Despite what feels like many weeks of rain (snow in the high country) and gray weather lingering into late spring this year, I am deeply gratified by those plants in my garden that are flourishing regardless. Some of these plants, as I would expect, are positively reveling in the almost coastal weather pattern. But some of these wet-gray-spring-garden successes are wonderful surprises - salvia number among these. Almost all of my salvias - from the greggii to the leucophylla and clevelandii, to the more exotic varieties, are in full growth and most in full flower now - many having started by mid-May. While generally heat and drought loving, they are all showing their tremendous tolerance for a range of climatic circumstances and will almost all of them continue to bloom with gusto until late summer and early fall. Hummingbirds, bees and butterflies - perhaps also weary of the lingering rain and gray skies - nectar enthusiastically at the the warm, bright salvia blooms.

With all of this in mind, it seemed a good time to re-run this piece, originally published in September 2010, featuring Mike Thiede, a regional grower and hybridizer of salvias talking about his passion for the plants and his thoughts on their care. Enjoy.

Mike Thiede gets excited about plants. “You will never guess what I just found?” he said in all excitement the last time I met with him - and he did not wait for me to answer or guess, but continued on describing to me a plant he’d run across that really shouldn’t have been where he found it. He was thrilled. Mike Thiede is a plantsman - and so plants in general do thrill him. But among all the plants that might thrill him, Mike has a special place for Salvia - the genus of plants most closely associated with his name and hybridizing skills in our region. Photo: Tall, blue and furry Salvia leucantha forms a backdrop for red and apricot Salvia greggii hybrids. (more…)

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…)

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…)

Did you have to read William Butler Yeats when you were in school? I can’t recall too many things I had to read in school and can still remember, but this poem I remember and it continues to be one of my favorites: Photo: A happy black bee on a salvia.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 5
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 10
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

If you are a gardener, you have no doubt had the formative experience of a “quiet” moment working in the garden - trimming, weeding, harvesting - your head lost in the shrubbery, your hands in the dirt, your labor accompanied by the happy hum of bees at work on a nearby plant in bloom. Or the experience of being dive-bombed by hummingbirds trying to get to the plant you happen to be working in. Or of realizing that you’ve been standing stock still for several minutes completely riveted by the dance of the butterflies across the top of the flower bed. Photo a bee flying into the tubular flower of a California fuchsia. (more…)

This article was first published early this past spring when the garden was just waking up from its winter sleep. The plants are grown in so nicely and look remarkably different in just this one growing season that I felt I had to republish the piece. Different flowers are currently in full bloom, and the whole display area was extravagant with color when I visited recently. A great place to get ideas and see what plants can really do! Photo: A border along the public walkway before you reach the new Companion Planting Display beds shows how accomplished the McConnell Arboretum gardeners are with plant combinations. Here California Fuchsia blooms in front of a tall-form Sedum, which is backed by an silvery Artemisia - the overall impression is like a tapestry. It is also regionally appropriate, heat and drought tolerant.

Some things are just meant to go together: peanut butter and jelly; Acorus gramineus minimus ‘Aureus’ and Alchemilla mollis…..what??? Well, Grassy-leaved Sweet-Flag (Acorus gramineus minimus ‘Aureus’) a short, mounding, strappy leaved plant with a gorgeous lime-green color planted next to the ruffled-edged, saucer-shaped dark green leaves and the spikes of foamy-white flowers of Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) – might just be a perfect plant combination. And finding new and great plant combinations is the goal of the new companion planting trial beds at the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens at Turtle Bay, says Lisa Endicott, Horticultural Manager at the gardens. Photo: One of the companion pairs intended by the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens is this between Carex barbarae (dun colored grassy plant at back) and Lysimachia c. ‘Atropurpurea’ (pale purple flower at bottom), however, plants (like people) have a way of forming their own companions no matter what the gardener intended. Here, the dark purple head of a Verbena adds a third and striking element to the combination.

Companion Planting as a concept is as old as mother nature – who routinely puts plants together that work well together and for the most part, they look good together, too. Companion Planting as handled by mortal gardeners is a technique used to see which plants that you might not expect to see together actually make great companions anyway. The success of their companionship is based on a variety of criteria: (Photo: Rosemary planted against a backdrop of
the dramatic Muhlenbergia lindheimeri. (more…)

Lynette Gooch loves lavender. All kinds of lavender for all kinds of reasons. In the United Kingdom the gardening world has things known as National Collections, wherein when a specific garden has more species or varieties of any one kind of plant than any other garden, they can become designated a National Collection. Private gardens and gardeners are as likely to hold National Collections as larger public botanic gardens. In the United States, we do not have such a scheme, but if we did, Lynette Gooch and her husband Richard might well hold the National Collection of lavender with their 207 different named varieties of lavender at the display gardens in Whitmore: Tuscan Heights Lavender Gardens.

Grown as a culinary and medicinal herb throughout the world, throughout time, lavender (Lavandula) is a genus comprising multiple species and hybrids. Species of the genus originate from the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia, and the genus thrives in the Mediterranean climate of the North State.

The Tuscan Heights’ story started in 1999 when Lynette and Richard, farmer/gardeners at heart, were looking around the North State with possible re-location in mind. Living in Roseville at the time, Lynette is from Calaveras County originally and of strong Italian descent, with fond memories of the large family production garden she grew up helping to tend with her father. “Of five kids, I seem to have been the most gardening inclined, which I think has helped me out here!” she tells me the warm summer day I toured around the gardens. “We were about to leave and head home when Richard by chance picked a local discount classified paper and happened to read about land in Whitmore. ‘Where’s Whitmore?’, he asked me. So we drove up, I got out of the car, looked around, breathed deeply, kicked at the dirt with my foot and said - This is it. Let’s write the check.” Although the sloping land was covered in poison oak, manzanita and blackberry, Lynette knew she was home. The Fern Fire had devastated the area 12 years earlier, and Lynette could see that the soil had begun to recover and was ready for any garden she might want to grow. Neither she, the land nor Richard knew just what that garden would become.
(more…)

Some things are just meant to go together: peanut butter and jelly; Acorus gramineus minimus ‘Aureus’ and Alchemilla mollis…..what??? Well, Grassy-leaved Sweet-Flag (Acorus gramineus minimus ‘Aureus’) a short, mounding, strappy leaved plant with a gorgeous lime-green color planted next to the ruffled-edged, saucer-shaped dark green leaves and the spikes of foamy-white flowers of Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) – might just be a perfect plant combination. And finding new and great plant combinations is the goal of the new companion planting trial beds at the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens at Turtle Bay, says Lisa Endicott, Horticultural Manager at the gardens. Photo: One of the companion pairs intended by the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens is this between Carex barbarae (dun colored grassy plant at back) and Lysimachia c. ‘Atropurpurea’ (pale purple flower at bottom), however, plants (like people) have a way of forming their own companions no matter what the gardener intended. Here, the dark purple head of a Verbena adds a third and striking element to the combination.

Companion Planting as a concept is as old as mother nature – who routinely puts plants together that work well together and for the most part, they look good together, too. Companion Planting as handled by mortal gardeners is a technique used to see which plants that you might not expect to see together actually make great companions anyway. The success of their companionship is based on a variety of criteria: (Photo: Rosemary planted against a backdrop of
the dramatic Muhlenbergia lindheimeri. (more…)