The red foun­tain grasses are def­i­nitely not ster­ile, though they still are far less inva­sive than the green ver­sions of the species. It’s best not to plant these any­where where thye might escape. ]
  • Aga­pan­thus
  • Euge­nia, Aus­tralian Brush Cherry (Syzy­gium pan­ic­u­la­tum). These make tidy, fine-leaved clipped hedges. But when the euge­nia psyl­lid hit in 1988 plant­i­ngs every­where started to look awful. They dis­ap­peared from the trade.
  • Indian Hawthorn (Rhaphi­olepis indica)
  • New Zealand Flax (Phormium sp. and hybrids)


so-1970s-nassella

1990s

  • Mex­i­can Feather Grass (Stipa or Nas­sella tenuis­sima), now quickly mov­ing onto many people’s lists of obnox­ious if not inva­sive plants. I started with two and now have half a dozen. I’d have thou­sands if I didn’t pull out a cou­ple dozen seedlings every week! This is the park­ing strip of a neigh­bor a few blocks away who prob­a­bly put in one or two plants herself.
  • Laven­ders (Laven­dula sp.)–I still have one of these.
  • Blue Fes­cue (Fes­tuca ovina glauca)–and sev­eral of these…
  • Kan­ga­roo Paw (Anigozan­thus sp.)


so-1970s-cordyline

2000s

  • ???????

    What plants will the future decide define the Bush decade? What sturdy plants are the nurs­eries offer­ing that will run their course as peo­ple get tired of them or the plant’s inva­sive poten­tial are revealed? For one, I’m see­ing a lot of Cordy­line aus­tralis. I like these a lot, but they sud­denly seem to be planted every­where, many in loca­tions where they look good as two-foot ado­les­cents but will quickly out­grow their spots. And there are cheap queen palms (Sya­grus roman­zof­fi­ana) going into the ground everywhere.

    I’m sure there are dozens more.


February 19 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • | 15 Comments »