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Archived Gardening Tips - Summer 2003

Goings on in my own garden

Well, it’s been awhile since my last update but spring is just ending and summer is on the way. I am planning a large remodel of the home garden for this fall. As I continue in my pursuit of garden nirvana (to own every plant on the planet), the garden has become overrun with new entries still in their black plastic nursery pots with no home for them. WHAT I NEED IS MORE LAND!! But that’s beside the point, so after September, I’ll begin (with some help from others) to reevaluate and reorganize the entire garden from top to bottom. I’ll keep you posted as the process develops.

This past winter we had a slightly above average rainy season (16.41”) that was spread out from November to May giving the unwatered areas of my garden a refreshing pick me up. (Sometimes, So Cal can get all its rain in one month and the other 11 wind up being dry). Now the drought tolerant garden will show its muster by looking fabulous all the way until the next rains in October/November (hopefully).

Garden activities by season

MULCH! MULCH! MULCH! I can’t say enough good things about mulch. If you didn’t mulch during the winter months, this is the time to do it as temperatures rise. The garden may be exploding all around in spring but mulch will help carry it through the blazing hot summer months. An annual 2” layer of mulch throughout the garden will retain moisture, keep roots cool and less subject to temperature extremes, and feed your plants by creating what soil fanatics call the “A” horizon. This is the layer on the surface that is dark, full of organic materials and also full of healthy and beneficial fungi and insects. The critters help to digest the organics in the soil leaving the healthy minerals and nutrients that makes up plant food.

Now that the winter rains have subsided, its time to double check your irrigation schedule and turn the sprinklers back on. (You did turn them off during the winter months, didn’t you?) I’m running my sunnier garden irrigation twice a week and I’ll probably leave it that way through the summer. The shady areas get water once a week and the drought tolerant garden is off water for the summer.

Plant focus on new plants and the tried and true

I bought a Weigela ‘Red’ last year (its unfortunately still in the pot) and it still looks great having just been covered in rich red blooms back in April. It is slightly smaller and evergreen and it will be hidden during the winter months. Carexes are my new found favorite this year as I’ve been using them throughout many of my designs. Think unmowed grassy tufts that can be low (3” to 5”) or big (24” +) in colors that range from brown (C. buchannii or C. testacea) to yellow or white striped (C. morrowii ‘Variegata’ or Carex elata ‘Bowles Golden’) to green (C. comans or C. tumulicola) to grey blue (C. glauca). I use them a lot in the fronts of borders in sun or shade. The plants in general are meadow plants that are associated with water but many will tolerate average dry conditions and once a week watering. Salvias are another favorite and are too large a group to mention all my favorites but last year I planted a tropical Salvia ‘Costa Rica Blue’ at my office with flowers that are a deep rich purple and it’s reaching heights of 6’, 7’ and even 8’ (with a wall to lean on) and it’s a hummingbird magnet as are all the Sages. I’ll try to include a new sage in every update.

Design ideas

I find that punctuation marks in the garden can be quite a lovely thing especially in the context of otherwise simplistic plantings. Try interlocking sweeps of low groundcovers and throw in some spiky accents like aloes, agaves, or kangaroo paw. My other favorite expression is to mass large areas of dramatic plantings such as Stipa tenuissima (Mexican Hair Grass) with a splash of color like Catmint around the edges. The contrast is what livens up a garden and the plantings hold up throughout the seasons so they also satisfy the LOW MAINTENANCE criteria. I find that in small gardens, it is better to try simpler plant combinations than to try to stuff it all in. If you can control the urge (and believe me I’ve got the urge) to want one of everything, you will wind up with a better composition and if your remodeling an existing garden or starting a new one, consider planting it in stages, start with just a few plants and watch what they do. This will give you a better sense of how to add new plants. In my own garden, I’ve planted too much and as things grew the more robust ones smothered the smaller ones and you wind up finding the shriveled carcass during fall cleanup.

Plant Combinations

At a garden that I’m just finishing with a tropical flavor I combined the reed orchid Epidendron in pots with Gardenias on a garden terrace. The flowers of the orchids are hot orange against a dark burnished metal wall and the gardenias help hide the ugly kneecaps of the reed orchid. Other swell combinations include variegated Westringia ‘Morning Light’ with any drought tolerant plant where you want a bright fine-leaved but durable tough shrub. Feijoa sellowiana or Pineapple Guava combined with any of the gray leaved plants like; Artemisia ‘Powis Castle, Centaurea gymnocarpa, Maireana, Plectranthus argentatus, Festuca ovina glauca, Carex glauca, Senecio mandraliscae make for a dramatic and stunning shading of grays to whites and if you’re really confident, you might add in one of the striking burgundy Loropetalum chinensis with magenta flowers.

Other garden treats

If you’re ever in Southern California, you must go to the J. Paul Getty Museum gardens designed by artist Robert Irwin. They are a mix of wildly contemporary and traditional border plantings, thought provoking and in some cases downright inspiring. I have found myself taking friends and family there to tour the gardens and never make it inside the museum exhibits. Next issue we’ll talk about the Norton Simon Museum Gardens in Pasadena, CA.