Reliable landscaping selections

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A berry good time of year

This time of year, the bling in our southern California landscape is often coming from seasonal decorations—the red bows, the shine from the holiday lights, the texture of evergreens, real or not, hung from doors and draped around mailboxes.  But there’s another source of (to borrow What Not to Wear‘s mantra) color, texture, pattern and shine that’s longer-lasting, and which doesn’t have to be put up or taken down at an already busy time of year:  berries.

I love berries; I love all the fruits and drupes and hips and haws that manifest themselves this time of year; it’s wonderful how much interest they add to our outdoor surroundings.  And if you plant them in your own landscape, that’s not all they’ll add; you’ll have a whole new level of color and texture in the wildlife that shows up to eat your berries.

There are many colors and varieties to consider; right now pyracantha is making its vivid display everywhere you look. IMG_1301 It’s a cast-iron plant—pay attention and you’ll see how often the really big, showy ones are on a neglected bank or are part of the edges of yards where nobody looks (or waters).  Pyracantha doesn’t care.  It just keeps on putting on its spectacular show from November till late spring or longer.  It’s also one of the shrubs Neighborhood Watch experts advise you to plant beneath windows to keep people out; it’s spiny, hence the common name “firethorn.”  The spines also mean birds love to use it for cover.

If you’d like to add one to your yard or your own neglected bank, this is a great time of year to make your selection, as the shade varies–below, a very orange variety on an untended slope near us.

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If pyracantha doesn’t send you, or you aren’t feeling the thorns, ha ha, you might like the Chinese pistache’s kind of otherworldly pink berries, plus the pistache has that amazing fall foliage:

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Thanks to Mike, our neighbor and plant expert, for the positive ID on this pistache!

Or the nandina (heavenly bamboo), one of the few fruit-bearing stalwarts that performs in shade:

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There are lots of other tough plants that will give beautiful, wildlife-attracting berries all fall and winter.  One of my favorites, the tough, totally-taken-for-granted raphiolepsis or India hawthorne, has beautiful berries; I took the picture below in a medical complex parking lot.  Notice this one’s fruiting and flowering at the same time!

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The sweetshade tree (Hymenosporum flavum)  is a no-maintenance selection that’s been overlooked in landscaping for too long and is due for a comeback.  I will wax eloquently about its fragrance in the spring, but for now, check out its fall berries!

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Another plant whose fruit is beloved by birds, and which  is almost too much fun to be real, because the berries are not one, but two colors,  is the strawberry arbutus–the arbutus unedo.  They say you can make jam from the fruit, but you can’t prove it by me.  I can, however, vouch for its toughness; the photograph is taken from a neighbor who has apparently decided to stop watering every single bit of land he owns.  A lot of his plants are now dead, but not this one.  Well, maybe that one branch, but I think it’s broken:

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Okay, I could go on . . . but I hope I’ve convinced you to notice and enjoy the berries around you—once you start looking, you’ll see they’re everywhere.  This seems to be a very berry-ful year, which is strange considering just how little rain we got last year, but perhaps the plants are putting their last-ditch survival mechanisms into play.  At any rate, enjoy the literal fruits of their labor, and consider which ones you might like to add to your own garden environment.

And let me know any favorites of yours that I’ve missed!

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Succulents–because to forgive is divine

Succulents are having a moment.  A fairly extended moment, which means garden designers writers are really reaching for ways to use them.  October’s pumpkin-as-succulent-container craze was a perfect example of this; I personally am gobsmacked that anyone has the discretionary time, especially at this time of the year, to fiddle with floral pins and sphagnum moss.  Though they do look pretty cool, and if anyone wants to make me one, I’m up for it.succulent-pumpkin-instructions-collage1But it is certainly great proof of how succulents will adapt to all kinds of creative situations; they’re a great artist’s tool.   Too, succulents will adjust to just about any container, which means if you’re the kind of person who can’t say no to a thrift-store find of a rusty Dutch oven or delicate teacup, you’re in luck.

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Now you can justify your habit because you can stuff succulent trimmings into your treasures; they’ll take root and flow down the sides, and people will admire your panache.  If you want more crafty ideas for using succulents, set yourself up a Pintrest board and prepare to be amazed.

In addition to these qualities, of course, succulents are also becoming more widely used both in landscapes and containers because of their relatively modest needs (good drainage; occasional water).  They’re really like the perfect dinner party guest—they quickly make themselves at home, they get along with just about everyone, and they’re not high maintenance.  But here’s the real reason I like succulents, and invite many to live with me:  They’re forgiving.  Really, really forgiving.  I like that in a relationship.

You see, just because I write a gardening blog doesn’t mean I can always spend a lot of time gardening.  In fact, in the whole month of October I am not sure I saw my own backyard more than twice, due to work demands and the usual shot-from-cannons pace of 21st-century life.   So succulents, which overlook my lapses of memory and failures to carry out my own good intentions, are the perfect garden partner for me.

If you haven’t had a lot of experience with succulents, let me show you what I mean.  Here’s one of my patio pots planted with aeonium “Schwarzkopf.”  Because it’s in full sun, on a stone wall and inconveniently far from a spigot, this pot often suffers from a double whammy of heat and neglect.  So when I did wander out a couple of weeks ago to see if the backyard was still there, the aeonium looked like this:  IMG_5933I was not alarmed; I just whisked by it on my way to something else.  And normally I would go right on ignoring it, because I know it can wait, and other things in the garden needed my attention, but it occurred to me that I could use this to dramatically demonstrate the Lazarus-like qualities of succulents.  So I took the picture above, and then went and got the dog’s water bucket.  I dumped the water over the pot, and came back the next day.

IMG_6425As Emeril says, “Bam!”

I don’t mean to suggest that succulents can be ignored with no consequences.  Drought and heat will alter their appearance.  But here’s the thing—I can live with that.  Sometimes the stressed look is actually cooler than the healthy look.  As soon as they’re watered again, either by rainfall (what does that look like again?  I’ve forgotten) or via the occasional dog bowl, all is forgiven.  The past is forgotten, and you’re moving forward.  And you can do this over and over again, and the succulent will never hold a grudge.  If only all relationships were so elastic.

So if your life includes long stretches of chaos, intense activity, or any other distractions which divert you from your gardening, consider succulents.  Adaptable, self-sufficient, easy to ignore, and always forgiving—they’re the perfect partner in a gardening relationship.

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Consider the bottlebrush

Bottlebrush blossom

An important insight early in my re-education in “plants we take for granted” came from Beverley Nichols, an English writer whose works have recently been revived by Timber Press.  Nichols was a man of his age (early 20th century), complaining about his manservant lying a-bed too late of a morning, employing gardeners to tend his conservatory, and so on.  He is frightfully opinionated–and completely addictive.  You won’t read him for garden advice–at least unless you have an English estate–but I do recommend you read him for his take on people, cats, and plants, and his use of the King’s English.

Now that I’m done with that plug for his estate, let me move on to the moment of revelation.  Our neighborhood has a number of old bottlebrushes (callistemon) stuck here and there in the landscape.  Untended, unwatered, they’re mostly gnarled and scrubby, and if I noticed them at all, I mostly noticed how untidy they were.  And then one day my husband was reading Nichols’ Garden Open Tomorrow, and read out loud (as he is wont to do even though he can clearly see I’M READING, TOO) the author’s description of seeing a bottlebrush for the first time in Kew Gardens’ Australian greenhouse:  “It is a flamboyant, extravagant, and altogether unlikely creation; the arrogant scarlet flowers are like fantasies of spun glass tied to the branches by a modern decorator.”

On my next walk I stopped to consider the bottlebrush that hung over the sidewalk, asking for nothing—not water, not fertilizer; maybe only some attention—and decided, by God, that was an accurate description.  It was truly spectacular.  And we already had a previously-unappreciated one on our bank, surrounded by ivy.  So we cleared the ivy, and planted three more.  The bees and hummingbirds could not be happier, and when the sun shines on the blossoms, they do indeed look like spun glass.  And look at it (above) after a rain!  It looks like a Chihuly piece!

So in your plant selection, do consider the bottlebrush.  They attract hummingbirds and bees, come in a number of cultivars to fit a variety of situations, from patio tree to hedge to foundation plantings; Callistemon viminalis, the weeping bottlebrush, can stand in for people nostalgic for the weeping willows of their youth, and the smaller-sized Callistemon “Little John“ is a wonderful compact, blue-green shrub that, in Bob Perry’s words, is “highly tolerant of heat, aridity, and cold termperatures below 20 degrees.”  Can’t get much more versatile than that.