DryStoneGarden

‘…a hole in back you could put your fist in, if it were a small fist and you wanted to put it there…’ Hemingway, A Natural History of the Dead

The last few weeks we’ve been working in a yard that has a wild bee hive in an old silver maple. Apparently, they vanish each winter and a big, noisy swarm returns in the spring. On cold days, the hole in the trunk steams faintly. The bees are mellow in the morning, but in the late afternoon they make a loud buzz like every cartoon representation of an angry bee swarm that I’ve ever seen. It’s a little disconcerting, though they are far too busy to pay any attention to me.

I bet there’s some nice honey in there, but I’m sure not going in after it.

Here’s another view of the woodland strawberry planting I showed on bloom day. The strawberries have been rather mealy this year. Two years ago they were good, last year they were okay, but this year they aren’t much good at all. I’m guessing that might be because of all these April and May rains. Also, the leaves are looking somewhat chlorotic up close, so they might need to be thinned out to refresh them. We originally put these in as a cheap, low-water groundcover, but after a big harvest of berries the second year we started to think of them as an edible deserving of more attention and respect. If anyone has a suggestion for getting fruit production back up, please let me know.

This planting started with three 2″ stubbies and had full coverage within two years. Normally, I’d be afraid of a groundcover that can spread this fast, but it’s pretty easy to control because it does all its running above ground. California Native Plants for the Garden uses a photo of it to illustrate the potential ‘weediness’ of some natives, but personally I like the look of the strawberry with the irises and alliums rising out of it. Any drought-tolerant, evergreen, native groundcover that produces berries is okay with me.

Allium, Fragaria, and Iris

Sidalcea bloom, Sisyrinchium and Fragaria foliage, in February

The sidalceas disappeared into the strawberry patch a couple of years ago, with only their flowers showing unless you hunt for the leaves. I like its ‘What plant are those flowers coming from?’ effect.

Blue Eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, last month

Mostly Fragaria vesca

We put in a single Beach Strawberry, too, which is now the dominant plant in its own corner of the planting. It has sent out runners through the rest of the planting that send leaves up for a bit of textual contrast. Before growing the two strawberries, I used to get them confused, but side by side it’s not hard to tell the difference. The beach strawberry has a harder, darker, thicker, glossier leaf. Flowers are bigger and often set deeper within the foliage. I’ve never seen a berry on it. Woodland strawberry unsurprisingly prefers part shade, while beach strawberry is happiest, again unsurprisingly, in coastal full sun, but both plants have worked in pretty much every situation we’ve tried them.

Fragaria chiloensis and Fragaria vesca

Fragaria chiloensis, on the left, Fragaria vesca, on the right

Species Tulip, Tulipa saxatlis

During my first visit to the Bancroft Garden at the end of March, there was a naturalized patch of a species tulip, Tulipa saxatilis, the same one that we have in our garden and which I showed for March bloom day. Pretty nice. I’ve seen them described as looking washed out in the sun, but I like the peachy off-white. I tried it in my mom’s garden, and she gave it the thumbs up, too, so at least one tulip lover accepts it as a reasonable substitute for the hybrids. I’ll be pretty happy if they come back and make a big patch like this in her garden.

Tulipa saxatilis

Showering in the Rain

One of the things we’ve discovered with our outdoor shower is that it is surprisingly pleasant to take a shower in the rain. At night in the rain is usually the best — the rising steam and dripping plants create a wonderful tropical ambience — but daytime is better now while the wisteria is blooming. It feels quite decadent to shampoo your hair with a bunch of wisteria flowers hanging five inches from your face.

Wisteria Shower Curtain

Our wisteria is the Japanese one, Wisteria floribunda, which has longer, more fragrant bloom clusters that open more gradually over a longer period than the more common Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis. It doesn’t give us the dramatic every-flower-open-at-once photos of the Chinese, but it gives us a longer season of showers, which is more valuable to us. Today’s rainy showers are at the start of its peak. Pretty soon the flowers will be getting stuck to us while we shower.

Pandorea Flowers

One of the other vines in our garden is a Pandorea pandorana. It’s overhead on a trellis, screening us from our neighbor’s second story windows, and we probably don’t appreciate it as much as we should. I knew it was blooming but didn’t pay much attention until this recent storm when it dropped hundreds of flowers on the little side patio that it shades. Not as nice as some fallen flowers can be, but still one heck of a lot of flowers.

Clematis ligusticifolia, Virgins Bower

Now that we are just past the official start of spring, I thought I’d post the state of our deciduous plants. Nothing especially revelatory here, but it might be interesting/helpful to me in the future to have an approximate calendar date for leaf-out on some of these plants.

California natives:

Clematis ligusticifolia is leafed out;
Calycanthus occidentalis is just now leafing out;
Dicentra formosa and Dicentra “Bachanal” leafed out at the start of the month;
the Redtwig Dogwood is leafed out;
the Ninebark leafed out in early February and already has flower buds;
the native lilies came up several weeks ago, the other bulbs have been up for a long time;
the native asters are leafed out;
the Ribes “White Icicle” in the shade is leafed out and still holding some blooms;
the non-cultivar Ribes sanguineum is mid-bloom with leaves just starting to appear;
the two Amelanchier alnifolia in containers are budding;
Philadelphus microphyllus is budding;
the Snowberry leafed out two weeks ago;
Mimulus cardinalis is leafed out;
the Stream Orchid is just poking up

Non-natives:

the fig tree is leafing out;
the walnut just started to leaf out;
the Chinese pistaches are budding;
the Japanese maples in containers are leafed out;
the Astilbes just sent up some foliage;
the Chaste tree is just budding;
the young Eastern Redbuds have a few flowers;
the Indigofera just started to leaf out

Dicentra formosa and Tellima grandiflora

Dicentra formosa was the plant that I was happiest to see this year. It’s in a container that was devastated by skunks last year and I thought it was gone, but it popped out from under the Tellima several weeks ago and now has a few blooms up.

Dicentra formosa and Tellima grandiflora

Wow

To my complete astonishment, the highlight of my day yesterday was the Lowes parking lot in Concord. It has the biggest, bloomingest, most successful wildflower meadow I’ve ever seen. I have some cynical thoughts about it — it was probably done to appease environmentalists or the planning commission, it was probably amended with all the damaged bags of Miracle Grow, Monsanto probably supplied the seed mix — but it was impressive nevertheless. Not something I expected to see at a big box store.

Tidy Tips, Layia platyglossa

Tidy Tips predominated in the bio-swale, Chinese Houses on the berms.

I had never been to Lowes before and it turned out to be even more like Home Depot than I expected, but my hat’s off to whoever is responsible for that meadow. It’s pretty incredible.

Tidy Tips, Baby Blue Eyes, Alyssum, and African Daisy