Posts Tagged ‘native plants’

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​.Beau​fortkayak​tours​.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​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)

¹¹⁄₁₉:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (above): Thanks­giv­ing Flower Arrange­ment class.
• Theodore Payne Native Plant Foun­da­tion (Sun Val­ley): 3 part Native Plant Design Sym­po­sium (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Des­canso Gar­dens (La Canada): Her­itage Oak Walk (www​.des​canso​.org)

AKA loco weed!

How can some­thing so attrac­tive be so evil? (rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, just check out the news lately). I posted this photo, taken on my beach wan­der­ings, a week ago, call­ing it the mys­tery flower and request­ing it’s name. My loyal read­ers were on it imme­di­ately. Turns out it is the extremely poi­so­nous jim­son weed, also known as devil’s trum­pet, hell’s bells, locoweed, stinkweed and jamestown weed (talk about demo­niz­ing a plant!). In humans, the symp­toms of poi­son­ing include delir­ium, bizarre and vio­lent behav­ior and severe amne­sia. Treat­ment almost always requires hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. It is also poi­so­nous to ani­mals but less so.

Inter­est­ingly enough, accord­ing to jim​son​weed​.org, “This small, poi­so­nous bush had long been used med­i­c­i­nally, crim­i­nally, and for recre­ational pur­poses through­out the world, long before the set­tlers at Jamestown came across it. It was used by thieves in India and Rus­sia, where they used a mix­ture of ground up seeds and water to inca­pac­i­tate and then rob their unsus­pect­ing vic­tims. A reli­gious cult in India used it to mur­der peo­ple, and the plant was used as a poi­son in Renais­sance Europe.”

This is also the flower that so inspired painter Geor­gia O’Keefe. That makes sense, as it flour­ishes in the New Mex­ico deserts where she painted. I will be going to the Life Guard sta­tion to turn in this offen­sive mem­ber of the plant com­mu­nity. It will not be planted in my garden!

Jim­son Weed by Geor­gia O’Keefe 1932

On the Web:

• Sat­ur­day, ⁸⁄₆: Con­tainer Gar­den­ing with native plants at Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants (www​.Theodor​e​payne​.org) under East Val­ley nurseries
• Sat­ur­day, ⁸⁄₆: Using Native Plants and suc­cu­lents in pots class at Nopal­ito Nurs­ery (under Ven­tura Nurs­eries) www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com
• Free jazz con­certs with admis­sion at Des­canso Gar­dens this month (www​.Des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
• Mon­day, ⁸⁄₈: Cre­at­ing and keep­ing a sus­tain­able land­scape talk at San Diego Hor­ti­cul­tural Soci­ety meet­ing (www​.sdhort​soc​.org)
• ⁸⁄₁₀: Mys­tic flo­rals class (sounds pretty neat from descrip­tion) at Sher­man Library and Gar­dens (www​.slgar​dens​.org)
• Weidner’s Gar­dens in Encini­tas has a lot of fun pro­mo­tions going on right now..(www.weidners.com) San Diego Nurs­ery section

Mys­tery bloom and Trikke at the beach

Carpe Diem is a phrase made famous in a Robin Williams film — it means “seize the day” in Latin. Trikkers say “carve diem” because carv­ing is what you do on a trikke — you move your body in rhythm to pro­pel your­self, sim­i­lar to a skater or skier. What does this have to do with gar­den­ing? Absolutely noth­ing. But since I have this forum I’ll use it to tell the world about my healthy addic­tion! Actu­ally, we gardener’s all seem to grav­i­tate towards the same things, includ­ing but not lim­ited to the out­doors, plants, ani­mals, books, travel…So I believe I can slip trikking in there some­where. I first learned about trikking in an arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times health sec­tion. I was struck with how enam­ored the prac­ti­tion­ers of this unique form of exer­cise were — to the point of addic­tion. I now fully under­stand their love for trikking — there is some­thing about the free­dom of move­ment expe­ri­enced on this 3 wheeled cam­ber­ing device. Plus the Trikke folds up, it’s low-​impact, never bor­ing — even Jimmy Carter does it! There is a whole lot more info on www​.trikke​.com.

Now…who can tell me what this gor­geous plant is.….Pleeeeeze? Go to com­ments below and put me out of misery.….I’m won­der­ing if it is a native? Either way I must have it!

Mys­tery bloom at beach

Go to http://www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​2​r​u​K​P​i​E​A​zz4 to see Pres­i­dent and Mrs. Carter on their Trikkes.

On the web: Sat­ur­day, July 30 events…

• Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery, Ven­tura (Ven­tura Nurs­eries on left): Make your own suc­cu­lent wreath workshop
• Sheri­dan Gar­dens, Bur­bank (East Val­ley nurs­eries on left): 10% to 40% sale
• Anderson’s La Costa Nurs­ery, Encini­tas (San Diego nurs­eries on left): see the amaz­ing Rex Bego­nia “Escar­got” on their web­site (www​.ander​son​sla​costa​nurs​ery​.com)
• The Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants, Sun Val­ley (East val­ley nurs­eries to the left): Show­ers to Flow­ers with Kim­berly O’Cain and Hyper­t­ufa con­tainer workshop
• Des­canso Gar­dens, La Canada/​Flintridge (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org): Sus­tain­able Gar­den­ing workshop
• Worm bin work­shop @ El Cora­zon Com­post Facil­ity, Ocean­side (www​.enros​.com)

July Tapes­try

Isn’t this incred­i­ble? I found this on Etsy (www​.etsy​.com) a while back and ordered it imme­di­ately. This piece was cre­ated on a scan­ner by pho­tog­ra­pher, artist and land­scape designer Liz Reed. She is also that rarest of human beings, a mas­ter gar­dener. The above image con­sists of platy­codon, ascle­p­sias, blue­ber­ries and nico­tinia. I love the col­ors and tex­tures Liz has cre­ated but it is not sur­pris­ing — Liz is a pho­tog­ra­pher, fine artist and gar­den designer. She resides in Pitts­burgh. To find out more about her process go to this blog by Melissa Clark, another ter­rific pho­tog­ra­pher: http://​melis​saclarkpho​tog​ra​phy​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​1​/​0​1​/​0​8​/​c​a​p​t​u​r​i​n​g​-​b​e​a​u​t​y​-​f​r​o​m​-​t​h​e​-​g​a​r​d​en/.

Liz’s web­site: www​.eliz​a​bethree​dfin​eart​.com. To see or pur­chase more of Liz’s still lifes, go to www​.etsy​.com and search: Liz Reed.

Upcom­ing events:

• Any­time: City Farm­ers in San Diego is offer­ing the first of a video series on “Grow your own food 101″ on their newslet­ter web­site. (newsletter@​cityfarmers.​com)
• Now thru July 4: Paul Ecke Jr. Flower and Gar­den Show/​Del Mar Fair­grounds in San Diego County (www​.sdfair​.com)
• Sat­ur­day, June 18, Plant Depot of San Juan Capis­trano will be pre­sent­ing Cristin Fusano on soil prepa­ra­tion and plants selec­tion for low water usage. (www​.plant​de​pot​news​.com)
• Sat­ur­day, June 18 classes at Theodore Payne in Sun Val­ley include: Cre­at­ing an excit­ing park­way, Easy native plants and Native plant hor­ti­cul­ture. (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• June 19 is Fathers Day. Des­canso Gar­dens in La Canada/​Flintridge is offer­ing a BBQ start­ing at 11am and a con­cert start­ing at 1pm. call for details:(818)949‑4200.