[ Lost in the Landscape ]

picture this photo contest

Gar­den­ing Gone Wild is host­ing a photo con­test for the best image of native plants in a gar­den set­ting. Wan­der down to the links in the com­ments on their post to see all the excel­lent ways peo­ple use natives in their gardens.

It’s hard for me sit some­thing like this out, so below are my three entries, pho­tos taken in my gar­den over the last cou­ple of months. (As usual, click to see the larger images.)

I’ve already shared the first two on these pages, so for­give me for repris­ing them. These are of clumps of blue-eyed grass (Sisy­rinchium bel­lum) in a totally assorted plant­ing, mix­ing the natives with veg­gies (Red Win­ter red Russ­ian kale, beets, red– and orange-stemmed chard) orna­men­tals (heliotrope, geum and sages) and an herb (cat­mint). The plant­ing requires an aver­age amount of water­ing to keep every­body happy, but it shows how food plants and natives can eas­ily coex­ist with more gar­de­nesque selections.

(“Gardenesque”–how I love that word. No, I didn’t make it up. I have Noel Kings­bury (with Piet Oudolf) to thank for using it in Design­ing with Plants. He blogs, too!)

The first is a closeup of the native, the sec­ond shows the same bed three weeks later, after the geum started to flower.

The third photo pic­tures a foun­da­tion plant­ing fea­tur­ing one of the Cal­i­for­nia native rushes, Jun­cus patens. I have this thing for spikey, archi­tec­tural plants, and this one ful­fills my needs nicely. Most rushes are crea­tures of wet zones. How­ever, J. patens is one of the most drought-tolerant. These plants are located in the drip line for water off the roof, and they can make it through the sum­mer with min­i­mal added irrigation.

April 22 2009 | Categories: gardening • photography | Tags: blue-eyed grass • Juncus patens • native plants • Sisyrinchium bellum | 8 Comments »

gbbd: pretty purple

For this Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day I’ve picked some pre­dom­i­nantly pur­ple spring-flowering plants that are start­ing to do their thing in my gar­den. All but one of these are Cal­i­for­nia (or Baja Cal­i­for­nia) natives, and all would be seri­ously water-wise choices for the gar­den. Some would even make it through an entire sum­mer with­out water, though they’d look just a lit­tle bet­ter with a sip once or twice a month.

Blue-eyed grass (Sisy­rinchium bel­lum): What a great name for a great plant. This iris rel­a­tive is happy coex­ist­ing in a moderately-watered gar­den with other plants, though they can stand drought. Here they are liv­ing along­side some chard and heliotrope.

Blue dicks (Dich­e­lostemma cap­i­ta­tum) are com­mon here near the coast and are one of our reli­able signs that it’s spring. They self-sow and spread around the gar­den, but not obnoxiously.

Black sage (Salvia mel­lif­era) is one of the local canyon plants that’s earned a place in the gar­den. In life the flow­ers are a slightly stronger pale mauve color than here in the photo. It’s just begin­ning to come into flower and should be a lit­tle more intense in a cou­ple weeks. Though not one of the “look at me” sages, it’s still qui­etly beautiful.

Ver­bena lilacina orig­i­nates in Baja. The plant shown here is just get­ting started. It should flower much of the year and require very lit­tle sum­mer water.

This one’s maybe closer to blue than pur­ple, the South African bulb Morea tripetala. I stuck it in a really dry spot, and it’s now prob­a­bly just bloom­ing on the reserves in the bulb. We’ll see how well it does after a sea­son of tough love in the garden.

And with the last photo we come back to Cal­i­for­nia with the jus­ti­fi­ably ever-popular Pen­ste­mon Mar­garita BOP (some­times sold as Pen­ste­mon het­ero­phyl­lus ‘Mar­garita BOP’). The flow­ers are a wild mix of blue and magenta pink, giv­ing the over­all impres­sion of pur­ple. The open tubu­lar flow­ers have some­thing of the look of a fox­glove which would require a cer­tain amount of water, but this pen­ste­mon actu­ally does just fine with almost no added water.

Thanks to May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day. Check out the page with glimpses into what’s bloom­ing all around the world.

March 15 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • plant profiles | Tags: black sage • blue dicks • blue-eyed grass • color • Dichelostemma capitatum • drought-tolerant landscaping • gbbd • native plants • Penstemon heterophyllus • Penstemon Margarita BOP • purple • Salvia mellifera • Sisyrinchium bellum • Verbena lilacina | 12 Comments »