danger garden

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

New plants from the Sunset Western Garden Collection

It’s an exciting day when a box like this shows up at your front door.

In case there was any mistaking what's inside.

I didn’t see this warning…

…until I’d already torn into the box and lifted out the plants.

They came wearing little custom shower caps to keep their soil in place.

Exhibit A, Little Miss Figgy, a fig sized to grow in a container!

For now she’s living in a container just a smidge bigger than the one she came in, while I decide exactly where to plant her, long term.

The second plant (Exhibit B) is Skyscraper® Senecio, Senecio ficoides 'Mount Everest' PP22188. In their words: “Like Blue Chalksticks, on steroids. Senecio Skyscraper is a strong, upright grower, reaching 2-3' in one growing season. No staking or support necessary. Fabulous new structural component for succulent gardens.”

Unfortunately there was a hitchhiker in the pot, my nemesis the dark oxalis. There aren't many weeds I continually battle but this one is a problem. I tried removing the soil and working the oxalis roots out from around the senecio but finally just gave up and...

Beheaded it! Ha, yep! I chopped it all off and tossed the weedy soil.

You see I have a history with this senecio and I've beheaded it before. My friend Janet Sluis, director of the Sunset Western Garden Collection, shared a small start with me during a visit I made to the Bay Area in December of 2019. Getting it home in my luggage proved tricky and I injured it. After winter spent under lights (in the basement), spring came around and I cut off the good parts, stuck them in this container—and they thrived. Since that first year I've overwintered them in the shade pavilion greenhouse and they've loved it. Here they are last winter...

And now they're outside and doing even better. It's true these blue chalksticks stand tall!

So what did I do with my new blue chalksticks? Well the majority went in this container...

The fact it's placed right in front of a Mahonia eurybracteata 'Soft Caress' (another Sunset plant introduction) is purely coincidence.

A few short pieces were tucked into my dish planters.

They'll tower over the other plants by the end of the season.

A front view of the dish planters, in case you were curious.

Any left over senecio were tucked in the ground. I used do this annually with the common senecio. Tuck them into the ground in the spring, let them grow, and take cuttings in the fall to overwinter. Rinse, repeat. I'm not sure I'm ready to start that up again but it will be fun to see how they do in the ground vs. in a container.

Since we're here and talking Sunset, I thought I'd quickly hit on the past plants I've been given to trial in the garden. We all know I LOVE my Mahonia x media 'Marvel'.

This wonderfully fragrant Lavandula allardii 'Meerlo' has been happy for a few years here, even though it's rated as a Zone 9 plant (and I garden in a Zone 8 plot). I thought our "out of the blue" February freeze (and snow and ice) was going to be the end of it. When I snapped this photo on March 17 it was not looking good.

But what do you know?

That's some fresh new growth.

Then there's the podocarpus, P. macrophyllus 'Miu' (aka Roman Candle™ Podocarpus). Can you spot it below in my overplanted wonderland?

Some tips have extreme variegation and others are a bit splotchy.

I pruned back a few things that were taking advantage of the available sun, so I'm hoping it will be a little happier going forward.

Monday, May 24, 2021

Unexpected new planting space in the SW Corner

If things look immediately different in this photo it's probably because we got new patio furniture...

I wish I could say I love it, but I don't. I mean I like it, and I like it a lot more than what we had before. I was head-over-heals in-love-with that original set when we bought it, in 2007. But after thirteen years, not so much anymore. I hunted for something that made me giddy when I saw it, but never could find it, thus another IKEA set will do—for now.

New planting space though, that's what we're talking about today. I wish I had a before photo, but since I didn't know it was happening until it was happening (and really I was still asleep) there are no "befores"...

There was some strange police activity on our street the night before this all happened. I spent an hour—a very late hour—up watching the action (and I'm still not sure what I saw), once I crawled back into bed I wasn't able to fall right asleep, which meant I slept a little late the next morning. About 10 minutes after I poured my first cup of coffee there was a knock at the door, our neighbor across the back fence was trimming the laurel and wanted to know what I thought about the possible changes.

Let me just say, I don't function until I've had at least the first cup of coffee. It was very kind of her to come over and consult with me, but I felt in a daze. I was not awake. AT ALL. There were lovely draping branches of laurel that sort of fell over the fence and created a green back drop to the area below. I liked them. A lot, now they're gone. I've never seen that meeting of fence styles before, it was always hidden.

But I also knew she really wanted to cut them, they are her shrubs and I needed to just go ahead and rip off the band-aid. Let it go. Not my plants. It's always better to control the green and plant on your own land rather than rely on the neighbor's plants—and so now this is my view.

We'll make our way over there eventually, to look at it in detail, so you can see the new space. But first I want explain what's going on in this area, which you may have noticed in the first few photos. Last summer my Sasa palmata 'Nebulosa' (wide-leaf bamboo), in the stock tank, suffered a mite infestation. I cut it all down to try and stop the mites from infecting the other bamboo.

I was good timing as the ice storm we had in February would have flattened that bamboo anyway. I just got ahead of the game. New shoots are doing their thing and it's filling in nicely.

Behind the bamboo tank there are a few mahonia and aucuba finally starting to fill in.

And a vine climbing the fence, Holboellia angustifolia var. angustifolia.

Mahonia x media 'Marvel' from the Sunset Western Garden Collection. You might remember I just picked up one of these when I spotted it at Pomarius Nursery a couple weeks back. Little did I know I was going to have an empty corner to plant in!

So, there it is. The empty corner.

Here's my quick sketch to try and help you understand why this used to not be at all visible. The neighbor's laurel just draped over the fence and provided a green screen to an area that—I'll admit—was kind of a dump for heavy, wet, rain gutter cleanings and never really got cleaned out back when we put those stock tanks in; after building the patio and before installing the shade pavilion.

In other words... untouched for YEARS.

And now there it is, a scar for all to see.

And it's not small...

If you're wondering why we placed those tanks so far out from the corner to begin with, well, so am I. I think perhaps back then I never dreamed I'd run out of garden space.

The poor variegated fatsia took a beating in the February ice storm, new growth has begun to pop out of the lower trunk, it will be interesting to see what it does now with more light.

This corner—the SW corner—was my last really dark spot...

...after the big reveal last September of the previously shady area behind our garage (the SE corner), which I wrote about here. A large potted daphniphyllum is helping me to feel better about that spot (please pardon the galvanized tubes/pedestals that have not had their planted tops/trashcan lids put in place yet)...

I thought I should dig up a couple of old images to at least give you an idea how dark the newly revealed SW corner used to be. This is August of 2019. You're looking at the space to the right of the shade pavilion, that just sort of fades out of sight...