Add grasses to your palette of orange in the garden.
Enjoying a spectacular sunset on a warm evening in the summertime is one of life’s simple pleasures. Peach and orange tones bounce off the bottom of gauzy cirrus clouds as they streak across the sky. Combine these warm colors with varying shades of blue sky and you have he perfect color combo -opposites on the color wheel. We can’t help but ooh and aah, we have an emotional response to this particular pairing of colors.
If you don’t have a vignette or section of your garden with peach, orange and blue yet, now’s the time to create one. All the tints and tones of orange warm and cheer up our gardens, no matter what the weather. And orange flowers set off every color of foliage, from blue-gray to lime to copper.
Here’s a short list of my favorite peach and orange flowers and foliage: • Orange hummingbird mint ( agastache aurantiaca ) a drought tolerant, summer-blooming favorite of hummingbirds. • Crocosmia – an old garden favorite with long blooming flower spikes that make good cut flowers. • Kangaroo Paw Tequila Sunrise ( anigozanthus ) – another long blooming hummingbird favorite • Canna Pretoria – beautiful variegated gold foliage and orange flowers make this perennial a classic • Yarrow Terra Cotta ( achillea millefolium ) – drought tolerant, carefree, generously blooming perennial attractive to both butterflies and their larvae • Flowering maple Tangering ( abutilon )- favorite year-round bloomer of both hummingbirds and yours truly. • Fuchsia gartenmeister – the orange fuchsia that needs no cleaning. May still be blooming at Christmas time for your hummers. • Orange New Zealand sedge ( carex testacea ) – widely arching clumps of beautiful rusty grass
Other inspiring orange flowers your sure to want in your garden are mimulus ‘Jelly Bean Orange’, calibrachoa Sunrise or Terra Cotta, gazania, lantana, dahlia, coprosma Evening Glow, orange tuberous begonias and orange daylilies
Combine with blue flowers, stir well and stand back to enjoy your own garden sunset.
My friend, Grace, visited the other day. She’s almost 7 years old now and is really getting into plants, flowers and especially the birds that visit my little garden. She spent a lot of time quietly watching and listening to all the songbirds, hummingbirds and woodpeckers. We even opened the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone to listen to their calls. It was awesome to see her becoming a birder and future gardener.
A garden is the perfect example of the circle of life. A garden is nature’s way of taking and giving back life to the earth. A garden represents the infinite nature of energy. I was reminded of this when a friend lost her dog to cancer and within a day of that happening my niece gave birth to her first child. A garden holds hope. And it can heal our sorrows.
I am in my own little garden daily. Wherever I go I receive something from the experience and try to leave some positive energy there. What makes a garden that heals? And on the other side of the circle of life what’s important in a kid and pet friendly garden?
Throughout our history, gardens have aided in the healing process. Japanese Zen Gardens and Monastic Cloister gardens are good examples of this. Viewing natural scenes helps us reduce stress and negative emotions and replaces them with positive feelings.
To make your garden look better and make you feel better when you’re in it, pay special attention to plant selection. Allow the plants to dominate with a little bit of hardscaping. Choose plants that are fragrant, colorful or soft to the touch. Plants that attract wildlife make a garden a happy place. Simple, bold mass plantings are more comforting than a wild mix of many varieties. Leave that to the cutting garden. Enclose the space to keep your thoughts inward and peaceful.
It’s just as important if you have children and pets to create a garden that is calming and relieves stress.
Picking plants for a backyard that is shared with dogs is especially important if your dog naturally nibbles on greenery or berries. Some plants are lethal while others can cause illness or vomiting. I was surprised to see so many common plants on the ASPCA website that could cause problems like carnations, primroses and geraniums. What’s safe for us like grapes and avocado are not good for dogs. Check the list to make sure the plants you are considering are safe for your dog. http://www.aspca.org/Pet-care/poison-control/Plants?plant_toxicity=toxic-to-dogs
Plants near paths should have soft foliage without thorns and spines which can cause eye injury. Brittle plants like salvias should be in the center where they’ll be protected. Densely planted areas are usually avoided by dogs but planting in raised beds or mounds help, too. Pieces of driftwood placed at the front of a border will discourage them. Start with one gallon or larger plants that can stand up to a little roughhousing.
Kid friendly gardens should not contain plants that are poisonous. Sounds like a no brainer but even some of our common natives like the berries of snowberry and the leaves of Western azalea are poisonous. Non-toxic plants include abelia, abutilon, liriope, butterfly bush, hens and chicks, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis and black-eyed Susan. Better to check the poison control website if in doubt. http://www.calpoison.org and search “plants”.
What makes a great experience for a kid in the garden? In a nutshell, you can teach children of any age about beneficial insects in a garden and other wildlife. Older kids can identify and nibble edible flowers like calendula, dianthus, nasturtiums, pansies, peas and beans. Grow flowers that kids can cut like zinnias and snapdragons and plants to touch that are soft and furry like lamb’s ears.
Kids, even older ones, like hiding places, so grow one in the garden. You can plant tall growing sunflowers in a circle, leaving a space for a “door” that kids can crawl through once the flowers have grown. Or build a simple teepee out of fallen branches or long gardening stakes and plant bean seeds around the outside. Scarlet runner beans are also good and have tender, young pods like green beans in addition to bright red flowers that attract hummingbirds. Beans grow fast and soon make a great secret hiding place.
Yarrow (achillea) strongly attract bees with their nectar and pollen.
You can hear them a long way before you see them. I’m talking about the hundreds of honey bees feasting on the highly nutritious pollen of the Crape Myrtle blossoms. I confess I don’t know a lot about keeping bees. I even had to look up what a nuc was when offered as a pre-order from Mountain Feed in Ben Lomond. BTW- a nuc is a small, fully functioning hive. It consists of 5 deep frames containing all stages of brood and live adult bees along with a young well-bred queen. However, I do know how to attract all types of bees to the garden and here are some tips and interesting information about the bees in our area.
There are 1600 species of native bees in Santa Cruz county. They are solely responsible for pollinating many of our native plants. Being solitary they do not make a hive but make nests underground or live in wood, one female per nesting hole and she lays her eggs there. Leaving areas in your garden near flowering plants un-mulched helps her find a nesting hole. The hard working females mate, make nests, collect pollen for their young and lay eggs. Males live to mate and only pollinate inadvertently when they visit flowers for nectar to fuel their flight.
Common native bees in our area are the yellow-faced bumble bee and the long-horned bee which has stripes a little like a yellow jacket. The hard working bumble bee is easy to identify from its bight yellow facial hair and yellow bands on their backs and abdomens. Female bumble bees’ hind legs widen to form pollen baskets often filled with bright yellow, moistened pollen pellets.
The Long-horned native bee gets their name from the long antennae of the males although the females do not have this. Males may be seen by day jostling for female attention above a patch of blooming plants while the females are collecting pollen. Only the females have branched hairs on their legs for carrying pollen.
Bees eat two things: nectar which is loaded with sugar and is their main source of energy and pollen which provides proteins and fats. Some of the common native plants that are recommended for our area to attract bees of all types include yarrow, columbine, California poppy, coral bells, silver lupine, penstemon, ceanothus, toyon, big leaf maple, mahonia, monkey flower, buckwheat, western azalea and purple sage.
Common garden plants that can attract bees and provide pollen in your landscape and vegetable garden are herbs such as African blue basil, bee balm, oregano, mint, catnip and cat mint, borage, rosemary, chives, hyssop, dill, comfrey and fennel. Edibles that attract bees are blueberry, pumpkin, squash, sunflower, blackberry, hazelnut, artichoke, beans, cucumber and peas. Crabapple, iris, lavender, salvia, achillea, aster, coreopsis, sunflowers, monarda, aster, butterfly bush, sweet alyssum, alstroemeria, red hot poker, gloriosa daisy, verbena, scabiosa, coneflower and echium also attract bees of all types.
The higher temperatures that come with climate change can affect a bee’s ability to detect a flower’s pollen. A flowers scent is what tells a bee that nectar is present. If the weather gets too hot the plant will spend less energy on producing fragrance and just try to survive. When flowers stop emanating these enticing smells, some bees have a tough time finding food and may abandon certain area. Studies have shown that warming climates already have affected our central coast bumblebee population during the past 30 years especially the California bumblebee.
In your own garden an abundant and healthy population of pollinators can improve fruit set, quality and size. Crops raised in California depend on both domestic honeybees and native bees for pollination of almond, blackberry, cucumber and artichoke crops.
Honeybees and native bees need help to survive and we’re the ones to give it. Besides planting nectar and pollen sources you can help by buying local honey which support beekeepers. Use only organic pesticides and avoid applying during mid-day hours when honey bees and pollinators are most likely to be out foraging for nectar and pollen on flowering plants and only then if you can’t control a pest with any other methods including Pest Management techniques. Help save the bees.
