Category Archives: Design trends

Design trends

Finding Color in the Shade Garden

Recently I spent some time in a friends’ garden in Bonny Doon. This garden is so spectacular is was on the Valley Churches garden tour several years ago when Bonny Doon gardens were featured. As in many gardens there are some sunny spots as well as lots of shade under porch overhangs and trees. My friend Kate has managed to have as much color in her shade as she has in her sunny spots.

Perfect for pots, Shooting Star hydrangea re-bloom.

Blooming wildly on Kate’s shady porch are several Shooting Star hydrangeas. Very hardy and reblooming, hydrangea serrata reach only 24 inches high and wide and so are perfect for small spaces and pots. This small shrub would be the “thriller” in a pot. It blooms on new wood and old wood so repeats all summer. I took away several cuttings of this as well as traditional mophead hydrangeas so start my collection again.

Also called Queen’s Tears, billbergia are reliable growers in dry shade.

Every spring, before the fire, I would look forward to the unique flowers of my Queen’s Tears billbergia. Recently a fellow gardener gifted me a variegated one so I could carry on the tradition. This pineapple relative makes a vigorous, deer resistant groundcover under trees without becoming invasive. Exotic looking rosy-red spikes are topped with drooping pink, blue and green flowers that look like dangling earrings. Insects never bother them. Give them a little water now and then and forget them. They’re that easy to grow.

The sound of rustling leaves is soothing to our ears. But many of the ornamental grasses that sway in the breeze don’t survive in shady locations. One that does is Japanese Forest Grass. There are several varieties of hakonechloa that can brighten a dark spot by your favorite lounging chair. Aureola has the classic bright gold and lime green striped leaves. I love the way each graceful leaf tumbles toward the light reminding me of flowing water. Also called Sweet Grass they are relished by my cat.

Looking for shade tolerant flowering shrubs to cut for bouquets? Fragrant daphne odora is a wonderful small shrub. Sweet olive or osmanthus fragrans is a large evergreen shrub or small tree with blooms that smell like apricots in winter. For summer fragrance grow Carol Mackie or Summer Ice daphne.

Flowering plants to grow in dry shade areas include bergenia, mahonia, fragrant sarcococca and clivia, Viburnum ‘Mariesii’. Oakleaf hydrangea foliage and flowers look great in bouquets and the leaves turn red in fall which is an added bonus.

Chinese Ground orchid attract hummingbirds.

Chinese Ground Orchid ( Bletilla striata ) is another of my favorites plants for shade. A natural companion for ferns and wildflowers, this plant is tougher than it looks. Vivid, magenta blooms resembling small cattleya orchids emerge on long stalks for about 6 weeks in the spring.

Clivia miniata

For dry shade try growing Kaffir lily ( clivia miniata ). I’ve got a bright orange blooming Belgian Hybrid I hope to have many clivia in the future as they divide so easily and bloom in fairly dark shade. Beautiful, robust green strappy leaves are handsome year round but the dozens of flowers clusters, some containing as many as 60 flowers each, brighten up any area. Drought tolerant once established they make a gorgeous accent, border or container specimen.

Sure, every garden is different- different look, different soil, different degree of shade, but it’s surprising how often one of these plants plays a starring or supporting role in a vignette or border

I use all of these tough plants in designs for shady gardens because I know they will thrive, look beautiful and provide color. If you have a garden that gets little winter light these are the plants for you. Those of us who live under the trees know a shady garden is a pleasant place to spend time on a hot summer day. Be thankful for what you do have.

Design trends

Fire and Renewal

A very old New Zealand Tree fern struggles to regrow after the fire.

I regularly visit my burned parcel in Bonny Doon to monitor progress of the redwoods and understory plants. It will take 30-50 years for the forest to regenerate but it’s trying.

Yerba Santa in full bloom on burn scars

Amazing how Mother Nature takes advantage of a void. Succession plants like native Yerba Santa are everywhere. I don’t mean just a few. I mean hundreds of thousands all blooming and attracting butterflies and bees. Also Bicolor lupine are flowering in huge numbers along with California poppies all over Bonny Doon. Lupine roots or rather nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the roots take nitrogen from the air and so are useful to restore the soil. Birds eat the seed and butterflies and bees are attracted to lupine. The Arrowhead Blue butterfly uses this plant as a host.

Bicolor lupine blooming over burn scars

On my property, ceanothus thrysiflorus (Blueblossom ceanothus) has sprouted in huge numbers. They used to regularly self seed but this crop is all from seed. None of the original plants survived the fire. They are everywhere. Bluewitch nightshade has appeared in large numbers also. I had never seen this plant on my property before the fire. Insects love it including bees, butterflies and moths.

California fuchsia on the author’s property.

There are other plants that are growing up there on their own since the fire. Without irrigation for over a year and a half, Hummingbird sage (salvia spathacea) is blooming and spreading again. Hummingbirds, bees and butterflies are attracted to this plant. California fuchsia (epilobium canam) never skipped a beat after the fire and has self seeded and spread also. Hummingbirds, butterflies and moths frequent these plants also.

Cultivated plants that have come back include smoke bush (cotinus coggygria) Bear’s breeches (acanthus mollis and a very old New Zealand tree fern.

Of the burned plants that I brought back in melted pots many of them are staging a comeback. I had to cut off all of the burned woody trunks of Pink Flowering current but it has sprouted from the roots and regrowing. Hellebore, bleeding heart, calla lily, liriope, Japanese forest grass, a couple flowering maple, bletilla and cymbidium orchids are making a valiant effort.

Foxglove have sown in pots totally burned in the fire.

My favorite comeback story is the foxglove that sprouted last year in a couple of my pots. The seed must have come from one plant up on the hillside above my burn property. They are the perfect flower for hummingbirds. Each flower produces a large amount of nectar and they offer the supply that hummingbirds need to support their high energy needs.

All Gardners are optimists. We just need to be very, very patient with Mother Nature.

Design trends

Plant for Fragrance

Some yellow primroses have a delightful scent.

Every year the garden is different. Some plants bloom early and some later depending on the weather. But you know that. This spring my yellow, fragrant primroses have been spectacular as always. FYI – it’s only some of the yellow ones that have a scent. That reminds me I’ll have to get some dark purple petunias later this spring. They smell like vanilla. I just picked up a heliotrope to scent my deck with licorice and vanilla. Their vivid dark violet flowers are intensely fragrant and spectacular. Butterflies can’t resist them Some say they smell like cherry pie. I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Heliotrope arborescens ‘Fragrant Delight’

My pink jasmine is doing its thing, too. This common vine can easily overgrow it’s spot. Prune periodically to keep your vine in bounds. Fragrant Carolina jessamine has finished blooming so now is a good time to prune them back.

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 some 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.

Clematis armandii (Evergreen clematis) flower.

Another vanilla scented vine is Evergreen clematis. They make a great screen with 6 inch long, glossy leaves and creamy white, saucer-shaped, vanilla scented flower clusters. Provide study support for them to climb on. They are slow to start but race once established.

Citrus blossoms really scent the air. Plant lemons oranges, mandarins, kumquats, grapefruit and limes in full sun areas. Established trees need a good soak every other week during the warmer months so keep them on a separate watering system from your other edibles.

Sweet Alyssum attract pollinators and smell sweet- just like their name.

Inside the veggie garden, include scented plants that attract beneficial insects. Fragrant lavender and sweet alyssum are good choices. For sheer enjoyment, plant perennial carnation and dianthus for their intense clove fragrance. Cinnamon Red Hots grow to 15 inches, are deer resistant, bloom all spring and summer and don’t need deadheading. Velvet and White border carnations are among the least demanding and most satisfying perennials in the garden. As cut flowers they are long lasting and highly fragrant in bouquets.

Fragrant shrubs that are easy to grow are Mexican Orange (choisya ternata) which blooms most of the year. Pittosporum eugenoides, tenuifolium and tobira all have tiny blossoms that also smell like oranges. The tiny flower cluster of Fragrant Olive (osmanthus fragrans) have a delicate apricot fragrance. Other fragrant shrubs include California native Philadelphus lewisii (Wild Mock Orange) and Calycanthus occidentals (Spice Bush) another 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.

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