climate smart plants, Design trends, plant communities, plants for summer dry climates

Knee High by the Fourth of July

A black-tailed deer celebrating the Fourth of July.

Who doesn?t love corn on the cob fresh either from the garden or farmer?s market? But this column isn?t about growing corn or about patriotic deer, it?s about climate smart plants that hold up to the heat. So let?s get started.

All this talk about ?drought tolerant? plants or ?water smart? plants is misleading in some ways. What really matters for the success of a plant in your garden is that they are climate smart. You can call the new California garden climate tolerant or climate adapted but it all comes down to the same thing. The plants you choose to grow in your garden should be able to naturally tolerate periods of lower than average water. This doesn?t mean no water during extremely long dry periods. No plant can live without water.

I have two books that I look to for plant ideas when called upon to design a garden in our area. This first was published by East Bay MUD in 2004 and is called ?Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates?. The other book I refer to regularly for ideas and information is ?California Native Plants for the Garden?. Both are invaluable in these times of water conservation. One of the best tips each of them offer is to garden where you live.

All of us live in a summer-dry climate. Summer-dry gardens are naturally dry for long periods. Knowing which type of plant community you live in can make the difference between success and failure in your garden. Choose the right plant for the right place whether it?s a California native from an area with similar soil and exposure or a plant from another Mediterranean-like climate with growing conditions like yours.

Plant communities have evolved over time with geologic changes in climate, topography and soils. We have several district areas here- mixed evergreen forest, redwood forest, chaparral and sandhills.

If you live in a mixed evergreen forest you garden with trees like coast live oak, tan oak, madrone, bay and buckeye. Understory plants include ceanothus, coffeeberry, hazel and poison oak. Your soil contains serpentine and granite. Many other unthirsty plants like salvias, lavender, santolina, society garlic, giant feather grass, rosemary and rockrose do well here. California natives such as western mock orange (philadelphus lewisii), wild ginger and western sword ferns grow here also.

Mixed evergreen forest may also be found along canyon bottoms near streams where big leaf maple, white alder, cottonwood, and western sycamore trees grow. Most plant here grow lush in this deep soil. If you are looking to add something new to your garden here consider giant chain fern, aquilegia, dicentra, Pacific Coast iris and fuchsia-flowering gooseberry.

Found in the sandhills, silverleaf manzanita is perfectly suited to its environment.

Chaparral areas are the hottest, driest slopes of these mountains. Dense thickets of manzanita, coyote brush, chamise, coffeeberry, ceanothus, monkey flower and sage are native here. These plants are adapted to little water and often have tiny, thick, waxy, light green or grayish leaves. Soils tend to be rocky and shallow with overlaying rock or a subsoil that is mostly clay. Plants here need to have an extensive root system that reaches widely and deeply for water. If you live here a classic combination would be the spring blooming western redbud and Julia Phelps or Dark Star ceanothus. The combination of magenta and electric blue flowers is unforgettable.

The sandhills near Quail Hollow and Bonny Doon around Martin Rd. are part of an ancient sandy sea floor that was uplifted, eroded and exposed. These sandy soils lack organic matter and nutrients and their white color magnifies the temperature of the summer sun. Unique, native plants like silverleaf manzanita and Ben Lomond wallflower live here. Buckwheat and sticky monkey flower do well here. You might also try growing Lewisia, a pretty little plant native to northern California, thrives in sand and gravel soils with good drainage. This 8″ tall hardy perennial blooms from spring to early summer with extremely showy flower clusters in colors ranging from apricot to pink, rose and bright cherry red. Mulch them with gravel or crushed stone.

Remember right plant-right place. Don?t try to force nature although most gardens do look better with some summer water. Closer to the house we expect a fuller look. Combinations I?m going to try this season include leucospermum paired with blue echium or grey-leafed westringia planted with red-flowering callistemon ?Little John?.

Garden travel memoirs

The Virtual Vacation

Since it doesn?t look like I?ll be traveling this year I?ve been re-living past trips via the photos on my computer and putting them into slideshows. As you know, photos take a lot of editing to limit the number to what a person can endure who wasn?t on the trip. I?ve got photos of Poland, Costa Rica, southern Mexico, Hawaii, Guatemala and Honduras. But the photos I?m really enjoying seeing again are those from the destination nurseries and public gardens I visited with my sister to islands in the Puget Sound.

My sister Evan & me

Years ago, before I lost my sister, I would visit her on Fox Island, near Gig Harbor, Washington. Off we?d go by ferry to one of the public gardens or destination nurseries on another island. We visited the islands of Vashon, Whidbey, Vancouver, Bainbridge and San Juan. Any destination was sure to provide lush landscapes and a cornucopia of colorful flowers.

Vancouver Island is home to the famous Butchart Gardens, transformed a 100 years ago from a limestone quarry. Their website is https://www.butchartgardens.com and worth a few minutes to explore. Smaller and more intimate, Abkhazi Garden offer a fine example of what you can do with a large lot full of rocks and trees when you put your mind to it. https://www.abkhaziteahouse.com/abkhazi-garden.

“Lavender Sisters”

Another ferry, another island. This time the ferry takes us to Whidbey Island. Here there are flowers blooming everywhere. Hanging baskets of purple and lilac supertunia, lobelia and red ivy geraniums grace every light pole. The container plantings burst with color. White rugosa roses grow on a split rail fence overlooking the harbor in Langley.

Another highlight of my tour of gardens on Whidbey Island was a visit to Chocolate Flower Farm. If you like deep burgundy, chocolate, black, midnight blue, deep magenta or mahogany flowers and foliage like I do, you would be amazed by this garden. No surprise but chocolate cosmos are featured prominently in the perennial beds https://www.chocolateflowerfarm.com/

Meerkerk Rhododendron Garden

Another of our stops on this island is Meekerk Rhododendron Garden. This peaceful woodland garden features dozens of varieties of rhododendrons and we were drawn to one called Golfer with silver fuzzy leaves. Another one had velvety rusty red leaves that sparkled when backlit by the late afternoon sun. http://www.meerkerkgardens.org/

Bainbridge Island is home to the world famous Bloedel Reserve. A place to connect with nature, this garden allows only a few visitors at a time so each can enjoy the solitude and beauty of the 150 acres. Their website will hook you for hours of inspiration. https://bloedelreserve.org/

Clematis and alstromeria

Vashon Island. a large green island at the southern end of Puget Sound is home to The Country Store and Gardens. This nursery, in the heart of the island, boasts mature plantings on a 10 acre site with the nursery featuring rare and and unusual plants along with a wide selection of perennials, shrubs and blueberries. The flowers of a deep, dark purple clematis mingled with a rich pink, climbing cabbage rose on a long trellis surrounding the front porch of the store. A dead fruit tree was left to provide support for another midnight purple clematis blooming above a bed of deep red Lucifer crocosmia. I’ll remember this exciting pairing for a future design where the spreading crocosmia won’t be a problem. https://www.countrystoreandfarm.com/

Closer to home Hakone Estate and Garden in Saratoga is now open. Also now open is Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside and Elizabeth Gamble Garden in Palo Alto. So if your out and about, be sure to visit one of these almost-local gardens. And check out the websites of the destination gardens and nurseries I?ve mentioned.

Nurseries and gardens nourish our soul. They are more important now than ever before. If you want to stay healthy, stay gardening.

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The June Garden

With the soil warming and more daylight hours everything in the garden is growing like crazy. Some of that growth is welcome and some is too much of a good thing. Here are some things to tackle before they get out of hand.

Cooke’s Purple wisteria

There are few vines that rival wisteria for beauty. But at this time of year, those long new vines seem to grow a foot a day. Summer pruning of wisteria is a necessary task to keep these vines under control. Cut new growth back to within 6″ of the main branch. If you want to extend the height or length of the vine, select some of the new streamer-like stems and tie them to a support in the direction you wish to train the plant.

While you have the pruners out shear back early flowering perennials to encourage another round of blooms. The season has just started and you’ll be enjoying lots more flowers in the months to come if you deadhead regularly. To keep them compact, prune shrubs like erysimum, lavender, euryops and pink breath of heaven.

Apply the second fertilizer application of the year to your citrus and fruit trees. The last one should be immediately after harvest. Apply the fertilizer to the soil around the drip line of the tree where feeder roots are located and scratch into the surface. Water in well. As with all fertilizers, make sure the trees are moist before you fertilize. Young trees in their first, second or third growing season should receive half the rate of established trees.

Pruning is a good way to spend a couple of hours in your garden. I?m not talking about trimming plants into little balls but the kind of pruning that makes for a healthier and happier plant.

If you grow Japanese maples now is the time to remove dead branches and train your tree to look like one of those specimens you see in the magazines. Thinning cuts build your ideal tree limb structure. If yours is a young tree, though, don?t be tempted to head back long branches too soon. As these mature they give your tree that desirable horizontal branching.

This principle is important to keep in mind when you train any young ornamental tree. Lateral buds grow along the sides of a shoot and give rise to sideways growth that makes a plant bushy.

Summer pruning of fruit trees controls size by removing energy-wasting water sprouts. Summer is also a good time to remove leafy upper branches that excessively shade fruit on the lower branches. Winter pruning is meant to stimulate the tree. Summer pruning uses thinning cuts, where the branch is cut off at its point of attachment instead of part way along the branch, and these cuts do not encourage new growth but control the size of your tree making fruit harvest easier.

Summer pruning also can control pests like coddling moths, mites or aphids. Just be sure to dispose of these trimmings and don?t compost them.

If you have apricots and cherries, summer pruning only is now advised as these trees are susceptible to a branch killing disease if pruned during rainy weather. Prune stone fruits like peaches and nectarines after harvest by 50%. They grow quite rapidly. Apricots and plums need to have only 20% of their new growth pruned away.

Be sure to thin the fruit on your trees. That?s another good reason to keep them smaller so you can more easily reach the branches. The best time to do this is when the fruit is still small. Thinning fruit discourages early fruit drop and improves the quality of the remaining fruit. It helps to avoid limb damage from a heavy fruit load. Also it stimulates next year?s crop and helps to avoid biennial bearing. Left to their own devices, a fruit tree may bear heavily one year and then light or not at all the next year. Some types of fruit trees like peaches and Golden Delicious apples are likely to bear biennially if the current year?s fruit crop isn?t thinned.

While out in the garden add some more mulch to areas that are a little thin. And check the ties on your trees to make sure they aren?t too tight. Also remove the stake if the trunk is strong enough to support the tree on its own.

Most importantly, enjoy your time outdoors. If a task is too big to do at one time, break it down into smaller sessions. As they say, take time to smell the roses. And be sure to visit VCUM.org or their Facebook page to enjoy this year?s virtual garden tour and fund raiser.

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