All posts by Jan Nelson

I am a landscape designer and consultant in the Santa Cruz mountains in California. I write a weekly gardening column for the Press Banner newspaper. I am also a Calif. Advanced Certified Nursery Professional and managed The Plantworks Nursery in Ben Lomond, Ca. for 20 years.
bulbs, pests, sustainable gardening

Squirrels Control for Sustainable & Interesting Bulbs

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My resident squirrels are busy burying acorns for the winter. On the go from first light in the morning until dusk they scurry up the oak trees to collect this prized food source and then deposit them in the ground and in the pots on my deck where they will surely forget where most of them are. Their antics are frustrating because I want to start planting bulbs sooner than Thanksgiving this year. I usually have to wait until later in the season when the squirrels have finished loading up their pantry to get them in the ground. Daffodils and narcissus are safe but what would spring be without  all the other gorgeous bulbs to welcome in the season?

This year I’m going to try some different varieties of bulbs and to foil the squirrels I"m going to plant them really deep in areas that have excellent drainage. Squirrels rarely dig far under the surface so they aren’t likely to reach the bulbs. If you have less than stellar drainage, your bulbs will rot if you plant them deeply, so use chicken wire cages or gopher baskets when you plant them. Next year when they emerge from the soil, if the squirrels start eating the tops of the stems, spray the buds daily with hot pepper spray. All mammals except humans hate hot peppers. I’ve also heard that paprika and egg shells deter them.

I love those huge, showy tulips as well as the new colors of daffodil and narcissus coming out each year. Can’t live without them. But I want to add to the show next spring. Maybe I’ll plant Spring Starflower or Ipheion. Their starry white flowers bloom over a long period in spring and they naturalize easily. Spring Snowflake ( leucojum vernum ) will also naturalize in the garden. The flowers are small and bell shaped, white with a green or yellow spot and have a slight fragrance. And I want to include some species tulips. They will rebloom year after year just like they do in the wild in Europe, North Africa and Asia.

Another bulb I’ve wanted to grow for a long time is Ixia viridiflora. They need to be completely dry in summer so planting in pots will be perfect for this most striking and unusual bulb. Few plants can beat it for sheer brilliance of flower. Each flower is a brilliant turquoise green with a purple-black eye in the middle. The dark eye is caused by the deep blue sap of the cells of the upper epidermis. The green color is due to the effects of light being refracted from the cell wall and granules embedded in the pale blue cell sap. Amazing flower.

I think tucking several huge allium bulbs among clumps of summer-flowering perennials will make quite a statement next year and the deer generally avoid them as they are in the garlic family. The flowers from in clusters and are best known in the round pom-pom form, but they can be star or cup-shaped or nodding pendant-shaped. They look great with foxglove, monarda and hardy geraniums. The flower heads can be left on the plant to dry as they look attractive in the garden and can be cut for arrangements.

A bulb native to our area that I’m also interested in trying is Tritileia or Triplet Lily. There are several species of this brodiaea bulb found here in grasslands and serpentine soils. They are undemanding plants and make good cut flowers, lasting for 7-10 days in water.

Other interesting bulbs that I want to try include  hyacinthoides, hermodactylus tuberosa and bellevalia. All of them are beautiful. Don’t let October and November go by without planting a few bulbs to enjoy next spring.
 

color in the garden, colorful foliage, compact shrubs, Deer Resistant Plants, drought tolerant plants, fall foliage

Better Choices for Old Favorites

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Thinking about planting a new area or redoing a part of your garden that has gotten out of control? If many of your old favorites just get too big, insects and diseases plague them or they  take too much time to prune you need some new favorites.  What’s a gardener to do these days when we want our yards to be sustainable?   Here are some substitutions for good plants gone wrong. This time it’s gonna be the right plant in the right spot.

Phormiums have been popular for many years now. This plant from New Zealand looks great in low water landscapes providing architectural interest but usually grows much wider and taller than anticipated and next thing you know it’s taken over. One of the cultivars that behaves itself is called Jester. This phormium has beautiful 2-3 ft long pinkish leaves that have an orange midrib and lime green bands near the leaf margins. Combine it with teucrium  chamaedrys germander for an awesome combination.

If you want a similar fountain-like plant in your landscape that never reverts to plain green, try a cordyline Festival Grass. Vivid burgundy red leaves to 2-3 ft tall arching over so the tips reach the ground. Tiny pale lilac flowers appear in the summer, with a jasmine-like fragrance.  Plant in full sun to part shade and water regularly. Plants in shade have a darker more purple color while sun grown plants have more red.

What’s deer resistant with fragrant, gold foliage, uses little water once established and stays compact? Danny’s Sport Breath of Heaven is a bushy, finely textured shrub of the citrus family. They have slender stems and tiny narrow leaves which give off a spicy, sweet scent when crushed. Bright yellow new growth is upright, growing to 3- 5 ft tall. They thrive in sun or light shade and are hardy to around 18 degrees or less. Use it as a foundation plant, informal hedge or specimen plant. They are very showy in the landscape.

Ornamental oregano is a great perennial to use in a border or to tuck between other plants. Most oregano varieties are wonderful while in bloom but offer little interest after the main show is over. Oregano Santa Cruz is a better choice. Antique-toned, dusty rose-colored hop-like flowers, are offset by bright green calyxes and remain all summer on branched red stems. This plants grows 18" – 24" high and 3 ft wide. For a pleasing fusion of color, combine it with penstemon Blackbird or another rich burgundy penstemon. Add a grass such as muhlenbergia capillaris to complete the vignette.

Everybody loves clematis. They come in so many styles but how do you prune them for best flower production? Plant a Sweet Autumn Clematis ( clematis terniflora ) and your worries are over. They are a gorgeous sight now covered in pure white, lightly fragrant flowers. Later in the fall the vine will become a silvery mass of fluffy seed heads. This small-flowered species looks impressive covering an upscale arbor or even embellishing a plain fence of garden shed. It blooms on new growth so you can easily keep it in check by cutting stems back to 12" in the spring. It will bloom well in partial shade, too.

A smaller cultivar of the old favorite oak-leaf hydrangea is Sikes Dwarf. This lovely plant provides year-round seasonal interest.  At this time of year their huge, whitish-pink conical flowers turn a papery soft tan color. In later autumn, the leaves will take on striking shades of crimson and bronze-purple, and through winter the dry flowers persist above the branches lined with exfoliating copper-brown, cinnamon and tan bark. Oakleaf hydrangeas are fast growing and accept full sun or partial shade in rich evenly moist soil. They’re real lookers in the garden.
 

cool season flowers, cut flowers, flowers, vegetables

Sweet Peas & Cool Season Veggies

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Fall is in the air – sort of. The sun is setting earlier each day but our days are still beautiful. The autumnal equinox on September 23rd marks the beginning of fall when day and night are of approximately equal length. Gardeners living in Minnesota and Maine are thinking about "battening down the hatches" for winter already. Us, we’re just starting our fall planting season. There are so many possibilities for fall and winter edibles as well as colorful flowers, berries and foliage. For the biggest show there’s no better time to plant than early fall.  Let the fun begin.

While most of the summer annuals and perennials will bloom until at least October, there are cool season varieties that come into their own as our nights cool and last through the winter.  Try  colorful combinations of snapdragon, pansies, violas, sweet alyssum, calendula, chrysanthemum paludosum, forget-me-not, Iceland and shirley poppies, ornamental kale and cabbage, primrose, stock or sweet peas.

Who doesn’t  love old-fashioned sweet peas? A small bouquet will perfume a room with a delicious scent. They remind me of my Aunt Ruth who grew them every year and let me pick a bunch each spring whenever I went to visit. There are many new varieties and colors these days but back then her sweet pea vines were covered with the classic mixed colors of violet, blue, pink, peach and white.

Sweet peas have been around for a long time and many different countries claim that they originated there. One story is that a monk, Father Cupani, first harvested them in the wild on an island off Sicily in 1695` and sent the seeds to the Netherlands. In the 1800’s, an Scottish nurseryman named Harry Eckford began hybridizing and introducing larger varieties in a wider range of colors where they became quite a sensation. The most famous and perhaps the most important use of this flower was the extensive genetics studies performed by Gregor Mendel. Since they self-pollinate, their characteristics such as height, color and petal form could easily be tracked. But whether they came from Ceylon- the modern day Sri Lanka, China or Sicily, heirloom sweet peas are as exquisite in the garden and they are in the vase.

I like to plant early blooming types of sweet peas in October or early November. These varieties flower in the shorter days of late winter. Winter Elegance and Early Multiflora are common early flowering types. Also plant some of the more fragrant spring flowering heirlooms and Spencer’s at the same time to extend your harvest time. My very favorite sweet pea with long stems for cutting and an intense fragrance is called April in Paris. Large ruffled blossoms are a soft primrose cream, tinted at the edges in dark lilac that deepens and increases with age. You can’t go wrong no matter what color or style sweet pea you choose. They are all beautiful.

Now that the weather has cooled, plant cool season veggie starts like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, spinach, brussels sprouts, bok choy, onions and leeks in soil enriched with 4-6" of compost as summer vegetable crops will have used up much of your soil’s nutrients. You can sow seeds of beets, carrots, radishes, spinach, arugula, mustard and peas directly in the ground.

This is also the time to start perennial flowers seeds so that they’ll  be mature enough to bloom next year. Happy Fall.
 

meadows

How to Create a Meadow

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Have you thought about creating a meadow but don’t know where to start? Need some inspiration to get going? Take a hike through the breathtaking meadows in Lassen Volcanic National Park like I did recently and you’ll get all the ideas you need to create the meadow of your dreams in your own backyard.

A wildflower meadow in Mt LassenNature is not subtle when painting a scene and neither should you. In Lassen I hiked through waist-high meadows of blue lupine and pale lilac coyote mint. White corn lily spikes grew tall and majestic providing contrast and drifts of goldenrod and Indian paintbrush added just the right amount of  punch. The meadows took my breath away.  I marveled at swaths of mariposa lily, pussy paws, alpine aster, scarlet gilia. So many wildflowers – so little time. You can have the same thing each spring and summer. Here’s how.

Meadows can supply an ever-changing display of seasonal colors and textures. A natural meadow has grasses of varying heights, bloom times and colors. Self-sowing wildflowers mix in between perennials and grasses in drifts. Sure there are lots of different flowers in a meadow, but mixed throughout are drifts or large patches – and it’s the combinations of both that makes a meadow look natural. Around the borders of your meadow make sure to plant insect-magnets such as rudbeckia, agastache, monarda and Russian sage or other perennials.

Establishing a meadow requires a bit of patience but once you’ve gotten rid of existing weeds your drifts of wildflowers, perennials and small shrubs will take care of themselves with just a little follow up weeding. Weed control is essential and should be accomplished prior to planting. Now is a good time to start by working in compost, watering the area to bring up the weed seeds and then hoeing them off in about 3 weeks.

If you plan to include grasses in your meadow, get them established first before starting wildflowers from seed or the wildflowers will overwhelm the young grasses. You can mimic nature by using native shrubs to form the bones of your meadow. Try coffeeberry and toyon and then fill in around them with flowering natives such as monkey flower and monardella. A meadow of California natives might feature a colorful carpet of seaside daisy, golden aster, blue-eyed grass and checkerbloom or simply a blend of dune sedge and yarrow. Just remember to plant in drifts to get the most impact.

Another good combination for a hot, sunny meadow would be buckwheat, silver lupine, salvia and foothill penstemon. Or try combining rockrose, agastache, russian sage and gaura interspersed with some drifts of wildflowers. What about penstemon, gaura and Mexican primrose mixed in the lion’s tail?

Shade gardeners might enjoy a meadow of bush anemone,Pacific Coast iris, columbine and wild ginger. Or try combining salal, dicentra eximia, hellebore and campanula in the shade.

Some gardens have nearly year round natural moisture. Good choices for this type of meadow are miscanthus grasses, daylily, asters, monarda and cornflowers from seed. Wild columbine, hardy geraniums, gloriosa daisy and asclepsia also work in a moist meadow as would chondropetalum, yellow flag, calla lily and lobelia cardinalis.

Most meadows can be cared for with an annual pruning in early winter. Wait until some of the wildflower seeds have ripened before cutting to insure a new crop of wildflowers and grasses next year. Weed between plants until they have had a chance to become established and fill in. The shrubs and other perennials might need a little cleanup in the spring. too.

If you would like to see some of the other wildflowers I enjoyed, check out the Lassen National Park website.
 http://www.nps.gov/lavo/naturescience/Lassen-Wildflowers.htm

California Native Plants, garden design, perennials

Diamond Heights ceanothus, Sunroses & Ligularia

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Some plants have become the darlings of the garden while other perfectly good plants are being left in the dust ( no pun intended ) and ignored. Take Hot Lips salvia, for instance. Seems every garden now has a few. I know, I know, I’m as enamored with this variety as anybody and responsible for extolling its virtues but I want to give credit where credit it due to some underused but awesome plants. Who are these forgotten all stars?

One of my favorite groundcovers for sunny areas that looks beautiful as it fills in between other low water use plants is Ceanothus ‘Diamond Heights‘.  Carpet an area with a dense, low mat of golden yellow and lime-green variegated foliage that looks great year round.  The pretty light blue spring flowers take second place to the leaves.

This is one of those versatile plants, performing just as well in dry soils and tough situations as it does in sheltered gardens with partial shade and rich soils. If you want a spectacular effect, plant it as a group. Each plant covers 3-5 ft. Because the foliage makes a cover that weeds seldom manage to penetrate, it’s a real maintenance saver. Use it on difficult sites such as banks as well as in garden beds and raised beds. It’s also a stunner as a container plant, the foliage spreading wide on all sides.

What looks good with Diamond Heights? Try putting it with wispy, grey-blue lavender Little Spires perovskia and Hidcote lavender or Blue-eyed grass and coffeeberry.  It’s vibrant foliage also brightens the ground beneath native oaks.

Another perennial groundcover that I love to use in a tough, particularly problematic spot is Helianthemum or Sunrose. If you have enough thyme in your garden, it’s time to branch out and try this plant. Masses of colorful, inch wide flowers appear in early summer and last well into autumn. Colors include soft yellow, pinks, oranges, apricot and reds.

While the flowers are the main attraction, I find the range of foliage almost as wonderful. Some varieties have soft, grayish leaves, others a light green while some even have crinkled bright green foliage. Sunroses are work horses, hugging the ground and making an excellent low ground cover 2-3 ft across for a sunny location. They are very drought tolerant when established and don’t mind poor soils or even sandy soils.

My favorite cultivar is Belgravia Rose with its bright rose-pink flowers and grey leaves but compact Wisley Primrose covered with bright yellow flowers is also high on my list. This tough plants is rarely bothered by pests or diseases as long as there is good drainage and are attractive to bees and butterflies adding to their garden appeal.

Rounding out my list of favorite underused plants is one for shade gardeners. Because there are not many yellow flowers for the shade garden, Ligularia dentata Othello is a perennial that I like to include in a border. It’s like adding a little sunshine. This clump-forming perennial with bold leaves and 4" daisy-like golden flowers in July and August are born on plants that reach 2-3 ft tall and 2-3 ft wide. This variety likes moist soil. Plant them with other moisture loving plants such as ferns, hostas and Japanese forest grass. Ligularias are deer resistant.

These are just a few of the plants that I use in landscape designs to add punch to a garden. If you’re looking for something different in your landscape give them a try.

 

salvia

Salvia’s

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"Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow."   Anonymous

And if Salvias have any say in the matter, there will be lots of tomorrows. This large genus of plants in the mint family contains about 900 species, excluding hybrids and cultivars. They are native to Europe, Africa, Asia, Mediterranean, and Central and South America including our southwest. The name salvia is from the Latin word, salvere ( to save ) referring to the long-held belief in the herb’s healing properties.

There’s a salvia of every color and purpose for the garden. Recently I enjoyed touring the salvia garden at Cabrillo College and also revisited my friend, the "Hillbilly Gardener", and his collection of salvias in Scotts Valley. I was joined by dozens of hummingbirds and even more happy bees. The showy display of flowers ranging from blue to red, apricot, soft yellow, purple, pink and even white was breathtaking.

Ernie Wasson, the nursery and garden curator with the Ornamental Horticulture Dept at Cabrillo, explained that they grow 150 types at the college all of them propagated there. Three years ago, he hosted a Salvia Summit which attracted many visitors from as far away as Kew Gardens in England, Australia and New Zealand.

Many salvias have hairs growing on the leaves, stems and flowers which help to reduce water loss. Sometimes the hairs secrete volatile oils that give a distinct aroma to the plants. This often results in the plants being unattractive to grazing animals and some insects. Other species are tolerant of wet feet and grow in boggy conditions.

Some of the standout varieties at the Cabrillo garden included Salvia gesneriiflora Tequila or Big Mexican Scarlet Sage. Blooming with huge red, tubular flowers in the shade we sampled the sweet nectar again and again. Two sages that smelled like Vick’s were Salvia somalensis from Somalia and African Blue Sage. The bees  loved Salvia Mystic Spires best while we loved the fragrant leaves of Salvia dorisiana or Tutti Frutti sage from Honduras. Salvia cinnabarina smelled like – well, you can guess – cinnamon. The truest blue plant in the world, the Gentian sage or salvia patens was a show stopper. It spreads slowly from tuberous roots.

Have a wet spot? Try salvia uliginosa or Bog salvia. Want a smaller variety that lasts for along time? Try a microphylla type like Hot Lips. Salvia greggii varieties, although stunning, do not survive as long in the garden. I learned that the famous Hot Lips salvia was brought back from Oaxaca, Mexico from cuttings by Dick Turner of Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco. The original plant was bought by a maid for a housewarming gift. If you’ve ever wondered why the flowers of this plant are sometimes bicolor and other times mostly red, it has to do with the season. When the nights are warm in summer, the new flowers are all red with an occasional solid white one. As fall approaches, the flowers again will be bicolored red and white.

Another showy variety growing both at Cabrillo and at my salvia aficionado’s garden in Scotts Valley was Salvia confertiflora or Red Velvet sage. This spectacular late blooming sage from Brazil grows 5-8 ft tall with large foot long flower stalks that work well in flower arrangements both as a fresh cut flower or dried.  It will grow in light shade under redwoods. Salvia chiapensis blooms from spring to fall in this Scotts Valley garden. Another long blooming favorite is Phyllis’ Fancy that has just begun to flower but will continue till frost. This lovely sage with lush looking foliage grows 4 ft tall by 4 ft wide and fits into most gardens.

I saw over 20 varieties of salvia in this Scotts Valley garden but I’m sure there are many more tucked away that weren’t blooming. From the brilliant red of Holway’s sage to the soft magenta of Louis Saso salvia to the compact Dara’s choice, this garden has a salvia for every spot and a spot for every salvia.