Category Archives: Flowering trees

color in the garden, Deer Resistant Plants, flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, perennials, roses, shade plants, shrubs

A Ben Lomond Garden Coexists with Deer

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One of the perks of writing this gardening column for the Press Banner is being invited to visit beautiful gardens. I  recently had the honor to tour the garden of fellow columnist, Colly Gruczelak, writer of Plain Talk About Food, at her home in Ben Lomond. I've known Colly for many years going back to when she moved here in 2004 from Thousand Oaks.  If you know Colly it will come as no surprise that she is just as enthusiastic about plants as she is about good food. She gardens with a resident deer population and had lots to say about this dilemma.

When she first moved to the Ben Lomond property there was "nothing in the garden but bottlebrush and bare ground" she said. Not wanting to fence the property she has come to know what the deer are not interested in eating for dinner- in her garden anyway. Located right on the San Lorenzo River, her garden blends perfectly with the natural woodland setting.

A huge Fragrantissima Improved rhododendron poked its beautiful white flower trusses through an ornamental low fence. A Sally Holmes rose bloomed atop the fence, too. Colly explained she has included several roses in the garden and will spray them with a bitter repellent if the deer become too interested but often surrounding a rose with plants the deer don't like is enough to keep the buds safe.

A beautiful purple Grand Slam rhododendron bloomed nearby. Colly keeps plant tags in her Sunset Western Gardening book so she can look up a plants name when necessary. Given the hundreds of beautiful specimens in the garden this is no easy task.

I was surprised to see so many azaleas blooming in the garden. I knew rhododendrons are deer resistant but it surprised me to learn that her azaleas thrive also . Colly grows Encore azaleas that bloom continually throughout the season. They border all the garden paths and this first flush of flowers was spectacular.

She has an Iceberg rose intertwined with a Jackmanii clematis. The buds of the clematis were not quite open but I can imagine how stunning this purple and white combination will be. I love Iceberg roses. They scent the air with honey and vanilla. Colly doesn't worry about pruning the clematis according to the book. She "leaves it alone" and from the looks of the many buds about to burst with color it's doing just fine.

Another gardening tip Colly shared with me is her use of bungee cords to quickly hold up a plant until she has the time to tie it up properly. She buys 5 of these cords for a dollar and swears by their usefulness.

We stopped to admire a Cherokee Brave dogwood in full bloom. Underneath,  blue violet columbines covered the ground. As they reseed the patch grows larger and larger. The blue and pink made a breathtaking  combination blooming at the same time.

As we strolled through the garden I saw many other plants happily growing in spite of the deer. Fragrant daphne, fuchsia thymifolia, Australian fuchsia, Jack Frost brunnera, Mt. Tamboritha grevillea, lily-of-the-valley and Cape plumbago were all untouched. It surprised me to hear that she is replacing a large stand of white rockrose with Kaleidescope abelia. Seems her deer loved this rockrose and "ate it to the ground". Go figure about rockroses. Along her road there were lots of the dark pink variety not even nibbled in the slightest.

We finished our tour at the new sitting area she has created to enjoy with her husband in the evening. I'm sure it's the perfect way to end the day.
 

beneficial insects, birds, California Native Plants, colorful foliage, Design trends, drought tolerant plants, flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, flowers, fragrant plants, gardening tips, green design, groundcovers, low maintenance gardening, organic gardening, salvia, sustainable gardening, wildlife

Terra Sole Nursery Trials New Plants

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to start your own little nursery on your property? What would you grow? How would you decide?  Over the years, I've been asked by home owners with a bit of extra property what would be good to grow. What is there a market for? So I decided to ask some friends who trial plants on their Watsonville property and operate a small nursery there how it all works.

Terra Sole Nurseries was founded in 2004 by John and Sherry Hall with the goal of experimenting and growing native, unusual and drought tolerant plants that are adapted to our dry summer climate. "We push the limits on water use in our test garden until we fall too much in love with a plant and can't bear to see it die with our tough love approach", Sherry said as we talked about the their operation.

Just back from attending the California Spring Trials,  Sherry and John were excited to share how they decide what to grow In their nursery. Their focus is to grow a large variety of native and unusual plants, some of which are old-fashioned, some are hot new introductions. What treasures did they find this year?

During the course of a week at the Spring Trials,  the world's prominent plant breeders, propagation specialists, growers, marketing professionals and plant enthusiasts share the latest and greatest at several open houses throughout California. The robust plant varieties of today are a direct result of the countless hours and decades of study from the dedicated professionals spending their time observing, testing and experimenting the new varieties that are more disease resistant, more floriferous, the best performers and are easy to grow in ordinary landscapes and gardens.  

How does a plant get from an idea in a breeder's mind to your local nursery? It all starts with the breeders who might cross pollinate thousands of plants to select maybe a hundred of the best ones. Then the growers buy an unrooted cutting or the seed or plugs of rooted plants and grow them onto a larger size. This is where the finish growers buy the plugs and liners to put into bigger pots growing them to retail or sellable size. Terra Sole Nurseries bought some of the newest plants on the market this year themselves.

What are some of the newest trends that we might see in our neighborhood nursery this year? The breeders of impatiens have developed a variety that appears to have a gingerbread man in the center. Called Patchwork this  impatien has a bigger flower and comes in six bi-colors.

Grafted vegetables, higher in antioxidants, are being developed. Non GMO vegetable varieties are grafted onto vigorous rootstalks to produce a plant disease resistant higher in nutrients. Tomatoes, basil, cucumbers. peppers and lettuce are just some of the vegetables being grown.

Biodegradable pots made from wheat are another of the new trends being offered for sale at the Spring Trials. The pots look like plastic yet breakdown after being used and can be recycled in your compost system. They hold up to the normal environmental pressures of heat, water and cold.

Sunset Western Gardening and HGTV are both offering their own branded plants that are available this year. Patented varieties coming out include a compact hardenbergia called Meena, two upright. compact nandinas- Flirt and Obsessive with bright red winter color and a compact mahonia called Soft Caress with non-prickly foliage. A cold hardy salvia named Amistad that has a very long bloom time will also be coming out soon.

To simplify choices for gardeners, better dahlias, calibrachoa, petunias and pansies are coming on the market this season. Several types are grown in the same pot so the buyer need only to plant one of these in a basket or container to get a combination that will look good and grow happily all season.

With so many plant choices which ones do Terra Sole Nurseries trial in their own garden and grow in their nursery? Next week I'll talk about what Sherry and John have their eye on, which plants they grow and the results of their own plant trials. You can find out more about the nursery at www.terrasolenurseries.com.

Design trends, edibles, firepits, flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, flowers, green design, landscape design, SF Flower & Garden Show, sustainable gardening, water features

San Francisco Flower & Garden Show 2012

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Every year after attending the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show I'm exhilarated by the creativity of the display gardens  and the fresh use of familiar plants. Don't even get me started on the new plant introductions I want to use in my next landscape design. This year the world-class show celebrated its 25th anniversary.

A Flower and Garden Show is a huge and complex production. Creating the 20 display gardens is a demanding task and planning for them begins many months before the show opens. By the night before the show opens 1,200 cubic yards of sawdust and mulch ( that's about 150 dump truck loads ) have been spread and 280,000 pounds of rock stacked in undulating walls and water features.

The flowers and plants for the garden come from all up and down the West Coast. Many plants are forced into early bloom for the show as Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate. Even flowering trees are sometimes kept in greenhouses so that their buds can be timed to open the week of the show. It's not a perfect science. One display garden creator who garnered 5 awards told me that hundreds of daffodils she had planned to use in her garden bloomed a week early due to warm weather. 

This year the theme of the show was "Gardens for a Green Earth". There were tips for edible gardening at home including containers for herbs and veggies on the patio and small space gardening, too. One of my favorite gardens combined tomato and flowering vines cascading over the edge of a stone vaneer wall.  Raised vegetable boxes bordered the deck for easy access and a stone water fall splashed into a huge half oak barrel.

Another interesting garden was the Low Impact Bay Friendly Garden. Modern in design, this low water-use garden featured tall raised beds surrounding a pervious concrete stepping stone patio set in a gravel base. Pervious concrete is said to be able to take in storm water a a rapid rate of over 5 gallons per minute per square foot of surface area. That far exceeds the flow rate needed to prevent runoff in even the most severe rain events.
The rainwater is temporarily stored in the course gravel layer underneath while it is allowed to naturally percolate into the underlying soil. This could be a good solution to solve site drainage problems.

Most of the display gardens featured water in them. Some were large affairs with cascading boulders while others were small and understated. In one, a length of copper tubing delivered a shower of drops in front of an aged corrugated iron panel. Another consisted of a simple stacked flagstone ledger waterfall flowing into a flagstone pond- a DIY project?  Even used tires were used as the base for the flagstone edging around a pond although frankly, I couldn't picture this water feature in anybody's backyard. One I did like was a simple flume of water pouring into a small metal rectangle lined with Mexican black pebbles. A little feature with lots of impact.

Fire pits were prevalent, too. From ornate fireplaces to glass filled affairs to simple metal rounds filled with cobbles outdoor living is enhanced with fire and water.

I had to laugh when a man asked me at one of the gardens what I was taking a picture of.  Well, I explained, I take photos of paths and steps and how they're put together and the materials they're made of for future reference. "Oh, that's a good idea" he said, and started taking pictures, too. All in a day at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show.

color in the garden, cool season flowers, Flowering trees

Magnolia soulangeana or Saucer Magnolia

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I went to see a million daffodils  but I was too early. Filoli Gardens in Woodside has suffered from lack of rainfall like the rest of us and the daffodils know it. The treat I got instead was a massive display of Saucer Magnolias that scented the warm air with a sweet, lemony fragrance.  This tree loses its leaves in winter and even in the summer, the large green leaves are not very showy. But come late winter and kaboom you see them everywhere totally covered with huge, spectacular flowers. A tree in full bloom with a carpet of petals underneath can beckon us to stay a while.

Magnolias are native to China and has been cultivated in Chinese Buddhist temple gardens since 600 AD. Saucer magnolias or magnolia soulangeana were initially bred by French horticulturist, Etienne Soulange-Bodin, in 1820 at his chateau near Paris. Crossing two types of magnolia both with impressive flowers themselves, his new tree produced in 1826 the spectacular flowers we know today. From France, the hybrid quickly entered cultivation in England and other parts of Europe and also came to the shores of North America.  Over a hundred names varieties are now known.

Magnolias, once established, are easy to grow. They are naturally adapted to areas with cool, moist winter conditions like ours.  If you have a lawn they make a good specimen tree and do well in very large containers. The roots are shallow and don't like to be disturbed once they are established so make sure you pick a good spot to plant them, a place in the garden where they can show off their spreading branch structure. If planted in a lawn  leave a grass-free area bare under the canopy as the fleshy roots can be damaged from constant foot traffic. Most varieties grow about 20-25 ft tall and as wide. Here are some of my favorites.

Of the many cultivars that are commonly seen, I'm always drawn to Alexandrina. Large, tulip-shaped flowers are deep rosy-purple with dark veins outside and white inside. Rustica Rubra is another stunner with deep reddish-purple cup-shaped flowers. The variety we call simply Saucer magnolia is beautiful, too. Planted in a woodland or Asian style garden it's white blooms, pink on the outside, are fragrant like all of the varieties.  Gamble Garden, in Palo Alto, has a beautiful Vulcan variety blooming in their woodland garden. Above the blooming hellebores, their ruby-red flowers completely covered this spreading mature specimen. At 10-12" across, the showy flowers glowed in the late afternoon sun.

Star magnolias or magnolia stellata also make a fine addition to the garden. Much smaller than its cousin this mounding shrubby plant grows only 10-15 ft tall but much wider. Often it is pruned like a small tree to show off the early profusion of striking flowers in white, pink or rose. Star magnolias are valued for their small scale in woodland gardens and are especially beautiful if you can enjoy the early flowering from inside the house.

Deciduous magnolias along with flowering plums are among the earliest showy trees to herald in the new season. Valuable for both their stunning flowers and also their sweet scent they make the late winter garden come alive.
 

color in the garden, cool season flowers, flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, fragrant plants

Early Spring Flowering Plants

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 I look out my window and see deep pink ruffled flowers covering my Blireiana flowering plum.   It's one of my favorite early spring blooming plants and those fragrant blossoms are strong enough to scent my garden. It grows next to an Autumnalis flowering cherry that blooms nearly every month of the year. I'm not kidding. It's the energizer bunny of the flowering tree world.  We all look forward to the earliest flowers of the new season.  What else blooms in winter that you might want to have in your garden? Here are just a few suggestions.

One old fashioned shrub that figured prominently in many old gardens is forsythia. Deep golden-yellow flowers completely cover the bare stems in late winter and become the focal point of the landscape when in full bloom. The showy stems of this easy care shrub are great for cutting. Forsythias are native to eastern Asia but a chance discovery in Germany by a grower who specialized in breeding for the cut flower industry led to the especially vivid variety Kolgold in the 1800's. Forsythia has long been used in Chinese medicine. The flower petals contain powerful bacteria-fighting properties which make it an important dressing.

Hellebores are another winter blooming plant that with foliage that looks great, too. My double purple one has been blooming for well over a month now. I've got my eye on a variety called Golden Sunrise. Each plant is  different with variations of large, canary yellow flowers. Some are solid yellow but most have some degree of red veining and a red picotee edge. Some have a red starburst in the center. Hellebores bloom for six weeks or more and are deer and rabbit resistant. They are often flowering during the Christian season of Lent from which they get their common name, Lenten Rose. Use them for naturalizing in woodland areas. They are a low maintenance plant, will survive with little water and are disease and pest free.

What would a shade garden be without a bright orange clivia? Every year I look forward to their huge flower clusters to emerge from the dark green strappy leaves. Even in dark shade they will bloom and brighten the winter garden although they would do fine in morning sun. If you have a north facing window you can grow them as houseplants. Clivias are hardy to several degrees below freezing but mine, under an overhang, have survived temps of 23 degrees without damage.

Clivia breeders have produced gold and peach colored flowers also but I still like the standard orange and they didn't cost $599 like the plants I saw offered on the internet. I thought this price might have been a misprint but on further investigation I found another site offering the yellow Gloria clivia for a mere $950. I'll stick with my orange ones.

A beautiful vine that blooms in winter is Hardenbergia 'Happy Wanderer'. In the pea family, this evergreen vine looks like a small wisteria when in bloom.  Pinkish purple flowers cascade in clusters on twining stems that reach 12-16 feet long. It requires little water once established and is hardy to about 23 degrees. If you have an older, tangled plant you can rejuvenate it with hard pruning in early spring after flowering. Never prune in late summer or fall because you will cut off the wood that is going to bloom the following winter.

The last plant I couldn't live without is Fragrant Sarcococca.   The tiny flowers of this plant are easily overlooked but you can't miss their scent. If you have a problem spot in dry, deep shade give this plant a try. It's easy to grow, deer resistant and trouble free.

edibles, fertilizing, flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, fruit trees, gardening tips, organic fertilizers, perennials, pruning tips, trees,shrubs,vines,perennials

February To-Do’s for the Santa Cruz Mountains

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Seems to me that I'm still waiting for winter to start. I look hopefully each week at the weather forecast hoping to see a storm developing. The birds in my garden are already starting to pair up, however, and call to each other. They know  a new season has begun. So, as promised, at the beginning of each month, here's your to-do list of what you should be doing in the garden.

Each year the weather is a little different requiring some tasks to be done earlier in the month when it's been a warm winter while giving you a little extra time when it's been cold. This year we've experienced very cold nights since December so plants are still mostly dormant but spring is coming. Be prepared.

Cut back woody shrubs. To stimulate lush new growth on plants like Mexican bush sage, artemisia and butterfly bush cut back to within a few inches of the ground. Don't use this approach on lavender or ceanothus – only lightly prune them after blooming. Prune frost  damaged shrubs if you can tell how far down the die back goes otherwise wait until growth starts in the spring. Prune fuchsias back by a third and remove dead, crossing branches and interior twiggy growth. Container fuchsias can be cut back to the pot rim. Revitalize overgrown or leggy hedges by cutting back plants just before the flush of new spring growth.

Cut back ornamental grasses to within 3-6" of the ground. If  you get very heavy frost in your yard wait until the end of the month. Grass-like plants like Japanese forest grass should have all the old blades pruned off, too. You can divide them, if needed, after pruning to increase the number of plants you have.

Divide perennials before new growth starts. Agapanthus, asters, coreopsis, daylilies, shasta daisy and liriope are plants that tend to become overcrowded and benefit from dividing.

Prune established perennials later in the month if you get frost that may damage new foliage. Giving your maiden hair ferns a haircut now allows the new growth to come out fresh. Prune winter damaged fronds from your other ferns.

Begin sowing seeds of cool season vegetables outdoors. If it's been raining, allow the ground to dry out for several days before working the soil. Plant seeds of beets, carrots, chard, lettuce, peas, spinach, arugula, chives kale and parley directly in the ground. Later in the month start broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. You can also plant starts of many of these vegetables and that stir fry will be on your table even sooner. Indoors, start seeds of tomatoes, peppers and eggplant so they will be ready to transplant outdoors in 8 weeks when danger of frost is past and the soil has started to warm up.

Fertilize perennials, shrubs and trees their first dose of organic all-purpose fertilizer for the season. Wait to feed azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons until the last flower buds start to open. Roses will get a high nitrogen fertilizer to give foliage a boost and later next month, I'll feed with a high phosphorus fertilizer to encourage blooms.

Feed chelated iron to azaleas, citrus and gardenias to green up their leaves. Cool soil makes the leaves of these plants yellow this time of year.  

Apply the last application of dormant spray. Spray with horticultural oil, lime sulfur, liquid sulfur or copper dormant spray. Do not spray 36 hours before rain is predicted. Be sure to spray the ground around each tree.