[ Lost in the Landscape ]

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 »