Posts Tagged ‘native’

Tea tree shaped into a tight ball.

Some plants just worm their way into our lives. Per­haps because of its ver­sa­til­ity, the tea tree, or lep­tosper­num, is just such a plant. A native of Aus­tralia and New Zealand, it thrives in Sun­set zones 14 — 24. Jo O’Connell of Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ojai says there are many dif­fer­ent vari­eties of this shrub. “While the plants all have sim­i­lar pink, red and white flow­ers, they vary in height and growth habits.” I per­son­ally love them trimmed into tight balls close to the ground or as trees with vis­i­ble branches. But the most unusual appli­ca­tion is pic­tured below in Wal­nut Creek: the lep­tosper­nums have been allowed to grow through a wood framed wire fence, cre­at­ing a glo­ri­ous liv­ing wall.

Tea trees like well drained soil, are drought tol­er­ant and good near the ocean. My one spec­i­man took a cou­ple of years to get going but it is thriv­ing now. There are 16 vari­eties of this shrub listed in the Sun­set West­ern Gar­den book — one could have a whole gar­den of noth­ing but tea trees!

www​.aus​tralian​plants​.com

A liv­ing wall of leptospernum.

On the Web:

Thurs­day, ²⁄₁₀: Cur­rents, goose­ber­ries and man­zan­i­tas for your South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gar­den @ the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum, 9:30 — 12, $20.00/ 626−821−4623 or jill.berry@arboretum.org/

Sat­ur­day, ²⁄₁₂:

• Make a fab­u­lous foun­tain from a water­ing can @ the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum — bring a water­ing can, all other mate­ri­als pro­vided at cost –I couldn’t find a cost on this class /​626−821−4623 or jill.berry@arboretum.org/
• Bird­ing basics at Des­canso Gar­den 8am — 10am — $20/​10 members/​www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org/
• Also at Des­canso: Com­pan­ion Plant­ing 1pm — $20/​10 mem­ber and: Back­yard Chick­ens and Bees 10am — 12pm — $25/​15 member
• Camel­lia Show and Sale @ Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens Sat 1 — 4:30 and Sun 10:30 — 4:30 /​Hunt​ing​ton​.org/
• Hyper­t­ufa class: Make a con­tainer resem­bling a stone trough 10am — 12pm /​$35/​25 mem­ber /​theodor​e​payne​.org/

Sun­day, ²⁄₁₃:

• 27th Wild Mush­room Fair @ the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum, 10am — 4 pm details @ arbore​tum​.org/

This man is Patrick Dougherty in one of his phe­nom­e­nal struc­tures. His work makes me weep. How does he do it? Accord­ing to his web­site, by twist­ing the line between archi­tec­ture, land­scape and art. He has built more than 175 works world­wide over the past 20 years. The piece shown was com­mis­sioned by the Min­nesota Land­scape Arbore­tum, and built over a 17 day period with the help of about 80 vol­un­teers. That seems very fast to me.

Most inter­est­ing are the mate­ri­als he uses: thou­sands of wil­low twigs, branches and saplings woven and twisted together (no nails or pegs are used). “My affin­ity for trees as a mate­r­ial seems to come from a child­hood spent wan­der­ing the forest.…saplings have a nat­ural, inher­ent method of join­ing — that is, sticks entan­gle eas­ily. This snag­ging prop­erty is the key to work­ing this mate­r­ial into a vari­ety of large forms.”

Luck­ily for us in SoCal, Patrick is plan­ning an instal­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia, around Jan­u­ary 11 in Palo Alto at the Palo Alto Art Cen­ter, accord­ing to his web­site www​.stick​work​.net. To learn more about him and his meth­ods check out the Min­nesota Arbore­tum web­site: www​.arbore​tum​.umn​.edu/​b​i​g​b​u​i​l​d​p​r​o​c​e​s​s​.​a​spx. Patrick lives in, what else, a hand­made house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

On the web:

11/​4/​Thursday: Native Plant Gar­den Design with land­scape designer Susanne Jett @ Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)

11/​4/​Thursday: Nuccio’s Nurs­eries and a Peace­ful Gar­den in Altadena with Lili Singer, fea­tur­ing a self-​drive field trip thru the LA Arbore­tum (www​.arbore​tum​.org)

11/​6/​Saturday: a series on Native plant gar­den­ing at Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ven­tura (www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com)

11/​6 – 7/​Saturday and Sun­day: Japan­ese Gar­den Fes­ti­val at Des­canso Gar­dens (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)

For more SoCal events: www​.paci​fi​chor​ti​cul​ture​.org/​c​a​l​e​n​d​a​r​/​s​o​C​al/

Altadena gar­den tour, 2009

More web­sites worth click­ing on, con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous post…

San Diego:

• www​.daylily​hill​.com: a sec­tion show­cas­ing “real gar­dens”, book reviews, recipes
• www​.Cedros​gar​dens​.com: They offer a vari­ety of classes, notes from past classes, offer a sharp­en­ing service.
• www​.Laspili​tas​.com: Chock full of plant­ing, design and main­te­nance infor­ma­tion for native plants; Cal­i­for­nia cli­mate info.
• www​.Mis​sion​hill​snurs​ery​.com: Really nice blog
• www​.Simp​son​snurs​ery​.com: If you like to com­bine gar­den­ing with vin­tage cars, this is your website!
• www​.wal​teran​der​son​.com: classes, events, newsletter
• www​.MBnurs​ery​.com: A fun web­site to expe­ri­ence and see what is possible.

Ven­tura County:

• www​.Aus​tralian​plants​.com: in depth infor­ma­tion on Aus­tralian plants, pho­tos of design projects using Aus­tralian plants, resources for Aus­tralian plants, cus­tom plant lists
• www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com: classes offered on Cal­i­for­nia native and drought tol­er­ant plants
• www​.ottoand​sons​.com: for all things rose!

On the Web: Thurs­day, Sept. 16, 9:30am — noon: Great plants for fall plant­ing with Matthew Roberts. Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum in Arca­dia, call (626) 821‑4623.

Cal­i­for­nia native plants

I recently toured Matil­ija Nurs­ery with owner Bob Suss­man, who started his grow­ing busi­ness about 16 years ago. Nes­tled among the orchards of Moor­park, this SoCal nurs­ery car­ries a choice vari­ety of native plants, and native and hybridized irises. Bob has pro­vided Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com with the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion about native plant growing:

What to do now??? The end of the sum­mer dog days.……

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the most chal­leng­ing and demor­al­iz­ing time for a native gar­den, espe­cially a new native gar­den. The rea­son for this is that a native gar­den, or any gar­den for that mat­ter, always has a com­po­nent of trial and error. Most of us tend to focus on the “error”, what didn’t work and what died? This was indeed the case at a recent con­sul­ta­tion I went to last week where the new gar­den was going through its rough first year.

Most native plants flower intensely in spring but by sum­mer things are going the other way. There are non-​violent solu­tions to all of this and things to do like main­te­nance and planning.

You can start cut­ting back things that “need it”. Things that need it are salvia’s, sphear­al­cea, encelia, grasses and even matil­ija pop­pies but not cean­othus or man­zanita. Clear out leaf lit­ter except under oaks — my pref­er­ence. Weed and spread mulch. That will give every­thing a much neater and cleaner look while keep­ing the ground cooler and plants greener.

Plan­ning! What croaked and what didn’t? What looks good dur­ing the sum­mer heat? Most casu­al­ties occur in the first year. While there are many rea­sons for plant casu­al­ties, it’s gen­er­ally “wrong plant, wrong place”, but you may not know this until the first sum­mer. Then you find out. What to do?

Repeat the suc­cesses and not the fail­ures. Look at those things that did well and plant more of those. Go to the native plant nurs­ery (Matil­ija Nurs­ery) or botan­i­cal gar­den in summer/​fall and see what looks nice and in flower!!!!. Then, plant the plants that are both flow­er­ing and/​or look nice.

Flow­er­ing plants put the focus of your eye on the flow­ers and not the part of the land­scape going to seed or in to dor­mancy. Here’s a par­tial list of what is flow­er­ing now: lessin­gia, ero­gonum grande rubescens ie red buck­wheat (fin­ish­ing now), Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, chilop­sis lin­earus (desert wil­low), mala­cotham­nus nutalii (bush mal­low) and abu­tilon palmeri.

Matil­ija Bob will now do con­sults for about $100 per visit depend­ing on where you live and you get a 20% dis­count cer­tifi­cate good for 60 days on nurs­ery plants to boot. Way bet­ter and cheaper than a psychologist!

Go to www​.matil​i​ja​nurs​ery​.com for more arti­cles like the one above.