Varian Ranch Finale!

A few weeks I posted an update as work progressed on a garden I designed last summer: Varian Ranch.  Well today was the last day of work on the garden so I stopped by to see how it turned out.

Here is that mediterranean border all planted and mulched.

Look how nice the new decomposed granite path looks!  Hmm…maybe I want one of these in my yard.

As we move down the path toward the front entrance the plants change from mediterranean style to natives.

Now that the mulch is down those sycamores stand out even more!

I thought this was Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’ but Gabe says it is ‘Concha’.  It was originally supposed to be C. ‘Joyce Coulter’.  One of the problems with installing a garden eight months after you design it is some of the plants you specced are no longer available so you have to adapt.  Which is fine but when the project is finished I am always confused as to what we ended up finally using.  C. ‘Dark Star’ has darker flowers and foliage.

A group of four Ribes sanguineum ‘King Edward VII’ flank the front door.  They were just bare twigs a week and a half ago when they were planted but they suddenly burst into bloom.

I wanted running water in the garden to attract more birds so we got this little fountain.

Over the winter a large oak died in the backyard and really opened up the view and the space.  The back garden around the lawn needed some sprucing up so I drew up a quick plan.  Some plants were removed, some were divided, some were spread out, and of course we added a bunch of new ones to compliment the original design.  I’ve added lavender to replace some old ones, Santolina chamaecyparissus ‘Grey Tuft’, Verbena bonariensis and V. lilacina, Geum ‘Mango Lassi’, Gaillardia ‘Oranges & Lemons’, Cistus, and Halimium to name a few.

Four raised beds for vegetables were also added as well as some fruit trees.

One last view of those Sycamores and my work here is complete!  I look forward to visiting in six months or a year to see how the garden has filled in.

 

Interview with a Designer

My friend Maggie (Gabe’s wife and the “adminiscaper” at Gardens by Gabriel) interviewed me for their blog about my garden design techniques.

Check it out here: Interview with a Designer

 

Varian Ranch

So on Thursday I went to place plants for a design I did.  This was definitely a cool one and quite important to me.  Even though the plants are only going in now, in March, I actually designed the garden last July. It was the very first design I did for Gardens by Gabriel that was given the go ahead by the clients to be installed.  It got pushed back so far due to Gabe’s busy workload, some changes I made to the original design, and some other work the clients needed to have done.

The home is in the Edna Valley wine region that borders San Luis Obispo and Arroyo Grande in a beautiful gated cattle ranch.

There are just cows wandering around all over the place.  It is kind of crazy for a city boy like me.

This little guy was hanging out right next to the house as I was placing plants.  Probably contemplating walking in and eating some of them.  A very real threat to this garden!

You may remember I posted this picture last month.  This was how part of the yard looked last July.  That is a very overgrown and poorly pruned Correa.  The house had been professionally landscaped over twenty years earlier but the more interesting plants had died out and been over taken by Correa and rosemary which had then been pruned into billowing cloud shapes!

Last month most of the plants were removed leaving behind some beautiful live oaks.  The planting had to be wait for the mason to put in new paths near the front entrance and then dry rot was discovered on the large front porch so the planting was delayed while that was all ripped out and replaced.

I finally got the call that we were ready to plant on Thursday!  This part of the garden between the driveway and the front entrance I decided to carry on the mediterranean theme that the other side of the driveway and the backyard already had.  So between these two oaks are lots of lavenders, Artemisias, Salvias, and yarrows.  The large specimens in these beds are a Caesaplinia mexicana, Berberis nevinii, and Olea europaea ‘Montrose’.

One of the tricky things about designing this garden was that I was still living in West Hollywood and never got to meet the clients.  So I didn’t have a very clear picture of what type of garden they might want. I knew that it certainly wasn’t this.  I picked up on queues from exploring their property.  They had multiple birdfeeders, several dogs in the backyard, and an outdoor tortoise pen!  I pressed my nose up against the glass on the front door to peek inside and saw some Audubon prints hanging on the walls.  Designing a garden is much easier if you have some sort of theme so for the front yard I decided on creating a native plant garden featuring wildlife attracting plants.  The design was well received but I did have to make some changes to some of the large plants (Pacific wax myrtle and toyon) .  Even though they would have been great for attracting birds they were deemed too tall and would eventually block the beautiful views.

Part of the design was this path between the driveway and front yard.  As you can see it was mostly obscured!

The hedges were removed and the oak was gracefully limbed up a bit to reveal the path.  The Correa here was replaced with Salvia spathacea and Ribes speciosum with some Muhlenbergia and Sesleria to round out the design.

One of the reasons I didn’t just continue the mediterranean theme was that the entrance way was dominated by two large western sycamores. I felt that switching to natives would make more sense with the sycamores and oaks.

Native plants certainly make more sense here than the crazy hedges of rosemary all over the place.

The sycamores also received some artful pruning, the lawn beneath them was removed, and a new path was created as well as a small sitting area to enjoy the view of the beautiful hills and wandering cattle.

The new sitting area complete and waiting for plants.

I love the way they worked the huge boulders right into the path.

Did I mention the bluebirds?  Finally I got pictures!  They found our cars to be the perfect height to scan the fields.

They seemed to love perching on the windows and gazing at their reflections.  They enjoyed it quite a bit as you can tell by all the poop on Gabe’s truck!

I saw my very first western titmouse and a pair of magpies too!  On my way home I stopped at the farm supply store and finally picked up a bird feeder.

A new “lawn” was created in place of the old water thirsty one.  Three different species of Muhlenbergia wind through the space like a ribbon.  At the base of each boulder are Seselarias, Aquilegias, Eriogonums, and Salvias.  Around the edges of the property are several different cultivars of manzanita and some Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’ (hopefully none of which will be pruned into cloud shapes!).  Even though it is not native we also included some Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Blush’ for the contrast in foliage color. Flanking the front entrance are two pairs of Ribes sanguineum ‘King Edward VII’.

Hopefully once they fill in the new plants will accentuate the beautiful sycamores and not dominate the scene like the huge rosemary hedges did.  You can see the brand new front porch in the back still waiting for a handrail.

Western sycamore – Platanus racemosa

The clients also lost a large oak in the backyard recently created a large new sunny space. So a few more projects are being worked on including expanding the existing perennial garden, adding a mini orchard, adding four raised beds for a vegetable garden and a play set for their grandchildren.

I went back to inventory the existing perennials to see what could be salvaged and what should be added and when I sat down four very affectionate dogs jumped all over me!  This is Maya and Hudson.

And this tortoise had been let out of his pen for a bit of exercise on the lawn.

And this is one of the many scenic view of the hills around the property.

As my first successful design this is definitely another very meaningful garden to me.  Hopefully I’ll be able to go back and have a look when everything has grown in to see if my vision for the garden works the way I imagined it would.

 

Anholm House Restoration: Part Two

As I mentioned in Part One I visited Anholm House the other day and rather than just do a post on the plants I wanted to give you a little background.  Now that we’ve learned a little about the design process and the house itself you’ll get to see how the plants have grown and filled in the space.  Be warned, if you are a succulent lover not living on the California coast you may suffer a bit of zonal envy after seeing some of these photos!

As mentioned in the first post the plants were chosen by Gabriel Frank of Gardens by Gabriel and Nick Wilkinson of Grow Nursery.

First the lovely little hell strip.  It is fairly simple with some Dudleya, Carex, and the charming Silene uniflora ‘Druett’s Variegated’.

Silene uniflora ‘Druett’s Varigated’ – Pure white flowers on a low matt of cream variegated foliage.

A little colony of Banksia blechnifolia lives in the mulch under the shade of a large tree.

Banksia blechnifolia – Of all the unusual plants of the family Proteaceae I think Banksia are perhaps the strangest.

As Gabe mentioned they decided to create a large berm in the front yard rather than wall in the space.

This pergola archway just went in recently.  Even though the main restoration was completed over a year ago new garden projects are ongoing.

Euphorbia myrsinites coming into bloom in the front yard.

Anemanthele lessoniana (syn. Stipa arundinancea) is a beautiful grass from New Zealand that glows in the right light.  Unfortunately it can be a bit tricky.  It is short lived and sometimes plants just drop dead for no reason even though another one is thriving just a few feet away. Luckily this one is looking particularly amazing right now.

The driveway leads to a detached garage in the backyard and features a strip of Carex and a circular parking space in front of the garage. (I cheated a little.  This picture was taken last September.  The Carex was recently cut back so I didn’t take a picture of it the other day). The hill in the background is Cerro San Luis Obispo (aka Madonna Peak).

As you reach the backyard you are greeted by this pair of Agave celsii var. albicans ‘UCB’.

I posted some pictures of the houses backyard in part one but now you can see how things are filling in.  The summer blooming Gaillardia and Calylophus are resting and the succulents take over the show. Silver leaved Dymondia margaretae creeps along between the edge of the mulch and the flagstone path.

I’m amazed at how much these Agave ‘Blue Flame’ have grown since the first time I saw them a little over a year ago.

Cordyline ‘Renagade’ – If you want to be snooty you can pronounce Cordyline the correct way.  Kor – DILL – in – ee.  Remember in botanical Latin the accent goes on the antepenultimate syllable and the “e” at the end of words is its own syllable and is usually pronounced as a long E.

One of the features of the backyard is this cute little school-house red guest room.

Yucca rostrata ‘Sapphire Blue’

Otatea accuminata var. aztecorum and Puya berteroniana.  The Puya is one that I bought as a present for Gabe on a trip to Annie’s Annuals about three years ago. So even though I wasn’t involved in the design of this garden a little piece of me made it in anyway!

The large central island bed in the middle of the backyard with the fire pit and seating over on the left hand side and the detached garage in the background.

The back porch of the house decorated with a palm, Agave paryii, and a few Echeveria ‘Zorro’.

Echeveria subrigida in a bed of blue Senecio.

An impressive Agave speciosa in the center bed.

You have to love its inflorescence.  Maroon buds fade to cream flowers with green stripes as they open and reveal stamens made up of long deep red filaments topped with bright yellow-orange anthers. Craziness!

The Agaves in this garden are planted in pairs like these stunning Agave vilmoriana ‘Stained Glass’.

Another view of the central island bed.

Yucca ‘Bright Star’

Even if a garden isn’t on acres and acres of land Gabe likes to squeeze in a mini orchard in his designs.

Aloe striata

Next to the fire pit is this nice specimen of Agave ‘Mr. Ripple’ with variegated Cordyline ‘Torbay Dazzler’ behind it.

I think that is more than enough plants for one post. I don’t want anyone to overdose!

I hope you enjoyed this two-part tour of one of Gabe’s great gardens.  Hopefully in the next year some of my own designs will have filled in as impressively and I can share them with you.

 

 

 

 

 

Anholm House Restoration: Part One

So the other day I paid a visit to San Luis Obispo to one the projects Gabe did before I came on board with Gardens by Gabriel.  I know the garden as the “Chorro House”, for the street that it is on, but the correct name is the Anholm House. It is part of a historic home restoration that Gabe was part of and is one of his largest projects to date.  I took some photos of many of the beautiful plants in the garden but I thought it would be fun to get some of the back story of how the design came about and what it was like for Gabe to involved in such a large-scale restoration.

So the following will be a sort of informal “interview” style with my basic questions and Gabe’s answers and some photos that he took before the project started and shortly after the project was completed.  Part two will be my post on what the garden looks like now and photos of some of the impressive succulents and other plants in the garden.

So tell me about 375 Chorro Street.  What was it like designing and installing a garden along side such a huge renovation?

The historical name is the Anholm house and the house is part of a historical tract named after the owner, Chris Anholm. The house was moved a couple hundred yards down the street in 1931 to its present location. The house underwent a full historical restoration in 2009 along with the garden. Its attained a Mills Act status for the design and authenticity of restoring a period house. Gregg Wynn was the architect, and Ryk Kluver out of Cayucos did the full home restoration.

The GBG crew were actually the the first ones in on the project, and the last ones to leave. Ryk was an amazing contractor to collaborate with especially on a large project. He’s an artist and a craftsman, so great care was put into the quality of materials, and details of construction. He was very clear about the coordinated efforts and timelines of when we could do work, and how details changed throughout the process. The garden was installed in stages as permitted through a year and half period, starting with the back.

The front facade of the Anholm House at the start of the project.

The front facade when the project was completed.

The landscape underwent a dramatic transformation.  What was the overall plan for the new garden?

 The site was very much a grandma style garden with sweet peas, roses, wisteria, daffodils. We preserved noteworthy specimens of Trumpet vine, Wisteria, Camelias and Citrus to keep the great bones of the garden. Besides those everything else was removed, including a large concrete pool, a Santa Maria style barbecue, and over twenty pallets of red brick (they weren’t nice old brick unfortunately).

The backyard before work began.

The design intent was to create an ecological garden that was quintessentially Californian. This meant that the design could be somewhat eclectic, and represent the crossover influence of the mediterranean climates in a california style.  The house was bold, so the garden needed to have impact and pair with the clean lines of the architecture. Being seated on busy Chorro street, the house needed a noise and visual buffer so instead of doing large, expensive, masonry walls we decided to build up and create some dynamic soil berming to add height and a great volume of good soil to the heavy adobe clay. We used forty yards of soil in the front yard alone, and some areas of the berming are around three feet off the original grade.

The completed backyard including the freestanding garage to the left and the little red guest house.

Tell me a bit about the gardens hardscaping. 

We wanted to create a natural way of unifying the garden with the hardscape installation, so we chose big slabs of sweetwater flagstone to lay for pathways throughout.

Sweetwater flagstone path.

The sweetwater stone has similar rusty warm colors that paired well with the gold granite, Mexican onyx, and Arizona boulders and cobbles. From the garden there are vantages of both Madonna and Bishop peaks, so to echo the surroundings, and give the gardens a sense of place, we used massive boulders, some upwards of 2 tons a piece. We formed a fire pit seating area, around a series of stacked Arizona slabs at different levels to allow people to sit at various distances from the gas fire.

Firepit and seating area.

Cobble path.

Tell me about the plant choices.  Did you have any help with the design?

The garden was dreamed up by Nick Wilkinson of Grow Nursery and I over a series of drafting sessions. The owners liked our collaborative style that they had witnessed at the Cambria Shores Inn garden in moonstone beach, Cambria so they gave us free reign to make the garden as unique and spectacular as we could. A designers dream really…

The homeowners were from Michigan, so they loved all the classic elements of the california fusion style. We used plants with striking foliage like blue hesper palms, dwarf date palms, Mediterranean fan palms, variegated Yucca, Cordylines, Beaucarnea, and agaves for bold focal points. Plants like mexican weeping bamboo (Otatea) , a weeping blue atlas cedar, Agonis ‘After Dark’ and a twenty-one foot tall redwood specimen (48″ box)  were installed to create soft screening for fences, and sweeten the views.

The edible component of the garden held a heavy influence as well. A small orchard was created that catches the southern exposure complete with pluots, peaches, espaliered apples, three kinds of figs, hass avocadoes, raspberries, and a herb garden.

Plants shortly after the garden installation was completed.

In parts of the garden, we contoured the soil, to create water detention areas where the winter rainfall could slowly percolate into the ground and form deep reservoirs in the landscape. All the gutter downspouts were routed to a large cistern where winter rainfall could collect, and be used to irrigate in the dry summer season. A grey water system was also installed to irrigate the orchard section. All plantings are drip irrigated. All the flagstone walkways are permeable with gravel joints that allow water to soak back into the garden.

Back facade of the house.

Driveway featuring Carex strip of "lawn".

Stay tuned for part two where I will take a closer look at some of the plants used in the garden!

Gopher Trouble

Yesterday I discovered these holes in my backyard.

Every time I checked again there would be a new hole and an old one was backfilled.  I assume they are gopher holes though I am not an expert on telling the difference between gophers, moles, and voles.  California has all three.  Gophers and voles are particularly sucky little beasts and I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy.

This morning I went to the hardware store and picked up a pair of Macabee gopher traps. They are nasty little spring loaded traps that I will be in constant terror of impaling my finger or hand on.  But I’m not going to mess around and let the little ground burrowing devil find my new plants.

After setting the traps (you can watch videos describing how to do so on Youtube – what did we ever do before Youtube?) I got to work finishing planting and created some more chicken wire protective planting baskets for my plants.  A pain in the ass but worth the little extra bit of protection it offers my plants.  Hand made gopher baskets are way more economical than the premade ones.

Both traps are set but so far no luck in catching anything.  More holes keep popping up all around the first set. The twist tie is so I can easily retrieve the trap.  You are supposed to tie string around them but I realized when I got home that I don’t have any.  I have to admit I am somewhat skeeved out at the thought of removing the dead impaled corpse from the trap (don’t worry I will NOT be sharing photos).  Gophers are actually fairly large and there is nothing cute about them.  I just hope the trap does the job properly and I don’t have to finish one off with a shovel.

In other more exciting news I went and picked up that last paver and finished my path!  You would not even believe how heavy that sucker was.  They are two by two feet and two inches deep and made of concrete.  Must weigh about a ton.  Not fun getting it in my car.  I’m in awe of Victor who brought over twenty of them when he and Gabe where helping me.  I’ve already bought a few little six packs of plants to put between the pavers and tonight I am going to sit and figure out an order for the rest.  It should be pretty cool.

In other somewhat annoying news I was literally planting my last plant in this part of the garden (I do have a few odds and ends left over that I need to find homes for) and I pierced the irrigation pipe with my shovel. Ugh!  So much ugh!  So now that has to be patched before I can finish planting.  So much of the garden is raised berms that it didn’t occur to me that I was in a lower part.  Oh well. At least most of the garden is planted and now my back can recover a bit.  More about the garden in future posts including a full inventory of all the plants I used.

Bluebird!

Exciting day!  While I was finishing planting up my mediterranean garden bed a western bluebird landed on my mailbox and chirped at me for a few minutes.  I’m not that serious of a bird watcher (I don’t keep a little notebook or anything) but I do enjoy attracting birds to the garden and this was a first for me.  I had never seen a bluebird in real life before western, eastern or anything. They don’t generally live in cities or suburbs (where I have spent most of my life) and they don’t really come to feeders because they are insect eaters rather than seed eaters. I had a feeling that this was a perfect habitat for them since I live right next to several acres of fenced off grass fields but I wasn’t sure if they were in this area.  Well they are!

Sadly I did not have my camera or my phone on me so no pictures.  But he did poop on my clipboard and I took a picture of that for you.

There you go. Authentic western bluebird poop.  I bet that is something you don’t see every day.

In other weird blog news does anyone else follow the zany and wonderfull Bloggess? I saw these at the hardware store the other day and thought of her.  Should I buy one for my garden?

And now for something more serious and garden related I was very happy yesterday that my order from Far Reaches Farm arrived.  Three nice healthy plants plus a sweet little pink bonus Primula.  My evil, enabling, plant-nut, friend Marc sent me a link for this Ajuga incisa ‘Frosted Jade’ so of course I had to have it.  I thought about it for all of five minutes and then placed an order (only after scouring the website for other wonderful oddities).  I bet if you check out their website you will want to order one too.  There you go. Now I am an evil, enabling, plant-nut too.

I spent the day finishing up my mediterranean bed today.  This involved moving some of the plants that I had originally planted but since they had only been in the ground a few weeks it wasn’t a big deal.  Of course I stuffed the garden with way more than I should have (and still left a bit of room for some seedlings that I am growing on now – annual Scabiosa, Gilia, and Nemophilla will be planted out in a month or so) but I think the garden will be beautiful.  I think I will wait to post pictures until the plants are a bit grown in and the garden is mulched and nicer looking but I may post an inventory of all the plants I used so you can get a feel for  the direction I am going with this garden.  My inspiration was the wonderful book The Dry Gardening Handbook which is by far my favorite mediterranean climate book in my library.

The garden is more plant collectors garden than landscape but there definitely is a thought process to the design.

Bounty!

Here is my car full up with my plants from San Marcos Growers!

And here they are lined up on the driveway awaiting agricultural inspection.  When you buy in plants wholesale from counties in the south you have to have them inspected for eggs of glasswing sharpshooters (I’m not making that up).  They are a type of leafhopper and are a vector for diseases that can wipe out vineyards.  We take our agriculture very seriously here in California as we are the number one state in the country for farm income.  Luckily my plants were fine.

While I was watering my nursery plants the silliest little dog wandered into my backyard!  He looks like a tiny little lamb and must weigh about a pound.  He was very friendly and there was a phone number on his tag.  It turns out he belongs to the neighbor behind me and snuck under (walked under) the fence. Now I’m going to be worried that a hawk will snatch him up or a coyote will grab him.

 

Road Trip to Santa Barbara!

This morning I took a road trip to Santa Barbara to shop at the wholesale nursery San Marcos Growers.  But first a few weird and wonderful plants!

I’ve set aside a few of the oddities I bought at Annie’s last week.  They were sort of impulse purchases because they are so neat. I don’t have anywhere to put them at the moment.

On the left is Deppea splendens a rare plant from the cloud forests of southern Mexico that is extinct in the wild and isn’t terribly common in cultivation. I’ve seen online auctions for it go for several hundred dollars but luckily mine wasn’t quite that expensive.  Annie has a cool blog post about it here: Return of the Golden Fuchsia.  Frost might kill it and it has been going into the 30’s here at night this week so I bring it in every night.  I may pot it up and baby it a while before I plant it out in the garden.

To the right of that is Agapetes serpens an epiphyte from Nepal.  A few things about this plant I like.  One I just like saying Agapetes.  Uh-GA-pet-eeze or Ag-uh-PET-eez however you want to say it it’s fun!  Second it is from the family Ericacea which includes Ericas, blueberries, and Rhododendrons among other cool plants.  And third it reminds me of the Upland Tropical Rainforest house in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden.  There are all sorts of lovely and weird Ericaceous plants there.  Many of them have flowers and fruit that look like colorful pieces of plastic or candy.  I may put this plant in some sort of hanging basket and hang it near my front door.  I think it should be fairly happy in foggy Los Osos.  At least I hope so.  Please feel free to give me any tips if you have grown it.

The spiky little plant in front is Maihuenia poeppigii, a cactus from southern Chile.   All you have to do is look the plant up on Annie’s website and you will see why I needed it.  Cool stuff.

The weird plants in the background are Boweia volubilis on the left and Dioscorea elephantipes on the right.  The Boweia I bought at Logee’s in Connecticut on a road trip with my sister back on July 24, 2000.  My sister bought one too and much to my shame even though I am the plant person and she is the animals person (she’ll graduate from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania next year – so proud) hers had always done better.  But after nearly killing mine about three years ago it is finally bouncing back and looking really good.  The Dioscorea I have had for around three years.  I’m surprised at how quickly it grows and I am always surprised that it is still alive when it comes out of its summer dormancy.

Before I left on my road trip this morning my order from Annie’s Arrived!  I know! I know! I was just there last week.  Well of course right when I got back I got that evil and enticing spring slide show e-mail and saw a few things I NEEDED.  Particularly Lupinus regalis ‘Thomas Church’ which is mail order only.  So dreamy. I couldn’t stop myself.  Ordered it and then added a few other plants to fill the box. Look at what a great job they do packing the plants. No chance of anything being smushed, huh?  This Lupin and another one I bought from Annie’s already has a bud. What do you think should I pinch it out so the plant puts more energy into growing or should I just let it flower.  I am so bad at that. I don’t want to wait!

I wish I had some photos of the journey to Santa Barbara.  It was such a beautiful day and the hills were covered in bright yellow wild mustard and tiny blue and white lupins were blooming along the highway.  But I got a bit of a late start and didn’t have time to stop.  San Marcos Growers is a big place and I just had a few hours to fill my car!

I fell in love with Thamnochortus insignis the first time I saw this beautiful container specimen last fall.

Restios are not the easiest plants to photograph.

I believe this is a 15 gallon container of Grevillea ‘Long John’. I bought a 5 gallon plant.  Such a wonderful plant. As I’ve mentioned before I am currently having a bit of a love affair with Grevilleas.

Grevillea ‘Long John’ has large flowers by Grevillea standards. You can’t really tell from the angle I took this photo but they are sort of two tone.  Sort of pink and golden orange.

This Thunbergia alata is eating a small building.  Don’t stand still next to it for too long or you may be next.

They have this huge display border along a stream or drainage ditch that divides the nursery in half. I loved this little grouping.  That is Arctotis acaulis ‘Big Magenta’ in the front, I believe the center plant is Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’, which is surrounded by silvery Maireana sedifolia.

The other day I mentioned how impressed I was with the specimens of Euphorbia lambii at Vince and Janet’s house but boy this one really takes the cake!  At least ten feet tall and wide.  I must admit I left the nursery with a five gallon pot of it.

You can just make out the little white sliver of the moon in the sky.

The beautiful Santa Ynez (and maybe San Rafael I’m not sure) Mountains are the backdrop for the nursery and this big grouping of Phlomis lanata.

Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’

As soon as I took the picture this plant lept into my cart.  Sneaky plants.  You can’t turn your back on them.

The unusual rust colored blooms of Aloe castanea. This I didn’t buy. But only because I already have some seeds at home.  I feel like growing Aloes from seed might be fun because I’m guessing the seedlings will be adorable.  I really need to sow them this weekend.

And to end our tour I give you this insanely impressive specimen of variegated Echium candicans (possibly the cultivar ‘Star of Madeira’).  Apparently no one told it that it is only supposed to be three to six feet tall because this beast screening a work area is easily twelve feet. I’ve seen very big stands of Echiums before but I don’t think I have ever seen one quite this big before and certainly not a variegated one!

At the end of the day I bought forty six more plants.  Not as many as the two hundred that followed me home from Annie’s but these are all in one, two, three and five gallon pots so I have my work cut out for me.  I ended up falling in love with so many shrubs and large plants that I decided on the spot to create a shrub border in the six foot by twenty three foot bed that I wasn’t sure what to do with. It should cover up an ugly chain link fence and also give me a bit of privacy in my side yard once they fill in.

So now my garden will be full of plants from Native Sons, Annie’s Annuals, and San Marcos Growers plus a few mail order sources that should be arriving soon and of course some seed grown plants. I just wish someone else was going to plant them all for me!

Bocce!

Remember my recent posts about the garden I designed in Morro Bay? Inspiration, January Garden Design Update, Giant Rock Moving Truck, and Design Update: Completed! Well the bocce court is finished!

How excited am I that I designed a garden that features a bocce court?  Pretty excited actually.  Simply because it isn’t something that I would have ever imagined myself being involved in a few years ago.

Gabe and I stopped by to take a look at the finished court and see how the garden is coming along.  Homeowner Carl gave me a lesson in bocce and I’m actually pretty good at it (or maybe it was just luck).  Pretty cool stuff.  I’m really looking forward to sharing updates on this garden as the plants grow in.  You can’t really see from this photo but to the left of the court there are some plants.  A pair of Agave vilmoriniana, some Sedums, Leucadendrons, and Grevilleas. I think they will look really nice when they grow and fill in but now that I see the finished court I kind of wish I had kept it simpler.  Just a row of maybe five Agave vilmoriniana growing from a carpet of Sedums.  Oh well.  All part of the learning process.  I don’t think I had a really strong image of what the bocce court would look like in the space.

We were discussing maybe adding some kind of art installation hanging on the fence at the end of the court.  What do you think?

Now this wasn’t the only garden we visited today that has a bocce court.  This next one is going to knock your socks off.  I just wish my photos were better but I wasn’t planning garden visits today and only had my camera phone.

This is the garden of homeowners Vince and Janet just a few blocks away.  This is a garden that Gabe designed before I started working with him. It is hard to believe but I think the garden is just under two years old.  Plants grow really fast here on the coast.  I first saw this garden last January when I was had just moved to West Hollywood.  I was just starting my design business and came up to Morro Bay for a visit to ask Gabe for some tips on how he was running his business.  He took me to several of his gardens that weekend and they were all amazing but this is the one that really wowed me.  It also encouraged me to ask Gabe what he thought of the possibility of us working together and here I am today designing gardens for him.

I love everything about this garden.  Gabe said the design itself was rather informal.  He started putting it on paper and then just started buying cool plants for it.

Look at the size of this blooming Sedum ‘Coppertone’.  I wish my camera had captured the color of the leaves better.  They glow at dusk.

Look at all the blooms on this Leucospermum!  Vince and Janet are really into caring for and learning about the plants in the garden. It is fun to see homeowners so involved and excited about their garden.

Another Leucospermum with a Grevillea.  I’m a little bit in love with the genus Grevillea lately.  I’m going to include them in more and more of my designs.

Kalanchoe pumila

It is hard to believe this is a Kalanchoe.  It reminds me of an Arabis or Aubrieta.

And the bocce court!  The walls are a bit higher on the ends of this court and the plantings around it are more mature.  What do you think?

Not one but two beautiful specimens of Euphorbia lambii.  I wish I had a picture of the entire plants as they are quite impressive. (ETA: actually I just noticed you can see them in the background of the next photo!).

Kniphofia thompsonii

I was excited to see this species of Kniphofia looking so fantastic as I just included some in a design.

This is the top of the garden around the bocce court.  The rest of the garden that you can see in the first picture slopes down toward and is visible from the street.

Not only is this Dyckia in full wonderful bloom but it has four more huge inflorescences forming!

They even had some bocce inspired art commissioned. I love it. I think if you are going to include art in your garden you should go all out and have something grand and a little crazy.  Something made just for you is neat too.

Leucadendron discolor is just starting to bloom (I’m sorry it is not quite in focus).

And finally a very impressive specimen of Agave gypsophila.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour. I’ve wanted to share this garden for a while now and in the future I’ll share more of Gabe’s garden designs before I came on board.  As homeowner Carl said “I’ve hitched my wagon to a shining star” and after seeing some more of Gabe’s mature designs you’ll see that is true.