Winter Walk-Off 2013

A few weeks ago, I read about the Winter Walk-Off, hosted by Les of A Tidewater Gardener. He explains the details of his challenge in this post, and it seemed like a lot of fun! Today, after daylight savings, it was actually light enough when I came home, so I grabbed my camera and walked on of my regular running routes, and took pictures around my neighborhood.

In the last week, all the ornamental fruit trees (mostly cherry and plum) have started blooming. There a lot of them around, most planted by the city.

Flowering fruit trees

 The white ones are cherries, the pink ones (like these in my neighbor's yard) are usually ornamental plums:

So much color

 As I was walking around, I noticed this tree, with it's odd combination of new leaves and weird looking green flowers:

Not sure what this one is? I'll have to remember to go look for it later in the season

 In addition to fruit trees, there are a lot of Palms in my neighborhood. However, this past winter has not been kind to them, and most of them look pretty bad:

Every one that's like the left and center pictures that I've seen around town looks dead.

 People have started cleaning up the dead fronds in many cases, which leaves the palm looking like this:

Funny looking palm trees

 In addition to the flowering trees, the city plants the same scrubs everywhere, leading to big masses of the same plants:

The scrub in the middle always looks like its covered in mold when it blooms. I don't know what it's called.

 I like the accidental combination of red berries and blue lavender in the upper right picture of that collage. I'm pretty sure the Lavender wasn't planted there, but the combo always makes me smile.
This also makes me smile - the effect of our near constant winds on trees:

That is a very large pine tree, leaning at a 30 degree angle

Same thing on the golf course, but with smaller trees

Yes, a golf course - who thought that was a good idea in the desert?!

They must spend a large fortune in water...

Even though there is a golf course in our neighborhood, a lot of people have created xeriscaped front yards. These are some of the ones I liked:

stream bed + palo verde tree. I would replace the blue fescue, I think

 This next garden is not at its best in the winter, but it should be gorgeous in just another few weeks:

There are two purple smoke bushes in there... I want one.

Their agave bloomed last year - hopefully they replace it!

 I've always liked this house with it's giant Optunia in the front. Those pads are huge!

Plus it has more all-season interest compared to the other garden.

 This next garden took a very different approach - going for more of a "Japanese" look:

Two pines/conifers and a stream bed. All the "dirt" is actually pea gravel

 I really like the bridge over the dry stream bed. I'm trying to decide if the Japanese-style garden elements work with the Mediterranean style of the house. There was another house with this similar-style lantern:

More Japanese style

 I've been thinking about garden art for my garden, and I'm not sure what would work well. I always like these lanterns when I see them in Japanese-style gardens, but I'm not sure about them with the style of houses that are in my neighborhood. More thinking required!

Of course, there were also several approaches that I didn't like as much - most of which share the "xeriscaping = rocks" idea.

Or fake grass for the stairs. I'm sure it's more durable and uses less water, but really?

 I do like the bold color on the garage door in the bottom left, and the cactus in the center picture. However, the cactus looked dead too, so we'll see how that goes. But all of those were still more area-appropriate than lots of (green) grass and cool-weather annuals, like this garden:

very colorful/cheerful though.

 This next garden feature has always made me scratch my head - it's an allee of willows (? I think), but they seem so close together. In the summer it's very pretty though.

There's about 6 trees on either side

 On my way back, I noticed a new feature on this house's fence: what looked like glass panels.

Maybe for a windbreak? But then it's facing the wrong direction for the prevailing winds

The last thing I noticed as I was looking at my pictures were some of the tree shapes against the sky - everything from willows glowing red in the sun, to London Plane trees and their seed pods, and Italian Stone Pine holding on to cones.

I wonder what made that Plane Tree in the middle have that kind of a branch shape?

Go visit Les's page for more links to Winter Walk-Offs around the world! Soon, winter will be over, and Spring will be here for real!

Flowering Broccoli

Whoops.

I'm pretty sure this is my fault for not eating enough broccoli:


Bolted!

 At least the bees are enjoying it:

look at those pollen sacks!

 It was nice to hear them buzzing again. I need more winter-flowering plants, I think.

And maybe I need to eat more vegetables. Although I'm going to continue to mix vegetables into my ornamental plants, like using Brussels sprouts for edging in one of the beds, at least until it gets hot. I'm not even sure I like Brussels sprouts, but they look cool, so in they went. We'll see how that goes.

And as a note to myself - I planted these in late fall (November?) in the bed on the west side of the patio, and they grew all the way through winter, even though it got way colder than normal. I should remember this for next year.

Getty Cactus Gardens

I love going to the Getty Center in Santa Monica for gardening inspiration. There's two distinct "characters" to the gardens at the Getty. This is somewhat by design: the buildings and the central garden were designed by two different people, Richard Meier and Robert Irwin. The two took very different approaches to their projects; Meier is known for his grids and orderly designs (primarily architecture) and Irwin is an artist, rather than a designer or landscape architect. Combine the different styles with the fact that Meier thought he would be doing the whole project (only to later have the garden taken away from him), and you have a feud that still echoes to this day.

I've taken a tour of the Central garden led by a docent who was very much in Meier's camp - he told us all the things that were "wrong" with the design! An interesting experience to be sure.

Meier did get to design some of the gardens at the Getty - the biggest of which is the Cactus Garden, on the south side of the complex:

Cactus garden - that's the 405 on the left.

This garden has two main parts - the big round part at the end (that you can't walk in) and the staircase leading to a viewing platform, with a "forest" of Aloe and cacti trees.

The bottom portion has a few species of plants, of which Opuntia robusta, Agave americana 'Marginata', and Echinocactus grusonii stand out the most, to me:

Garden in September of 2012



Garden view in Febuary 2013, with the Kalanchoe thyrsiflora blooming



Similar view in September 2012

Senecio vitalis is used as a ground cover through out. The Agaves flower almost every year (I'm not sure how that works...) and it's fun to watch the hummingbirds fly through them. 

Agaves blooming in September 2012

 A very large number of golden barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) makes up the path leading up to the circle. Too bad you can't walk anywhere near them.

According to a guide, these are all seed grown.

 According to one tour docent, the gardeners weren't allowed to maintain this part of the garden for the first three years, until the guard rail was installed. I guess that means these plants are well adapted to their new environment. Supposedly, they're not watered either.

The pathway to the viewing platform is lined with forests of Aloe bainessi, Senecio vitalis and some kind of cactus that I can't identify (nothing is labeled at the Getty).

Picture of planting beds

 I'm sure someone will be able to identify this one:


The berries were on the trees in February 2013

The Aloe trees are pruned to stay this small: 

Aloe trees - I don't think I've seen these flower, ever.

 While this garden might lack the "overflowing" character of the central garden, it certainly does draw your eye to the views beyond, and the simplicity is a nice counter-point to the art inside (whether that's the paintings or the central garden). I'm trying to decide what to take as inspiration from here - it may just be appreciation of a garden I could never replicate, unless I decide to plant my neighbor's garden with golden barrels...

Spring Inspiration

It's the first day of March, and it was above 70 degrees today. Spring really will be here soon. To keep from just going out and planting plants (only to watch them die if when we get another frost), I'm looking for inspiration to redo (or do the first time) some of the planting beds. These pictures are from my last trip to the Getty:

This succulent bed was pretty cool - I think I can recreate some of these combinations in the pipe garden.

I like the 'aurora' Sedum and that black rosette combination

 One of those black succulents made it though the winter, so I think I will try to create this combination with it. And the normal form of that sedum has grown in the front garden for the last few years.

This is another interesting color combo:

sprawling golden sedum and a pink rosette

 I have a (rather large) Echeveria that mostly made it through the winter. I might add some of the golden sedum to that same planter, after I remove some of the other plants.

This is a good idea for filling up empty space:

A Nasturtium vine crawling through a bed

 I did something similar last year with the melon vines. This year, I might tempt my absolute lack of luck starting anything from seed, and see if I can get some Nasturtiums to grow in the part-shade bed. They'll need part shade in our hot summer, I think. For the full sun beds, I'm trying to find some other alternatives, since last year, the melons got eaten by aphids...

I had to include this picture of an agave, I think. At first, I though it was a Phormium tenax of some sort, but it's not

That stripe is gorgeous!

I'm still looking for something to anchor the front garden bed -something with some height, and something unique. This guy is probably not hardy in our winters, but something like this might work really well...

More signs of spring!

I was going to post something about my new project, my idea for edging, or my battle against the burmuda grass, but instead I noticed something I wanted to document: The first of the almond blossoms are open!

This is an 'All-in-One' Almond tree

 I guess it's a little small to be properly called a "tree", but it has quite a few buds already:

It was planted when the backyard was redone

Sunset says that Almond trees are good in zones 8-10 and 12-16, but there are several almond groves nearby, so they do alright here in zone 11. They only need moderate water, which is better than most other fruit trees.
Almonds are closely related to peaches and nectarines, which are planted to either side of the almond tree on my slope. Those buds aren't open yet, but they are swelling up. If we get a late frost, that would not be good, which is part of the reason these don't do as well in zone 11 as they do in other zones.

This is 'Elberta' peach

buds are almost open!

 These are pretty enough to grow just for the blossoms. I noticed today that some of the first ornamental cherry trees in town are starting to bloom! Every day we get closer to spring.

I also found a new "helper" in the garden today - this cat has shown up before, but normally it runs away if it sees me. Today, it seemed very interested in my digging up weeds - maybe it wants to help?

I think it belongs to one of my neighbors, although it doesn't have a tag...

Challenge Reward!

Even though I'm still working up to my whole post-four-days-a-week thing, I did want to share what I did as a "reward" for actually taking a picture every single day and posting it here in January.

Several of the pictures I took of my house plant (like this one) were all taken in the same place - this weird ledge-think I have in my house, by the stairs. It actually doesn't get much natural light, but with some of the other lights on, it made a good spot for taking pictures at night. So for my reward, I decided to make it nicer - hang some pictures, some paint, and, of course, more plants. Here is what the area looked like while I was trying to pick a paint color:

Green, dark blue and light blue were the options - this area is very open to the rest of house, so it had to match...

 Since I already had the paint, the only things I bought for this area were the two new plants and containers to go with them. I ended up using the light blue paint:

Here you can see the odd shape this ledge has.

 And here it is all finished with pictures and plants:

It's not too cluttered, which is good. always room for more plants.

The plant at the far end is the fake plant that was up there already. The one in the middle is a very bright Dracena - hopefully it will be ok with the lack of light. If not, I'll switch it out with something else.

Here are the pictures that are on one side of the wall. The fun part is that these are all pictures I took during the January challenge! I just printed them on 8x10 photo paper, and framed them. I think I will add matting to them at some point in the future (when I make/find some).

The new plant + pictures on one side

 This plant is a Sanseveria "Moonlight". Loree recommended a Sanseveria for this low light area, and this one is really pretty. Of course, now I have to look at different colored ones every time I go somewhere, and I'll probably end up with more of them, assuming I don't kill this one.

The little succulents in pots that show up in these pictures are also pretty fun - they're not real plants, but wall-stickers that I got at IKEA of all places a while ago! They come six in one pack, and they just stick to the wall, but can come off if needed. I added them to the area to add some more color and interest. Plus now it looks like there's even more plants.

The other side of the wall has this grouping of pictures. The one in the middle is one a local artist made of an airplane. The others are more pictures from the challenge:

The picture arrangement makes sense with the sharply-sloping ceiling at this point

The best thing about this reward is that this is now the view from my favorite spot in the living room:

sorry for the blurry cellphone picture!

Pictures and plants! Much nicer to look at than the white walls and not-much-else that was there before. And now, if I do this challenge again, and need to take pictures indoors at night, I'll have a slightly more interesting background for them! And I'll have the pictures up on the wall to remind me of the challenge - and the fact that I actually did it.

Now if only I could get on that 4-day-a-week posting schedule...

hope springs eternal...

Remember this aloe from the February Foliage post:

It is a pup from my parents' plant - one of about seven that I got about three years ago. A lot of them have died, mostly from being too close to my neighbor's lawn, and getting too much water in too cold weather. Some of them got squashed when the new block wall got put up too. There are only three left, and they're all sad. The combination of the north side of the house, and the way the drainage worked, meant they spent each winter trying not to die, and didn't grow much over the summer. So, this weekend, I dug them all up, and put them in a temporary container:

I also got rid of all the clay still hanging on their roots

 There were actually four - three decent sized ones, of which only one is still green, and a tiny pup, which has some green in the crown still.

Here they are all potted up in well-draining potting mix, with leaves trimmed:

Intensive care for Aloes

I think the bottom two in the picture might be too far gone, but they've looked that bad before and not died. My plan now is to keep them in this container until about late March/early April, when the night are warm again. I'm actually going to move them indoors at night while they're in the container. Then, I'll plant them in one of the pipes, as part of a bit of a redo on the pipe garden. They should like it there - better draining soil, less water, and more sun.

The part of the front garden these came out of will be one of my projects this spring - I want to turn it into a gravel garden. I've been doing a lot of research (These old posts from Allison and Loree have been helpful!) and I think I'm almost ready. The most fun part will be finding plants - but I'm trying really hard to not buy any yet, since we've still got another month or two of winter...

Which makes me wonder how this new plant showed up, first in my car, and then in my garden:

yup, i fell for the big garden center trick...

It's a Hardenbergia violacea 'Happy Wanderer', and according to sunset it's good for sunset zones 8 through 24, and according to most sources, it's fairly drought tolerant too. Getting it might have had something to do with being at the Getty last weekend, and seeing this specimen:

Getty Sculpture garden, by the tram

It will be a few more weeks before this one gets planted though - I'll keep it in the garage at night until we're out of frost danger.