SF Garden Show Inspired

It's raining steadily as I sit down tonight to tell you something about us mice's grand day out at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show on Sunday March 28.

As we did last year, we signed up to mouse the California Native Plant Society booth. This year, Town Mouse made us each a set of furry mouse ears on a bandana and we wore them all day. I kept thinking, gosh, how happy everyone is, look at all these people smiling at me - maybe I'm just radiating peace and joy today ... then I remembered ... the ears!

The CNPS booth was really wonderful, as you can sort of see in the not-so-great picture, with fresh, colorful plants and a large Ribes sanguineum that drew a lot of people in for a closer look).

I think this year, more people than last brought some fairly specific questions to the CNPS booth. There were curious newbies and knowledgeable nursery owners, and all stations between. I was hoarse in no time.

We gardeners tend to be very nice, don't you think? We nurture plants. What could be nicer? I had a very nice time talking to all the very nice people.

And we got to take in the show besides.

I thought I'd just share some pictures of one garden installation that we both enjoyed very much, then in other posts follow up on some of the interesting questions people asked me, and other things of interest from the day.

Maybe it was because we were wearing silly ears and feeling light hearted, but I really enjoyed the bright colors and energetic almost cartoonish - no - painterly feeling to this installation (I'm not sure what they are officially called - they're like art installations to me).


I also was immediately taken with the you-can-do-this-at-home-iness of the hardscape, the whimsical paths and the retaining walls.


And even the pots maybe.

I used to enjoy clay modeling, and I think that's why working with concrete appeals to me so much. All it takes is corrugated tin roofing to use as forms, concrete ready to pour, and things to decorate the surface of the concrete with - to scratch, smooth, paint, and embed etc. Oh, and by the way - a modicum of artistic talent.

Part of the appeal, as Town Mouse commented, is that the bright colors in the hardscape would make the garden space bright and attractive even in the summer, when, one must admit, the chaparral habitat does tend to go to sleep. Also, for fire safety you are advised to have a lot of hardscape close to the house, not advice I've ever really relished.

The south garden area of our home is in need of landscaping and is definitely in the chaparral habitat, though it could also be edge-of-the-woods too. I could use a few non-invasive ornamental plants, and interesting and colorful seating and so on, and -- why not! -- brightly colored paths!

The landscape designer is Keeyla Meadows Gardens and Art from Albany, and the name of the installation is Habitat Dance with Redheaded Snake. The artist was there and said she had a book for sale: Fearless Color Gardens. Here's a blog post I found on it by BloomingWriter. The review says the book gives readers a lot of encouragement to be bold, and some tips and techniques for handling color and so on in the garden. Too bad we bumped into the author just as we were leaving, or I might have bought a copy.

I probably won't end up going for Keeyla's exact look, how could I? - but entertaining the possibilities is certainly fun. And thank goodness I can always call on Town Mouse, and on my artistic children and friends, to help me with the whole aesthetics thing, if I do give it a go.

But I would first need to look into the hardscape material. Town Mouse reminded me concrete has an environmental downside.

A topic for another post.

Wildflower Wednesday

Here she is! Beautiful, pure, white, a joy to all who discover the blossoms among the bright green leaves. Clematis lasiantha (chaparral clematis) twining over a trellis along the fence. 

Last week, after 2 years of summer dormancy and winter dormancy (and some leaves in between spring and fall) she finally showed her stuff. 

OK, I won't rip you out after all. Welcome to the garden!

An unexpected gift

Today my daughter and her husband - let's call them, in the spirit of the blog, Mr and Mrs Squirrel from up yonder near Boulder Creek - came over with sandwiches for lunch, and an offer to work the afternoon on some task around the property, while I tapped away in my office, it being a WFH day. My mind danced with the possibilities. We took a stroll about the property after lunch and decided the redwood grove area behind my dad's cottage needed help the most:

It's hard to describe the lay of the land here. The blown-out white areas in the upper right are the road, with the driveway curling up and to the right of the grove. The corral is down to the left, and this grove rises in a hump between the corral and the road/driveway. Hence it has nice banks where I see a lot of ferns and grasses, soap root, and such like.

The redwoods in this area range from zero up to about 100 years old. No stumps of old giants. An occasional individual tree that's bigger. Way down the hill behind our house, down the north slope, we did find a huge old stump, and a disused logging road.

One adviser told me the grove should be thinned, and another said that it should not. You'd think the larger redwoods would do better without competition from weak saplings growing in their shade, but I'm not sure. They could be like overcrowded seedlings, on a slightly different scale.

But lately, I've been bewailing all the debris that has fallen in the recent - and not so recent - storms. For fire safety it's important, of course, to keep the wooded areas close to the house free of undergrowth, for the most part, which is just fuel for wildfires, and especially to eliminate fuel ladders: flammable material such as vines growing from the ground up into the tree branches, that might spread the fire into to the canopy. Also it's just not very pretty.

So - they set to with a will. They piled the fallen branches and bigger twigs in the corral, ready for the next time the chipper is by. And half way through the afternoon, they paused to consider the state of the grove.

What we need here is a....



Neat little woodland path! They did such a great job!

Thanks, guys!

Congratulations, Country Mouse!

OK, so neither of us was a winner in the Gardening Gone Wild photo contest. But Country Mouse was honorably mentioned for her photo of a redbud leaf awakening. And with over 70 photos submitted, that's a great honor indeed!

Considering that Country Mouse was a second runner up last April, looks like we're on a winning streak here for spring photos! (The photo below was Salvia Bees bliss in the morning light)

 Congratulations Country Mouse!

Propagation "Mid Term"

At Rebecca Sweet's tweeter's get together in Los Altos lately, to which she was kind enough to invite The Mice (yours truly and Town Mouse), I met An Alameda Garden blogger, and we bonded over propagation, so I know she will enjoy this post. It was great to meet and greet other bloggers, designers, and even garden publication luminaries, at the get together in Rebecca's stunning garden! (I should perhaps mention that I squeak, but I don't as yet tweet.)

Us mice even got us photo taken there, and you can see our mouse ears, and more about the event, and about the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show (whither we mice are headed tomorrow), on this Blue Planet Garden Blog post.

Well, in a garden you are always in "mid term" I guess... So, in the spirit of a mid-term test, here's how things are going in the propagation department.

Cuttings: D+
Things not going well on many fronts, OK on others - but learning has occurred and that's what mid terms are for eh?

My ceanothus cuttings all got fuzzy fungus and died.

[Photo omitted for reasons of good taste. We don't want to see dead cuttings!]

I had two sorts, warty-leaved Ceanothus, Ceanothus papillosus -- sort of the scrub-oak of ceanothus species around here -- and Ceanothus thyrsiflorus, the graceful small tree ceanothus.

We have quite a lot of the warty-leaved ceanothus here, hardly any C. thyrsiflorus. A neighbor let me take cuttings from her C. thyrsiflorus and told me that thirty years ago, there were many many more of them around here. We wondered together what could have accounted for their decline. It's a mystery.

My toyon cuttings (Heteromeles arbutifolia) all got crispy-crittered because they were out in the cold frame and suddenly we had a sunny day (but check out the seedlings below!). Most of the coffee berry (Rhamnus californica) also baked, but a few that were in the shade just might make it. Just a peek into the cold frame of mostly death!:


Rosa californica cuttings didn't make it. Too puny I think. My Western Azalea likewise got crispy crittered one day in its little tent, with too-strong sun coming through Rat's office window, and all the lovely promising green buds are withered. ARGH!!! And they were rooting too. Great wailings and gnashings of teeth!

Here's a survivor I think - or a well preserved corpse:


The above cutting has survived over a year, survived the storm that blew down the old duct-tape greenhouse and more - but it is not doing anything much. Looks like Lupinus albifrons, from a local wild plant. I keep on keeping it and wonder if it will actually take root and grow!

But the great news is that the Arctostaphylos tomentosa crustacea (the local manzanita species) cuttings show a little resistance to a tug, and are mostly looking good - If they survive I'll convert my grade to an A regardless of other failures!


I also have some California Dutchman's pipe, Aristolochia californica, but it's too soon to tell with them. Of the hazelnut, Corylus cornuta, maybe 4 might make it! Plus - the Coast Live oak cuttings are still looking alive and do show resistance to a tug, indicating roots, though why I want oak cuttings I really don't know. Acorns are sprouting everywhere.

From earlier cuttings that took, the Dicentra formosa, western bleeding heart, are absolutely stunning. It took for ever for their underground stem cuttings to emerge but then practically all did at different times. Also the seafoam, Holodiscus discolor, are thriving though don't look that pretty - I need to prune them but am waiting till the roots get good and strong.


Learning: Next time, I will keep the foliage much more dry while keeping the roots moist, and keep everything on the cool side (though some things might like the warmth better).

Seedlings: A +!
I'm doing much better on the seedling front

Hetermomeles arbutifolia, Toyon - lots of healthy babies from local mamas. I smooshed little ziploc bags of berries-in-water for months to get the seeds out. Those berries never did get mushy and in the end I smashed them open. But it worked!!


These are Ithuriel's Spear - Triteleia laxa

From propagation group - we were getting bulbs but I didn't want to throw away the seeds. Now I have two trays all popping up and don't know what to do!

I'm also really happy with the local hairy honeysuckle (Lonicera hispidula) seeds I prepared last year and stratified for a month in the fridge - So many of them popped up! I have potted them on now.

And this little Lupinus bicolor from local seed is just busting out all over, in the big pot where I put it with single-leaf onion and bunch grass (not the best photo I'm afraid):

I hope to gather seeds from these. There are even a few more just now emerging from last year's batch:


I think they are the same sort but who knows - all my labels bleached out and I don't know what's what. Maybe I'll get lucky and propagate a L. albifrons!

I don't know what this is either::

It could be douglas iris I brought home from CNPS propagation group?

Below is a bank of Melica imperfecta on our driveway - not looking too special yet but a lovely local native grass none the less and I'd like to make more grow along that bank :


Last year I gathered seeds late - they are ready in May or earlier, in fact they are starting to show now. But a few of them came up just recently! And last weekend they filled a flat of 3 inch pots:

Woo hoo!

Learning: Never give up on a flat of seeds. You never know when one might just take it into its tiny head to germinate!

Propagation Infrastructure - aka Greenhouse A +++ !
The rains stopped, and Rat came back from a business trip and got right to it! I hope to show you more greenhouse progress in the upcoming weeks! The glass along the long side is in, the two doors flanking the "front door" are in, the rafters are painted white, and we are well on the way. The rough siding will be covered and painted with some slightly less rough siding, we've decided.

I just can hardly wait!!

Can you explain the whole dry creek thing to me?

In my last post, I whined mightily about the amount of time I'm spending removing redwood twigs, leaves, and other debris from the paths and dry creek beds in my garden. One of the comments to that post asked why one would want to have a dry creek bed in the middle of a housing development, and I had to say: Good question.

The answer comes in several parts.

1. Aesthetics

The gray stones are a wonderful background to the fresh green grasses. 

When planning the garden, it's much easier to have a varied surface to plan around. Here's the plan I made for the Great Front Garden Remodel. 

Having the dry creek bed -- which came with the house -- really helped me with the structure of the front garden. I planted a California Fescue (F on the plan) and Penstemon (P on the plan) along the creek bed, and it's worked well. Here a view of the rows of grasses on the left, and right (plus a bonus Triteleia bloom, first of the season, in the foreground on the left).

The back garden came with a sweet little bridge over a dry creek bed -- you can't have a bridge over nothing, and it's fun to look out on the path and the bridge from the house. 

In a garden, the human eye is pleased to see more than just plants, and I prefer a dry creek bed to more concrete. For the mediterranean mounds, the designer surrounded one mound with a dry creek bed, and left the other without. 

A path that uses smaller pebbles and leftover flagstone dissects the area where the bridge creek meets the mound creek. And again, we've used the creek in the design. This time grasses in the creek, Iris along the side. 

2. Benefits to Plants

Many California natives love perfect drainage. I have clay soil. This is a problem, but the dry creek bed really helps. In the front, the creek bed has been around for a few decades and sinks a bit each year. The result is not perfect drainage, but much better drainage than a flat surface. 

The small California redbud in front probably survives because it has the creekbed drainage. Same with the penstemon and the woolly blue curls, which are notoriously difficult to grow in a garden environment. 

3. Managing Runoff

By nature, creek beds are well suited for managing runoff. Interestingly, where you live seems to critically affect how you want to manage runoff. In this article in Fine Gardening, the dry creekbed is used for erosion control and directs the water off the property and into the drain. That's likely quite appropriate for areas where it rains a lot.

Here in California, and especially so close to the Bay, we want to keep water on the property but away from the house. The dry creek bed collects runoff and allows the water to penetrate the soil instead of going into the drain and disappearing into the Bay. Buena Luna landscaping has a nice example of such a dry creek bed here.  My dry creek beds are actually not currently hooked up to the gutters, but we're hoping to have that done this summer. And the front creek is deep enough to catch water where it is.

Maybe that was a longer explanation that expected. But I was happy to spend some time thinking about my dry creek beds, and how they enhance the beauty and sustainability of a garden. 

Oh, and by the way, the lizards love to live among the rocks and sun themselves... mulch just doesn't do it for them.

Sometimes I wish...

...I were a restoration gardener. Reading Country Mouse's post yesterday about finding the Lupinus hirsutissimus really made me happy. Just imagine helping nature along up there in the coastal hills. How peaceful.

Take me, in contrast. I spent last weekend starting to get the garden ready for the garden tour. Now, you'd think that means planting attractive annuals, maybe rearranging a planter or two, snipping off a few dead flowers...The reality is different. What people look for is a tidy garden, and the first step in making the garden tidy is to clean up the paths and dry creek beds.

I have a lot of dry creek bed, both in the back and in the front. In the back, I also have the neighbor's redwood trees dropping branches, and the bark on the mounds gets washed into the creek during the rains. The result is this:

Part of me says that's fine. But the other part says "Town Mouse, you don't go to a job interview in torn jeans, and you don't show your garden with really messy dry creek beds." So I got down on my knees for several hours and moved around the rocks, collected redwood twigs and bark, and disposed of a few slugs (so that's where they live!).

Better. Even if we have another storm, the worst is taken care of. Next come the edges of the paths, which look like this right now.

Fortunately, this will be an easier job, so I can wait to sweep there until we're a little closer to tour day. I'll also have to sweep the square pavers, which are dirty, and remove the worst of the weeds (I hope to get some of that vinegar weed control for the dandelion). Here's a paver picture with bonus Towhee. 

And I'll have to remove the avocado that the squirrel brought by and placed on the arbor. Don't ask me why, I'm not a squirrel. I'm a mouse.

There's also the DG patio, to sweep and rake, and I have to oil the IPE benches. Would a restoration gardener do that? No, but a suburban gardener would.

But, in the end, when I look around and see the birds visiting, the fountains splashing, and all the plants looking happy after the winter rain, maybe it's not so bad. When I look away from the redwood twigs and see the big picture, I feel lucky. And suddenly I hear the birds, and the wind in the tree, and I'm just happy to be outside. 

P.S. Before tour day, I'll also go back to North Coast Gardening's "Four Secrets to a FAST Garden Makeover" and put on some final touches. And then, I'll cross my fingers for sunshine!

You know you're a restoration gardener when...

you are overjoyed at the appearance of this little guy, warts and all. Lupinus hirsutissimus, also known as stinging annual lupine. Right now he's about six or eight inches across but could grow to three feet or so. Here's what Wikipedia says:

It is native to the coastal mountains of Baja California and California as far north as the San Francisco Bay Area, where it grows on dry mountain slopes, including areas that have recently burned. ... The stem and herbage are coated in long, stiff hairs that sting skin when touched.

He doesn't even get proper lupine spires, just lupine flowers growing up the hairy stem. Here's the wikipedia picture from the article above:

Definitely not something you want in the front of a mixed border!

The reason to be overjoyed is that it appeared in an area where we cleared a lot of chaparral. He's growing under a manzanita, and is a "fire follower" - the first in the succession of plants that follows a fire.

His appearance means the land is alive and well, and responding to the absence of vegetation as if a natural fire had occurred, which of course makes the restoration gardener very happy indeed.

Awakening

Well to get right to the point, above is the photo I've chosen - also recommended by Town Mouse - for the GGW photo competition whose theme is "Awakening." It's western redbud, Cercis occidentalis. This bush lives in a neighbor's property.

And BTW, if you haven't seen them, you can go one post back for Town Mouse's entry and also-ran photos.

I love the tenderest new leaves, translucent like the redbud's, and the soft, fuzzy ones, like this hairy honeysuckle, Lonicera hispidula, which grows well and indigenously on our property ... The below photo is from a year ago, and I have it up on my wall at work:


I love how the leaves unfold like a butterfly's wings and reach skyward, like this buckeye leaf bud. I don't think it's strictly our native buckeye, Aesculus californica, though it is in a "native" landscape, now mostly weeds, at my place of work. But that's another story.


BTW just for some color - here are some more pictures of the redbud (one week later - but I think that is the same leaf in the background! not sure... )


And here is the whole bush:

Redbud grows slowly for me, and is munched on by deer. I sprayed mine with liquid fence for a couple of years and then gave up. If it survives it survives. I enjoy the neighbor's and hope my little one can pull through on its own - as the neighbor's bush certainly has.

I get almost anxiously happy in Spring. I don't want to miss a thing, but of course I do. Spring sends me to a special place.

I particularly love when the majestic oaks leaf out. Ancient beings pushing forth tender new green gives me hope and encouragement. Here is a valley oak (again at my place of work), Quercus lobata:

But the pictures I get never capture that achingly lovely state of unfolding. Nature's first green is gold indeed, as the Robert Frost poem says. I like the photo above because it has a heart in it, do you see? - and it does hint at the freshness of the green, the quality of the light on the trunks.

I liked how the tendrils of this California manroot aka wild cucumber aka Marah fabaceus, were reaching out and up, the energy of spring shooting through them. They grow all over here where I live. And when I looked at it on screen, indeed I did see a little man in there... his head turned to one side... Do you see it?


This next photo is of the Zigadenus fremontii, star lily or death camas. Very poisonous. It got infested with black aphids - I have to look em up - and I took a photo before I washed them off with the hose. To me this photo does symbolize the realities of life, that spring awakening is not always that simple perfection we might wish.


Or you could look at it from the aphids' POV: their spring awakening was put to an end by my murderous hose before they could blight the blossom. Or as William Blake put it, maybe to make a different point:

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

And now to cheer us all up again, here is another favorite of mine - The unfurled fern. This is Dryopteris arguta, coastal wood fern, which grows on my property. I took the picture one year ago and I may have shown it before as I do love this image.

Here is an unfurling fern, another much loved sight hard to really capture. This is a western sword fern, Polystichum munitum, growing a mile or so from our home.


I liked the below shot of Smilacina racemosa, fat (or false) Solomon's seal [update: now called Maianthemum racemosum], and so did some others whose opinions I sought.


All along, this was my favorite but it has blown-out highlights:

Except for this one which definitely said "awakening" to me, but was overall a little dark. But I went with the tender translucency and pink color of the redbud.


Oh what fun - photography really brings me into the appreciation of the spring awakening time and helps me feel less anxious about losing a second of it - by capturing a few of its special moments to look back on.