DryStoneGarden

I haven’t posted anything about our own garden in a couple of months, not since before I went out to the eastside, and yet it was great to see the garden after a month away. Really nice to come back to it. Though the garden’s looking a bit tired this month, to be honest. A few of the natives like the blue flax, the poppies, the foothill penstemons, and the woolly blue curls have a few token blooms, but they are basically hunkered down, waiting for the rains. This past weekend’s rain was a welcome surprise. Photos of plants, some native and some not, that are in bloom are below.

Our indigofera has been blooming nicely for a couple of months, but now it’s getting aphids on the flowers, probably from drought stress. Some of the aphids are winged now, signaling that the population is preparing to spread, so we’ll have to spray them with a hose the next few days. I think the indigofera got aphids last year about this time, too.

The coast aster is going full out. This one, Aster chilensis “Purple Haze,” got a little too close to the lawn sprinklers in a client’s garden and ran amok — our plant is actually from a piece that we yanked out of that garden — but it has behaved itself in our garden so far. I’m usually a fan of Hendrix names for cultivars, but I think they probably should have bred a little more purple into it before calling it “Purple Haze.” Though I guess it does have marginally more color than the seed-grown coastal asters in out yard.

Our California Fuchsias are only pretty along the last four inches of each branch, otherwise they’re mostly tumbleweed. This is a newish planting and their first full year in the ground; next year they’ll get the springtime haircut that everyone recommends.

One of our Coyote Mints (Monardella villosa) has some late blooms because I cut it back late. I drank tea made from Mountain Pennyroyal (Monardella odoratisima) a few times last month. Pretty good, better than M. villosa, I found.

A client wants a brugmansia, so the big guy in a pot by our door is probably on its last bloom for us before it goes to a new home. It has been really good, blooming several times a year in full shade. Not sure what we’ll replace it with.

This is the second round of meadowfoam (Limnanthes dougalsii) in the vegi garden this year. They were cotyledons when I left and already blooming when I came back a month later, definite fans of the good soil and regular water they’re getting. I like them for the vegi garden because they attract hoverflies and their big seeds don’t spread far unless I help them.

Our best fall bloomer right now is the Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii) I planted across the street in our neighbor’s yard, our unofficial garden annex. Not sure why these aren’t planted more in the Bay Area. On the one hand, I guess, annual sunflowers are already extremely cheap and easy and common, so why plant a perennial one, but on the other…a perennial sunflower!

Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Click over for lots of bloom action.

Tags: maximilian sunflower

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 7:48 am and is filed under garden bloom day, plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.