DryStoneGarden

Summer deciduous can be a hard concept to bring into the garden. It makes perfect sense–plants go dormant during the dry summers and leaf out again during the temperate, wet winters–but it takes a fair bit of confidence to keep reassuring your clients that the plant is healthy when other plants in their garden and virtually all of the plants in their neighbors’ gardens are using summer as their time to shine. 

This Ribes malvaceum is full of brand new leaves several days after the winter solstice. Planted as a five gallon in June, the ribes sat there with tired, raggedy-looking leaves and dormant leaf buds all summer and fall, and as soon as the rains came, it put out these beautiful big green leaves and even a few token blooms. It might be in leaf a bit early because this is its first year and it’s getting regular irrigation, but it’s clearly not on the same schedule as a lot of the more traditional deciduous shrubs and trees; for instance, the Japanese maples in that same garden are just losing the last of their leaves. This Ribes has its most beautiful foliage at the same time as other plants have abandoned theirs.

ryan 12/26

Our Christmas selection of the variegated ficus, recently potted up and moved back indoors after three months outside to clear up an outbreak of scale. In its third year, holding more ornaments each time.

Happy holidays to all.

ryan & anita 12/25

Lantana montevidensis

Lantana grows in several gardens we maintain. I’ve never particularly liked it. I don’t like the smell, and the orange flowered shrubby form, Lantana camara, is a scourge in Australia where Anita and I stayed for three months. Even this one, the trailer, Lantana montevidensis, has an impressive list of places where it’s a noxious weed. It clashed with the other plants the only time I ever planted it. 

But it’s tough. It doesn’t need much, if any, water. Cut it to the ground and it comes right back. Bees and butterflies like it. It can bloom all winter on our side of the hills, and it does a great job of draping down over concrete walls.

To balance my karma now that I’ve praised lantana, I present the Aussie recipe for organic removal of Lantana camara:

Dig, pull, cut, hack, butcher.

Burn.

Dig, pull, cut, hack, butcher.

Burn.

Dig, pull, cut, hack, butcher.

Plant a fast growing groundcover, shrubs, and trees (preferably local native species).

Mulch as much as possible.

Dig, pull, cut, hack, butcher.

Mulch as much as possible.

Dig, pull, cut, hack, butcher.

Plant more fast growing groundcover, shrubs, and trees (preferably local native species).

Mulch as much as possible.

Our friend in Australia would probably add to that recipe: Repeat.

ryan 12/24

calendula & geranium "bill walls"

We try pretty hard for year-round bloom to keep our beneficial insects happy, but I doubt they’re very impressed with our offering on the first day of winter. Geranium “Bill Walls,” this calendula, and Linaria pururea are the only ones in full bloom. Everything else is young or only able to muster a token bloom. Of interest probably only to me, the bloom list is below:

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Misguided, brilliant, makes me smile.

ryan 12/20

– Note — Anita claims the roadrunner says Beep Beep, I claim Meep Meep. According to someone on Metafilter, the voice of the roadrunner, Chuck Jones, spelled it ‘Beep-Beep,” but pronounced it ‘Meep-Meep.”

calindrinia

These calandrinias sure are happy. This spot used to have bamboo in the ground, so before planting, we dug out the soil to a depth of two feet. Whenever we turnover or dig soil, we also add compost (turning soil increases the oxygen in the soil which in turn increases the population of bacterial microbes; you need to provide additional food to sustain the boom of bacterial life or else the population will go bust and leave you with worse soil than before you started), so these calandrinias are growing in two feet of loose, ammended soil, slightly raised to provide good drainage, full coastal sun, pretty much their ideal conditions. They’ve pretty much exploded, tripling in size in three months and blooming by their second or third week in the ground. 

We usually plant them in less optimal conditions where they grow well but much more cautiously. The photo shows their leggy bloom habit. They seem to look best if you can raise them a foot or two so the blooms are stretching up to just below eye level. They will bloom most or all of the winter in Berkeley and Richmond.

The aloe in the lower corner was a dark red when we planted it, but the good soil and (I’m guessing) generous hand-watering by the homeowner has turned it blue-green. Below are a couple of shots of Calandrinia in my neighbor’s garden. (more…)