Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California…I’m a sucker for art museum landscaping done well (I bet you've never considered that as a whole category of landscaping have you? I'm weird that way). One of my first awe struck art museum landscaping experiences was at the Phoenix Art Museum, it was also one of my first danger garden posts, last March.

The landscaping at the LA Country Museum of Art didn’t disappoint. As we moved through the museum campus patterns and grids emerged, every where I looked I saw them…on the plants themselves…

In the way they were planted…just look at the lines of the palms, the fronds and the lines of the fence, spectacular!

Patterns and grids in the cafe furniture…

And of course the exhibits…

In the front of the building were huge raised beds full of giant Bromeliads (I think…correct me if I am wrong) and palms.

Here is the same planting but from inside a building (please excuse the window glare).

These palms reminded me of dancers with giant fans, so graceful.

Again with the patterns and texture!More from above…

Bamboo and spiral staircase…

Next door to LACMA are the La Brea Tar Pits we didn’t visit but just wandered over to take a peek. When my husband lived in Ventura he frequently visited LACMA and tells of seeing tar oozing through the cracks in the asphalt on Wilshire Blvd, sounds messy!

More pictures taken from inside the museum, this one of the building across the street. Isn’t this the hottest LA Fitness building ever? (you can barely make out the sign behind the tree)...it has a moat!

This is my favorite shot. So wavy! This is also the image that convinced me I needed to own a Furcraea, at least that’s what my amateur I.D. is of the plants in the big pots. Am I wrong?

I love the way the museum campus blended new and old buildings. Old like the Pavilion for Japanese Art.

And new like the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

This brings up one of the negative aspects of visiting an art museum on vacation…when you just miss an exhibit that is so perfect for you, like the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape…October 25, 2009–January 3, 2010, how I would have loved to see that exhibit! We were there on the 20th and the exhibit opened on the 25th! So close…

Garden Book Shopping (on vacation)

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California…

If you’re not gardening, scheming about your garden, or shopping for plants, what’s the next best thing? Reading garden books! My husband can spend hours in a bookstore and as long as they have a good gardening section I’m fine with that. But I think I’ve been spoiled by the choices at Powell’s, our Portland book Mecca. The gardening sections in the bookstores we visited in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Santa Barbara left me bored, 15 minutes and I was ready to move on.

At Vromans in Pasadena I finally found a few new titles worth browsing. But the big selection was at Hennessey and Ingalls in Santa Monica!
Finally…an incredible selection of garden, landscape and design books! I was in book heaven. If you are in the area you should plan a visit, if not possible then their website looks promising, check out the landscape and horticulture category.
I could have shopped longer, but we had to cut our browsing short to run outside and catch the sunset. I know sunset pictures, how trite. But these sunset pictures have the ocean and agave blooms!

And the Santa Monica pier...

And if you look closely even the moon!

The Leaf & Petal Company

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California…

I’ve been remiss in finishing up my California travels! When last I posted on California we were in Venice, after that we headed up to Santa Monica. We were looking for a bookstore but when consulting an informational sign I saw the name Leaf & Petal Company (Plant Studio / Floral Arts) even though it was in the opposite direction of the bookstore with a name like that I had to check it out!

The anticipation was building as we waited to cross the street staring at this…My excitement quickly faded when we crossed and I saw they were closed. Even though we were within their posted hours of business they were closed. So frustrating! Looking through the gate only made things worse!

I wanted to touch these plants!

Naturally I had to walk around the entire building, in case there was an open door…no such luck. In the back, next to the Sears parking lot we found these plants just pushed up against the gate, out in the open where frankly anyone could have taken them. Call me naive but there is something so endearing about the trust factor that many nurseries have, I guess that applies even in LA! (no offense LA...just being a big city and all...)

Coming back around the other side I was cursing them again. Look at what fabulous things were on the other side of the gate!

If you’re in Santa Monica and find them open I would love to hear about what I missed.

If I were a rich girl

I thought I was over my “palm love” stage, this stage hit shortly after moving to Portland and discovering that some palm trees actually grow here! I bought a small Washingtonia robusta at Home Depot the first summer in our house. Of course it died a couple of winters later, (around this same time I finally realized that plant tags sometimes paint a rather “optimistic” picture of the plants hardiness). Photo from August of 2007…it died that winter.That same summer, on our first-ever trip to Cistus Nursery, we bought a Mediterranean Fan Palm (Chamaerops humilis). I loved that palm. It was a painfully slow grower although it did produce a few pups (palm pups?), but it's no longer with us, a victim of back to back harsh winters. This is it in August of 2007...

And this is it today, not so pretty eh? It will be coming out as soon as I work up the energy to dig it and a nearby Acanthus that is being moved. I'll try to salvage the pup.

Our neighbor has an amazing Trachycarpus fortunei we can see from our living room and the media room. I love this palm.

When our huge Rosemary shrub up and died we decided we needed a Trachy too. Unfortunately we stuck it in a pot so it hasn’t grown much (this picture from July of 2007, just shortly after planting). This is the year we are finally painting (our house and the neighbors garage, the wall behind the palm) so it will come out of the pot and go in the ground. Hopefully to grow as big as our neighbors!

So coming back around to the title of my post, if I were a rich girl. I had a little time I needed to kill a couple of weeks ago and I was near a nursery that I hadn’t visited for months (dangerous combination). Wandering around aimlessly I found this…

What a perfect specimen! The plant form, the shape of the leaves, simply beautiful, I was in palm love! The price for this charming (5-gal, I think?) Trachycarpus wagnerianus $119.99. If I were a rich girl, it would have been mine. But I am not.

I spotted a smaller 1-gallon for $39.99, it didn’t look so healthy however and it’s been a while since I’ve spent that on a plant…so I walked away empty handed (yes…it’s true! There are times I visit a nursery and buy nothing!).

But (you knew there was another piece to the story didn’t you?) last week I was at Garden Fever (buying chicken grit for my agave pup potting project) and I spotted this!

A very happy healthy 1 gal Trachycarpus wagnerianus tagged from Gossler Farms (so I know it came from good parents) for only $14.99!

Proving you don’t have to be rich to have the good stuff. Just patient.

Walking around the neighborhood

This is the time of year when walking the dog is a treat, not a chore (during the winter rains it’s definitely a chore). Every day brings something new and exciting. I love watching our neighbor’s Magnolia unfold. It’s simply gorgeous.And fuzzy!

The same neighbor has a huge old clump of Kniphofia in her parking strip, it had become a little ragged and a few weeks back she chopped it off about 8” above the ground. Doing so revealed the circle that the plants had formed; the original plant must have occupied the center? I want an established old clump of Kniphofia just like this!

Different neighbor, pruned shrubs. I remember walking past her house late last summer? right after the hack job had been done. She was distressed and I tried to assure her that they would grow back. Sort of.

This neighbor has me infected with a serious case of Manzanita envy. As a result I am on the Manzanita “call when in” list at Garden Fever. Evergreen, manageable size, amazing bark…what’s not to love?

The same neighbor also has a Ceanothus. I’ve been watching it through the seasons making sure I like it before I commit. I was staring at it for a good 3 minutes before I actually saw this nest.

This is my Flower Power neighbor. She’s always changing things up and always has hundreds of flowers in her garden. Do you suppose she intentionally chose Husky (Univ of Washington) colors? I’ll have to ask. And was the one red Anemone on purpose or a happy accident?

Another Magnolia. I wanted to share with you the view I normally have of this tree, but that would’ve required my standing in the middle of a busy street to take the picture. Not going to happen.

I love this fabulous moss garden on top of an old fence.

Back home I am thrilled with the first blooms on our Clematis armandii, since it failed to bloom last year…

As well as this surprise white Crocus. I didn’t plant this, at least not on purpose. I think it hitched a ride on the Sedum I traded for last year (Concordia Neighborhood plant exchange).

And I find it terribly sweet (a word I rarely use) that the first bloom to open on our Camellia is facing right into the kitchen window, the same window where I drink my morning coffee and read the paper. How did it know?