Design trends

Dogwoods for the Santa Cruz Mountains

This pink flowering dogwood is spectacular in any garden.

I don’t know if I like the pink ones or the white ones best. A flowering dogwood in any shade is stunning. My friend Colly, the food columnist for the Press Banner, has several dogwoods in her garden, including a Cherokee Brave with dark pink flowers. They are so beautiful at this time of year and in the fall when they turn bight red.

There are four main species of dogwood trees. From the Himalayas in China comes cornus capitata. Korea is home to cornus kousa. Cornus florida is native to the east coast and the west coast is home to cornus nuttallii or the Western dogwood.

Dogwoods have spectacular fall color

I see so many showy varieties available now. The fast growing Venus Dogwood is a hybrid of the Pacific dogwood (Corpus nutallii) and the Korean dogwood (Cornus Sousa). It has exceptionally large white flower bracts. Good disease and drought tolerance make it a good choice for the garden. The Constellation dogwood is a similar hybrid to the Venus but sterile so it doesn’t get the red fruits that the Venus produces. Perfect for the small garden.

The fast growing Stellar Pink dogwood is a cross between cornus florida and cornus kousa. With profuse, large, overlapping blush pink flower-like bracts it’s a magnificent landscape tree for small gardens that produces no fruit.

Our native Western dogwood is unfortunately prone to leaf spot fungal diseases when grown out of their range. They are a little temperamental in the garden before they reach the age of 10 years but after that they tolerate seasonal flooding and flower and grow with little care in morning sun or light shade. They prefer moist soil.

We are all familiar with the Eastern dogwood (cornus florida) that’s blooming now. With various shades of pink, red or white blossoms they are stunning. Take note that their root system is prone to disease if not grown with good drainage. An awesome variety ‘Pringlei’ or Mexican Flowering Dogwood is grown by a fellow gardener and it’s a stunner. With its unusual flowers than look like Chinese lanterns to the red fall color this is a species to be on the look out for.

The Wedding Cake Tree (cornus controversa ‘Variegate’ ) is another unique variety. When this small dogwood blooms the large flowers cover the tree like snow. The tiered horizontal branches resemble a wedding cake when in bloom.

Deciduous dogwoods don’t like wet feet especially in the winter. That’s how they develop fungal disease. But there’s an evergreen dogwood that can handle moisture all year round. Cornus capitata Mountain Moon is a tough tree that can handle strong winds and isn’t bothered by any pests or diseases. They enjoy lots of organic matter as do all dogwoods. Huge flowers up to 6” wide can last from late spring into early summer. After flowering, the fruits begin to form and grow into red balls about the size of large strawberries. This is the reason is it also known as the Himalayan Strawberry Tree.

Cherokee Chief

Dogwoods attract a variety of wildlife. All sorts of critters use this tree for food and shelter. The giant silk moth and several species of butterflies favor dogwoods as host plants. The spring flowers provide nectar to bees and other pollinating insects. Robin and sparrow are just two of the bird species than build nests on the horizontal branches and many others seek shelter in the leaves. The high calcium, high fat, fleshy red fruits are eaten by 35 species of birds including titmice, juncos and waxwings.

Many people think of dogwoods as an understory tree but this location is often too shady. Grow them in a full or partial sun location that gets afternoon shade after 4:00 PM. Add a couple of extra drip emitters or inline drip tubing to your irrigation system and they’ll be happy.

Dogwood are a good tree choice for the allergy sufferer as their pollen is not wind borne. Their showy flowers, which are actually bracts, are pollinated by insects. Their pollen is large and heavy, sticking to insects rather than becoming airborne and leading to sneezing, runny noses and watery eyes.

Design trends

All You Need to Know About Wisteria

The wisteria blooming now are spectacular. I almost forget about them during the dormant season as I’m not fortunate to have one in my garden but once they start to flower they seem to be everywhere, even growing up into the redwoods in many places. Who hasn’t longed for their fence, arbor or pergola to be covered with fragrant wisteria? Bees and hummingbirds love them, too.

Those you see most often are probably Cooke’s Purple with clusters of fragrant blue-purple flowers 20 inches long.It blooms twice per season which is a plus but there are many other varieties available now.
Chinese wisteria like Cooke’s Purple can take up to 20 years to mature enough to produce flowers, but once it has matured, the plant is very long lived and can live up to 100 years.

Amethyst Falls American Wisteria has become very popular because it’s perfect for smaller spaces. Growing to only about a third of the rate of Asian wisteria, it blooms at an early age with lightly fragrant purple racemes. Grow in a container for your porch or patio, train up an arbor or trellis or train as a small free-standing tree.

Another smaller variety to try is Shiro-Beni Silky Wisteria with its highly scented dark pink smaller flowers that open all at once. Consider also Iko Yama Fuji Silky wisteria with long violet buds that open to highly fragrant pale lilac blooms in late spring. Also beautiful is Kaptain Fuji a white silky variety.

Japanese wisteria like Texas Purple, White and Pink Japanese wisteria are most effective when grown on pergolas so their long flower cluster can hang freely.

Kentucky Blue Moon is one of the hardiest wisteria. It blooms up the three times in a growing season once established producing beautiful foot-long racemes of fragrant, pea-like lavender-blue flowers.

Wisteria are one of nature’s most resilient survivors. They are able to withstand and recover quickly from difficult conditions. To some they are a little too tough for their own good with a growth rate rivaling bamboo during the summer. If you dream of a wisteria-covered pergola shading your patio here are some maintenance tips that are sure to keep both gardener and vine happy.

Wisteria are so vigorous they can be pruned at any time, keeping them in bounds and clearing out unwanted or dead growth. Prune out any stems you see extending into eaves, windows or shingles. If yours has gotten away from you, you can even prune it down to the ground and start over with training although you’ll have to wait a few years for your vine to bloom again.

To their control size major pruning is done during the dormant season. Start by trimming the long tendrils that grew over the summer back to about 6 inches from the main trunk. Cutting the tendrils back in this way will initiate flower bud development, neaten the plant up, and show off the attractive trusty, gnarly character of the vines.

Whatever time you do renovation pruning remember the response of the wisteria to aggressive pruning is to literally explode with new runners. They put energy into new vegetative growth at the expense of flowering. Make sure you keep up on ongoing maintenance pruning by removing all unwanted runners right to their point of origin. Then prune back the others to 3 buds or sets of leaves. Repeated pruning of these runners is what will eventually give you spurs of wood, short laterals that in turn will provide you with flower clusters. You need to prune these runners all season long which ends up being every 3-4 weeks.

Do not fertilize your wisteria. They do not flower well if there is an over abundance of luxuriant growth. Over feeding also ends up giving them the means to become un unmanageable monster. If you have trouble getting your vine to flower an application of a high phosphorus fertilizer may promote blooming.

Maintaining a wisteria requires some diligence but the reward is worth the effort. Remember this especially during winter pruning season to make summer maintenance easier. If you find that the wisteria vine has invaded a nearby bed, cut roots with a shovel below the soil line to control any that have wandered.

All parts of the wisteria vine contain a toxin known as wisterin which can cause stomach upset. Growers should also be wary of pets and children eating the flowers or seed pods.

Design trends

Earth Day 2025

My friend Grace learning about horses and our environment with Lucy.

The theme for Earth Day 2025 is Our Power, Our Planet. Emphasizing the importance of renewable energy and aiming to triple global electricity generation from renewable sources by 2030.

Earth day is a day of education about environmental issues. Celebrate it in your own backyard by being outside. It’s your own personal outdoor living room – a safe place for pets and kids to play. Just get outside, maybe trim some shrubs, plant something for the birds and pollinators. When you become a steward of your own yard, you are helping to preserve your own corner of the ecosystem. Our connection to the earth is one of the most valuable lessons we can share with our children.

For Earth Day 2025, kids can improve renewable resources by reducing waste, conserving energy and water and enjoying nature by planting trees or participating in cleanups, all while learning about the environment and inspiring others.

We can reduce waste by avoiding single-use plastics, bringing reusable containers for lunch and choosing products with less packaging. You can find creative ways to repurpose old materials like Turning old magazines into art.

This sounds simple, but recycle properly, ensuring that all your recyclable materials are sorted and placed in the correct bins. Save energy and water where ever you can.

Engage in nature-based activities like planting trees in your yard. Clean up littler where ever you find it. Go for walks in parks or nature trails and learn about the plants and animals that live there. Make a nature-based craft like a bird feeder or bee hotel.

Finding things to do in the garden is easy. You probably already have some edible flowers in your garden. Flowers like tuberous begonias, calendulas, carnations and marigolds are all edible. Last year Grace & I planted zinnias for the Swallowtail butterflies. This year will be cosmos to attract more butterflies. Fragrant flowers and herbs are fun for us to smell. She noticed that some of the yellow primroses were fragrant and I have lemon verbena, peppermint, spearmint to enjoy also.

And make sure you take photos of everything you discover in nature and share them with others to show the beauty of our planet.

To share one’s excitement and knowledge of the outdoor world with a child is fun and rewarding. The wonder on a young person’s face as they discover a swallowtail butterfly, a flower just starting to open or a bird feeding in the garden is priceless. And be sure to leave some time after a busy day out in the garden for kids to draw what they’ve enjoyed outside.

Get a kid into gardening and nature and they’ll be good stewards of the land for a lifetime. Plus you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.

So plant a tree, clean up litter, do something in the garden, hike in the woods, enjoy a walk among the wildflowers and just be in contact with the soil, breathe fresh air and think about ways to promote our renewable resources.

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