Every year – about this time in the North Valley - the big spring bloom begins. And every year I think – it’s even more miraculous – even more lovely this year. Narcissus, hellebores, daphnes, camellias, magnolias, the first of the fruit trees – the beauty is abundant. And now that we’ve had some real rain and snow, I can actually enjoy the bloom with less worry. Close to 11 inches of rain – that’s how much rain I measured in my home garden in the month of February. The rain was so inspiring to me that some days I had to go check my rain gauge 2 or 3 times. I then ran inside, reported the newest numbers to my family and rushed to record the numbers in my journal. I know one good month of rain and snow will not reverse the past seasons’ unusually low precipitation. I know we are still in a drought – but this one good month sure doesn’t hurt. And when the March mountains are decked with snow and the valley is greening and damp, life in my garden feels just right. Photo: White Hellebores.

Although the first official day of spring is March 20th – hurray! - average last frost dates are still a ways away for most of us (early-April for the earliest of us) so don’t get too excited too quickly. Now is a great time for continuing to sow cold hardy vegetable seeds or planting out cold hardy perennials and shrubs to begin establishing before true spring. Now is also the time for feeding a balanced fertilizer to your trees, shrubs and lawns that are starting to show signs of growth. March 1st is a traditional date on which to feed citrus trees. And don’t forget that March 8th, we spring our clocks forward one hour. Photo: Looking across snow covered mountains from Mt. Shasta in mid- February.
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Diane Stout loves Prickly Pear (Opuntia spp.) cactus - all kinds of them. She likes them in artwork, she likes them in pots, she likes them in all shapes and sizes all around her Orland garden. She likes them so much she named her nursery in Orland after the plants. The home garden that she shares with her husband Dave is home to nearly 40 individual Opuntia plants, comprising 16 different species or varieties. Opuntias are quite hardy, very low-maintenance and, extremely drought tolerant. In general, they prefer full sun, lean rocky soil with sharp drainage, and once established, they need almost no supplemental water.Photo: Diane began her colllection in earnest by asking for cuttings from mature stands of Opuntias in the area, for instance from old farmsteads or churches. Here an established stand of Prickly Pears complement the side of an old industrial metal quonset hut in Los Molinos.

Opuntia is a genus of close to 200 species of cacti originating to North, Central and South America and the West Indies. The genus can be divided into what some people call the Prickly Pear cacti – with round but flatter pads, and the Cholla or Teddy Bear cacti – with heavily spined, oblong sausage-shaped pads. California beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris), Teddy Bear Cholla (O. bigelovii), Pancake or Dollar Joint Prickly Pear (O. chlorotica), Silver or Golden Cholla (O. echinocarpa), Old Man Prickly Pear (O. erinacea), and Buckhorn Cholla (O. acanthocarpa), are all considered native to California – mostly to the desert scrub and desert woodland regions of the state. Photo: A purple-fruited Opuntia.
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Over the past few months Karen McGrath, a Landscape Designer, and I have had an ongoing conversation about the many merits of using a good, trained designer to help in the initial design of a new garden or the renovation/remodel of an existing one. In her well articulated philosophy: “Landscape design is more than just shrubbing up the outside of a building. It is a logical planning process and also an art form that marries a site’s unique characteristics with people’s needs and wishes to create a totally unique outdoor place.” Karen is the owner of Karen McGrath Design, Landscapes for Outdoor Living based in Redding. Photo: A good Landscape Designer can help you choose and articulate good focal point sites and elements in a space.

As a gardener – and I like to think a pretty good gardener – using a designer to help me in my garden was once unthinkable to me. If I was a good gardener, why would I need a designer? I thought. Landscape architects, landscape designer and/or garden designers were for people who weren’t really gardeners, I reasoned. But then my family and I moved to a house with a really oddly shaped lot. And it had odd elements within that shape. And odd plantings – some I wanted, others I did not – numbered among those odd elements.

I had very solid ideas about what I wanted as several parts of the whole garden: I knew I wanted raised vegetable beds; I knew they would need to be fenced due to dogs, kids and rabbits; I knew I wanted the fenced veggie garden to be attractive; I knew I wanted a long perennial border; I knew I wanted to create some sort of “space” beneath a grove of old Ponderosa Pines; I knew I wanted a chicken coop, and so forth. But after three seasons in the garden, and after implementing and working on my wish list including installing the attractive vegetable garden, the chicken coop and some nice perennial beds, after planting and transplanting, sketching and re-sketching, I also knew I had reached a wall and was stumped. Photo: Some garden designs are more self-conscious or dramatic for effect than others. This is one of the display gardens at Cornerstone Gardens - Gallery Style Garden exhibits in Sonoma.

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Until I moved to the North State, I had never belonged to a garden club. My mother was never in a garden club, nor was my father, for that matter. I am not sure why, but in my own mind garden clubs were – well – ‘clubby’, sort of stuffy and a bit exclusive and not my cup of tea. But I had aunties – and not stuffy ones – who were very involved in their local garden clubs. My aunt in Virginia was one of these. When my cousins, her daughters, were married (at different times), the garden club ladies who had been long-time friends with my aunt came out in force - dressed in dirty jeans and muddy shoes, with their clippers and their beat-up cars full of garden stuff. They picked masses of flowers from their own gardens and spent the better part of the day before each of the weddings arranging. Finally, they arrived at each of the weddings cleaned up and flower-proud. This was not stuffy or clubby – this was a sisterhood of good gardeners doing good things. Photo: The new Cone & Kimball Plaza Clock Tower on the same corner in downtown Red Bluff where the historic clock tower stood.

Lorna Bonham, a retired educator, and Cathy Wilson, a retired nurse, are just such garden club ladies. Both are members of the Red Bluff Garden Club, a very active garden club dating back to the 1950s. Lorna’s mother was a charter member and her father was a well-known regional horticulturist. Cathy on the other hand has lived and gardened throughout the west and was a Master Gardener in the Yuba City area before moving to Red Bluff fairly recently. She has been a member of the Red Bluff Garden Club for a little over a year. But lifelong member or new member notwithstanding, Lorna and Cathy are both excellent examples of what garden club members for the most part actually are: good gardeners doing good things. Photo: Cathy Wilson (left) and Lorna Bonham (right), are members of the Red Bluff Garden Club and instrumental in the club’s part in the Cone & Kimball Plaza restoration project.

My copyright 1936 Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Gardening has this to say about garden clubs: “Second only to the experiment stations, the garden clubs are the greatest single agency of the advancement of gardening in America. Their lectures, test gardens and influence for better standards of the art of horticulture are of incalculable value.” According to the National Garden Clubs (once known as the Federated Garden Clubs), Inc website: “The first garden club in America was founded in January 1891 by The Ladies Garden Club of Athens (Georgia).” Originally garden clubs were often Ladies clubs or Men’s clubs, but in this day and age, they are men and women, young and old. Here and now, the North State is a region of active and dedicated garden clubs, the Red Bluff Garden Club being just one. See below for contact information on other garden clubs in our region.
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