It is hard to believe that spring is just a few days away. This winter has flown by with so many family happenings as well as personal events that took over much of my focus and time.
The big El Nino we were counting on to bring us relief from the long drought has been rather winpy to say the least, but there is still more rain in the forecast and the mountain tops are covered with snow, a good sign.
I haven't spent any time in the gardens up until this week, but they have been soaking up the rain and the record breaking heat in February and there are signs of growth everywhere. I am delighted that the abutilons I searched for all over last year have settled in and are blooming like crazy in all the shady gardens that were so bare. I absolutely love their charming blooms as do the hummingbirds. Their structure is a bit leggy and sparse still, but I am hoping they will fill in this spring. I learned the hard way not to prune them too hard because they are slow growers so I am just leaving them alone to allow them to spread out in their light and airy fashion. Because they prefer the shade, they don't seem too bothered by the lack of rain last year and are good sports almost everywhere I have planted them. I am going to figure out how to cut some branches and bring them in the house too.
I don't know where the time goes, but it looks like spring is upon us based on the roses starting to bud and the wisteria that is showing color. I have been wrapped up in various house projects that have kept me busy but I need to take a minute to reflect on some late winter blooming succulents that are unique to our climate. The long goose neck blooms like the one above are showing up all over the place in the winter in Southern California and to visitors they do look like quite a curiosity. They are the blooms of the Agave attenuata, a very common plant in our landscapes. It takes about five or more years for the plant to bloom like this and then it will die, but by then there are usually many pups formed at the base ready to take over. This one is in my street-side garden and is putting on quite the show. Originally from Mexico, you can see where they get their common name, Fox Tail Agave!
Kalanchoe blossfeldiana is a plant that I usually buy in pots for the colorful blooms in the fall and I use for indoor decorating, but my garden helper loves to propagate them because they are so easy. As a result I have tons of them all over the gardens (often to my dismay)! They are not much to look when not in bloom, but this time of year they put on a big show of color. I just found out their common name is Flaming Katy! I kind of like them a little better now!
Also in the Kalanchoe family is this plant, whose name I'm not sure of, some big lanky cousin of the Kalanchoe blossfeldiana that is tucked back in a corner of the Moonlight Garden. Very charming little flowers I think!
For the past six years I have been planting native milkweed to attract Monarch butterflies. We are in the migration path for their annual trek from Mexico to California and because of the over population of our area their natural food source, the milkweed plant, is disappearing at alarming rates, having a negative impact on these lovely and amazing creatures.
For many years I never saw any sign of them and so I moved the milkweed around the yard and even planted them in different spots. It did take a few years to see any signs of butterflies at all after the yard had pretty much been cultivated with pesticides and chemicals for years by the previous owners, but finally life started to return.
Last year I wasn't in the garden much due to a knee injury, but one day when I was out walking around I noticed some strange, bare sticks protruding out of the ground. It took me a while to realize it was what was left of the milkweed plants that I had planted the previous fall! I was excited that there was hope that the Monarchs had found the food source I had left out for them and devoured it, although any sign of them was long gone.
Last weekend I was out digging up iris tubers (I know, I'm way off sync) and a pretty orange and black butterfly flitted by me. I always assume any orange and black butterfly I see is a Gulf Fritillar because we have lots of them and they love the passion flower vines which I grow. But I watched it head over to the patch of milkweed as if it was directing my attention there and then it was off. I climbed through the flower bed over to the milkweed and there they were, about a dozen Monarch caterpillars of all sizes, munching away on the plants! We have been watching them all week, growing in size, then disappearing, crawling off (I hope) to form a chrysalis on a nearby leaf or twig. Today when I went out the five plants were all but stripped of all foliage and there were still tiny caterpillars just emerged still looking for food. There should be another "crop of butterflies in a couple months so maybe I should get some more milkweed in the ground before then! There are actually three short-lived (two to six weeks) generations of butterflies that hatch in one area before a "super" generation that make the migration hatch. That generation lives six to eight months to make the migration to warmer climates in the fall. Well, I'm glad they finally found my little patch of food I planted for them and I figure if they can migrate thousands of miles to find the exact same mating place through generations, they'll be able to find my little milkweed patch every year too!
We're adding a new fruit tree (actually two) to the SJC gardens this year. When we moved into the Laguna beach house there was a pomegranate tree, or more like a pomegranate bush, growing way down in the back forty. Planted by birds I'm guessing. Anyway, I found it rather charming and a lovely addition to have on hand, both for the tasty fruit that is so good for us, as well as the decorative component. There are few things as lovely and sensual as a large bowl of pomegranates during the holidays. Especially when you cut a few open to show the beautiful seeds and gorgeous colors inside. Because they grow so easily here and seem like a natural addition to any Mediterranean garden, I have been meaning to add one or more to our SJC yard. At the nursery a couple weekends ago they had some bareroot ones that my DH and I picked up and now we have one in the rose garden and I am looking for a sunny spot to put the other one. I like to buy two of new additions to the gardens and spread them around so if one doesn't do well in a location, maybe the other will take to it's new home a little better! Bareroot fruit trees are so easy to plant is is almost crazy! (I know the label looks like it is a peach, but it is not!) Pomegranate trees grow kind of like a scrappy, large shrub, so finding the right spot may take a little work, but I am looking forward to the fruits of our labor this fall!
It's been a number of years since I've indulged in planting bleeding hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) in the shade garden. I guess once again the rain has been encouraging me to take a chance on something that I know is just a short-lived charmer. Even though they are supposed to be perennials, I have never seen them come back to bloom the second year around here, but they are just so sweet, I am willing to go to the trouble and expense just to have them in the garden for a few months in the late winter and early spring. Besides, is there a more perfect flower for Valentines Day? Anyone can have roses, but a bleeding heart? Come on!
I don't know if I'm early or late, but I do know that this isn't the ideal time of year to be digging and dividing bearded iris, but our mild climate is very forgiving and I didn't get any flowers last year, so I figure the worse that can happen is I don't get any blooms until next year anyway. But chances are I will get a few flowers if I am lucky, so I have been taking advantage of this lovely weather and out digging the rhizomes up and separating the mothers from the babies. It has been five or six years that most of these plants have been in the ground, way too long to go without dividing. In addition to that, many of them are now growing in the shade from trees that were just shrubs when they were planted. Years of adding mulch to the beds have also covered many of them so that they are buried too deep and the tops of their rhizomes are not getting any sun, another reason they will not bloom. I have lost track of what is planted where, so they are all just being dug up, separated and thrown in a basket and will be planted with a handful of the organic fertilizer I am getting for the camellias and azaleas since they prefer acidic conditions and we have such alkaline water. They are all going in one of the sunny beds that have good drainage and we will see what comes up! I may throw a few in pots to share after I see them bloom so I know what I am giving away because I have quite a few it seems. There are a few areas like the Moonlight Garden that I know only have white reblooming Frequent Flyers and the side garden that are all Frequent Violet, but other than that it looks like I am in for some surprises when it comes time for them to bloom this spring!
If I remember correctly we were traveling last year this time and I missed seeing my pretty little pyrus calleryana or Ornamental Pear tree bloom. One of the first plants to show color, it is looking especially robust this year as are all of the shrubs and plants in the Moonlight Garden, I suspect due to the rainfall we have had this winter. It is a beacon of sunshine in the middle of winter as the California natives are starting to bloom and some of the early spring flowers are waking up. The weather is lovely this week and just perfect for getting out in the garden and taking care of some of the chores (like cutting back the roses) that I have been falling behind with due to other obligations! After a year of injuries for me and years of drought for the garden it is nice to be able to get back out there and make up for lost time!
Thanksgiving and Christmas are big holidays at our house, but Super Bowl Sunday takes the prize for sheer volume of people at the house and I work all month trying to refresh the mid-winter gardens so that they at least look presentable since this is the only time of year many of our friends come to the house and most of them associate me with being a gardener and have high expectations. The camellias and azaleas are lovely, but I have been taking advantage of the lovely weather and abundant rain we've been having to add some pretty seasonal color that I have skipped the past few years. After the poinsettias were retired from their showy pots around the entrances, there were empty pots for many weeks until I got busy at the last minute to drop in some winter bloomers. I even updated this wooden planter with tiny succulent cuttings that will look good for months to come. Amazing how inspirational a little rain and sunshine in the middle of winter can be to a gardener!
After Christmas my DH and I got away for a few days at a spa in the hills in the San Diego area. Although it was colder than usual (ahem) we did spend a lot of time outdoors and the grounds were just lovely with an exceptionally beautiful landscape of mostly California natives with some Mediterranean plants covering acres and acres of the grounds. I was so impressed with it that I was inspired to come home and look for ways to incorporate more natives in my own landscaping plan, although I do already have a lot now, I can always add more. I do think it is not as easy as it sounds to gracefully add them into the average yard and it pays to either seek help from a landscaper who specializes in native plants or spend time exploring and taking notes and pictures of native landscapes that look good year round. There is a yard in our neighborhood that has removed their lawn and replaced it with drought tolerant plants and unfortunately it is somewhat of a visual disaster. It almost looks like it was laid out on a grid and succulents that will most likely stay very small were planted resulting in a very sad display. Like I say, it is harder than it looks to come up with a visually pleasing display that is also environmentally sound. I have had my fair share of mistakes! But we should always keep trying!
It has been a while since I have been able to spend any time in the garden, let alone write about the garden, but today was a beautiful day with the temperature of about 80 degrees and I finished my "must do" list and headed over to the nursery to see what was going on there. I had just written a post for the UCCE Master Gardener blog about fertilizing citrus this month along the coast and I decided that I had better follow up on the dose I gave last summer that resulted in a bumper crop of grapefruit and lemons. I have a feeling my garden helper is a bit frugal with the organic fertilizer I buy (it is pricey) and spreads it a bit thin, resulting in weak trees with not much fruit. Citrus trees are heavy feeders and need to be fertilized at least three if not four times a year. You might as well save your money if you are going to skimp on the dose.
Of course just to prove that we really don't know more than mother nature, my key lime tree in the front yard that was here when we moved in, never gets fertilized and produces a ton of fruit every year! I always look at the poor scrawny thing growing in a rather shady spot and think it certainly can't hang in there another year thriving on neglect, but it continues to prove me wrong! I suspect that because it is tucked away behind the grape tunnel it gets lots of natural fertilizer from all the grape leaves and fruit that fall and go unnoticed.
The camellias are blooming all over the yard. I am going to make sure to feed them soon because I am afraid I am asking them to keep going without much care and they do seem to be giving me fewer and fewer blooms each year. I did go to buy some fertilizer today, but came home with five new camellia bushes instead, they were just too beautiful for my weak constitution to resist on this beautiful day! Now is the time to plant camellias and azaleas because they are dormant while they are in bloom. Once they stop blooming they go into a growth cycle and will need the nutrients the fertilizer will provide, so I am going back for fertilizer tomorrow! I have already cut a few but I need to get out my shallow bowls that I use to float the blooms in all over the house!
Of course the azaleas are blooming too! I'm not a big azalea fan, but there were tons of them here when we moved in and after moving them around a bit I've grown to appreciate the sparkle of color they add to the winter garden and the low maintenance requirements. I'm sure they are in need of some food and they will use the same acidic kind as the camellias, so I will see that they get some this month too.
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| October 2014 |
Somehow it has worked out that most of our entertaining at the SJC house takes place in the winter months. Dozens of relatives come from all over the country to visit and dare I say hundreds of friends stop by some time between Halloween and Valentines Day. Needless to say, they are certainly missing the prime time in the gardens which I would have to say is spring, followed by summer and then fall.
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| November 2014 |
By the time winter rolls around most of the prettiest scenes are tired and taking a rest. Roses are either spindly or cut back, most iris are sleeping and of course the clematis, wisteria, flowering shrubs and vines are either bare or devoid of blooms at best. Even the willowy grasses are often cut back to bristly stubs. I am thankful for the azaleas and camellias, of which I have planted many, and there are always the plants that look good consistently year round which add the foundation to the gardens. I do try to add some seasonal color in the way of cool season annuals that I probably would skip if not for the onslaught of guests. As you can see by the top picture, the Moonlight Garden was showing signs of a long hot summer a couple weeks ago, so a carload of bright white perennials and annuals in addition to some organic fertilizer has brightened up this focal point and will go a long way to keep this garden looking good until the spring plants start to wake up. If you look closely, my 'Golf Ball' (more like Basketball) pittosporum look terrible, having been covered with blight all year. They are supposed to stay small and round, hence the name, but these became so large and gangly they were trimmed back at the wrong time and have become a mess. I'm debating whether to remove them all together or just cut them back and
give them another chance. But enough about problems! I've been out every weekend with a watering can and some seaweed fertilizer to make sure this area is robust for the upcoming months and all our guests because next weekend there will be soccer balls, baseballs and maybe even a few Frisbees landing among the newly planted daisies and phlox and they need to be as robust as possible!
Just for fun here's a look at years past. If you are on Pinterest and 2010 looks familiar to you, it has probably been pinned a few thousand times!
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| 2009 |
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| 2010 |
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| 2011 |
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| 2012 |
I just wanted to say a word about one of my favorite vines, pink jasmine (jasminum polanthum). It is such a sweet thing that is so easy to grow, nothing bothers it at all and it will ramble all over the place with little or no care. It blooms in the middle of winter when everything else is sadly dormant and is so very, very fragrant that it gives even the most discouraged gardener hope of an early spring in our mild climate. It does have one unpleasant characteristic though. It is not self cleaning and it is not easy to deadhead. Once the pretty little pink blooms turn to brown they hang on the vine way past their welcome and look very untidy while everything else is starting to look quite nice. Because the vine is so woven throughout the other plants it can become quite an eyesore. The solution? My suggestion is to plant it at the base of shrubs and trees where it will grow up high looking for light. That way you will be able to enjoy the strong fragrance drifting down and even the cascading flowers in the winter while little else is blooming, but once the show is over and there are more interesting things to attract the eye closer to ground level, you won't even notice the brown swags that will hang on for a month or so until the new growth takes over and grows past the old blooms. Problem solved!
Sorry about the long gap in my postings. I've been a bit distracted.
I've been meaning to write about the rain we had last month. I had turned the sprinklers off for an entire month and was only using the hose on occasion when a few plants looked about to expire in an effort to conserve water since we had only had an inch of rain all year and it was getting pretty dire. Both of my gardens are fairly well established and fairly drought tolerant, so they can go for long periods without much water, but eventually they will need some rain. We had discussed giving up the front lawn if need be. We keep it mainly for the grandkids and dogs to play on, but it can always be replaced if needed. Great old trees and large privacy hedges not so much.
The four days of rain the we had in February were very welcome and although not nearly enough, you could almost hear a sigh of relief from the gardens.
The grounds soaked it in and hopefully not much ran off due to mulching and pavers that allow the water to seep through in the long driveway.
The cool damp weather soon gave way to warm, sunny days of beautiful spring weather, but we are still hopeful for more rain to help with the drought this spring while the rainy season is still upon us.
This year I've started using the winter blooms of my many camellias as cut flowers indoors on a regular basis. I always tell people that camellias are to winter what roses are to summer, but I do know that they do not quite have the scent of roses and the long stems that lend themselves to beautiful indoor bouquets so I am not surprised when I am met with a bit of skepticism over my enthusiasm for these beautiful blooms as cut flowers. Although I do sometimes cut them with stems and they do fine in small vases, my favorite way to display them is floating in flat bowls of water. On my coffee table all winter I have a large glass bowl of water that holds five to seven blooms and they last at least a week and are a lovely change of pace from the usual bouquets that are gathered from the garden. Add a few of the lovely dark green leaves tucked in around the blooms for a full look. One single bloom and a few leaves in a pretty saucer is lovely on a nightstand or in the powder room too. I did plant a couple new varieties this year for the sole purpose of adding to my choices to bring inside. My sister has moved into a home that has some established bushes and she always calls them "those peony-like flowers". Maybe I am missing the mark when I compare compare them to roses!
On a side note, camellias are shrubs that prefer shady locations and once established and well mulched, can survive with minimum additional watering during droughts. Do clean up spent flowers under them though to prevent fungal diseases.
Here we are in the second half of February and while the rest of the country is experiencing a deep and difficult winter it feels like spring here and my liquidambar is finally looking like autumn! I know we gardeners are feeling guilty because we are really enjoying the weather but we know how much we need the rain. There is no rain in the 10 day forecast, and I am going to have to turn on the sprinklers for at least a good soak this week and hope for some relief soon. Maybe we'll have a wet spring!
I turned the sprinklers off a couple weeks ago to try to conserve water while the weather is cool and plants other than natives are somewhat dormant. There are some spots in the yard like this one, that stay cool and damp in the winter with minimum water due to the deep shade and being at the down side of the slightly sloped property. This area was originally a swampy mess when we first moved in and it was only grass, but now the ferns and flowering shade plants and ground covers keep it in check. I added some primrose a few weeks ago for a touch of winter color in hopes that we get some rain this season and sure enough, we have had some this week to keep them perky, although we will need much more to catch up and make a difference in the drought conditions. It is not just the rain along the coast we need, but snow in the mountains to fill the rivers and creeks this spring and summer. We still have time in our rainy season, but today the sun is shining beautifully and there is not a cloud in the sky. As much as we love our mild weather, we understand the need for rain and will gladly welcome it when it comes. There are always some plants that can be sacrificed during a drought in the gardens and many more that will survive tough times, but let's hope we get the rain and can look forward to a lush garden this summer.
So today should be an interesting day. I have been very busy lately, doing everything except gardening. A few weeks ago I was contacted by a photographer from Minnesota who was going to be in our area this week and was hoping to get to visit a garden with the goal of photographing a California garden in the winter to sell a story to a gardening magazine. I told her I would be happy to show her my garden, but not to expect much because although we do live in a mild climate, our gardens are not exactly spectacular year round. As I walk through my garden this time of year it looks rather bleak to me. Most of the roses have been cut back (there are a few that were blooming away and were temporarily spared that are still in need of a cut back), the ornamental grasses that are abundant in my gardens and add so much movement and character other times of the year look like short whisk brooms stuck in the dirt and many of the trees and vines that I love for their changing fall colors have shed their leaves and are a tangle of bare branches. There is more bare ground than I care to see after the winter clean up and I'm afraid the rabbits have had their way with many of the winter annuals and ground covers that I had high hopes for earlier this season. Still, when she asked last week if anything was in bloom, I had to admit there was a long list when I started to think about it. There are camellias and azaleas of course, and the pretty abutilons that I adore and have been combing the nurseries looking for more to add in shady spots. I have noticed some lavenders starting to bloom and the Russian sage is putting on a show. There are a few daffodils starting to wake up and a few reblooming iris that never know when to stop blooming. The unseasonably warm weather we had confused some of the daylilies and there are even a few of them showing their blooms. This is also the time of year for succulents to bloom their unusual flowers and natives to flower and I'm sure there are some of those blooms to be found around and I did notice lots of buds on the Anna apple trees. I guess although it doesn't exactly look like spring, there will be more to see blooming than my guest this afternoon will see in Minnesota at least! I'll let you know how it goes!
Although most of the roses have already been cut way back and stripped of all their leaves for the winter, some that are blooming away in this mild weather have been spared a week or so until the end of the job is at hand. The blooms are not the big full ones that will come back in a few months, but they are appreciated nevertheless. I must say though, the foliage is flawless this time of year!
There are no daffodils coming up yet, but the narcissus are almost done blooming, much to my dismay. I rarely get out in the gardens during the holidays and I usually miss the few that I have here in SJC and if I don't get over to Laguna soon I'll miss those too. I thought I did plant some more last year but maybe they were late season bloomers. I need to keep better records!
I am off to the nursery this morning to get some organic rose food to make sure the roses are well fed before the mulch goes down. I'm not sure how long this lovely weather will last (the weather forecast does call for rain on Thursday) and if there wasn't football on all weekend this would have been where we would have spent the warm afternoons even though things are pretty bare!
It has been a while since I have posted on this blog and it has been a while since I have been out in the garden! A combination of a sore knee and way too many responsibilities involving the holidays have kept me from even taking a peek at what is happening out there other than a quick glimpse as I hurry by on my way to doing what must be done at this time of year. Somehow I made it through the holidays (with the help of others) and now I am looking forward to taking advantage of this beautiful weather we are having and getting out and doing some sprucing up and a bit of winter planting (also with the help of others). As always we will have a number of visitors at the end of this month and I like the gardens in SJC to look good and it is a good excuse to add some winter annuals as long as the rains hold out. Although I am enjoying the sunny days, I know we are in need of the rain and I am hoping for a wet winter to flush out the soils and give the trees a good deep soaking, but maybe not until February?
Note: My sincere apologies to those of you that are suffering through blizzard conditions back east. We hope for the best for all of you that are being hit by this latest storm and I really didn't mean to rub it in!
Although I've been busy visiting nurseries trying to pick up some shrubs and perennials for spaces in need of reviving in SJC, I am not finding any abutilon. They really are one of my favorite shrubs that, although considered a tropical plant, seem to bloom all fall and winter long and most of the spring. They are disease resistant and rarely are bothered by insects. Simple, easy and charming, no wonder the nurseries are sold out!
