Thigamotrope Satellites with Air Plants from Flora Grubb

Thigmotrope Satellite is the easiest way to make a vertical garden indoors. Just screw it in the wall and your tillandsias have a stylish new home. Thigmotrope Satellite is a steel tripod with a threaded base, designed to be a screw-in perch for tillandsia air plants.

A close up thigamotrope

A Christmas ornament from Laura Eubanks

On the Web:

Australian Native Plants Nursery (Ojai) is featuring a very beautiful plant this week called Eucalyptus “Moon Lagoon”. Owner Jo O’Connell also has a new shipment of books for holiday gifting. Check out her website by clicking on the button to the right.

Attention: Palm and Cycad lovers: Owner Phil Bergman of Jungle Music (Encinitas) is offering a very desirable selection of palms and cycads, many of them new to his nursery. Some are collectable; there are cold tolerant plants on offer. Phil is very helpful to beginners and will make sure you get the right plant for your needs. He is also well known to collectors, and carries specimens from all over the world. Go to www.junglemusic.net (619–291-4605) for photos and info.

A hunting estate in the South Carolina backwoods

Imagine my surprise when I discovered a chapter on this home in the book Lowcountry Plantations Today, given to me by my prescient friend Lisa some years before. Last September my sister Mary Lynn and I were on our way to go kayaking at the ACE Basin near Beaufort, South Carolina when we passed this home out in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by 100+ year old oaks, the estate includes gorgeous barns as well. According to my Lowcountry book it is called Bonny Hall Plantation and was built circa 1897 on the Combahee River. Once owned by the Doubleday publishing family, it is now reputed to be the domain of a Hollywood producer. Somerset Maugham wrote The Razors Edge in the guest house there in the 1940’s.

Our kayaking guide, Kim, owns Beaufort Kayak Tours (www.Beaufortkayaktours.com) with her husband David. She is a local as well as a naturalist and very well informed about the area. We kayaked in the  swamps where the land was used for rice production before the Civil War. Now a lot of the land is owned by wealthy families who use it for hunting part time. This is a good thing because it preserves the land and saves it from development.

That’s us, kayaking away!

On the web:

Australian Native Plant Nursery (click on website at right) features Eucalyptus “Moon Lagoon”, a collectable drought tolerant shrub.

11/18:  Huntington Gardens (San Marino) offers an all day Ranch symposium on urban agriculture. (www.huntington.org)

11/19:

• Huntington Gardens (above):  Thanksgiving Flower Arrangement class.
• Theodore Payne Native Plant Foundation (Sun Valley):  3 part Native Plant Design Symposium (www.theodorepayne.org)
• Descanso Gardens (La Canada): Heritage Oak Walk (www.descanso.org)

C of C campus

The first leg of my September trip to the Low Country was booked through Road Scholar (formerly Elder Hostel — I really love their new name). Road Scholar is a nonprofit tour company dedicated to “lifelong learning”. They have a mouthwatering array of trips in their catalog, many involving some type of volunteering. My Charleston leg was orchestrated by the College of Charleston, a very old (1770) and wonderful public liberal arts and sciences school. We stayed in a lovely hotel, the Francis Marion, and ate our meals in the student dining room. That was so much fun; carbo loading and enjoying the high energy of the students. In the morning we would hear talks given by experts on the history of the Civil War, Charleston, cooking, music and more;  afternoons were devoted to sightseeing. Many of our group had enjoyed 6 or more trips with RS. I would have to give Road Scholar and College of Charleston an “A” for my experience!

The C of C campus has amazing old oaks

• www.francismarionhotel.com
• www.roadscholar.org
• www.cofc.edu/

On the web:

Australian Native Plant Nursery has a new shipment of books from…Australia! Click on their website to the right of this post.

Thursday, November 10: Huntington Gardens (huntington.org) Talk and sale on Native Trees for Native Gardens by Lili Singer

Saturday, November 12:

• Descanso Gardens (Descansogardens.org) La Canada: Flower Market Tour, Fruit tree pruning and  Fall color walk
• San Diego Botanic Garden (sdbgarden.org) San Diego County: Bromeliad Bash
• Theodore Payne Native Plants and Flowers (theodorepayne.org) Sun valley: Irrigation 101 and Native Plant Horticulture

The beginning of the journey

I believe Socalnurseryplants.com may have scooped the national garden magazines on this one. Jo O’Connell, an internationally known botanist, owner of Australian Native Plant Nursery and authority on Australian plants, was kind enough to share these photos of a project she worked on recently. Her client, Amy Goldman, is the author of The Heirloom Tomato — from Garden to Table, a book with a prominent place in my library. Ms. Goldman is also the chair of the board of the Seed Savers Exchange. Ms. Goldman recently completed a conservatory on her property in upstate New York.

The new conservatory from across the duck pond

Ms. Goldman’a newly built, gorgeous conservatory was in need of a collection of Mediterranean plants; to this end she dispatched her architect Tom Pritchard to the West Coast. He purchased many at Australian Native Plant Nursery and Jo was put in charge of their safe delivery from the West Coast to the East Coast. She also supervised the installation, below.

Home sweet Home

• You can view Jo’s website by clicking on the Australian button on the top right of my website — it is wonderfully informative.
• Amy Goldman’s website is www.rareforms.com. The Seed Savers website is www.seedsavers.com.
• Tom Pritchard’s website is www.madderlakedesigns.com.

On the Web

• 9/24: UC Irvine  Arboretum/ Saturday Plant Sale (949–824-5833)
• 9/24: Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants Hummingbird Ornament Workshop, No Lawn Workshop (www.theodorepayne.org)
• 9/24: Shipley Nature Center, Orange County —  Annual Native Plant Sale/Composting workshop (www.shipleynature.org)