Posts Tagged ‘garden’

Cal­i­for­nia native plants

I recently toured Matil­ija Nurs­ery with owner Bob Suss­man, who started his grow­ing busi­ness about 16 years ago. Nes­tled among the orchards of Moor­park, this SoCal nurs­ery car­ries a choice vari­ety of native plants, and  native and hybridized irises. Bob has pro­vided Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com with the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion about native plant growing:

What to do now???  The end of the sum­mer dog days.……

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the most chal­leng­ing and demor­al­iz­ing time for a native gar­den, espe­cially a new native gar­den. The rea­son for this is that a native gar­den, or any gar­den for that mat­ter, always has a com­po­nent of trial and error.  Most of us tend to focus on the “error”,  what didn’t work and what died?  This was indeed the case at a recent con­sul­ta­tion I went to last week where the new gar­den was going through its rough first year.

Most native plants flower intensely in spring but by sum­mer things are going the other way.  There are non-​​violent solu­tions to all of this and things to do like main­te­nance and planning.

You can start cut­ting back things that “need it”. Things that need it are salvia’s, sphear­al­cea, encelia, grasses and even matil­ija pop­pies but not cean­othus or man­zanita. Clear out leaf lit­ter except under oaks — my pref­er­ence. Weed and spread mulch. That will give every­thing a much neater and cleaner look while keep­ing the ground cooler and plants greener.

Plan­ning! What croaked and what didn’t? What looks good dur­ing the sum­mer heat? Most casu­al­ties occur in the first year.  While there are many rea­sons for plant casu­al­ties, it’s gen­er­ally “wrong plant, wrong place”, but you may not know this until the first sum­mer. Then you find out.  What to do?

Repeat the suc­cesses and not the fail­ures. Look at those things that did well and plant more of those. Go to the native plant nurs­ery (Matil­ija Nurs­ery) or botan­i­cal gar­den in summer/​fall and see what looks nice and in flower!!!!.  Then, plant the plants that are both flow­er­ing and/​or look nice.

Flow­er­ing plants put the focus of your eye on the flow­ers and not the part of the land­scape going to seed or in to dor­mancy.   Here’s a par­tial list of what is flow­er­ing now: lessin­gia, ero­gonum grande rubescens ie red buck­wheat (fin­ish­ing now), Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, chilop­sis lin­earus (desert wil­low), mala­cotham­nus nutalii (bush mal­low) and abu­tilon palmeri.

Matil­ija Bob will now do con­sults for about $100 per visit depend­ing on where you live and you get a 20% dis­count cer­tifi­cate good for 60 days on nurs­ery plants to boot. Way bet­ter and cheaper than a psychologist!

Go to www​.matil​i​ja​nurs​ery​.com for more arti­cles like the one above.

“Huge Sude­ley Bench” by Pablo Reinoso at Sude­ley Castle

I came across this work of art on a favorite web­site and stopped in my tracks! What a per­fect set­ting for this glo­ri­ous piece of out­door sculpture!

From the catalog:

As impres­sive in scale and ambi­tion as its name sug­gests, Huge Sude­ley Bench was com­mis­sioned espe­cially for the Sotheby’s at Sude­ley Cas­tle exhi­bi­tion. It rep­re­sents the first time that Reinoso has worked on this mon­u­men­tal scale, over­see­ing a team of foundry tech­ni­cians who employed hydraulic machin­ery to manip­u­late lengths of steel girder into exu­ber­ant and free flow­ing forms. Reinoso refers to this process as ‘breath­ing sculp­ture’, ref­er­enc­ing the man­ner in which Calder adapted his mobiles while at the same time acknowl­edg­ing its archi­tec­tural prop­er­ties. Com­ment­ing on his early train­ing as a sculp­tor, Reinoso has stated his will to go beyond pre­scribed bound­aries, ‘bound­aries you need to know but you don’t need to respect’. Huge Sude­ley Bench was cre­ated in three indi­vid­ual sec­tions and treated with black auto­body paint, a deci­sion made to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions could refresh its sur­faces and appre­ci­ate the work in the pris­tine state it first left the foundry. It also sees the intro­duc­tion of Reinoso’s new artist’s mono­gram which he intends to apply to all his future creations.

“Spaghetti chair” is actu­ally a bench.

To learn more about Pablo Reinoso and his work, go to:  www​.pablor​einoso​.com, www​.chair​blog​.eu/, and to see more of this Sotheby’s exhi­bi­tion:www​.sothe​bys​.com/​m​i​n​i​s​i​t​e​/​s​u​d​e​l​ey/.

A Socal com­pany that car­ries beau­ti­ful gar­den art and foun­tains on a smaller scale is Gar­den Tem­ple (818 – 783-0079) in Stu­dio City,www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com.

Now this is a bicycle!

I was impa­tiently antic­i­pat­ing Flora Grubb Gar­dens and was not dis­ap­pointed! I was in fact wowed by this ulti­mate urban gar­den resource. Set in an indus­trial area of down­town San Fran­cisco, Flora’s green king­dom  encom­passes a soar­ing indus­trial build­ing filled with witty dis­plays, ver­ti­cal gar­dens and unusual plants and con­tain­ers. Ser­vices offered include cut­ting edge flo­ral designs (suc­cu­lent wed­ding bou­quet, any­one?), gar­den design and main­te­nance and a palm bro­ker­age. Flora Grubb Gar­dens has a ter­rific web­site and newslet­ter: check it out @ Flor​agrubb​.com. She also offers sem­i­nars and speakers.

1001 Gar­dens is a book to die for!

.….YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE. That’s the title of a book edited by Rae Spencer-​​Jones that I had to have when I spot­ted it at the Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens gift shop (www​.Hunt​ing​ton​.org/). Weigh­ing in at about 2 pounds and with 960 pho­tos and 800+ pho­tos, this is not a take-​​along book. It really is intended for arm­chair trav­el­ing (to actu­ally visit a listed gar­den you will evi­dently need to do some dig­ging on hours, direc­tions, etc.) I like it because there may be a gar­den not far afield to visit that the reader is not aware of. The for­mat lists design­ers, own­ers, gar­den style, size, cli­mate, loca­tion and a brief descrip­tion. List­ings are eclec­tic, on every con­ti­nent, with a heavy con­cen­tra­tion on the British Isles.

1001 GARDENS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, Pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2007 by Barron’s Edu­ca­tional Series Inc.