This nifty aloe is supposed to be frost hardy in the Central Valley. It has interesting leaves and as a bonus gets typical red, tubular aloe type flowers that should attract hummingbirds.
Aloe
Cape Rush
The rain garden area will get a Cape Rush (Chondropetalum tectorum), a large, bold grass-like plant from South Africa. This plant supposedly likes wet conditions during the rainy season that dry out as the year progresses.
The plant gets over six feet tall – definitely a bold, focal point.
Grevillea ‘Coastal Gem’
The hummingbird garden will get a Grevillea ‘Coastal Gem’, a compact gray shrub with numerous interesting red flowers in early spring. There will also be an Aloe ‘Pink Blush’, a compact succulent with – as the name says – a pink blush to the leaves. It has red, tubular flowers that should also please the hummingbirds.
Leucadendron salignum ‘Golden Tip’
Another distinctive South African plant, Leucadendron salignum ‘Golden Tip’ will contrast with an existing large bronze New Zealand flax. The cut stems and flowers are very interesting in cut flower arrangements, the plant is evergreen and attractive year round. It takes very little water once established. The only drawback is that it can be tricky to grow – it seems to be one of those plants that is either happy the way things are and thrives on neglect or it just suicides.
New New Zealand Flaxes (Phormium)
A couple of medium sized New Zealand flaxes will join the collection as well. ‘Sundowner’ has stiffly held red-bronze leaves and grows to five feet tall. ‘Tricolor’ has yellow and green variegated leaves that droop, with a distinct red band at the edges. By coincidence, the yellow in the leaves is similar to the yellow in the Leucadendron. We’ll probably place something between the two just to set them off a bit from each other.
Helleborus orientalis ‘Blue Lady’
A Helleborus orientalis ‘Blue Lady’ will go in a shaded area, with columbine and coral bells. The flowers are a solid deep maroon-magenta color on plants about a foot and a half high. It’s a great flower color, but the blue name is misleading, since neither the flowers nor the leaves has a blue cast. Even better, it blooms in mid-January.
Agapanthus ‘Little White Bird’
A variegated lily of the Nile, Agapanthus ‘Little White Bird’ will mingle with Purple Three Awn (Aristida purpurea). The flowers are supposed to grow up to around three feet tall, so the base will be a mix of the grass and the Agapanthus, while the aggie’s flowers will float above the purplish flower heads of the aristida. Should be an interesting show. If not, we’ll move things around and try something else. The mix of agapanthus, often maligned as overused, and ornamental grasses creates a fresh look contrasting the solid flowers against the feathery grasses.
A new rain garden
The rain garden, in this case a fancy word for a depressed area in the landscape where rain water can pond and slowly infiltrate back into the soil, is partially installed. The trick here is that we’re blessed with heavy clay soil, so we didn’t know if the rain garden would take days or weeks to drain. So far, it seems to empty out after about three to four days of dry weather.
Another trick is that the plants in the lower portions have to survive immersion for indeterminate periods. For this, we’re testing various meadow grasses and perennials to see what works. So far, everything appears to be thriving despite multiple immersions. The lowest point is planted with Deschampsia caespitosa and Carex pansa, with some Lupinus polyphyllus thrown in. Areas that are not normally subject to immersion have Festuca idahoensis ‘Siskiyou Blue’, Muhlenbergia rigens, Calamagrostis acutifolia, Schizachyrium scoparium and Achillea millefolium ‘Paprika’. In summer, the rain garden will become a flowering meadow adjacent to an outdoor dining area.
When complete, the rain garden will overflow into a sediment trap, then into a powered sump that will remove the excess water before the house starts to float. Hopefully with time, biological processes of root growth, burrowing worms and insects will naturally introduce organic matter into the underlying clay and make it more permeable.
Right now, it just looks like a large mud puddle, but we’re hoping that it will transform into a beautiful green area with an added ecological function.
Our garden: demolition phase
After over ten years of trimming, watering, weeding and planting the garden we inherited when we moved in, we decided it was time to change. Too many plants needed too much water. The deck was rotting underneath, since they didn’t use rot-resistant materials to build it. The trellis could come down in a strong wind. There wasn’t enough hardscape, so everything needed trimming.
The new landscape will have lots of paths for easy circulation and one less thing to maintain. The redwood from the old deck will be recycled for the new one, the old, cracking concrete slab will be broken up into urbanite, stained with a soy based coloring agent and used to make paths. It will be sustainable – paving will be pervious, a rain garden will reduce runoff into the storm drain system, and the irrigation will adjust itself according to how much water is actually needed. A meadow will replace the lawn, where we can test lawn substitutes such as Carex praegracillis and other grassy plants that supposedly save water. One section of the garden will not be irrigated – instead it will be planted with annual wildflowers and bulbs. This will probably evolve over time, but there’s already an improvement: all the things that were falling over are now gone or ready for their new life.
Bugs in your garden? Let them live.
First, I’m only talking about garden pests. Not roach infestations in restaurants or food processing centers. Just the usual bugs you’ll find in the usual garden. These are the inoffensive creatures whose only crime is being bugs in the wrong place (I’m excluding nesting hornets, and other “clear and present dangers”, too).
What I’m questioning is the need for “zero bug tolerance”. Aphids happen. They don’t last very long, since eventually the predator population builds up and reduces their population. But not to zero.
What about spiders? “Spiders are hard to kill, since they have very tiny feet,” as one pest control person, of the non-sustainable variety, said. But why do we have to kill them in the first place? Most of our spiders are harmless, and it could even be argued that they’re beneficial, since they eat mosquitoes that carry diseases that are much more harmful than the spiders.
If we’re planting things that are killed by insects, we decide that the insects are at fault – not the choice of the plant nor the environment into which its placed. So, we attack the insects, instead of just deciding to change the plant, modify the watering schedule or heaven forbid, just letting them live.
I’ve never seen an ornamental landscape plant killed outright by insects. I’ve seen them defoliated, but they recovered. Some plants have died, and insects have been contributing factors – but usually the plant was in a weakened state for another reason. However, I’ve seen many more plants killed by human error. Overwatering, frost tender plant frozen to black mush, wrong plant for the climate, acid loving plants in alkaline soil…
So why pick on the poor garden insects, spray a bunch of things that are strong enough to kill them around our homes?
Aphids, thrips, harlequin bugs, orb spiders, caterpillars… They all live in a well balanced garden, and some of them can even be kind of fun to look at as they stroll around the plants.
All things considered, most of the “bug” problems are in our heads, not in our gardens.