“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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I am going on several winter weeks without rain (or snow) on my garden. I am enjoying the sun, but I am very aware of the lack of needed water as well. If you are a gardener (or living creature of any variety really), water is a fairly constant topic of interest to you – and to your garden. It is one of the small-handful of things that neither we, nor our gardens can live without and as a result its sources, supply and usage are of paramount importance. Photo: A John Whittlesey garden design featuring low-water plants - and what, in winter, I dream of my garden being come summer. Photo by John Whittlesey, 2010. (more…)

An arid summer is a fact of life for North State gardeners. It’s the dry side of our Mediterranean climate. But ever-increasing awareness around the need for water conservation and creative use and re-use of water (as well as all of our resources including time and money) is a fact of life no matter where you live or garden. Photo: The dry creek bed and its planted edges in Michael Cook’s Sense of Place and Lawnless garden in Chico. (more…)

This story begins with a shared passion. Shared passion and a collegial friendship between a man and woman, conducted from opposite coasts of North America in the 1980s.

Francis H. (or Frank as he is known) Cabot, an avid gardener in Cold Spring, New York and Ruth Bancroft, an avid gardener in Walnut Creek, California, share a profound love of gardening and plants. Despite many differences between these two gardeners in space, age, climate, hardiness zone, stylistic inclinations and gender (which as we know can lead to very different gardening tendencies), it was Frank Cabot and his wife, Anne’s late-1980s visit to Ruth Bancroft’s legendary cacti and succulent garden that inspired Cabot’s founding of the Garden Conservancy in order to help guarantee the conservation of “exceptional” gardens such as Bancroft’s. Photo: Frank Cabot, courtesy of Garden Conservancy website. (more…)

Sometimes as a garden lover you just want the sight of a beautiful garden – that sweeping view of plants and space and color and form all working together to create that ephemeral thing we call a beautiful garden. Could be a cottage garden, could be a Japanese garden, could even be a kitchen garden – doesn’t matter – it just has to be lovely to look at in your eyes. Yes, we want healthy soil, yes, we want healthy plants, yes, we want sustainable and regionally appropriate gardens, but let’s face it – what most of us gardeners are after is pure beauty. Which in gardens as in people, is much more than skin deep. Photo: A view down a long Mixed Border at Skylake Gardens in Durham. The border works together as a whole unit with colors and shapes repeated through the trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials that Christy has chosen. The most noticeable repetitions change throughout the year as different combinations of plants come to the fore, and then fade back. The rounded Carolina Cherry shrubs form the protective and aesthetic backdrop for the border.

One sure way to get that killer Cover-of-a Glossy-Garden-Magazine effecy is with a well-designed Mixed Border. A Mixed Border can be a gardener’s best friend in terms of garden design elements. Done well – it will give you pause for admiration over and over again throughout the gardening year.

Mixed Borders are perhaps a bit more difficult to implement than glossy magazine photos of good ones might suggest, but they are also not so difficult that you should not consider one in your next garden, or your next garden make-over. Where an Herbaceous Border relies almost completely on herbaceous perennials (flowering plants that die back to the ground in winter, but return again each spring) and is far and away strongest in the peak summer months, and an Annual Bedding relies on fresh annual plantings each summer, or even two or three times a summer, a Mixed Border is just that: a section of the garden which consists of a mix of all kinds of garden plants, including trees, shrubs, sub-shrubs, vines, perennials annuals and bulbs, that are designed to work together as a whole. Photo: A small planting combination in the formal White Garden and patio area just off the back of Gail Brown’s house. This garden was planned not only to be predominantly white: featuring white flowers or white foliage, but to also be especially fragrant. The structural backbone trees and shrubs include a white treed-up Wisteria, and white-edged holly leafed Osmanthus, and many, many white roses. Here white Watsonia is center and pops beside the red foliage of a Berberis.

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Several weeks ago, when I wrote “Let the show begin!,” I certainly did not intend to invite the aphids. Nevertheless, the show has begun and the aphids are here to enjoy it along with us. So are the weeds. I am not much of a believer in death-by-chemical, and so I am once again enjoying my spring morning ritual of pulling a few weeds and squashing as many aphids as I can. The aphids are mostly clustered along the stems and young flower buds of my clematis vines and rose bushes, so I am able to squash quite a group with one gesture. Soon enough the beneficial bugs (Aphid wasps, assassin bugs, lacewings, ladybugs,praying mantis, etc.) and who feed on the aphids will be along to help me in my work and until then the morning squashing is oddly satisfying. If I lose my zeal for squashing, I can always pull out the hose and give the plants a strong spraying,w which helps to dislodge a large portion of the aphids as well. Photo: Aphids very happily covering a clematis stem and bud.

To escape our spring gardening reality of aphids and weeds, (and other gardeners’ reality of late-winter snow and frost), we have spring Flower & Garden Show season followed closely by Early Summer Garden Tour season. Unlike aphids, garden shows and garden tours at their best are all about fantasy and possibility. They are - dare I say it - sexy and seductive with the garden temptations and promise they hold out to us.

In the past two weeks I have attended two good garden shows: The world-class San Francisco Flower & Garden show this year was in its new location at the San Mateo Events Center. I was duly impressed with the display gardens and duly overwhelmed with the plant and garden vendor booths (every garden thing you can think of from books to orchids to garlic presses) and next year I hope to go for two days so that I can take advantage of some of the speakers and seminars offered. The Soroptimists Home, Garden & Antique show in Chico last weekend had some nice floral competition displays and several very good plant vendors sales and demonstrations - regional plant groups including the Iris Society, the California Native Plant Society, the Orchid Society the Bonsai Society, the Audubon Society and Chico Horticultural Society were there with displays, information and even plants for sale. Several other regional Home & Garden shows and the first of the regional garden tours are coming up in the next few weeks. Photo: while my home garden does not have space for a fountain quite like this one - I so admired the design of it, I had to take a picture for my files.
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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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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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For a gardener, one of life’s peaceful pleasures is a mid-winter walk in the park (or garden as the case may be). We as North Staters are lucky to have so many outstanding parks to choose from for just such a walk. While the University of California at Davis Arboretum might seem a bit south of us, and we actually haven’t had much of a winter yet, the Davis Arboretum makes for a great walk. Photo Above: A view down the waterway that runs through the center of the UC Davis Arboretum and its gardens and collections.

Recently, Ellen Zagory, Director of Horticulture at The UC Davis Arboretum, enthusiastically walked and drove me around a good portion of the 2 mile-long, 100-acre, 73 year-old Arboretum – where we paid the most specific attention to the individual ‘Demonstration Gardens’ within the larger park.

Under the leadership of staff horticulturists Warren Roberts, Emily Griswold , Ryan Deering and Ellen, this “public garden, living museum and out-door classroom and recreation area” has undergone significant renovations and additions that are of special interest to home gardeners. Restored areas include several of the 10 distinct demonstration gardens. The largest of these renovations was completed in 2008 on The Ruth Risdon Storer Garden, famous for its “Valley-Wise” plant and plant-care principles. Photo Above: Beautiful and helpful new signs were pat of the Aboretum’s renovations completed in 2008.
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Recently I visited the McConnell Arboretum and Garden at Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding. In a North State Garden last toured the park with Lisa Endicott, Horticulture Manager, in February of this year when she talked to us about the history, layout and mission of the mature 20-acre cultivated display garden and 200-acre arboretum. This time, however, I was talking to Lisa about the damage caused to the gardens by a wildfire that started in the City of Redding and ran through the Arboretum and Gardens on August 26th.

The fire started in town and ran swiftly through untended green belts. Heavy winds of up to 30 or 40 miles an hour that day, coupled with extreme summer heat and dry conditions, allowed the the fire to rapidly burn more than 130 acres in downtown Redding. The area of the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens most affected was on the sundial side of the Sundial Bridge but across the main walkway running perpendicular to the bridge.”

Fire is devastating and destructive. The 2008 Northern California fires burned many acres and homes and negatively affected much of our region. If a silver lining can be found in the fire at the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens, it is in the fact that with the fire here also comes the opportunity to learn: to observe and draw conclusions about the nature of fire in a garden setting and how most efficiently and effectively to respond and go about with restoration. “Oh yes, the fire presents us with an opportunity for research we wouldn’t otherwise have had,” says Lisa, with something of an ironic laugh. “This is the first fire we’ve had since I’ve worked on the grounds (more than 10 years now) and we will be collecting information about various plants’ response to the event – short and long term. For instance how did the Mediterranean plants fare versus the native plants? How did the well-established fare compared to the juvenile or young plants?”

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