May Meadow In Fall of last year, I became tired of a field full of Filaree and embarked on planting a marvelous meadow of native wildflowers and grasses. The Filaree stickers are evil and they stick terribly to Maggie, our Corgi. Here are photos showing the progress and challenges, with the first wave of flowers blooming…
The Oaks of the Sierra foothills “I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again ‘I know that that’s a tree’, pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: ‘This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.” — Ludwig…
Recently identified, four CA natives on the property are ‘new to me.’ If you read this blog very much, you know that I’ve been compiling a sort of natural history of the California natives on the place. After ten years here and five years since the house was built, I have thought I knew all the…
OK, there are conflicting accounts, but seeing as it is my blog, I will say that the Tractor Man got too close to my container plant.
Tractor hits old bucket
Tractor Man came in after the accident full of advice for me, primarily to keep my garden further away from his driveway. No defense is needed for my part, so I will decline to show the ‘before’ photos of the driveway and how close it is to the front garden.
Deciding to divide and set some of these babies free!
Since sempervivum divides easily and this old bucket container was very crowded before, the best solution was to deconstruct the relatively squashed ‘hens and chicks’ and spread them around throughout the garden. I didn’t count how many pieces there were, but it was a lot.…
Growing California Fuchsia is like hanging out a neon sign to a certain pollinator, namely hummingbirds! It also fills a need many native plant gardeners have of maintaining a colorful garden all year and Zauschneria fits that description. The red, red-orange, pink, or white blossoms — sized just for a hummingbird’s beak — open in…
It’s California Native Plant Week and I’m profiling a different California native each day that is on my particular wish list. If you live in an area considered Mediterranean, you’ll be able to grow these, too. Today’s plant is Foothill Penstemon.
Foothill penstemon, Penstemon laetus
Maybe because blue is a favorite color, maybe because I had not grown penstemon much in the past and maybe because it is a penstemon first seen and purchased at a favorite nursery, I fell hard for Foothill penstemon, Penstemon laetus, also called Mountain blue penstemon or Gay Penstemon.
The genus, Penstemon, or Beard-tongue, is a common garden perennial, offered in so many colors and cultivars, but in California the native penstemons are nearly as varied. Penstemons normally have one large, sterile, furry stamen that pokes out to attract pollinators to the other four smaller fertile stamens (the name Penstemon means “Five Stamens”). “Laetus” means “bright” or “vivid”. …
California Native Plant Week It’s California Native Plant Week and I’m profiling a different California native each day that is on my particular wish list. If you live in an area considered Mediterranean, you’ll be able to grow these, too. Today, Wednesday, is for the ‘Shasta’ Sulfur Flower. In Hardy Californians: a woman’s life with…
It’s California Native Plant Week and I’m profiling a different California native each day that is on my particular wish list. Today is a favorite, Blue-eyed grass.
“Out of the clover & blue-eyed grass
He turned them into the river-lane;
One after another he let them pass,
Then fastened the meadow-bars again.”Driving Home the Cows
by Kate Putnam Osgood,
b. 1860
Blue Eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bellum is a primitive iris
Blue-eyed grass or Western blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, is native to California and other areas west of the Sierra Nevada. A perennial meadow wildflower related to the iris family, it hides among the other grasses until the clear blue flowers appear in April or May.…
It’s California Native Plant Week and I’m profiling a different California native each day that is on my particular wish list.
The first is Coulter’s Matilija poppy, Romneya coulteri.
The flowers of the tall and dramatic Matilija poppy, Romneya coulteri, look eggish, growing atop an 8-12 foot plant. A perennial, this grey-green leafed California native, prefers dry, disturbed soil near road cuts and along rocky streams.
Matilija poppy, 7 inches wide, Shelter Cove, California
In my area, it’s found beside the Merced River along Hwy 140 going into Yosemite, but I’ve seen it in Monterey, CA in the median strips and planting areas along the roadsides and as far north as Shelter Cove, CA. In my neighbor’s garden, it grows rampantly with sprinklers going summer long and suckers madly, multiplying in all corners of the place.
Matilija poppy stands 8 feet tall or more
This photo was taken in Shelter Cove, CA where the Matilija (Ma-TILL-a-ha) grows wildly beside a gas station parking lot. Named for the Matilija River in Ventura County, CA, it was discovered in the 1860’s by Irish botanist, Thomas Coulter, who named it after his friend, John Thomas Romney Robinson, an astronomer. Coulter, collected and studied plants in Californa and Mexico.…
Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’
Marlene Dietrich, in her strong German accent, said this in the old movie ‘Grand Hotel’, but plants say it too, in a silent deadly way. Nature has a way of giving certain plants an advantage over the rest. They contain an unfriendly substance that prevents other plants from growing underneath. They want to be alone. The…
Blue Flax, linum lewisii, a CA native, introduced in my garden
Blue Flax, linum lewisii, not native to my property, but wildish
Blue Flax in the meadow
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… or, how I discovered Buckeye ‘bulbs’. California Buckeye, Aesculus californica, is always ahead of the season,…first to leaf out in late Winter, first to lose its leaves in summer, surprisingly, making it look quite dead in Fall. Always one step ahead…and that’s how to identify it! The buckeye was the first tree that piqued my…
This is National Wildlife Week and for that, I have chosen some favorite California native plants to show, as well as show one of the areas of my garden, with a mixture of CA natives and Mediterranean plants, that is starting to show some progress. The setting The land here is sloped generally 15 degrees and the…
My idea of gardening is to discover something wild in my wood and weed around it with the utmost care until it has a chance to grow and spread. – Margaret Bourke-White Covered with the greenest and freshest grass, the open woodland is where the earliest wildflowers of Spring spread their wealth of ephemeral loveliness.…
What I am really doing in the garden
Daffodils, only thing left in beds formerly full of Mexican primrose
Sunny January weather is lasting into February, and although chilly, by mid morning, it’s possible to putter in the garden with the sun to warm me. After a few weeks gone, a walk around the garden reveals welcome progress, and that there is a lot of work to be done. My heart lifts as I see daffodils showing their grey green shoots from under the winter leaves.…
Lewis & Clark discoveries we can plant… In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson requested $2500 from Congress to send Meriwether Lewis and William Clark off on the Corps of Discovery expedition. See how their discoveries influenced the garden world of today in our foothills! Lasting from 1804 to 1806, this was the first exploration of the new…
