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…)

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…)

My deer come daily to the garden this time of year. Sigh. I thought it was a good time to repeat this interview with Karen McGrath from last year. A girl has to have hope….Enjoy.

Let’s face it - I am all about habitat and environmentally friendly and responsible gardening. I am. I love birds, bees, butterflies and the like. But, let’s also face the fact that we live in deer country. And Oh Deer! (%^&*^%$*!!), this can be a harsh reality for a gardener. What to do? Throw in the gardening towel? Set up a tree stand, get out your rifle, paint your face, put on your camo and look through your venison cookbooks while you wait for deer to venture back to your decimated garden? (Although your HOA and/or neighbors might object to this second option.) Photo: Hungry deer heading toward my garden.

Ask the question “How should I deal with ravenous deer decimating my garden?” in mixed gardening company and you will get some seriously interesting answers, ranging from little bags of human hair hung throughout your shrubs and trees, to sprinkling human urine all around your garden (again, maybe not the best if your neighbors are quite near), to bags of Ivory soap, to radios blaring soft rock or talk-shows in the garden all night, and on it goes. (more…)

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…)

Some plants are rooted more deeply into each gardener’s personal memories than others - the plants they grew up surrounded by, the plants grown by people they loved perhaps. Peonies are among those memoried plants for me. Each June when I was a child, my family’s dining room table would be graced by a Wedgewood-blue urn-shaped vase overflowing with opulent and sensual pale-pink and pink-flecked-white blooms of sweetly-scented double peonies grown by my mother. In this annual June arrangement, the rounded, ruffled, voluptuous peonies were accented by delicate little spires of red coral bell flowers. The composition of this arrangement - its size and shape and colors and scent - marks for me still the height of elegance and beauty. (more…)

Let’s face it - I am all about habitat and environmentally friendly and responsible gardening. I am. I love birds, bees, butterflies and the like. But, let’s also face the fact that we live in deer country. And Oh Deer! (%^&*^%$*!!), this can be a harsh reality for a gardener. What to do? Throw in the gardening towel? Set up a tree stand, get out your rifle, paint your face, put on your camo and look through your venison cookbooks while you wait for deer to venture back to your decimated garden? (Although your HOA and/or neighbors might object to this second option.) Photo: Hungry deer heading toward my garden.

Ask the question “How should I deal with ravenous deer decimating my garden?” in mixed gardening company and you will get some seriously interesting answers, ranging from little bags of human hair hung throughout your shrubs and trees, to sprinkling human urine all around your garden (again, maybe not the best if your neighbors are quite near), to bags of Ivory soap, to radios blaring soft rock or talk-shows in the garden all night, and on it goes. (more…)