In the winter days, I spend my daydreaming time thinking about things I might want to change about my garden, or add to my garden. With such little precipitation in the past few weeks or in the coming few weeks, my mind keeps returning to the loveliness of the design elements and the plant choices in the Oroville home garden created by Catie and Jim Bishop. Thought this was a good time to re-run the piece. Happy winter dreaming and planning for your North State garden!

An Oroville couple brings their love and knowledge of the spare splendor shared by California’s deserts and alpine zones to their home with a low-water, low-maintenance, habitat-friendly, high diversity and high-enjoyment desert garden. Photo: Catie & Jim Bishop’s colorful desert garden in front of their Oroville home illustrates the beauty that a spare, dry garden can provide. (more…)

I think it starts with the pomegranates and pumpkins of October, but it’s hard to put my finger on exactly. Something about this time of year begins a seasonal journey of tradition and ritual. Once it begins, it sort of carries me along - like a leaf bobbing along on the ripples sent out by a pebble dropped into the water.

This mostly comforting, fairly consistent seasonal rhythm from harvest and Halloween to fall planting, Thanksgiving and on to the December holidays, then the New Year and planning of the next crops in the vegetable garden - carries me right through to mid-January, where it drops me off to start another round of seasonal rhythms.

During this time the view in the garden goes through what for me are some of its most moving seasonal changes: Pumpkins and pomegranates give way to lemons, oranges and holiday greens. I watch the daily arc of the sun become angled, softer. Iridescent and sometimes arrestingly beautiful shades of red and orange, pink and gold settle into the oaks each evening. Each evening is consistently colder, and the blue oaks change their garb a little more each day: the dark, firm blue-green of summer, changes to the mottled rusts, browns and yellows of late Fall. The little shapely leaves begin to drop - a few more each day rustling their way to the ground where they mulch my garden beds and round out my compost piles. Photo: Courtesy of Derral Campbell: Autumn Rose hips on the Trinity River. (more…)

How the Northern California Regional Land Trust works with Farmers and Ranchers to protect the agricultural heritage and future of the North State with agricultural conservation easements. Twenty-one such easements have been achieved in the organization’s 21- years of hard work. (more…)

Even with the rain of the past few days, the ornamental grasses in the garden are lovely this time of year - stately and painted in warm, light catching hues. The McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens at Turtle Bay in Redding is hosting a class on the planting and care of ornamental grasses in the garden on October 29th. Thought revisiting this interview with Lisa Endicott was timely.

They catch the light - especially the low, soft slanting light of Autumn; they dance in the slightest breeze; they hold dew drops and rain drops like pearls, winking on a string; they arch and drape and cascade, adding both vertical and horizontal beauty and interest to any garden; they are often drought tolerant and deer resistant, and many of them provide both forage and shelter for native and migrating song birds. They are ornamental grasses, and with more varieties, colors, shapes and sizes (and native choices) available to home gardeners every year, there is one (or 30) to brighten and dress-up just about any garden throughout the seasons. Photo: Deer grass under planted with blue fescue in the California display garden at the McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens. (more…)

Autumn’s arrival for me is accompanied by a renewed sense of community. Perhaps it is the return of regular school schedules, and the return of regular monthly meetings for garden clubs and organizations. Perhaps it is the primal sense of oncoming winter and a need to come together and prepare. Perhaps it’s the anticipation and energy of the harvest – from the vast chartreuse rice fields and the statuesque almond, olive and walnut orchards running through our region, to the end-of-summer tomatoes, peppers, beans, and squash finishing up in our home gardens and now filling our kitchen counters, freezers and shelves. Cool, even cold, nights and days with a prospect of rain are returning. We are gathering, and we are planning and planting for the seasons to come. Photo: Rice fields, Central Valley in October. (more…)

Put the growing needs of melons and the gardening conditions of much of the North State together, and what you get is an uncommonly happy marriage. This week on In a North State Garden (Northstate Public Radio 91.7 fm Chico/88.9 fm Redding at 7:34 am Saturday and 8:34 am Sunday), I talk to Kaye and Roger Diefendorf of Morning Glory Organics about growing melons. Located in Butte Valley near Oroville, Morning Glory Organics grows a selection of specialty and heirloom melons. (more…)

“Once neighbors and passersby see the changes happening as you begin the process of removing your default front lawn and replacing it with something more lively and interesting,” notes landscape designer Bernadette Balics of Davis, “curiosity gets the best of them, and they ask questions. I really like the social aspect of this gardening interaction, and my clients do too. If you plant something edible, the interest level really peaks. So consider replacing your lawn with some strawberries or artichokes, and meet the neighbors.” Photo: Bernadette’s gardens are frequently marked by creative pairings of common and less-common herbaceous perennials. Here a vibrant yellow yarrow and a radiant pink buckwheat (Eriogonum grande rubescens) balance opposite corners of a rich planting around a drip-fed cut-stone birdbath. In this composition, strongly textural foliage and the focal-point of the birdbath create interest year-round - for people and for visiting birds and pollinators.
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For almost all of her almost eight decades, Jeanne Zimmerman has been gardening and for a good part of that time she has been growing - and loving - the elegance and hard-to-beat beauty of clematis flowers and vines. “The radiant colors, the long bloom time and the ease of growing them - here and in Minnesota where I learned to garden - make them the perfect garden plant,” Jeanne says warmly. “Besides, they so nicely cover any ugly fence.” From a farming family, and a long-standing member of the Chico Horticultural Society, Jeannie is a natural gardener and naturally generous in sharing her experience and knowledge. “I am no expert,” she is quick to say, while other experienced gardeners and plants people smilingly dismiss this modesty: She is an expert with her clematis, they nod. Photo: Clematis ‘Dr. Ruppel.’ (more…)

“If you are going to love carrots, your best bet is to try them fresh from the farm - and Matthew Martin’s carrots are some of the sweetest carrots you are ever going to taste!” Gina Sims exclaims. Matthew Martin is the President/Owner and Head Farmer of Pyramid Farms in Chico. He is also the Farmer of the Month in April 2011 for 35,000 kindergarten through 12th grade public school students throughout the North State. (more…)

Renowned American wildflower and native plant advocate Lady Bird Johnson, founder of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in central Texas, once wrote: “Wherever I go in America, I like it when the land speaks its own language in its own regional accent.” But of course in order to hear this language, we need to slow down, stop talking ourselves……and listen. As with any language, if we take just a little time to learn more about it - the language sounds so much more clear and mellifluous to the ear. Photo: Vernal Pool in flower, photo courtesy of Joe Silveiras, all rights reserved 2011. (more…)