Posts Tagged ‘landscaping’

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)

Escapism at its finest! I can’t say this Hawai­ian nurs­ery is the most gor­geous in the world — as I haven’t expe­ri­enced them all (alas) — but it has to be close. Has any­one seen a big box store nurs­ery as nice as this one or most neighborhood/​speciality nurs­eries? We need to sup­port them as they are all rel­a­tively small busi­nesses in a slow econ­omy — what would we do with­out them?

On the web:

• Wednesday, April 20: Stephen Orr lec­ture about his new book Tomorrow’s Gar­den; www​.gar​den​con​ser​vancy​.org
• Thurs­day, April 21: Lec­ture and Field Trip on Land­scap­ing as if the Water­shed mat­ters at the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum; jill.​berry@​arboretum.​org or (626) 821‑4623 –pre­reg­is­tra­tion required.

Bam­boo Headquarters

Ralph Evans, owner of Botan­i­cal Part­ners, and I had been play­ing tele­phone tag for weeks. Finally I was able to meet him for a tour of his Vista, CA grow­ing grounds and nurs­ery recently. Boy, was it worth the wait! In addi­tion to the won­der­ful 4 acre prop­erty we toured on Majella Road, he has over 38 more acres in North San Diego County. Ralph has been in the landscaping/​nursery busi­ness for over 45 years and he is pas­sion­ate about his work, espe­cially bam­boo. One mis­con­cep­tion about bam­boo he aims to clear up: all vari­eties of bam­boo will not over­run your gar­dens, only “run­ners”. There are also “clumpers”, with­out an inva­sive bone in their, well, bod­ies. He can show you over 270 vari­eties of bam­boo, and will want to know where you will be plant­ing and how tall you want your bam­boo to get: any­where from 1′ to 50′! Botan­i­cal Part­ners also car­ries many unusual palms, Aus­tralians, suc­cu­lents, cacti and spec­i­man plants. They sell mail order and on the Inter­net. Bam­boo poles are avail­able (see below). Last but not least, Ralph can tell you how to har­vest edi­ble bam­boo shoots, though it sounds like a lot of work to me.

www​.botan​i​cal​part​ners​.com

Bam­boo pole har­vest at Bam­boo Headquarters

Tree of Life Nursery

If you are like me, you have fan­ta­sized about work­ing at a spe­cial nurs­ery — or hav­ing your own. Tree of Life Nurs­ery is just such a spe­cial place for me. Located on 40 acres off Ortega High­way in San Juan Capis­trano, TOLN was started over thirty years ago by own­ers Mike Evans and Jeff Bohn. Their mis­sion was to prop­a­gate Cal­i­for­nia native plants with the view to return­ing Cal­i­for­nia habi­tat to its nat­ural form. Since then TOLN has become the largest native plant sup­plier in the state. Both the set­ting and the build­ings on the prop­erty are won­der­ful. The staff “has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in eco­log­i­cal restora­tion, habi­tat enhance­ment and authen­tic land­scap­ing.” Tree of Life natives are made avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic through the charm­ing Casa “La Paz” Plant and Book Store. They also offer ter­rific work­shops, includ­ing: Native Designs: Color Year Round in the Cal­i­for­nia Native Gar­den (April 3), Native Design: Cre­ate a Hum­ming­bird Con­tainer (April 10), Native Design: Incor­po­rat­ing Desert Plants (April 17), Native Design: Design Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess (April 24), and Native Design: Plant Tour of Nurs­ery Gar­dens (May 1). They also have a 4 part work­shop in May on how to get rid of your lawn. For more infor­ma­tion go to their web­site: www​.Cal​i​for​ni​a​na​tive​plants​.com.