Philip’s Garden Blog

The week before Christmas we woke up to the sound of soft rain. Now, most people would pull up the bedcovers and linger over a cup of coffee. That does sound wonderfully cozy, but I could not pull on my hiking boots fast enough. Armed with my coat and camera I set out into the misty rain to one of my favorite gardens in San Francisco: the Native Plant Garden at Strybing Arboretum.

Longfellow writes of “Air sweeter than wine”, and in the park this rainy morning I breathed in the heady ozone: damp, earthy and of green, growing things. I was not a completely solitary visitor to this garden as numerous house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), golden-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia atricapilla) and other small birds clustered in the shrubbery, their presence made known by droplets of water as they flew from branch to branch, and by the babel of their birdsong. I imagined they were saying “Party over here! Party over there!”

With the arrival of the winter rains in northern California, now is a time to plants seeds of all types, and especially native plant seeds. These native wildflowers are uniquely adapted to this area’s climate of cool, wet winters and long, dry summers.

A few years ago when I first visited the Native Plant Garden at Strybing I thought to myself, ” I know these plants, this place, this feeling. This is the California landscape in which I was born and that I love”. Other parts of the arboretum are quite beautiful, but the trees are too big, the lawns too expansive for me to attempt to re-create in my own garden. I felt this native garden could be a teaching laboratory for me. This last year I planted seeds representing some of the plants shown here to see how they would do in my own garden. Most of the native plants in my December garden are dormant or are just seedlings. In a few months these plants will begin to grow and flower.

 The following pictures are from a visit I took to the Native Plant Garden at Strybing in April of 2008, and assists me with plant selections when planting seeds right now.

Tufted Hairgrass, Deschampsia cespitosa, has grown luxurient in this spot by April. In the arboretum one cannot venture off the path, but imagine sitting in the springy grass with your back nestled in the hollow of a California Buckeye tree, Aesculus californica, just coming into leaf.

The yellow flowers of meadowfoam, (Limnanthes douglasii) are spectacular planted en masse, and to do that economically one must do this by seed. This plant is delightful in flower, but I have learned a few things along the way in its cultivation. Limnanthes in my expeience can be devastated by slugs and snails when tender and young. Also, It is not reliable as a bedding plant. In reviewing again how it grows naturally in its habitat, I can see now that it prefers a natural, dry watercourse. There must be enough moisture deep down for this plant to “live happy and grow”.

I think I will try this again in the descending walk between the upper and lower sections of my own garden. The natural stepping stones could be made to effect a natural watercourse, interplanted with meadowfoam. Let’s see what happens this spring!

Without a doubt, one of the easiest of California wildflowers to plant by seed is the orange flowered California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). I have found to my delight numerous species of this type that have white flowers, yellow flowers, pink and even apricot flowers! The orange is the most common, but withstands a variety of climatic conditions. It can be a perennial in the right conditions, and very happily re-seeds. This time of year I am busily transplanting Eschscholzia sp. from where I feel they should not be (like under the garden table), and to where I think they could be set off best. When planting with seed, thinning the multitude of plants that emerge will allow a few to grow to be quite vigorous and provide a delicious display of blooms for bees …and for you!

The pink flowered Clarkia sp. turned out to be one of my great dicoveries this last season. Shown here intermixed with native grasses, planted alone in my own “test kitchen” in a miniscule plot of my own garden, I was amazed by the vigorous and showy blooms we had from this seed to plant. Clarkia comes in a number of species, some double, some single flowering — all are spectacular.

There is a common misconception that one can simply throw native plant seeds willy-nilly about and expect a flowering garden. My personal experience is that this is simply not the case. Most seeds like good, well-drained amended soil, and do need to be planted in the soil to prevent being eaten by birds.  But I do love birds and I have a birdbath and feeder with good seed for them. Mother nature has many seeds to expend to birds, and the law of averages applies. If you have a limited budget, and wish to plant directly by seed with plants such as Clarkia, plant them carefully in a well prepared bed.

In this type of garden, pure color appears to float like daubs of paint on a green colored ground.

One of the California native irises, Iris longipetala flourishes in great stands in the coastal prairie.

Iris douglasiana produces many different colored flowers. It is instructive for me to see how nature arrays these plants in clumps. Where one Iris in the garden is a jewel-like specimen, a great drift of these flowers provides a spectacular display in the spring. In the background is the yellow flowering tree, Fremontodendron californicum

 Admission is free to visit the native plant garden at Strybing Arboretum http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/

Further information can be found with The California Native Plant Society: www.cnps.org

From their website:
The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the understanding and appreciation of California’s native plants and how to conserve them and their natural habitats through education, science, advocacy, horticulture and land stewardship

Many seeds and rhizomes of the plants shown here can be purchased online with Larner seeds: www.larnerseeds.com.  I hope to visit Judith Larner Lowry’s demonstation garden on the coastal bluff of Bolinas soon. That will be another garden adventure!

Honeybees and bumblebees, hummingbirds and cedar waxwings, books in the teahouse and friends on the lawn, wildflowers and poppies dancing in the sun: this was the year in my garden.

A few years ago I decided to remove a number of perennial shrubs in my San francisco garden to recreate the feeling of the meadow garden I had known as a boy. My aunt and grandmother, whom we called Joan and Grammie, lived above a cove on the wild Mendocino coast north of San Francisco. My father one morning recounted a dream he had about his sister Joan where she was growing plants on a clothesline. I can well believe that if Joan had wished to have a clothesline garden, she would have achieved spectacular results. Joan did not let drought, deer or fierce ocean winds deter her. She remarked that in a garden such as hers the law of averages applied. If some of the cuttings survived and some of the seeds sprouted and managed to live despite the odds ranged against them, then all was good. When tamping the soil over a seed or around a cutting she would say “Now live and be happy”, and I suppose this sentiment also applied to people as well, for we had many happy times.

In this section of my garden which recieves dapped light from tall tree ferns Chrysanthemum paludosum and forget me nots ( Myosotis sp.)”knit” a border with poppies and wildflowers about to emerge.
 My aunt was proof that a garden need not cost anything at all in terms of monetary outlay. All was needed was an inventive and positive approach. We collected lupine seeds up and down the coast and a treat was an expedition to our “favorite nursery”, a ghost town appropriately enough called Casper, located above the cliffs. Here plants popular in the early 20th century such as Love in a mist( Nigella sp.) and Shirley poppies (Papaver rhoeas) had naturalized with native wildflowers.

It was just these informal effects of shimmering color and loose form that I set out to create, in a small hilltop city garden, using the planting method of seeds and naturalization. By closely observing plants that have naturalized in the wild, and giving them a similar situation, the garden began to behave as a wildflower meadow. Over these last few years the wildflowers and old fashioned cultivars have self sown and created the dense and diverse tapestry we first enjoyed on those wild gardens perched above the Mendocino cliffs.

Stepping stones collected from the cove and hauled to a few gardens since create a path from the lower to the upper garden.

“The Teahouse” is too modest to live up to its name, but it takes its tradition from a “Teahouse” my twin brother Patrick and I built for my aunt. Built of driftwood hauled up from the cove, that teahouse was inaugurated by a tea ceremony where my aunt and her friends all came in costume! Joan wore her Chinese brocaded coat and jade and Patrick and I wore the vintage karate jackets, bleached for the occasion, that she used to wear while cooking. A grand time was had by all!
The current Teahouse incarnation is used every day as a place to read a book or muse in the shade. Facing Southwest, it commands a borrowed view over the city to Twin Peaks. After the above image was taken, sweet peas climbed the plum tree with a heady fragrance.

Despite the loose, naturalistic form this is still a small city garden, so foxgloves which self sow in the front of the border or Clarkia in the lawn are dug up and transplanted to where I feel they would be set off best. Recently I gathered seeds from many of the plants such as Shirley poppies to ensure a continuous bloom for future seasons.

Once the poppy seedheads have dried, vents open below the crown. I gather the dried poppies and place in a paper bag with the seedheads down. The tiny black poppy seeds exit from the vents. I then store the seeds in envelopes labeled with the name to be planted in the Spring.

I have not shown all the aspects of my garden: the area we grow berries, strawberries and herbs, the garden of symbolic cairns and rocks, the view of the city beyond.

 I appreciate every type of garden, from a terrace garden filled with poetry, gardens with rare specimens such as Pinus montezumae, an enchanted pond grotto only achieved by hard work, a celebratory victory garden, sidewalk gardens which enhance the community, gardens of art and Martians, gardens which bring joy and change the world and so many more.

And so progresses the rhythm of the seasons, where in every turn is a new activity, something new to consider and the delight of the promise to come.

Irises are a bulbous or rhyzomatous native to northern temperate regions all over the world. Their distinctive flowers consist of three inner petals or “standards” nested inside three outer petals or “falls”.  But other than these characteristics, iris flowers vary enormously in terms of size and color.  Irises are usually propagated through division.  Divide every year and the intrepid gardener can achieve similar effects!

This charming annual and California native, Collinsia heterophylla, received the name “Chinese houses” due to the fact that the whorls of flowers on long stems resemble pagodas. They are delightful viewed up close and spectacular planted en masse . These grow naturally on the margins of oak woodland  so they can take some dappled shade and add sparkle to the semi-shade border. If it likes your garden it reseeds! Plant in generous drifts for optimal effect.

Plants can be purchased from: http://www.anniesannuals.com/ and  purchase seeds from: http://www.swallowtailgardenseeds.com/annuals/chinese_houses.html

Borage (Borago officinalis ) is a native to Syria. Perhaps a Crusader brought back seeds of this plant back with him to Europe. Certainly this was a fixture in Medieval gardens, with references made of it by Culpepper and Gerard: “Those of our time do use the flowers in sallads to exhilerate and make the mind glad. There be also many things made of these used everywhere for the comfort of the heart, for the driving away of sorrow and increasing the joy of the minde. The leaves and floures of Borage put into wine make men and women glad and merry and drive away all sadnesse, dulnesse and melancholy, as Dios corides and Pliny affirme. Syrup made of the floures of Borage comforteth the heart, purgeth melancholy and quieteth the phrenticke and lunaticke person”

You do not need to be a “Lunatike person” to experience these desirable effects. An infusion of the leaves in a tall glass is an ingredient of the traditional Pimm’s cup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimm%27s_Cup

This prickly plant with its star shaped blue flowers certainly makes the bees merry, as they are quite attracted to it.

 Reason enough to grow this in the garden.  This is easy to grow from seed and can be purchased here: http://www.swallowtailgardenseeds.com/herbs/borage.html

I love shirley poppies. I had great success last year from seed and I have planted this variety by seed this year: Papaver rhoeas “mother of pearl”: in shades of grey, lilac, mauve and white.

This can be purchased from Select Seeds: http://www.selectseeds.com

Place the (very tiny) seeds in a mixtue of horticultural sand and sow in good, moist but well-drained soil. Place a light top dressing of  soil on top of the seeds. Keep the bed evenly moist throughout the days of germination (about two weeks).

The Shirley poppy was created from 1880 onwards by the Reverend William Wilks, vicar of the parish of Shirley in England.  In a corner of his garden where it adjoined arable fields, Wilks found a variant of the field poppy that had a narrow white border around the petals. By careful selection and hybridization over many years, he obtained a strain of poppies ranging in colour from white and pale lilac to pink and red, and unlike the wild poppies these had no dark blotches at the base of the petals.

Celia Thaxter writes in “An Island Garden”, 1894
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/thaxter/garden/garden.html:
“On one low bookcase are Shirley Poppies in a roseate cloud. And here let me say that the secret of keeping Poppies in the house two whole days without fading is this: they must be gathered early, before the dew has dried, in the morning. I go forth between five and six o’clock to cut them while yet their gray-green leaves are hoary with dew, taking a tall slender pitcher or bottle of water with me into the garden, and as I cut each stem dropping the flower at once into it, so that the stem is covered nearly its whole length with water; and so on till the pitcher is full. Gathered in this way, they have no opportunity to lose their freshness, indeed, the exquisite creatures hardly know they have been gathered at all.”

And for a succession of bloom:

“I am always planting Shirley Poppies somewhere! One never can have enough of them, and by putting them into the ground at intervals of a week, later and later, one can secure a succession of bloom and keep them for a much longer time, –keep indeed, their heavenly beauty to enjoy the livelong summer.”

The tall stands of Russell Hybrid lupines that are seen in English gardens
do not do well in the San Francisco bay area.  Glorious stands  of these flowers
are possible with these new varieties available at Annie’s Annuals.

This coastal variety can be gathered by seed and planted in the Fall.
We used to gather these seeds along the Mendocino coast and they were
planted in the meadow garden. This is not attractive to deer and copes
with wind and drought!