Category Archives: Design trends

Design trends

Dahlias

It’s that time of year when the dahlia exhibitions are held. I missed a couple already but the Santa Cruz County Fair is still going on this weekend and there’s always a huge display there. Last year a dark magenta cactus dahlia was my favorite. These mammoth flowers take longer to grow, I’m told and fewer are produced by each plant but boy, are they worth it.

I’m envious of those that have the right conditions in their garden to grow these awesome flowers. According to the American Dahlia Society, dahlia culture is similar to growing tomatoes. So if you can grow tomatoes in your garden you can grow dahlias.

Dahlias are often referred to as the queen of the autumn garden. They are native to the mountainous regions of Mexico with history that dates back to ancient times. The Aztecs cultivated these remarkable plants for their edible tubers. Spanish explorers and botanist encounter dahlias during their journeys to the New World in the late 18th century. The first recorded description of the dahlia by a European was made by Francis Hernandes, Spanish physician in 1615.

The name dahlia honors Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, who studied them in the late 18th century. Over time, dahlias made their way to Europe, where they were cultivated and by the 19th century, dahlias had become a symbol of elegance and refinement in Victorian gardens across Europe.

Over time, dahlias made their way to Europe, where they were cultivated and by the 19th century, dahlias had become a symbol of elegance and refinement in Victorian gardens across Europe.

Dahlias need good drainage, fertile soil and at least six hours of sunlight per day. When planting, provide adequate spacing, usually around 18 inches between each plant to ensure good air circulation. They do well in pots, too.

Watering is crucial for dahlias, especially during the growing season. Apply mulch to retain moisture. Regular deadheading encourages continuous blooming throughout the growing season. Fertilize regularly and stake taller varieties.

Small dahlia plants are susceptible to slugs damage. Bait with Sluggo or remove slugs manually. Japanese beetles can eat dahlia blooms. Remove and put in a bucket of soapy water. Earwigs like dahlias, too. Trap them using rolled up newspaper.

Dahlia exhibit an astonishing array of shapes, sizes and colors. They are classified into cactus, pompous, anemone and ball dahlias. Popular dahlia varieties include the Dinnerplate Dahlias with gigantic blooms that can reach up to 12 inches in diameter. There are even tree dahlias that grow to 13 feet tall.

I was able to visit Beeline Blooms Dahlia Farm in Ben Lomond last Friday. This is a place you don’t want to miss. Karla and her sister are extremely knowledgeable You’ll come away inspired, educated and with a huge bouquet of dahlias.

Design trends

What to Do in the Garden in September

Abutilon bloom nearly year round and are relished by hummingbirds.

Summer is winding down. Already. Seems it barely started two months ago. Who doesn’t love these long days and warm nights? The calendar might say fall is near but Indian summer is one of the our best seasons so I love this time of year, too. But then I get all excited when spring rolls around and everything is in bloom. It’s all good. I have a check list of some garden tasks I need to do at this time of year so I better get to them between hiking and trips to the beach.

Fertilize shrubs lightly one last time if you haven’t already done so last month. All shrubs, especially broad-leaved evergreens such as rhododendron, pieris, camellia, hebe, need to calm down, stop growing and harden off to get ready for the winter cold. Some plants have already set next year’s buds.

Roses especially appreciate a bit of fertilizer now, encouraging them to bloom another round in October. To keep them blooming make a habit of pinching and pruning off old flowers. Always cut back to an outward facing branchlet with five leaves. There are hormones there that will cause a new rose to grow much sooner than if you cut to one with only three leaves. You can always cut lower on the stem if you need to control height.

Deadhead flowering annuals and perennials in the ground as often as you possibly can. Annuals like zinnias and cosmos will stop blooming if you allow them to go to seed. The same is true of repeat blooming perennials like dahlia, scabiosa, echinacea and lantana. Santa Barbara daisies will bloom late into winter if cut back now.

These plants know they’re on this earth to reproduce. If they get a chance to set seed the show’s over, they’ve raised their family. Try to remove fading flowers regularly and you’ll be amply rewarded. If you want to start perennial flowers from seeds this is the time so that they’ll be mature enough to bloom next year.

Now through October, divide summer blooming perennials like agapanthus, coreopsis, daylilies and penstemons that are overgrown and not flowering well. You can also divide spring blooming perennials like candytuft, columbine, astilbe, bergenia and bleeding heart but sometimes they don’t bloom the first spring afterwards due to the energy they use re-establishing themselves. If you’re on a roll out in the garden, though, go for it now.

It’s still a little hot to plant cool season veggies starts in the ground. They appreciate conditions later in September when the soil is still warm but temps have cooled. It is OK to plant seeds of beets, carrots, spinach, arugula, mustard, leeks, onions, peas, radishes and turnips.

If you aren’t going to grow vegetables in the garden this fall consider planting a cover crop like crimson clover after you’ve harvested your summer vegetables. Next month I’ll talk about how to go about doing this and how this benefits your soil.

Cut back berry vines that have produced fruit. Canes of the current season should be trained in their place.

Spider mites are especially prolific during hot, dry weather. Sometimes you don’t even know how bad the infestation is until all your leaves are pale with stippling. Periodically rinse dust and dirt off leaves with water. Spray the undersides of infected leaves with organics like insecticidal soap switching to neem oil if they build up a resistance to one of the pesticides.

Now that you’ve taken care of your chores reward yourself by adding perennials to your garden for color in late summer through fall. Take a look at the garden areas that aren’t working for you and replant. Good choices include aster, chrysanthemum, coreopsis, and gaillardia. Abutilon also called Flowering Maple come in so many colors that you probably need another one in your garden. Petite Pink gaura looks fabulous planted near the burgundy foliage of a loropetalum. Don’t overlook the color of other foliage plants like Orange Libertia and Japanese bloodgrass in the garden.

One last to do: Make a journal entry celebrating the best things about your garden this year.

Design trends

The Best Cut Flowers from the Garden

This mixed bouquet features late summer bloomer like verbena bonariensis,
rudbeckia, yarrow and cosmos.

Several of my friends have big gardens. Gardens that are big enough to have lots of blooming flowers that can be cut and barely make a dent in the riot of color in their garden. The other day I recieved a huge mixed bouquet. It’s spectacular. If you’ve always wanted a garden like this here are some tips for the best perennials and annuals to grow for cutting.

Don’t have much space to devote to a cutting garden? No problem. Although we all dream of a dedicated spot in the garden set aside for growing masses of flowers and foliage for bouquets, it’s not a necessity. Many great plants for cutting can just as easily be grown in raised beds, containers and between shrubs. So whether you prefer formal floral bouquets or casual, deconstructed flower and foliage arrangements let your imagination run wild and grow plants that make either easy to put together.

While just about any plant material that strikes your fancy will work in a mixed bouquet there are four types of plant forms that naturally look good together. First are the spires for height and architectural properties. Flowers like liatris, snapdragon, gladiola, salvia, Bells-of-Ireland as well as the strappy leaves of New Zealand flax or cordyline fall into this category. Secondly are plants and foliage with a round form for focus such as roses, dahlias, long-stemmed marigolds and peonies. Last are the lacy accents for fillers- ferns, baby’s breath, dill and foliage from shrubs such as abelia, breath of heaven, smoke bush, Japanese maple and ornamental grasses. Grapes and other vines and herbs are also good as accents.

A deconstructed arrangement separates each type of flower into their own vase or container instead of grouping them in a mixed bouquet. Vary the size and shape of the vases and containers and group them together to create a unique vignette.

In shady gardens, fragrant daphne odora is a wonderful small shrub that provides interesting variegated foliage as well as flowers. Sweet olive or osmanthus fragrans blooms smell like apricots. Oakleaf hydrangea foliage and flowers look great in bouquets and the leaves turn red in fall which is an added bonus. Our native shrub philadelphus, also called mock orange, has flowers that smell like oranges and will grow in some shade as well as sun. Pittosporum ‘Marjorie Channon’ will add white with a hint of lime to your bouquets.

For sunny spots grow penstemon and kangaroo paw. Coreopsis attract butterflies and are long lasting in bouquets. Perennial coneflowers, dahlias, gloriosa daisy, delphinium, foxglove, scabiosa, aster, shasta daisy and yarrow are good as cut flowers.

Self-sowing annuals that have a long vase life are bachelor buttons, clarkia, cosmos, flax, love-in-a-mist, nasturtium, cleome and calendula. Annual flowers such as zinnia, lisianthus, snapdragon, statice and marigolds are great in containers where you can make every drop of water count and are also good for cutting.

Native flowers that last for a week or more include Clarkia and Sticky Monkeyflower. Yarrow and hummingbird sage will last 4-6 days.

To make cut flowers last, pick them early in the morning before heat stresses them. Flowers cut in the middle of the day will have difficulty absorbing enough water. Cut non-woody stems on a slant for maximum water absorption. Woody stems can be cut straight across but smash the ends. Plunge immediately in a bucket of tepid water. Indoors, fill a container with cool water and recut each stem under water so an air bubble doesn’t keep the water from being absorbed.

Pull off any foliage or flowers that will be below the water level in the vase. Fill a clean vase with 3 parts lukewarm water mixed with 1 part lemon-lime soda, 1 teaspoon vinegar and a crushed aspirin. Another recipe for floral food is 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 tablespoons white vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon bleach in 1 quart water. The sugar helps buds open and last longer, the acid improves water flow in the stems and the bleach reduces the growth of bacteria and fungus. Change the water and recut the stems every few days to enjoy you bouquets for a week or maybe even two.

Design trends

Blue in the Garden

Make your garden feel larger with blue flowers.

Recently I designed a garden for someone who asked for lots of blue in her landscape. “Good choice”, I said. I did have to chuckle when she also requested lavender plants that were blue and not lavender. I admit I was stumped there but with lots of other choices she was happy with her new garden.

With the heat of summertime upon us I’m drawn to those areas in my garden that have blue, white and lavender flowers. A hot day just seems cooler there.

Washed out magenta is nature’s favorite go-to color and the shade that hybrids will revert to it if allowed to go to seed. Among gardeners, red is a favorite color. Orange and yellow come next, then pink and purple with blue and white both comparatively rare in nature last on the list.

So naturally, most of us gardeners want the elusive blue flower in our gardens. Knowing that cool colors recede, place them around the edges or at the back of a garden to make your space appear wider or deeper.

Agapanthus are loved by hummingbirds

True blue flowers are rare. We use words like cerulean, azure, cobalt, sapphire, turquoise, electric blue or steel blue when describing blue flowers. Hybridizers have tried for years to produce a true blue rose or blue daylily. Blue plant pigment is hard to manipulate. It occurs in the daylily as a sap-soluble pigment and is difficult to segregate. Lilacs, purples, orchids and mauves we have and working with them hybridizers may eventually get near blue, but pure blue probably never. Recently, some companies have found a way to insert some blue in the center of their daylily flowers but a totally blue daylily has never been produced.

Rose hybridizers striving for true blue have come close by crossbreeding lavender hybrid teas in order to produce offspring having optimum amount of cyanidin, the pigment that imparts purple or magenta tones and flavone, the pigment that gives light yellow tones.The results have been more of a silvery lilac or mauve. A blue rose is still in the future although labs in Australia and Japan are genetically modifying the pigments from petunias to produce a blue rose. Their results are not yet perfected and these roses are more of a lilac in color and can not survive conditions outside the lab. It is apparently very difficult to isolate the pigment cyanadin. Delphiniums have a monopoly on it.

Geranium ‘Orion’

The color blue is calming and tranquil. It is the color of serenity and peace and is said to slow down the metabolism and reduce the appetite. When brightened with white or combined with yellow or orange in a complementary color scheme the results of blue in the garden are breathtaking. The great English gardener Gertrude Jekyll used plants with golden leaves or clear yellow flowers to spice up blue gardens. Just remember that blues and purples are the first flowers to fade as darkness falls so be sure to have those whites and yellows to carry your garden into evening.

There are many blue perennials as handsome as they are durable that we can enjoy in our gardens today.

Omphaloides

Some of my favorites are old fashioned hydrangeas, violas and campanulas. Both are valuable in the shade garden along with omphaloides and brunnera. The blue spikes of a long blooming peach-leaf campanula just go together with the white and green variegated foliage of Jack Frost Siberian bugloss.

In early spring we are dazzled by our native ceanothus which bloom with deep blue, sky blue or electric blue flowers. Emerald Blue phlox subulata carpets the ground in spring with clear blue flowers that top creeping stems. Penstemon Blue Springs, a California native hybrid, carries dense spikes of bright blue, bell-shaped blossoms.

Make sure your garden has a blue section to cool you on a hot day.

Design trends

Native Plants that are Toxic

August already. Plants are growing like there’s no tomorrow. The hummingbirds are my constant companions in the garden and the resident deer population is afoot. I see their tell tale droppings. The young yearlings sample what the older deer are nibbling. There are native plants that are poisonous for us but only some of them are avoided by deer. It got me thinking. How do deer eat poisonous plants without apparent ill affect?

Deer are browsers. They thrive on a mixed diet. You’ve seen them eat a few roses then saunter over to the abutilon and then on to the daylily flowers. Deer will eat almost anything, even plants with a strong scent like catmint, lavender or thyme when they are hungry or need water. They can even eat a few bites of various toxic plants.

According to Tom Hanley, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, “There seems to be threshold levels for the toxicity of different plants and as long as deer eat below that threshold, they’re okay.” Plant toxicity varies with the time of year also and flowers may be less toxic than leaves or roots. They just mix it up.

That explains the eating habits of deer but what about us?

Western azalea – all parts poisonous

Many of us are including native plants in our landscapes to attract wildlife and save water and resources. Here are some common native plants that you should be aware of if you have small children. This list comes from
Borstein, Foss and O’Brian- California Native plants for the Garden.

Coffeeberry- leaves, berries and bark
California buckeye- all parts (poisonous to bees also)
Western azalea- all parts
Elderberry- all parts except ripe berries and fruit
Solanum-all parts
Snowberry-berries
California buttercup- juice of the plant
Berberis- roots and leaves
Prunus ( cherry )- seeds
California poppy- all parts
Lupine (annual)- seeds, fresh leaves and stems.

Mostly though, native plants make great additions to the garden. They tend to be well behaved and are rarely invasive. Birds and butterflies rely on them for food, shelter and nesting. And best of all they are beautiful.

When I’m designing with native plants I find the following plants are fairly safe around deer. They are not perfectly safe at all times of the year but they are usually avoided.

Douglas iris are safe natives around children

Artemisia also called Ca. sagebrush
Asarum – Wild ginger
Baccharis – Dwf coyote brush
Ceanothus ‘Julia Phelps’
Eriogonum – Ca. buckwheat
Douglas iris
Mimulus auritanicus – Sticky monkey flower
Monardella – Coyote mint
Ribes speciosum – Fuchsia-flowering gooseberry
Salvia

Enjoy your garden. Let the deer browse elsewhere and be aware of plants that may be toxic to children.

Design trends

Kids in the Garden

My sidekick Grace feeding the scrub jays peanuts.

My 4 year old neighbor, Grace, helps me in my garden. She tells me her favorite activity is transplanting. A pro now at loosening roots, she adds just the right amount of soil and waters the new plant in to settle the soil. Watering from the watering can is her favorite part. She knows the names of many of the birds that frequent my suet feeder including the chickadee and junco. And she’s quite the expert at putting peanuts on the railing for the jays, then sitting quietly to watch them find the treat. The swallowtails visit the butterfly bush regularly and she knows them by name, too. She’s a naturalist in the making.

Collecting seeds

Today we identified the ripe seeds on annual cosmos and noted how the zinnia flowers that we started from seed earlier in the summer are just about the open. The swallowtail butterflies will love them. Also on the agenda was reviewing the wildlife camera footage to see what animals visited the garden during the night.

School has begun for many students. And now would be the perfect time to encourage your child to grow something, keeping track of the progress by pictures and notes. Maybe what they learn could even be used for a school project.

Collecting edible petals

Finding things to do in the garden is easy. You probably already have some edible flowers in your garden. Tuberous begonia petals taste like lemon. Calendulas are spicy as are carnations and marigolds. Dianthus are clove-flavored, nasturtiums give a hint of horseradish and violas, pansies, hollyhock, squash blossoms and johnny-jump-ups taste like mild lettuce. You can also freeze flowers like violas, fuchsias, geranium, stock and thyme in ice cubes.
Whatever you grow, include the kids in the garden. It’s a free and fun activity.

Besides flowers, fragrant foliage plants like lemon basil, lemon verbena, lime thyme, orange mint and other herbs engage the senses and can be included in a kid’s garden.

Pet-able plants are a sure hit with kids. Usually we tell them, “Don’t touch”, so to actually have someone encourage this is a rare treat. If your own garden doesn’t have plants that look and feel so soft that you can’t resist petting them, consider adding lamb’s ears which are soft and furry, artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ or fountain grass.

Butterfly bush are sure to attract Swallowtail butterflies

In a garden, children can breathe fresh air, discover bugs and watch things grow. And, of course, a garden offers kids and everyone else fresh, tasty homegrown food. What better place for kids to play than in a place where they can use their hands and connect with the earth? Where else can they make a plan for a plot of land and learn the lessons of hope and wonder, suspense and patience and even success and failure? In a garden you can have conversations about life and even death in a way that doesn’t seem so sad.

Teach children about beneficial insects like butterflies and lady bugs. Good bugs help plants by pollinating flowers or preying on insect pests. Make your garden a more inviting place for these helpful insects by planting lots of flowers and herbs to attract them. Flowers with umbrella shaped clusters of small flowers such as cosmos, zinnia, black-eyed susan and yarrow are favorites of butterflies. Lady bugs like a pest free garden and will patrol your plants looking for any tiny insects and their eggs.

Whatever you grow, include the kids in the garden. It’s a free and fun activity.