Posts Tagged ‘flowers’

I love porch swings — this one is in the front yard

I was out rid­ing bikes with my brother Scott in the East Bay area east of San Fran­cisco when I came across Riza’s gar­den. Her gar­den­ing is unique to an area that relies heav­ily on junipers, aga­pan­thas and nandina(my pet peeve). Her gar­den reminds me of sum­mer in the Mid­west, but she pretty much has this abun­dance all year around. She gra­ciously gave me me a tour and allowed me to take pho­tos. I also asked her many ques­tions; the answers are below, in her own words:

“I’ll try to answer your ques­tions as accu­rately as pos­si­ble. I became inter­ested in gar­den­ing in 1991. We had our pre­vi­ous house pro­fes­sion­ally land­scaped and hired the con­trac­tor to do the main­te­nance. We had a falling out with the con­trac­tor and I could not find a gar­dener com­pe­tent enough. The land­scap­ing was really fancy and I wanted to keep the gar­den in good con­di­tion so I did the main­te­nance until I could find a gar­dener. That got me hooked! I’ve been gar­den­ing ever since. When I started I couldn’t even tell the dif­fer­ence between an aga­pan­thus and an oak, now I’m like a walk­ing dic­tio­nary of plants. I make flower arrange­ments, too, from the flow­ers in the gar­den and I like to read. I like most plants. It’s pretty hard to list them since I like most of them so I will just list the ones I don’t like .

• Junipers (my num­ber 1 pet peeve since they are overused in this area because of the drought).
• Ole­an­der — I noticed when I went to Europe they are really liked by Euro­peans and treated like spec­i­men plants.
• Eng­lish Ivy
• Privet — I hate, hate, hate them. My neigh­bor has two trees and they drop their seeds on my yard and mil­lions of seedlings are sprout­ing all the time. I call it the evil tree.
• Mon­terey Pine — ugly and messy. The hap­pi­est day of my life was when another neigh­bor behind me cut the dis­eased Mon­terey pine and I was finally able to keep plants alive on that side of the house.

I get my plants every­where, from the local CVS, Ace Hard­ware, KMart, Home Depot, Costco to the more high-​end nurs­eries. The com­mu­nity col­leges have plant sales 4 times a year and their plants are unique, healthy and rare and they have good prices too. I brought plants from as far as Wis­con­sin, Wash­ing­ton State and Oregon.

I have a “Mow and Blow” gar­dener who comes once a week and that’s all he does — mow and blow. I have another gar­dener who is more spe­cial­ized and prunes every­thing by hand and he comes 4 times a year for gen­eral prun­ing and gen­eral clean­ing. The rest of the time I do most of it.

My guess is I have at least 300 plants — Just the roses alone I have 75 bushes, so when I get a chance and count them I will let you know.

Tip for home gar­den­ers — do not limit your­self to any type of plant or color of the foliage because you might be miss­ing out on some beau­ti­ful com­bi­na­tions. For exam­ple I have a neigh­bor who does not like gray plants and I think she’s miss­ing out a lot because gray is a very uni­fy­ing color. Another friend does not like suc­cu­lents and cac­tus and I think she is miss­ing out because cac­tus has so many inter­est­ing shapes and tex­tures and forms.”

Wow! 75 rose­bushes! I don’t even have one because of the deer!

Suc­cu­lents are another ele­ment of the garden

On the web: Lots of con­certs at botan­i­cal gar­dens, for one:

• Des­canso Gar­dens (Descansogardens.org)…Summer evening jazz con­certs thru August 25
• Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion (theodorepayne.org)…classes include relief print­ing, irri­ga­tion primers, hyper­t­ufa container
• Los Ange­les Arbore­tum (arboretum.org)…Concert on the Green by The Cal­i­for­nia Philharmonic
• South Coast Botanic Gar­den (south​coast​b​otan​ic​gar​den​.org)… 7/​22… ensem­ble Spi­rati wood­wind quin­tet concert
• Fuller­ton Arbore­tum (fullertonarboretum.org)…Nature pho­tog­ra­phy class, Bug safari for adults
• San Diego Botanic Gar­den (sdb​gar​den​.org) Thurs­day Fam­ily Fun Nights
• Sheri­dan Gar­dens, Bur­bank — Sum­mer Sale (sheri​dan​gar​dens​.com)

Cot­tage Nurs­ery Garden

This yummy Orange County nurs­ery is burst­ing at the seams with old-​fashioned flow­ers and roman­tic heir­loom vari­eties. A smaller scale enter­prise, it is lov­ingly tended by sis­ters Jayme and Stacy Cox, and their mom Jane Cox. A brick foot­path winds through a tapes­try of blooms, vines, foun­tains, arbors and stat­u­ary. Beat­rix Pot­ter would have been right at home here. Think wis­te­ria, rare pop­pies, tons of antique roses. I noticed “bleed­ing hearts”, a plant that I remem­ber from my grandmother’s gar­den in Wis­con­sin. If you are look­ing for Eng­lish gar­den plants this nurs­ery is well worth a drive — it’s one stop shop­ping. A ship­ment of Annie’s Annu­als arrived April 1. Be sure to Mapquest or call for direc­tions — access can be tricky.

www​.cot​ta​genurs​ery​gar​dens​.com

Finches feast at Cot­tage Nurs­ery Gardens

Anthro­polo­gie flowers

I was walk­ing with my sis­ter Mary Lynn on the Third Street Prom­e­nade in Santa Mon­ica, Cal­i­for­nia recently when we came across the most beau­ti­ful win­dow dis­play at the Anthro­polo­gie store. They had a spec­tac­u­lar dis­play of great look­ing flow­ers made of plas­tic bot­tles — some­thing I had never encoun­tered before. I got some pho­tographs but they don’t do jus­tice to the effect of these bright and col­or­ful recy­cled blooms. Made out of plas­tic bot­tles that have been spray painted, it’s an easy way to cre­ate a spe­cial object from a mun­dane object. To recre­ate these flow­ers go to the link below — you can also do a search for “flow­ers made from plas­tic bottles”.

http://​www​.recy​clethis​.co​.uk/​2​0​0​8​0​5​0​1​/​r​e​c​y​c​l​i​n​g​-​p​o​p​-​a​n​d​-​w​a​t​e​r​-​b​o​t​t​l​e​s​-​i​n​t​o​-​f​l​o​w​ers

More flow­ers you can make yourself

Brid­get and Lori with a sec­tion of Aus­tralian fencing

Rib­bit Tree and Plant started life about a year ago on the side of the road — lit­er­ally. Own­ers Brid­get Blake-​Wilson and Lori Dovi were sell­ing plants on the shoul­der of Topanga Canyon Blvd., at the loca­tion of the old Sas­safras Nurs­ery (the first nurs­ery I ever fell in love with and bemoaned by us old timers). Recently they pur­chased a gor­geous 2 1/​2 acres of oak stud­ded land just off Old Topanga Road. Brid­get and Lori are start­ing out small but they have big ideas. The selec­tion at Rib­bit (don’t you love the name) is lovely. As well as a choice selec­tion of trees, shrubs, veg­eta­bles and flow­ers, many of which are drought tol­er­ant, they are dis­trib­u­tors for the Aus­tralian fence prod­uct Aus­brush. They can pro­vide land­scap­ing, design, main­te­nance and even sprin­kler design and instal­la­tion. Since they live in the canyon, they want to give back and are start­ing out by mak­ing a pic­nic area on their land. Look for some sur­prises in the future!

Rib­bit Tree and Plant is located at 301 Old Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga 90290. At the moment they are open 8am — 6pm, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Call them at 310−351−7247 or 310−403−9090.