All posts by Jan Nelson

I am a landscape designer and consultant in the Santa Cruz mountains in California. I write a weekly gardening column for the Press Banner newspaper. I am also a Calif. Advanced Certified Nursery Professional and managed The Plantworks Nursery in Ben Lomond, Ca. for 20 years.
Design trends

Garden Inspiration at the Gamble Garden Tour

Picture your friends and family around this inviting fire pit.

Looking at your yard and thinking “This year I’m finally going to make some changes and enjoy my garden more.”? Take my advice: go on a garden tour for inspiration. Even a visit to a neighbor’s beautiful garden will work to get your creative juices going and motivate you. I do have to say that the gardens I visited recently in Palo Alto were spectacular. Definitely “the garden of my dreams” and I may just have to practice what I preach in my own little space.

While some of the gardens were clearly out of my price range – this was Palo Alto remember – there were elements from every one that I could imagine in a regular garden around here.

Everybody’s garden looks the best in the spring. Plants are full of new, healthy growth and the heat of summer has not yet descended. Early flowering plants are at their peak and those that wait until summer to flower so that their nectar will attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bees are patiently awaiting their time in the sun. It’s a glorious time in the garden.

This strip between sidewalk and street is solved here with succulents.

Because The Gamble Garden Spring Tour is a walking tour I got as many ideas from the gardens featured as I did passing by the front yards of the other houses. This is the neighborhood where Steve Jobs used to live.
The theme of the garden tour, Garden are for Living, came through loud and clear in each of the gardens. Many featured sustainable features such as a decomposed granite patio, poured in place concrete pavers, corten steel raised beds and path edging and dry laid flagstone paths. Edibles were included in every garden- from a grape-covered pergola to a cleverly designed raised veggie bed complete with steel corners and banding and lighting for evening dinner harvesting.

While walking the neighborhood a low water use plant combination of ornamental olive trees under-planted with rosemary and Iceberg roses complemented one Mediterranean style home. Another garden nearby featured a rustic fence made from fallen tree branches. I must have taken a hundred pictures to remind me of all the great design ideas I saw that day. The gardens were very approachable. Most are maintained mostly by the homeowners.

Many of us have meandering paths in our gardens separating the different garden rooms. The elements of garden design, like arrangement of paths, planting beds and open spaces, shape your garden. Your eye is drawn along a path through a garden. The plantings along the sides serve to frame but it’s the style of the path itself that enhances your experience in the garden. Some of the paths can be gravel, some walkable ground covers with pavers, some flagstone. All draw the visitor deeper into the garden to explore and linger at each spot.

Over the years I have gotten lots of inspiration from other gardens and tours. Valley Churches has held several fundraiser garden tours. I remember how fun it was to see the Enchanted Gardens of the Valley which was in San Lorenzo Valley one year, in Scotts Valley only a few years ago and one in Bonny Doon quite a while ago. On each of these tours I knew some of the garden owners and had spent time in each. Also I’ve gotten inspiration from visiting Camp Joy and everybody loves Filoli Gardens as well as Hikone Garden in Saratoga.

So go outside in your own garden and imagine the changes – big and small – that would make it spectacular.

Design trends

Fragrance in the Garden

Is everything fragrant that’s blooming now or is it just me? Does Mother Nature have a card up her sleeve to insure pollinators find nectar thereby ensuring plant propagation or is it mostly spring fever on my part? What makes flowers fragrant anyway?

Fragrance in flowers is nature’s ways of encouraging pollination. Just as it draws you to take a deeper whiff, it lures insects to blossoms hidden by leaves. Some flowers are fragrant only at night and attract night-flying pollinators like moths, while others are more fragrant during the day and attract insects like bees and butterflies.

The fragrance itself comes from essential oils called attars that vaporize easily and infuse the air with their scents.
Aroma chemistry is complex and the smell of any flower comes from more than a single chemical compound. These molecules are present in different combinations in different plants, but often they are markedly similar which is why there are irises that smell like grapes and roses that smell like licorice.

Our noses can detect those chemical compounds that have a major impact on the aroma. Often a particular molecule will make a large contribution. Some roses, for instance, derive their scent from rose oxide and others from beta-damascenome or rose ketones. These molecules are detectable by our noses at very, very low concentrations. Carnations, violets, lilies, chrysanthemums, hyacinth- all have their own set of compounds that contribute to their scent.

It’s interesting also that as we become accustomed to the same smells our brain phases them out. A compound called ionones, found in violets and rose oil, can essentially short-circuit our sense of smell, binding to the receptors. This shut down is only temporary and the ionones can soon be detected again and registered as a new smell.

The word fragrance comes from the 17th century French word fragrantia, meaning sweet smell. A garden’s fragrance can be as unforgettable as its appearance. The scent of a particular flower can make you remember past times and places. Plant them along a garden path to enjoy as you stroll, in containers to scent a deck or patio or locate them beneath a window and let their aroma drift indoors.

Old fashion lilacs are still blooming in gardens. Nothing ways “spring” like the legendary scent of these shrubs. Give them a spot in full sun with enough room for them to spread 6 feet wide. While most plants accept slightly acidic soils, lilacs are an exception. Dig lime into your soil at planting and side dress yearly if your soil is acidic.

Place sweet-smelling plants where you can enjoy them throughout the season. The potency of flower scents varies greatly, so consider the strength of a fragrance when deciding where to put a plant. Subtle fragrances such as sweet pea, lemon verbena, scented geranium and chocolate cosmos smell wonderful right outside the back door. Add stronger scents by your deck, pool, spa, dining area or gazebo. Stargazer lilies, jasmine, lilacs, daphne, citrus and peonies will make you want to stay awhile.

Several easy-to-grow shrubs have fragrant flowers as an added bonus. Mexican Orange (choisya ternata) blooms most of the year. Pittosporum eugenoides, tenuifolium and tobira all have tiny blossoms that smell like oranges. too. The tiny flower cluster of Fragrant Olive (osmanthus fragrans) have a delicate apricot fragrance.

Other fragrant plants include California native Philadelphus lewisii (Wild Mock Orange). Calycanthus occidentals (Spice Bush) is native to our Central and Northern California mountains. Their fragrant burgundy flowers smell like red wine. Ribes viburnifolium, carpenteria californica and rosa californica are mildly scented, too.

In spring there may be nothing quite as spectacular as a wisteria vine, loaded with fragrant purple, pink, blue or white flower clusters, covering an arbor or pergola. Pink jasmine is another vigorous vine with intensely fragrant flowers as is Evergreen Clematis.

Plant for fragrance. It’s your reward for all the care and tending you give your garden.

Design trends

Spring is Busting Out All Over

Every spring when the dogwoods, lilac and wisteria bloom I get excited. Not having room myself for these beauties I visit friend’s gardens often. Seems everything is flowering now- lavender, salvia, protea, ceanothus, lily-of-the-valley shrub, bleeding hearts, coral bells, grevillea, camellia, abutilon and more. Here are some of my favorites from the past week.

A hike at Quail Hollow is always a treat. The native bleeding heart ground cover (dicentra formosa) greeted me with hundreds of flowers as I started to hike. Along the trail the white Pacific Coast Iris (iris fernaldii) stood out alongside the sky lupine. Stunning Silver Bush lupine made quite the show in the dry, sandy soil.

Later in the week I admired a Variegated Star of Madeira (echium candicans) at my friend Joy’s house. Because she’s a landscape designer she had planted in a spot that receives little water while attracting bees and butterflies and controlling erosion on the hillside. It was breathtaking being in full bloom alongside a Julia Phelps ceanothus with a few California poppies thrown in for color.

The next garden I visited belonged also to another fellow designer. Cathleen’s piece of paradise always has something in bloom and this day did not disappoint. Lilacs scented the air. She has some in several colors from classic lilac to pink to white. Her hellebores were still blooming and she has quite a collection now including the varieties with double blossoms as well as upward facing flowers. I’m waiting for her Ghostly Princess Spanish lavender to start blooming. Last year it was gorgeous.

You can’t drive anywhere these days without encountering dogwoods and wisteria in full bloom. Wisteria are long lived and can grow quite large as you probably know if you have one. When you see one growing up a redwood and it’s reached over 50 feet it’s impressive. There is one that is smaller and easier to maintain. Perfect for smaller spaces Amethyst Falls blooms at an early age with lightly fragrant purple racemes weeping gracefully downward. You can use it in a container on the porch or patio or train it up an arbor or trellis. It repeat blooms lightly in the summer. Twining stems quickly reach 8 to 10 feet.

I love white dogwoods. Cherokee Princess just pop with their snow white blooms in our mixed forest. But it’s the pink ones that get to me. There is a big Eastern dogwood on the road I used to live on in Bonny Doon that survived the fire. It doesn’t get any water anymore but still manages to bloom. Talk about being a survivor. I really like the rose red flowers of the Cherokee Brave variety. After the beautiful flowers in the spring it gets vibrant red berries that feed the birds. In the fall the leaves turn crimson.

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 that 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.

And remember that 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.

This is turning out to be an incredible spring. Get out and enjoy it.