Tag Archives: Design

Social Distance XIII: Landscape Design Concepts

Posted on by
Reply
Salvia + Achillea

This column’s garden photo shows a swath of the Friendship Salvia (Salvia ‘Amistad’) as background for Fernleaf Yarrow (Achillea filipendulina ‘Coronation Gold’). These plants have good traits in common: both are summer-blooming perennials, upright in form, and propagate each season by spreading. The Yarrow needs support while the Salvia stands on its own, but they work well together in multiple ways. This photo illustrates useful concepts in landscape design, which is the focus of this column as we continue to explore accessible and productive gardening activities while we are social distancing.

Care for Your Garden

Gardening by walking around can be worthwhile just for meditating on Nature’s wonders, but it can also be an opportunity to consider ways to refine your garden landscape.

Landscape design involves a multitude of issues and ideas and deserves college-level study and extensive reading, but a short list of basic concepts can support significant improvements in garden vistas.

This column addresses three concepts in aesthetic landscape design.

Concept #1: Place tall plants in back. This concept is primarily practical: it simply protects the visibility of shorter plants. The shorter plants might also hide the less attractive stems of background plants. This approach leads to installing a series of plant layers in the garden bed, providing an attractive display.

As with all landscape concepts, this rule can be broken. For example, some “see-through” plants such as Angel’s Fishing Rod (Dierama pulcherrimum) or Brazilian Vervain (Verbena bonariensis) could be placed in front of shorter plants without obstructing the view.

Concept #2: Plant in groups. Having multiple specimens of a favored plant provides visual continuity in the landscape. Too often, when gardeners see an attractive plant in a garden center, they purchase and install just one plant and the landscape develops an eclectic or scattered appearance. A more effective method from a design perspective is to install at least three plants in a grouping. Some plants, e.g., Salvia ‘Amistad’, will spread on their own through runners, and soon create an attractive cluster.

A related concept, repetition, also provides continuity in the landscape. A plant that grows well in the garden and reproduces over time could form a clump that is larger than wanted in its location. This situation inviting transplanting divisions of the plant within the garden, ideally within sight of each other so they are visually linked.

Concept #3: Arrange Plants by Form and Color. The garden landscape looks best when it has been arranged intentionally. When selecting plants, envision their intended location in the garden to consider whether the new plants will look relative to existing plants in size, color and form of foliage, or color and form of blossoms.

Size relationships go beyond the “tall plants in back” concept. A landscape generally gains visual interest from plants of various sizes, but adjacent plants should not differ greatly in height or width.

Also consider foliage texture and color: which can vary over a wide range. When a given plant is grown in a grouping, there will be continuity in the foliage, but when installing different plants together, the garden design often will be enhanced by juxtaposing different foliage textures and colors. For example, pairing a red foliage plant with one that has silvery foliage could provide a striking effect, while putting two different plants with similar foliage could look like a design blunder.

Blossom colors, which are often emphasized in garden design, present challenges and opportunities. Again, intentional combinations look better than randomness.

One of the world’s most famous garden designs is Vita-Sackville-West’s white garden at England’s Sissinghurst Castle. This landscape favors white shades in both blossom and foliage color.

A comparably monochromatic effect could be developed with any of several other colors, but the more popular approaches use analogous or complementary color schemes. Such design approaches could be applied to larger garden beds, or smaller vignettes of just a few closely positioned plants.

Advance Your Gardening Knowledge

Analogous color schemes typically involve three colors that are close on the color wheel, e.g., red, orange and yellow, while complementary color schemes involve two colors that are opposites on the color wheel, e.g., violet and yellow in this column’s photo. These schemes can expand into complex ideas for fine artists and fabric designers, but gardeners can accomplish effective displays by applying the basic schemes. Learn about developing this aspect of your garden landscape by searching the Internet for “analogous color scheme” or complementary color scheme” or “color wheel.”

Enrich Your Gardening Days

As you stroll by gardens in your community or public gardens, or search YouTube.com for “private garden tours,” look for examples or violations of the three landscape design concepts outlined in this column.

Look also for creative and successful departures from these basic concepts. Even the best rules can be broken!

Keep your emotions positive and your viruses negative, and enjoy your garden.

Current Trends in Garden Design

Posted on by
Reply

As I was planning to visit nine exemplary hone gardens in the Santa Cruz area, in a tour organized by the UCSC Arboretum and Botanic Garden, I happened upon a popular garden magazine’s summary of ten current trends in residential garden design. Redbud soil company online supplier of soil containers.

Most of these trends related to indoor gardening and flower arranging, while eight relate to outdoor gardening. I became interested in how those eight trends related to the Arboretum’s garden tour. Two question came to mind:

  • Do these trends actually appear in these community gardens?
  • Do these community gardens actually reflect the trends?

I managed to visit six gardens during the day. I won’t identify the gardens because they are not now on tour, but each garden was unique, nicely designed and developed, and very well presented for this special event.

Here are my observations, with reference to eight reported trends for outdoor gardens.

The Keeping It Low Maintenance

Everyone, it seems, wants a low-maintenance garden, and some strategies certainly can lower the workload, but gardens that shine for visitors show the result of ongoing maintenance plus “sprucing up” for tour day. All the gardens on this tour were neatly maintained: there were no weeds, diseased or neglected plants, or unsightly debris. Congratulations to the garden owners! My findings don’t negate the published interest in low maintenance, but it suggests that low maintenance doesn’t align with garden tours.

Creating a Staycation Spot

This trend focuses on recreational resources in the garden, e.g., outdoor kitchen, furniture, fire features, decorative lighting, etc. All of the gardens I visited included a table and chairs, and some had a basic barbeque set-up, but none appeared to have been planned for a “staycation.” People who invest significant money and effort in their gardens apparently prefer to explore new environments on occasion, rather than to switch from gardener to vacationer in the same place.

Structures as Focal Points

This trend relates to the development of garden structures, e.g., sheds, walls, and swimming pools. One of the six gardens had a small greenhouse and a hot tub, and another had an impressive collection containerized plants mounted on a fence, but there were no other structures serving as focal points. Some gardens include well-designed paths and retaining walls, but these were more functional than architectural focal points.

Private, Secluded Places

This trend envisions a smallish space dedicated to seating for two people, with perhaps a water feature, a wall or plant screen to separate it from the garden, or an arbor or pergola to create an enclosure. I saw one seating area that provided such seclusion; the others were positioned to support viewing and enjoying the garden. Avid gardeners enjoy being in their gardens, rather than relaxing in seclusion.

Notable First Impressions

This was a toss-up. Of the six gardens, three had front yards that were very nicely designed and presented fine streetside impressions. The other three had well-done front yards, but more impressive back yards. Clearly, the private, backyard garden area had the higher priority. Such differences could result by chance, differences in the available gardening space, or particular interest in impressing neighbors and passers-by.  Good arguments could be made for both front yard and backyard priorities.

Food in Landscapes of All Sizes

This magazine article envisioned a trend for including edibles in a primarily ornamental garden, whether in containers or raised beds, or mingled with perennial plants. There are interesting ideas for combining edibles and ornamentals, and good books on the creative design of vegetable gardens. Still, I saw vegetable gardening in only two of these six tour gardens, and in both cases, veggies were separated from ornamentals. To be fair, three of the gardens I did not visit reportedly included vegetables and fruit trees, so this tour evidently demonstrated this trend rather well.

Investing in Quality Furniture

Is this a trend? I saw attractive and serviceable garden furniture in good condition, but not the artisan-created teak items or classic showpieces like a Lutyens bench. It has been said that no garden can have too much seating, but gardeners with tour-worthy gardens might have more interest in the selection, placement and cultivation of plants than in the display of sophisticated furnishings.  

Giving Back with Gardens

This trend emphasizes gardening that is friendly to wildlife and the environment. The forms of such friendliness include providing wildlife habitats, supporting pollinators, using organic methods to control weeds and pests and not poisoning wildlife or the environment. This trend might be understood also to include using water wisely, in keeping with water conservation priorities. These tour gardens were highly compatible with this trend, with multiple sites featuring drought tolerant plants, e.g., Mediterranean climate specimens and succulents, and avoiding synthetic chemicals. I did not, however, see wildlife habitats, e.g., bird houses, brush heaps, bird baths or bird feeders.  Perhaps I just didn’t notice.

My conclusion is that the gardens on the Arboretum’s garden tour exemplify most of the design trends featured in this one magazine’s overview of 2019’s garden trends. These gardens are quite trendy!

We are now in garden tour season, so include at least one tour in your schedule, and enjoy the opportunity to discover unfamiliar plants and new approaches to garden design. An exceptional opportunity is St. Philips’ annual Garden Tour and English Tea Luncheon on May 11, 2019. For information: http://www.stphilip-sv.net.

When you embark upon a garden tour, you might find it interesting to review each garden with reference someone’s perspective on current design trends.

You also could expand this strategy by adding your own thoughts about garden design trends. For example, my design priorities include thematic design for sections of the garden, and landscaping with swaths of selected plants, in contrast to collections of single specimens.

Organize Plant Selection with Themes

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s column is about thematic gardening.

Let’s start by breaking down “landscaping” into its components.

Landscaping includes hardscapes (i.e., pathways, steps, walls, ponds, structures), but plants are enough to think about today. For our purposes, landscaping emphasizes plant selection and plant placement. With in case of having a pond you’ll need oxygen and AquaPro Pond Liner is a safe low voltage pump that is child and pet friendly.

These two activities overlap in the development of landscape styles, which can be complicated and subjective. One approach defines styles in terms of décor, materials, plant palette, and fabrics.

Styles can be interesting and important, but for today let’s stay with the basics: plant selection and placement.

Plant placement involves the relationships among plants, e.g., combinations of color, height (tall plants in back) or form, swaths of plants vs. specimens.

We might explore plant placement issues on another occasion, but thematic gardening is about plant selection, so let’s stick with that.

When selecting new plants for the garden, consider the conditions for the plant’s health and growth: Specify the location for a new plant (available space, plant size) and satisfy cultivation issues (soil, exposure, moisture and drainage needs, climate, wind exposure, etc.), then…

…consider the universe of plants you can choose from. The Royal Botanic Garden, Kew concluded that there 391,000 vascular plants known to science. Add the large and growing number of recognized cultivars (hybrids and selected varieties). These creations of plant breeders are featured each year in plant catalogs and garden centers.

Given this enormous range of possible choices, how should the gardener proceed?

For many gardeners, the approach is to leaf through a mail-order catalog or stroll through the local garden center and choose plants that are striking or attractive or familiar.

This approach is not wrong, because there is no right or wrong, just personal preference. Still, a thematic approach is a more organized and ultimately more successful.

Thematic plant selection basically involves selecting plants to have a common characteristic, as a way to focus the selection process and adopt an organized approach to developing your garden.

This approach to plant selection could be used for an entire garden or sections of the garden, i.e., particular beds.

Some of the most popular themes are based on a single plant genus, e.g., Iris, Rose, Dahlia, Orchid, Hosta, Hellebore, Orchid, Fuchsia, Heuchera, Daffodil, Tulip, or another.

A variation of genus-oriented themes focuses on categories of plants within a genus. For example, there are several kinds of irises (tall bearded, intermediate, border, miniature), and the rose genus includes modern roses, old garden roses, and species roses. (My current projects include developing a bed of old garden roses.)

Other themes emphasize the botanical categories of plants, e.g., bulbous plants, succulents, edibles, conifers, variegated, blossom color, and others. There are many other possible categories.

Then, we have themes based on the native region of the plants. A California native plant theme is a popular choice, in the Monterey Bay area because these plants thrive in our climate and are hospitable to the regional fauna.

Thematic gardening can present challenges to identify plants within the theme, and then to hunt for sources of desired plants. Fortunately, the Internet is a powerful tool for success with these tasks. The thematic gardener needs to be an effective user of Google and other search engines. Once you have selected a theme to pursue, search the Internet for websites that offer useful information and ideas.

Thematic gardening offers several benefits.

  • Creates a purposeful approach to plant selection
  • Simplifies plant selection by focusing on a sub-section of available plants
  • Defines the related part of the garden, e.g., “the rose bed”
  • Adds to understanding and appreciation of the chosen part of the plant kingdom

At another level, thematic gardening brings harmony and calm to the garden landscape. By comparison, the all-too-common tendency to add plants with a random selection strategy can result in a botanical hodge-podge. The individual plants in such a garden might have gorgeous blossoms and foliage, but lack any relationship to adjacent plants. The effect could lack coherence, and could even be jarring.

If parts of your garden already follow a thematic approach, consider whether those parts please your eye more than other parts. If they do, develop a thematic approach for other parts of the garden.

Thematic gardening can be challenging and enjoyable.

Appreciating Bonsai

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend, the Santa Cruz Bonsai Kai presents the 2018 Bonsai Show, the 30th annual exhibit by this local group. This show offers an excellent introduction to the art of bonsai and the beginning of the appreciation of this ancient form of gardening art.

Bonsai began in China in 2000 or more years ago and spread to Vietnam and Japan, where it grew in popularity. The most basic concept of bonsai is to grow a tree in a container while keeping it small. From that core idea, the practice bursts into an extraordinarily complex art form. Japanese bonsai master Masahiko Kimura, speaking of bonsai and Japanese garden design generally, observed, “In western gardens, it’s all about how it looks. The Japanese have stripped this away and reduced it to your imagination.” This suggests bringing your creativity to the bonsai viewing experience.

Here’s a quick overview of the art of bonsai:
Plant Selection—A wide range of trees can be used, but temperate climate trees are preferred because they grow best outdoors, where projects are developed traditionally. Selections are based on attractive appearance and adaptability to bonsai treatment. Three of the most popular varieties are Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum), Bodhi tree (Ficus Religiosa), and Rock Cotoneaster (C. horizontalis).

Container Selection—Glazed or unglazed ceramic containers are most widely used. The size and shape are based on the intended size and style of the full-grown bonsai tree; straight sides are an important criterion, often, to facilitate lifting the plant for root pruning.
Style—The style of a bonsai tree typically describes the orientation of the tree’s trunk. A dozen or more basic styles have been described, and are sometimes combined in a single work. Popular styles include formal upright (chokkan); informal upright (moyogi); slant-style (shakan); cascade-style (kengai); and root-over-rock (sekijoju).

Size Objective—The most often seen bonsai trees are medium-sized, i.e., 12-to-36 inches high, including the container. Some specimens are large (up to 80 inches high) or miniature (as small as 1-to-3 inches high).

Control Techniques—Practices to control the size and shape of the tree include trimming the leaves or needles; pruning the trunk, branches, and roots; wiring or clamping branches and trunks; grafting new material to the trunk; defoliation for short-term dwarfing, and deadwood techniques to simulate age in a bonsai.
Cultivation—The basic methods for maintaining the health of a bonsai tree will be familiar to gardeners: soil composition, fertilization, watering, and re-potting. When bonsai master Kimura was asked if you need instructions to care for a bonsai, he replied, “Do you need instructions to look after a baby?”

The Bonsai Show will be presented on Saturday and Sunday, April 13th and 15th, at The Museum of Art and History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day. Show Chairman Edward Lambing advises that in addition to the display of fascinating plants, the event includes bonsai demonstrations and sales, raffles, door prizes, and the drummers of Watsonville Taiko. Admission for both the Museum and the Bonsai Show has been reduced for this weekend to $5.

This Bonsai Show is a fine opportunity to broaden your gardening perspectives and enjoy the creations of local bonsai artists.

Touring California’s Best Gardens

Posted on by
Reply

Gardeners should visit public gardens to broaden their knowledge of garden design and plants. Visiting private gardens is also a good practice, especially to learn about the possibilities on a residential parcel, with various levels of time and resources. By contrast, public gardens typically are much larger than private gardens and have much more gardening support, including staff and volunteers. They can be wonderful resources for the home gardener’s continuing education.

An excellent resource for visiting public gardens is Donald Olson’s new book, The California Garden Tour (Timber Press, 2017). The book’s subtitle, “The 50 best gardens to visit in the Golden State,” describes its scope, and the contents page lists these targets geographically. The book includes maps of the northern and southern parts of the state, showing garden locations.

The Northern California section lists twenty-six gardens, from the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in the north and continuing southward to The Secret Gardens of Monterey.

 

The Southern California section lists twenty-four gardens, with the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden northernmost and San Diego’s Balboa Park southernmost.

Olson’s nineteen-page introduction is definitely worth reading. It includes a concise history of California gardens, a distinction between art gardens and botanical gardens, a nice overview of the California floristic province, and more.

Olson then describes each of the gardens in two or three pages, providing enough information to prepare the visitor with the garden’s history and orientation. The descriptions include a summary of basic facts: address, operating hours, phone number and web address, admission cost (usually free), etc.

His descriptions are readable and include one or more photographs by the author. Olson’s comments about the plant collections and noteworthy plants reveal his familiarity with horticulture and his appreciation for plants that each garden features.

Information about the books fifty gardens and other public gardens in California is available on the Internet: Google “California public gardens” for links to several websites that list such gardens, often with terse descriptions. Such information can be useful but doesn’t compare well with Olson’s more complete and expert presentation, like that of a well-informed friend. A visit to given garden’s website will yield more information of interest, but if you are interested in visiting any of California’s excellent public gardens, this book will be a valuable introduction.

Here are three recommendations for visiting a public garden.

Select a garden to visit firstly for its convenience. The maps in Olson’s book will be helpful in spotting gardens that are close to your home, or near a future travel route. Certainly, readers of this column you might begin with gardens of the Monterey Bay area: the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and The Secret Gardens of Monterey.

As you enter a garden, notice how the pathways bring visitors past a series of horticultural displays. These displays might be designed as vignettes or “rooms,” or as sections that focus on plant genera, geographic regions or landscape styles. If the pathways offer only a random variety of routes to follow, look for a map that helps to make sense of the garden experience. Larger public gardens’ maps might highlight one or more walking routes as learning opportunities. A large garden that lacks an organizational model can be confusing and less successful, despite expert maintenance of the inventory of plants.

Finally, prepare to enjoy your visit. For some gardeners, preparation might include listing learning objectives, but for all visitors, it is wise to wear comfortable shoes and weather-appropriate attire, carry some water and provide enough time to enjoy the experience.

Federal and state agencies recognize public gardens as living museums. They offer unique resources for both avid gardeners and casual appreciators of nature to gain an understanding of our horticultural environment. California has many wonderful public gardens (even more than the fifty excellent gardens in Olson’s book) that should be part of every gardener’s ongoing education. Find time to see a new garden every year.

Designing a Succulent Garden

Posted on by
Reply

The recent surge of interest in gardening with succulent plants combines the appreciation of colorful plants with architectural interest, drought-tolerance, and ease of maintenance.

Succulent plants are often grouped in the landscape because they share a preference for limited irrigation. This approach, called “hydrozoning,” simplifies watering tasks, and, conversely, avoids accidentally over-watering succulents.

This emphasis on the design of irrigation plans often results in garden designs that consist entirely of succulent plants. This approach can produce interesting “desert landscapes” that compare and contrast the range of colors, forms, and textures of the plants. The plants might be spaced widely or clustered closely.

Examples of such landscapes can be viewed at these websites: https://tinyurl.com/y7kclnee and https://tinyurl.com/y8vhzje4.

Succulent plants, by definition, are native to places with limited moisture: sandy deserts, rocky mountainsides, and plains that have extended periods of drought and occasional downpours. A desert landscape design will be most successful aesthetically when the plants are in fact native to a similar dry environment. Two basic styles are the rock garden, simulating a mountainside, and a desert-like sandy or gravelly bed,

A second consideration in planning such a landscape is to focus on plants from the same geographic region. While succulent plants grow in many parts of the world, the specimens that are most commonly available from garden centers and mail-order sources are from either Mexico or South Africa, with Australia as a distant third.

In the Monterey Bay area, succulent plants from all of these areas will thrive, but mixing them in a garden design often yields a haphazard appearance. The arbitrariness of the combination will be obvious to gardeners who study succulents, and subtly “off” to casual observers.

Another basic approach to the succulent landscape design involves combining succulent plants with drought-tolerant perennials. Such combinations certainly occur in nature, so an authentic design that rings true intuitively requires some research. This approach can provide interesting contrasts between relatively static succulent plants and visually active plants, such as grasses.

A third approach involves deliberately showcasing plants from a variety of native habitats. The plants used in such a landscape still need to be appropriate to the growing environment, and might require selective irrigation from a well-planned drip irrigation system, but can be educational from a horticultural perspective. An accompanying annotated garden map would add value to such an essentially educational landscape.

If you are now or might become inspired to develop a small or large landscape devoted to succulent plants, decide on a thoughtful approach, do some preliminary research, and install the landscape that fulfills your unique vision. The result is most likely to satisfying to yourself and appealing to visitors to your garden.

Right-size Plants for the Garden

Posted on by
Reply

While selecting plants to bring to your garden, considerations begin with basic cultural issues: exposure (sun, partial shade, full shade); moisture (infrequent; regular; ample); and drainage (fast, normal, boggy). Other more advanced cultural issues exist for future discussions.

Once we satisfy the basic cultural conditions, the selection process can proceed to aesthetic issues. There are many such issues, potentially, because they involve site-specific priorities and gardener-specific preferences. Today’s column addresses the mature sizes of plants as factors to consider when selecting a new plant for the landscape.

Plant size might seem an obvious concern, according to the Louisville privacy fence company, an all-too-common error is to install a plant where it will grow eventually to intrude on a pathway, overwhelm nearby plants, unintentionally block a view, or reach over a fence into a neighbor’s space.

Such issues could arise with all kinds of plants, although some grow more slowly than others and could become a problem only after several years of maturation.

Thoughtful gardeners favor purchases of small plants, knowing that they could buy at lower cost by growing the plant themselves rather paying a nursery to care for the plant for one or more seasons. That’s a good and frugal practice for gardeners, and it brings the additional pleasure of watching the plant grow in the garden.

Garden centers often carry selections of herbaceous perennials and succulents in four-inch—and even two–inch—containers, and woody shrubs and trees in one-gallon or smaller containers. These small plants often have labels that indicate their mature size, and the gardener has the responsibility to read the label and select plants that are suitable for the space they are intended to fill.

Small plants can be misleading, however, when the label provides insufficient information about its eventual size, or when the buyer overlooks this important information. If the label doesn’t tell the story, search for the plant’s botanical name on the Internet to learn about its full size.

For example, I recently brought home a four-inch pot holding a Dasylirion longissima. The common name, Mexican Grass Tree, suggests its eventual size, which is eight-to-ten feet wide, with a flower stalk that could reach up to fifteen feet. I’m looking for the right spot to plant it.

Photo of Large Succulent Plant

Mexican Grass Tree (Dasylirion longissima) at the UC Botani cal Garden

My garden already has a Dasylirion wheeleri, a related plant that is known as Desert Spoon. This plant has already grown to its full size of three feet wide, and once developed an impressive flower spike over eight feet high. It is, however, too close to a walkway, and its leaves have saw-tooth edges that are inhospitable to passersby and the occasional weeder. I will need to bundle it before attempting to dig up and move it to a better spot.

Large plants can be excellent specimens in the garden so this “mature size alert” is not intended to discourage the use of botanical behemoths. Given enough space, big plants can be striking additions to the garden, but it’s best when the gardener knows their mature sizes before planting.

Inspiration for Next Year’s Garden

Posted on by
Reply

We are now one week into the fall season of the year (the autumnal equinox occurred last Friday. Now is the time to plant in preparation for the new season. In the spring, many gardeners become inspired as garden centers display flowers that have been nitrogen-dosed into bloom, but the fall is best for installing new herbaceous perennials, and woody shrubs and trees. This time is good for such tasks because the plants will have time to establish their roots during the winter months and prepare to burst into bud and bloom in the spring. As this underground growth happens, our seasonal rains (hopefully) will provide needed moisture.

Planting and transplanting involve the pursuit of landscape design visions, which makes the late spring/early fall also a fine season for touring gardens for new ideas.

The Garden Conservatory, a non-profit organization, conducts a national program of one-day garden tours, known as the Open Days program. The tours are organized in local clusters of three-to-five outstanding private gardens. The Conservatory publishes an annual catalog of Open Days events, which are scheduled from April through October.

Last weekend, I visited one of the Open Days clusters in San Jose, and volunteered as the greeter at one of the gardens. There were three gardens on tour: a garden designer’s “intensely private sanctuary” with extensive stone and cast embellishments; a design gem, once featured in Sunset magazine and recently recovered from five feet of flood waters; and an artist’s nicely designed and well-managed collection of palms, cycads, bromeliads, ferns and succulents.

I won’t attempt to describe these gardens in more detail. The direct experience is always best. These three gardens are not larger than standard city lots, and they each presented details that most gardeners could adapt for their own landscapes. They also have interesting and well-grown plants, one of which (shown below) I could not identify:

Photo of Unknown Plant in Container

Mystery Plant

This striking plant was in the designer’s garden, but he was not present when I visited. The flower resembles that of the Firecracker Plant (Cuphea ignea), but the leaves are quite different. I’m searching for its name.

Several design details caught my attention. I particularly liked the use of small black river stones (Mexican pebbles), which are available in several sizes. These can be used loosely as a stone mulch, placed in sand or concrete as decorative pavement made by Custom Rock Formliner, or in other ways as imagination might lead.

Another design detail of interest was the use of small Christmas light strings, woven into hanging metal pieces, e.g., chandelier, empty birdcage, etc. and serving a decorative lighting under a patio roof. Not everyone has a similar situation, but the effect would be attractive in the evening.

Thirdly, I was impressed by the use of very large carved stone, natural stone, and cast concrete pieces in a relatively small landscaped environment. Placing massive blocks requires bold commitment as well as physical effort, but such pieces express permanence with great clarity. Even a single specimen could be a strong addition to a garden, and a vote against more tentative actions.

Visit the Garden Conservatory’s Open Days website < www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days > for more information.

If you are ready to add plants to your garden, a good opportunity is the 5th Annual Native Plant Sale of the Watsonville Wetlands Watch. The sale will be 8:30–1:00 on Saturday, October 7th, at the organization’s resource center at the Pajaro Valley High School campus in Watsonville. The sale supports the group’s education and restoration programs in the Pajaro Valley. For info, visit www.watsonvillewetlandswatch.org/.

Mosses in the Garden

Posted on by
Reply

Learning about flowering plants (angiosperms) can be a lifelong study for a gardener. One report states that they include 416 families, approximately 13,164 known genera and about 295,383 known species. Angiosperms are within the group called vascular land plants, i.e., plants that have specialized tissues for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant, and for conducting the products of photosynthesis.

Other kinds of vascular land plants include clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, and gymnosperms (e.g., conifers). Seaweeds and other plants that grow in water (aquatics) are in a different group.

The scientific term for vascular land plants is Tracheophytes, a name with the same root as our own windpipes (trachea). The suffix “–phytes” means “plants.”

The complement to vascular land plants could be non–vascular land plants, which do not have the specialized tissues of vascular plants, and that have very different ways to grow and propagate. For example, instead of roots they have rhizoids, which are similar to the root hairs of vascular plants.

Non-vascular land plants, called Bryophytes (“moss plants”), have three divisions: mosses, liverworts and hornworts. There are some 18,400 species among the Bryophytes, including about 13,000 mosses, 5,200 liverworts and just 200 hornworts. This group is clearly much smaller in number than the Tracheophytes. The plants also are typically much smaller in size, even in some cases microscopic.

The current issue of Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society, includes an absorbing article on Bryophytes, and suggests that we should care about them because of their aesthetic charm, contributions to biodiversity, and ecological functions, which include hydrological buffering and nutrient cycling.

Because of such qualities, about two years ago interested persons formed the Bryophyte Chapter of the California Plant Society, to “increase understanding and appreciation of California’s mosses, liverworts, and hornworts—and to protect them where they grow.” For information on this CNPS chapter, visit its website.

The aesthetic aspect of Bryophytes, particularly for mosses, might be interesting to gardeners and landscapers. Moss gardening can be a fascinating pursuit for the adventurous gardener with sufficient time and patience.

Screen Shot 2017-08-09 at 11.56.17 AM

There are moss varieties for many different situations, including both sunny and shady settings as well as a wide range of soil types (except sand). Growing mosses for an unusual garden bed or between stepping stones or pavers can take a year or two and consistent irrigation. For information on such projects, search the Internet for “moss gardens” or visit the website of Moss & Stone Gardens.com for the useful paper, “How to Grow Moss.”

Bryophytes and especially mosses are an under-appreciated and fascinating part of the plant kingdom, and mosses could be a welcome addition to the home garden.

Designing Naturalistic Landscapes

Posted on by
Reply

Landscape design has been analyzed, discussed, and written about by many people, and from several angles. Most treatments of this subject consider the built landscape as part of built environment, which contrasts with the natural environment. Generally, they describe landscapes as vignettes or vistas that please the beholder’s eye by combining forms or colors from an aesthetic perspective. Aesthetics determine whether a garden is Victorian, Italian, Japanese, modern, white, classical, etc. Often, this approach results in random groupings of favored plants, with the only design principle being “tall plants in back.”

There are more horticultural perspectives for thinking about landscapes. For example, we have the idea of companion planting, in which proximities affect plant vigor. Then, we have generic groupings, as with small or large collections of roses, cacti, irises, or some other plant genus. Another horticultural approach involves grouping plants with similar needs for moisture. Such “hydrozoning” responds to the horticultural needs of plants and incidentally organizes the gardener’s irrigation tasks. A tropical landscape focuses on plants with an exotic look and a continuing thirst (not a good choice in the land of persistent drought).

Moving further into horticultural considerations, we encounter climate-oriented landscaping, with emphasis on plants from the world’s Mediterranean or “summer dry” regions, which of course include the Monterey Bay area. This landscaping approach supports plant development and vigor and eases the gardener’s workload.

The attractive subset of summer-dry landscaping is landscaping with California native plants, which combines the climate-oriented approach with the ecological compatibility of flora and fauna.

The more naturalistic form of landscaping with California native plants is landscaping with California plant communities. There are various ways to define this state’s several plant communities but essentially, the coast, the mountains, and the deserts are different horticultural environments, and therefore support different plants. A very useful book on this topic has been provided by Glen Keator and Alrie Middlebrook: Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens (University of California Press, 2007).

The next level of appreciating the difference between built and natural landscapes can be found in the book by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West: Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes (Timber Press, 2015). This book has been called “inspiring,” “masterful,” “groundbreaking,” and a “game-changer.” Reviewers have also praised it for “lyrical, passionate, and persuasive writing” and “lavish” illustrations.

Planting in a Pot-Wild World - coverThe authors deplore the ways in which typical gardening and landscaping practices have ignored the ways in which plants thrive in natural combinations, and present A New Optimism: The Future of Planting Design. They state, “The good news is that it is entirely possible to design plantings that look and function more like they do in the wild: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance.”

The book (which we have just begun studying) advocates planting in interlocking layers of plants, which reflects the dynamic way plants grow together in nature. There is much to learn about this approach. The authors envision improved plant labels that provide more useful information about how a plant grows and recommend relevant resources as the http://www.cnps.org/cnps/grownative/California Native Plant Society.

Both aesthetic and horticultural approaches to plant selection have significant impacts on the success of gardening and the amount of work involved in maintaining a garden. If your gardening involves mostly keeping plants alive, replacing plants that have died, combating weeds, and wanting the garden to look better, it could be time to give more attention to plant communities.