“For all our grumbling about wasteful and purposeless government spending, I look at this project and think to myself: ‘Now this is money well spent,’” said Emily Alma, co-owner with five others since 1987 of Riparia, an organic 12-acre farm in southwest Chico. She was referring to Riparia’s partnering with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. Photo: One of Fred Stolp’s established hedgerows running along a young walnut orchard.

Since late 2009, Riparia, with the help and under the guidance of the NRCS, has incorporated several conservation programs into the care of their land, including cover-cropping, and the planting and tending of riparian-forest buffer zones, native bunch grass cover areas, wildlife habitat management areas and hedgerows. Riparia is actively worked by two separate farmers who lease land from the Riparia partnership and all involved help to implement these conservation programs throughout the farm. The NRCS, according to their website www.nrcs.usda.gov, works to help agricultural producers – farmers and ranchers - conserve and improve their land’s natural resources including “soil, water, air, plants, and animals,” while also helping them to achieve their “aspirations” of making a living. The NRCS’s collaborations with agricultural landowners strive to make life better for us all - from the smallest of flowering plants to the widest expanse of orchard - from the smallest of insects to the largest of mammals - including us humans. Photo: Big-leaf maple seed clusters in one of Stolp’s hedgerows. (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…)

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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