Posts Tagged ‘willow’

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/

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.