Category Archives: my garden

bye-bye birdie

July 12, 2009 James 4 Comments

Yesterday’s big garden task was to take out a big bird of paradise that we’d planted twenty years ago.

Left: The “before”…

…and the “after”…

The plant had some good things to recommend it: big splashy flowers (if you’re into that sort of thing), a robust plant that needs minimal maintenance, and a requirement for no additional watering beyond what it gets from rainfall here near the coast.

But one bad trait that you don’t often see discussed is that over time the roots can do damage to nearby hardscape. Ours had lifted the brick patio nearby by over an inch over just the past year.

John’s first inspiration was to use the hedge trimmers. The idea was that they’d make quick work of the bird, cutting through the lower stalks as if they were butter, and we’d be done in a couple minutes. They sort of worked, but had a hard time cutting through the fibrous stalks. It might take an hour, not two minutes.

Since it was such slow going I decided that doing things manually, with the trusty hand pruners, would work at least as well and not introduce the issue of losing a finger or two to the blades.

The local landfill has a program where they’ll accept greens waste without charge, chop it to bits, process it into mulch or compost, and sell it for next to nothing. But certain fibrous plant waste is exempted: things like palms, bananas, bamboo and a few other plants…including bird of paradise. So, anything on the list of forbiddens has to be dumped as regular urban waste.

I’m not up on dump fees around the country, but our little expedition cost $34, about the same as a trip to the zoo ($35 per adult) and a deal compared to a day at Sea World ($55-65). And with no food stands selling deep-fried munchies, it was probably a lot less fattening.

While at the dump, it was a chance to see some of the rare local riparian habitat whizz by the window at 35 mph…

…and some blooming buckwheats. It’s not quite a native plant garden, but the edges of the landfill shield some protected and uncommon species.

In fact, immediately to the east, is Miramar Mounds National Natural Landmark, a piece of land designated to be of special interest in a program administered by the National Park Service. The Landmark comes to life during the winter rains, with vernal pools suddenly dotting mesa tops. The federally endangered San Diego mesa mint breaks into bloom, and the ground around the pools comes alive with toads the size of your thumbnail and Pacific chorus frogs…or so I’ve heard. Although I’ve visited vernal pools before, I’ve never made it to Miramar Mounds proper. Bounded by freeways, the dump, and part of the adjacent military base, access is restricted. It’s definitely on my list of places in town I’d love to visit.

gardening, landscape design, my garden

background check

July 10, 2009 James 10 Comments

My last post has me thinking more about the backgrounds that plants grow against.

I was getting excited that the San Miguel Island buckwheats(Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) that I’d grown from seed were coming in to bloom. But standing back from them, I realized that the place where I’d transplanted them–a raised bed with a red brick retaining wall behind it–might not have been the best place for the plants.

The dusky pink flowers blend so well with the reddish colors of the brick that they practically vanish. And the busy gridded background of the brick and weeping mortar draws so much attention that anything in front of the wall just gets ignored.

What would it look like against a more neutral backbround? I wondered. And so I went to grab a piece of white matboard and positioned it behind the plants.

Wow. Big difference. It’s suddenly easier to make out the shapes of the umbels of flowers, and you can begin to appreciate the subtle color of the flowers.

Up close, the white background almost made the plant look like a botanical illustration.

The low contrast against the background didn’t prevent this bug from finding the buckwheat. Clearly, a bug’s eyes and brain don’t work the same way our human ones do.

Once these plants grow in more and achieve some more height they should stand a better chance of holding their own against the background of busy brickwork. But the plants will never “pop” against the wall in the same way they’d show against a simpler, more neutral background. So, in the “note to self” category, I’ll be paying more attention to contrasts between the plant and the hardscape around it.

gardening, my garden

my swamp creatures

July 2, 2009 James 11 Comments

Here are some of the pitcher plants growing in my guilty pleasure bog garden, a small concrete container in which I have more than a half dozen of these sarracenias and as many sundews. The guilty pleasure part of this comes in when you consider that most of California is now in its third year of drought, and when you realize that none of the plants in the bog garden likes to dry out. And preferably they’d like to have their toes, though not all their roots, in standing water.

The genus Sarracenia is native mostly to wet zones in the Eastern and Southern United States (with one species into Canada). The ones I’ve tried are proving to be pretty easy to grow as long as they get sunlight and good-quality water. (I’ve probably mentioned before how mine get reverse osmosis water from the local water cafe instead of the hyperchlorinated bong water that comes out of most Southern California spigots. So far, providing good water has been the most difficult part of growing these plants.)

These plants, left to right, top to bottom:

Sarracenia rubra
S. leucophylla ‘Tarnok’
S. x Dixie Lace
S. alata
S. minor

There’s also a closely related swamp thing that’s native to Northern California and Oregon. That plant, Darlingtonia californica, however, is as difficult to grow in most locations as it is stunning. If your can’t provide summer night temperatures below 55 degrees, don’t bother with it. You’ll kill it. I killed mine. Not all native plants makes sense to grow if they’re not native to your environment! (If you really must do what I did and not as I say, you could try constructing a special darlingtonia box like they do in Japan to lower temperatures around the plant.)

So what’s the water use? During the hottest months the little bog survives on three to four 5-gallon servings a month of water. That totals around 15-20 gallons for a space that’s about six or seven square feet, or about 2.1 to 3.3 gallons per square foot. I was a little shocked when I compared this number to what one source says it takes to maintain a typical lawn over the summer here in the coastal zone: 2.6-3.6 gallons per square foot.

Like, I can have a tiny little swamp garden for about the same amount of water it takes to support an equivalent spot of average lawn? And when you consider that most lawns are larger than six or seven square feet, I suddenly feel a little less guilty about my little guilty pleasure. And it made me look at lawns differently, that they’re just green swamps full of grass. I think I’d rather have my little bog garden.

(Full disclosure: We still do have a small patch of grass in the backyard which gets greened up for the big Fourth-of-July party and then neglected most of the rest of the year. It helps to have heavy afternoon shade like we do to minimize how much water a lawn requires. But when the guy who keeps it mowed and edged won’t do it any more (you know who you are), the lawn is history…)

gardening, my garden

pleasures of hand-watering

June 27, 2009 James 9 Comments

It’s not a proper graywater system, but we’ve gotten used to showering with a bucket below us, both to catch the water before it gets warm enough to use and to catch whatever water splashes into the bucket. We still lose usable water down the drain, but we’re putting what we save to good use in the garden.

With only a small part of the yard on automatic watering, I’ve always done a lot of watering by hand. Now I’ve been doing it a lot more using reclaimed water.

Most of it’s been spot-watering. Not everything in the garden needs the same amount of water, so why not water only the things that need water? This is a tiny buckwheat seedling I’ve been encouraging to get established.

It’s a great way to get to know your plants better. At the same time you learn a lot about the soil they’re growing in, with some areas of the yard accepting a lot of water, while others just pool up and drain slowly.

Another water-conserving thing I’ve been doing is to let the facial fuzz go a few more days than I used to–Good thing facial hair is in these days. More fuzz = less water needed to take it off. (Don’t let the color of the hair get you off-subject. Remember that I’m talking about graywater, not gray hair…)

But back to graywater: One concern I have with using water from the shower is what happens when bath products get dumped in the garden. I’m working on finding out more, but in the meantime I’m only watering the ornamentals with the graywater. A local blog Linda turned me on to, Angel with Dirty Finger Nails, did an introduction to the subject. The post made some recommendations for laundry detergents and linked to a list of a few things to avoid.

Sure, watering by hand is more labor-intensive than turning on the sprinklers. But I think I’ve mentioned it before that I count myself among the gardeners who enjoy gardening, not just gardens. Watering by hand is one of those great pleasures that only gardeners like us will understand.

gardening, my garden

deformity or biological wonder?

June 22, 2009 James 3 Comments

There are some things I just don’t get. Waffles topped with fried chicken and syrup, for one thing. Crested succulents, another.

A trip to a cactus show or nursery site for succulents will likely turn up a section devoted to plants with crested (or “cristate”) and monstrose growths. Generally I find that the shapes of plants are interesting enough, and I usually don’t go gaga over some genetic oddball.

But the oddball cresting behavior found its way to the garden anyway. This is a young Euphorbia lambii in the back yard, one of four I have growing in pots.

Here’s a closeup…

And here’s a view from the top…

The typical habit for this plant is to produce branches that are distributed around its growing tip, something that you can see in this normal lambii nearby. With the crested mutation, the apical meristem, the point where new growth emerges, has changed from a point to a line. So instead of a cylindrical stem with branches all around, you get a stem that grows flat, like a cobra’s hood, with new growths distributed along that line.

From what research I’ve done it isn’t apparent what causes this particular mutation. The genus Euphorbia, however, is one of those where you could encounter it fairly commonly. (If there’s anything in the plant’s environment that caused it, I wonder if might be drought stress. Of the four plants, this one received the least amount of water. A couple times it came close to defoliating. All the others are growing normally.)

I’ll admit that the crested growth interesting. Maybe I’ll learn to love it. But I’m not there yet…

gardening, my garden

from spring into summer

June 14, 2009 James 14 Comments

The spring orgy of flowers is winding down. Some spring bulbs flashed for just a few days and were gone. But it didn’t really matter because they were replaced by something else interesting.

Summer’s flowers seem to come at a more measured pace. But for me it’s a different sort of pleasure, letting me focus on more subtle things like plant forms, leaf colors and textures.

Here’s some of what’s still blooming from spring, along with the beginnings of plants that will accompany me through the summer months.

The flowers above, left to right, top to bottom:

1: Blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella).
2: Lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus–I have to look up the spelling of this species every time).
3: Deerweed (Lotus scoparius) You might confuse this California native for one of the invasive brooms. It’ll drop most of its leaves to survive the summer drought, but the delicate wands of branches stay attractive–at least to my eyes.
4. St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum)–a buckwheat from the California Channel Islands and coastal regions. This is a young plant, but its umbels are already huge–the largest in this photo is two feet across.
5. Santa Cruz Island buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens)–another California buckwheat.
6. This is a Crinum that came with the house. It might be C. powellii.
7. Verbena bonariensis–a flower that’s exactly the same color as the verbena in the final picture in this post, though their plant and flower forms are totally different.
8. Clarkia williamsonii.
9. Same as 6.
10. Brodiaea species, one that I lost my records for–maybe B. elegans (anybody know this one?).
11. Butterfly bush (Clerodendrum myricoides ‘Ugandense’)–In the same family as mints and sages, this has square stems and a delicate scent to the leaves and stems. It enjoys water but doesn’t get much of it and still looks presentable.
12. Verbena lilacina, a tough species from the Isla de Cedros, off the coast of Baja. At first glance it looks like the lavender lantana many people around here grow, but the leaves are totally different. Here it’s planted alongside some succulents with red and blue-gray leaves.

Thanks again to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

art, gardening, my garden, photography

art from the garden

June 12, 2009 James 4 Comments

I started this blog because I was feeling that I was entering a bit of an imposed artistic hiatus. Kodak had stopped producing the specialized film I used for most of my photography, and I’d bought the last of the old stock of it that people had to sell on eBay.

I enjoy gardening at least as much as art-making. Also, the idea of a garden plays with the same kinds of ideas that I was interested in when I did my art, stuff like the edges between human culture and nature, and the environmental costs of human habitation. The idea of a garden blog seemed like it could keep me thinking about some ideas that interested me. And it might push the some of the same creative buttons that photography did.

(Left: James SOE NYUN. Calla Lily Dissection II, 1997. Pigment print, ca. 13 x 19 inches.)

Maybe the blog has functioned too well to keep me out of the studio. But I’ve been reprinting at some of the garden-based photography I did in the past and seeing how it might point in new directions.

Recently I was invited to show of my older work at a small gallery in Escondido, in northern San Diego County. The show is Eyesight is Insight / Art + Science, and is curated by Ruth West and Sarach Attwood. The show opened yesterday, and remains up through July 3 at the Escondido Arts Partnership Municipal Gallery. These are a couple of the works in the show, images from my Destructive Testing Series, a small group of works where I use plant materials from the garden in little science experiments.

(Left: James SOE NYUN. Fig Leaf Flammability Test 6b, 2000. Pigment print, ca. 19 x 15 3/4 inches.)

In addition to reprinting some fo the older work, I’ve actually been doing a little bit of work looking at gardening. I’ll share some of it here once I get to something I’m willing to show the world.

In the meantime, I’m happy to share some of this older work. Stop by the show if you’re in the headed for Escondido!

gardening, landscape design, my garden

reclaimed from concrete

June 9, 2009 James 7 Comments

Two posts ago I mentioned the Crack Garden, a winner in this year’s ASLA awards program that made me think in a new way about dealing with too much concrete. Ryan over at Dry Stone Garden has some different thoughts on the project that are worth a read.

And as long as we’re talking about reclaiming space from what used to be paved over, let me show you a few shots of my front porch. (Notice how fanatically I staged the space for these photos, including coiling the leaky old hose off in the corner. That’s a level of creativity you never see in the garden design mags.)

The area was all concrete until two, three years ago. This was from the years when a lot of concrete was poured with strips of wood to break the expanse of concrete into neat rectangles. Nice idea, but over the years the wood rots. The concrete shifts.

So I dug out all the decaying wood with a chisel. Next John and I spent a couple hours with a sledgehammer removing some of the big squares of concrete, and then I poured black-pigmented cement to grout between some of the slabs.

I probably didn’t do enough to prepare the ground. Why spend time doing that when there’s bare dirt where you can put plants? So in went some blue fescue in a grid pattern. (Fortunately a few of the plants died, breaking up what would be a cliche of little blue fescues all lined up neatly in their rows.) And then a plant of red shisu for contrast, two standing stones, three stepping stones, a potted euphorbia, gravel mulch and the coiled garden hose to complete the picture. (The shisu is an herb that dies back every year, but it reseeds like crazy, letting you decide where you want some dark red foliage this year.)

Okay, ASLA. I’m ready for my Honor Award.

gardening, my garden

the $128 dollar apricot

June 8, 2009 James 4 Comments

Many of you are familiar with William Alexander’s book, The $64 tomato. In its pages he installs thousands of square feet of new garden space and then does the unthinkable–adding up how much it all cost him, down to how much it cost him for that Brandywine tomato he was holding in his hand. (Sixty-four dollars per tomato, as you might guess from the book’s title.)

Pricey, for sure, but in the end he comes to a conclusion about gardening: “It’s not about what it actually costs to eat this piece of fruit. It’s really about lifestyle.”

One of my little lifestyle indulges is apricots. I love apricots. John loves apricots. But the apricot-shaped objects you get in the stores around here have nothing to do with what the fruit should taste like.

It seemed like a no-brainer: We could plant a tree of our own. We could pick the fruit when it was ripe, not when it was deemed at the proper stage for picking and transport by some industrial fruit-growing outfit hundreds of miles away.

The real no-brain part of this adventure kicked in after we actually put the tree in the ground. Coastal San Diego has winters that tend to be too mild for apricots to set fruit, even if you select the low-chill varieties. The tree always blooms, usually just a few cluster of flowers on random stems distributed around the tree. I see bees visiting the flowers. I’ve even tried my hand at pollinating them myself. But those flowers don’t usually turn into fruit. If we’d really been thinking we wouldn’t have bothered trying to grow one in the first place.

Last year was the best in the over fifteen years the tree has been in the ground, when the tree set almost twenty fruits. Out of those we probably got something like eight or nine before the critters got to them.

This year we’re down to one fruit, and it still hasn’t gotten to the point where we can pick it. It’s down to the final few days, and it’ll be a race against the critters.

Why do we pursue this perverse lifestyle, chasing the occasional apricot? In the years when we get fruit it’s always a revelation: The scent that prepares you for the first bite of fruit. The delicate balance of tartness and sweetness. The absolutely perfect sensation of all the things a good apricot should be.

But as I think about things like sustainability and what’s the best use of soil in a garden where cosmological space seems to be contracting, this indulgence is getting harder to justify. A new plum tree twenty feet away has already borne two fruits, and a fig nearby is suddenly covered with tiny figs. There are better choices out there than trying to make an apricot thrive where it wasn’t designed to grow.

At the top of the list for an apricot replacement next fall is the loquat. Delicious fruits. Low water needs. Ornamental evergreen tree, with a manageable final size. And the tree actually bears well in this climate.

(Image: Oldie, from the Wikimedia Commons, made available under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

gardening, my garden

morning drizzle

May 31, 2009 James 6 Comments

This morning the runners in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon are taking to the streets down the hill from me. It’s overcast and cool enough, for sure. But somehow I’m not feeling motivated to run 26 miles…

The locals have a name for these two months when the morning cloud cover blots out the sun: May gray and June gloom. It makes for a slow easing into summer, good running weather, and prolongs the season when you can hope to put plants in the ground and not have to worry too much about keeping them watered.

Yesterday was extra-cool, and the thick marine layer of clouds made for a heavy drizzle most of the day. For me the sight of raindrops on plants is rare enough that I grabbed the camera.

Are photos of raindrops and dewdrops on plants and flowers cliches? Dunno. Even if they are, I think there’s something so satisfying about them that people need to keep taking them.

Below are all the photos I took in smaller gallery format. Going left to right: images 1-4, flowers of sacred datura, Datura wrightii; 5-6, leaves on tower of jewels, Echium wildpretii; 7, spiderweb on California fuchsia, Epilobium canum ‘Catalina’; 8, flowers of deerweed, Lotus scoparius.

[ Lost in the Landscape ]

Category Archives: my garden

bye-bye birdie

background check

my swamp creatures

pleasures of hand-watering

deformity or biological wonder?

from spring into summer

art from the garden

reclaimed from concrete

the $128 dollar apricot

morning drizzle

an artist loosed in a garden