Design trends

For the Love of Roses

If you want your roses to bloom like this later this spring, prune them now.

January is almost over with nary a raindrop. Our days have been lovely and many of my plants have started growing earlier than usual. Guess I can’t put off pruning my Compassion rose any longer. I see some outstanding new rose varieties available for the 2025 season. It won’t come as a surprise that they are very fragrant and have good disease resistance So while you’re out in your garden pruning your existing roses consider adding a new one or two now available Here are a few that caught my eye.

Pretty Picotee is a new hybrid tea rose with huge, bright pink petals with white edges and a citrus fragrance. It’s resistant to powdery mildew and rust which makes it rank high in our climate. In Love Again is another new variety with very high disease resistance to black spot and downy mildew in addition to rust and powder mildew. The vivid red flowers are exceptional performers with a light fragrance.

If you are looking for a smaller rose that grows to 24 inches and has both strong fragrance and disease resistance, Easy Charmer is the rose for you. With old fashioned cupped fuchsia lavender blooms this rose would look great in a container on your deck. If your garden is in partial shade but you still enjoy roses, try the new floribunda Time After Time. It has considerable disease resistance which enables it to thrive with minimal upkeep.

But what about pruning those existing roses in your garden? First of all remember that roses are super forgiving so just go for it and you can trim them up again later. Here are some tips to get started.

Most of us want our rose bushes to produce lots of roses on a compact shrub and not just a few exhibition size blooms so prune your shrubs moderately. The goal is to keep the center of the plant open for good air circulation aiming for a vase-shaped bush with an open center. Cut out canes that cross, appear weak or are diseased, spindly or dead. Healthy canes appear green or reddish while old and dying canes are brown. Cut back the remaining stems by about one third. When pruning, cut canes at a 45-degree angle just above an outward facing leaf bud or a swelling on the cane Slant the cut away from the bud to encourage growth outward. Clean pruners after every use to prevent the spread of disease and keep your pruners sharp.

Heirlooms roses such as David Austin, other old antique garden roses, and floribunda roses require less pruning because their open look is part of their charm. Keep this in mind and prune lightly. Old garden roses that bloom once in the spring should be pruned after flowering.

Same goes for climbing roses. Cut out extra stems if there are too many and also cut back long established canes to about the place where they are slightly thicker than a pencil. Then cut each side stem down to several inches. This will make the cane flower along its complete length for a beautiful spring display.

It’s best to prune your roses before they start leafing out or some of their energy will be wasted. Pull off and rake away any old leaves. They can spread fungal spores. Consider spraying dormant plants with a combination of organic horticultural oil and copper soap or lime-sulfur. If you usually only have problems with black spot you can use a mixture of 1 teaspoon baking soda with a few drops of light horticultural oil in 1 quart water and spray every 7 to s10 days during the spring.

Prune your roses throughout the growing season, too. Deadheading, or cutting off spent flowers, encourages plants to re-bloom. Mulch around your roses to conserve water and encourage soil microorganisms.

Design trends

Houseplants- Good for You and Your Home

Prayer Plant or Maranta are safe for pets.

I look out my sliding glass doors and see tall redwoods and stately oaks but on the inside I enjoy the green and sometimes flowers of houseplants. I learned long ago to group them where they get enough light to do well. Recently I lost my cat Archer who never nibbled on plants but I’ll need to be more careful when I get a new cat. It might be a nibbler. Here are some info on what houseplants can do for your indoor environment.

It’s been known for a long time the beneficial effects of indoor plants. In addition to providing a natural, soothing environment, houseplants clean the air in your home of pollutants. Toxins such as benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene can be released from furniture upholstery, carpets, cleaning products, paint, plastics and rubber. Carbon monoxide from the incomplete burning of wood and nitrogen oxides from cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust and smog can also be present in indoor air. With people spending more than 80 per cent of the day indoors, air quality is a priority. Since COVID-19 improving environmental quality has become a global issue and a top priority for scientists today. The average concentration of pollutants indoors is 5 to 10 time higher than outdoors.

A recent study published in Scientific Reports on the ability of indoor plants to purify the air gave the highest rating of effectiveness to one of the easiest plants to grow- Spathiphyllum or Peace Lily. The highest purification per unit of leaf area award went to Sansevieria or Snake Plant and Aloe arborescens, a close relative of aloe vera, was one of the strongest absorbers and purifiers. But it’s not just the leaves of our indoor plants that clean the air. Plants absorb indoor chemical pollutants into their bodies through stomata on their leaves and lenticels on their branches. These pollutants are then neutralized into non-toxic substances by the plant. So either exited through the root system or accumulated and stored in organs, the process is an effective means of cleaning our indoor air.

Some of the easiest houseplants to grow are some of the best to have in your home. Any of the plants listed above would fit the bill. If you have a cat or dog that nibbles, however, it’s best to stick with spider plants, palms and orchids, African violets, aluminum plant, bromeliads, peperomia, cast iron plants, Christmas cactus, chenille plant, creeping Charlie, false aralia, tradescantia, piggy back plant, maranta and succulents like donkey’s tail and echeveria.

Houseplants toxic for dogs and cats according to the ASPCA are asparagus fern, lilies, cyclamen, jade plant, aloe vera, azalea, begonia, ivy, mums, coleus, sago palm, kalanchoe and rubber plant. Keep your pets safe by keeping toxic plants out of reach.

With a little planning you can clean the air in your home while keeping the pets safe.

Design trends

What’s Old is New Again: Gardening Trends for 2025

Find harmony is the less tidy garden.

In the spirit of my annual New Year’s resolution to learn something new every day, I did some research on Calscape about adding butterfly friendly natives to my partly shady garden and did some reading on garden design trends for 2025. Turns out the new trends are more of a reminder of good past ones than revolutionary ideas. Here are a few to consider.

Adapt to the challenges of a changing world by finding harmony in a less tidy garden. Yes, you read that right. By adopting a more relaxed and organic gardening style, nature is encouraged to thrive. The birds, insects and other critters will thank you when you don’t rush to tidy up fading perennials, remove seed heads or rake up every leaf in the garden.

Fire resistant gardening can play a big role in creating defensible space around your home. Focus on creating a garden that is not only beautiful and friendly to the environments but more resilient in the face of a wildfire. This doesn’t have to mean gravel for 30 feet out from the house either. There are many ways to protect your home.

Add more native plants and ’nativars’, which are cultivated native plants specifically designed to thrive and fit into residential gardens. While native plants are typically defined as growing in nature without human intervention, ‘nativars’ are created by selecting and crossing native plant seedlings to produce traits such as compact size or brighter flowers. In many cases they provide food and habitat to pollinators and wildlife while adapting to the home garden.

If you want a low-water landscape but aren’t into only succulents you can have it all by choosing plants with leafy foliage and vibrant blooms. Create your own version of a cottage garden by planting shrubs like grevillea and blue hibiscus and perennials like yarrow, catmint and kangaroo paw. You can still use water responsibly and have a beautiful garden, too.

Container gardening never goes out of style. Bring nature onto your deck, entry, windowsill, patio- wherever you can enjoy edibles, fragrant flowers, lush foliage or any combination you choose.

Borrowing from past trends- embrace the smaller garden. You can create an instant meditation garden that encourages you to stop and sit for a couple minutes by placing a small bench where you can view something interesting in your garden. Small gardens are not only compact they are easier to care for. Containers on the patio or deck allow you to grow plants for food as well as for the birds and the bees. There are more new dwarf vegetable, herb and flower varieties being introduced every year.

Combine ornamental plants with edibles. Your veggies don’t have to be in a special raised bed or plot but can be planted throughout the garden. Think tomatoes, pole beans and other vining veggies trained on a metal obelisk within a perennial bed. Or compact versions of beans, eggplant, chard, hot peppers, tomatoes or edible flowers like nasturtiums planted among your other plants or along path borders.

It all comes down to enjoying your garden anyway that works for you. Nothing is as personal.

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