Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day – April 2013

I’m usually not organized enough to participate in Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day with May Dreams Gardens but this month I have a bunch of blooms and I’m ready!

Most of my true annual volunteers are still looking pretty good.

All the plants in the foreground of the above shot are volunteers. Oh how I love free plants!

Zaluzianskya capensis bloomed all winter but the warmer it gets the more abundantly it blooms and the more fragrant it is. I’ve seen others criticize it for not being very exciting but I think the shrubby little plants are quite attractive and when the blooms open in the afternoon it is gorgeous.

Linaria reticulata ‘Flamenco’ is still blooming like crazy. A few at the front (where they receive less water) are starting to peter out.  I’m wondering if I will get any new seedlings and bloom for the season or if I am going to have to fill this big area of the garden with a few summer bloomers.

Urinia anthemoides were a huge success this year and many are still in full bloom.

Geranium maderense has survived the wind storms and has been putting on a show for the past month.

Clianthus puniceus from New Zealand deserves better placement in the garden than I gave it.  It has long stems that get weighted down by the large flowers so they end up hanging down pretty close to the ground.  Closer to the front of a raised bed or large container is my suggestion for anyone growing this neat plant.

Sutherlandia frutescens from South Africa is a similar pea flowered plant but a little more delicate. This one bloomed in just one year from seed despite some rough handling. First it got swamped by some Lotus growing nearby, then it got tromped on and snapped in half by construction workers, I dug it up just in time before they could do more damage and it surprised me with new growth and new blooms in the gallon pot it calls home now.

Echium gentianoides ‘Tajinaste’ is basically a smaller and more airy and delicate Echium candicans.

Most of my succulents are living in containers in the backyard. Awaiting some future garden. My Aloe dorotheae surprised me with a beautiful organe and green inflorescence.

I’m very glad I kept two Craspedia globosa in my mediterranean garden.

Hymenolepis parviflora has become a nice little shrub. It bounced back quickly after an attack by caterpillars last month.

I have tons of ladybugs which is a good thing because I also have tons of aphids.

A few Coreopsis gigantea flowers remain.

I snapped this photo of a Dudleya pulverulenta inflorescence just in time. A few days later my neighbors large dog escaped confinement and went on a rampage through my garden.  She snapped stems and small plants left and right. My future garden will have a fence to keep out neighbors dogs as well as marauding deer.

Euphorbia mauritanica in bloom looks pretty sticky and a bit sinister up close.

I am sure that there are some people who would consider Chrysanthemum paludosum a potentially noxious weed. A six pack of plants last year became thousands this year. But they are very easy to edit out and much more charming and longer blooming than perennial Chrysanthemum hosmariense that I also grow. They have become one of my “must have” plants.

I’ve posted about Thymus juniperifolius a few times.  In full bloom you can’t even see the foliage that gives it its Latin name.

Convolvulus sabatius is a tough and reliable plant for California gardens.

I had no luck with Penstemons last year. I planted many and they all withered and died. I’m trying again this year with various P. heterophyllus cultivars.  This is ‘Margarita BOP’.

Lavandula stoechas ‘Boysenberry Ruffles’ is pretty spectacular despite the fufu name.

Up close the bicolor blooms are pretty intense.

I like the overall form of this Lavandula stoechas ‘Blue Star’ (even though it is a bit floppy).

But up close the flowers are a bit stunted compared to other L. stoechas cultivars. The jury is still out on this one for me.

I’ll have to check my notes but it seems like this Mentzelia lindleyi has been blooming for about two months. Very rewarding since it is a California native and it was also a free volunteer. This winds have battered it a bit but it is still going strong.

I posted this little vignette last week but this week the Euphorbia ‘Blue Haze’ is in full bloom.

The first blooms of Berlandiera lyrata are opening up. It is well worth getting down on the ground to get a whiff of the amazing hot cocoa smell of these flowers.

Last year I was quite disappointed with Eccremocarpus scaber ‘Cherry Red’. It just sort of sat there looking sad all summer.  Since everything in California seems to grow like crazy I forgot that some perennials need a year or two to get established.  Now it is doing just what I wanted it to do. Covering the ugly chain link fence.  And the hummingbirds go crazy for it.

I think that is enough for now! Do go check out the links at May Dreams Gardens to see what is blooming in other garden bloggers parts of the world.

I’m Back!

I had a really lovely time visiting family in NYC (and an overnight trip to Toronto) for Persian New Year.  But as any serious gardener knows leaving your garden for over a week is a bit nerve-wracking. Who knows what you are going to find when you come home? I’ve gone on trips shorter than 11 days and come home to disaster.  And while I was gone I kept checking the weather and it didn’t rain in Los Osos at all. We have had such a dry winter.

Happily everything was fine!

(do please click on the images to get a larger view!)

Two new thymes along the path got a bit wilty but nothing serious.  The rest looks great. Even the newly planted mediterranean garden looks fine (gotta love California natives). Yesterday I gave everything a good soak and there is a good chance we will get some rain tomorrow.

The view from my kitchen window is even more enjoyable now that my Geranium maderense is in full bloom!

More to come in the near future but I just wanted to check in.

Spring Blooms (Lots of them!)

Tomorrow morning I am heading to NYC to spend Persian New Year with my family (Happy Nowruz everyone!). So I thought I would do a quick post on what has been blooming in my garden.  Despite the loss of most of the mediterranean garden there is still quite a bit going on. Tons of volunteer seedlings have been blooming (spring weather really started in Los Osos about a month ago), and some of the perennials I planted last year are starting to really hit their stride.

This will be a picture heavy thread so feel free to scroll through and stop if you see anything that interests you.

Zaluzianskya capensis has been blooming all winter.  All my little seed grown plants have become little shrublets (I mistakingly thought they were true annuals).  They open in the afternoon and you may remember last year I made fun of the fragrance as being too strong. Well I’ve grown to love them. You can just be walking by and suddenly get hit by the sweet scent.  They have been reseeding quite a bit as well.

The California native, Mentzelia lindleyi, mostly reseeded right along the road so most of them got tromped on by the construction guys.  Luckily this big clump was in a safer spot a few feet into the bed. I’ve put up some temporary fencing with bamboo poles and twine to remind construction guys to stay on the street and not take short cuts through my garden.

A few Nemophila menziesii seedlings came up and are blooming now.  I think I pulled them too early last year so they didn’t reseed as well as some other plants.

The adorable little South African strawflower, Helipterum roseum ‘Pierrot’, reseeded like crazy.  Mostly right around where they had been planted last year.

In the evening the flowers close up and look like cute little paper bowls.

Linaria reticulata ‘Flamenco’ is not for the faint of heart. I planted 24 little plants last year and this year I have about 24,000 growing in a huge 10′ x 10′ patch.  I can not even beging to explain how happy they make me. Especially all covered in condensation and brightening up a foggy day.

This is the view from my kitchen window when I wash my dishes. Almost makes me not mind the fact that I don’t have a dish washer. Almost.

Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Fire’ is another South African annual that reseeded like crazy. From a distance they look a bit like California poppies but up close they are quite distinct. This clump just escaped destruction.  See the patch of bare dirt right behind them? That was solid plants before one of the water tankers backed out of my driveway and right through the garden. After that I started parking my car in the driveway so the construction guys couldn’t park in it any longer.

Not bad for a one year old garden, right?

I’m not sure the beauty of the Layia platyglossa (tidy tips) foliage in the foreground is apparent in my photos. The leaf edges have this quality that sort of reflects light and looks all silvery. They must be covered in little hairs or something but I haven’t had a chance to really examine them up close.  This huge clump is all volunteers. I collected a huge envelope of seed but ended up not needing to use any of it so I sent it out to friends and the Mediterranean Garden Societies seed share.  If I have time to collect some more this year maybe I’ll mail some out to blog readers if anyone is interested.

The flowers are just starting to open. They should go into full bloom while I am out of town. Hopefully we get a bit of rain and they are still nice when I get back. They should be fairly drought tolerant but I didn’t think them as much as I should have so they do get a bit droopy when it gets warm.

I love the way the sticky little hairs on Geranium madersense flowering stems look when they are back lit.

The flowers aren’t too shabby either.  These should reseed like mad and make a nice big colony in front of the house.

Euphorbia lambii is another big shrubby plant that reseeds like mad.  This is the first bud on mine. It should be looking really nice when I get back into town. These can get 8-10 feet tall if they are happy though they don’t seem to grow particularly fast on the coast.

Lobelia tupa is another slow grower. This is one of those great big perennials that probably takes about 3 or 4 years to reach its maximum potential.  This one fat stem should bloom nicely at some point this year but in a few years it will be 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall and covered in blooming spikes.

Abutilon X suntense should have lovely purple blooms when I get back home. I’ve seen it in a lot of English gardens but I don’t know how happy it will be here long term. I’ve heard it is not at its best in California.  If it doesn’t succeed I will probably grow Abutilon vitifolium which is one of its parets that I know will do well.

Echium pininana (not Echium pinnata, a common mistake) is starting to expand quite a bit lately. It should grow about 15 feet tall this spring. I grew about a dozen from seed last year and only kept this one.  The others went into some of our clients gardens as a fun Dr. Seussian treat for them. Native Coreopsis gigantea is looking rather nice in full bloom now. Hard to believe that was just a tiny little 4″ pot last March.

Phlomis purpurea had to be moved to the backyard garden during the construction and has not been happy.  Apparently Phlomis have different shaped leaves in winter and then drop them in favor of more drought resistant ones during the dry summer. I’ll have to see if I notice a change in their leaves this summer.  They have really been sulking and needed quite a  few deep waterings in their new home.

Some of the former inhabitants of the mediterranean garden have found a new home in my back yard garden. I had started this bed last summer but then had to go out of town suddenly for about a month and lost most of the plants new plantings here.  This worked out in my favor because these plants needed a home quickly. The chain link fence is not cute, and my landlady was thinking of removing it, but I want to keep it now so I have a more sheltered area of the yard. A lot of my neighbors have big dogs and this is where my plant nursery is. Once the bigger plants and climbers fill in it won’t be as bad.

And speaking of the mediterranean garden this is how it looks now that it has been replanted.  I bet there isn’t a single garden designer out there that isn’t secretly delighted when misfortune gives them the opportunity to try something new. Since all my nice compost is now buried about 12 feet under ground with the new sewer lateral I was left with Los Osos sand. While I would rather work with sand than tough clay it does have some logistical issues.  It either drains too quickly or sheds water as if it was completely water-proof and it is probably pretty low in nutrients. While there are many medit plants that would be perfectly happy in poor, sandy, soil I thought it would be safest to use plants that I know for a fact are happy in Los Osos sand so I went very heavily with California natives.

Las Pilitas Native Plant Nursery is about an hour east of me in Santa Margarita and their website is an absolute treasure for California gardeners. It was a huge help in deciding what I would plant in this newly imagined garden. They have detailed descriptions and pictures of many plants and even some videos talking about their experiences growing specific plants and what conditions they love or hate. I still haven’t visited their nursery in person but I will have to take a trip out there when I return in April to see their display gardens. A few great native cultivars like Salvia ‘Pozo Blue’ and Penstemon ‘Margarita BOP’ are their introductions.

The garden isn’t looking quite as nice as it was a before the sewer work but I think it will fill in quite nicely.  The outer edges remain the original medit garden and the center strip is mostly natives now. There is a manzanita, three types of California buckwheat, native Salvias, Verbena lilacina and of course lots of California poppies. I went with white and lavender ones for this part of the garden.

The Dudleya pulverulenta are starting to bloom and perk up a bit after being stomped on quite a bit.

Salvia africana-lutea, Lavandula pinnata var. buchii, and Gaillardia ‘Oranges & Lemons’ are all looking really nice despite the fact they had quite a bit of sand dumped on them.

The path garden got a bit of a refresh since I talked about it last week.  The succulents and other plants that weren’t working have been moved elsewhere, a few new plants have been tucked into empty spots, and the left side of the path has been replanted with plants similar to the right side.

And just when I thought I was safe I woke up to this monstrosity this morning. No worries. They didn’t harm the garden. They were just putting in the correct manhole cover at the end of the street. But I am glad I will be out of town and away from the construction noise for a bit.

I hope you all will forgive me for posting so many pictures but that I wanted to tide you all over until I return in April. I hope everyone has exciting things going on in their gardens this spring.

Garden Critters!

One of the best things about creating a garden is all the critters you attract.

I’ve already talked quite a bit about the California quail and their babies visiting the garden.

The other day I found this cool spider hanging out among the bells of Ireland.  Does anyone know what type it is?

This morning I was watering and noticed something big scurrying away out of the corner of my eye.  It appears I had soaked a poor praying mantis.  It climbed up on some Convolvulus to dry off and catch something tasty.

For a while I was lamenting the fact that no hummingbirds were visiting my garden. I’m happy to say they finally found me.  This little guy is often perched on the Cantua buxifolia where he can quickly defend the nearby Nicotiana mutabilis from bees and rival hummingbirds.  Kind of funny that I went out of my way to plant lots of orange and red flowering plants to attract the hummingbirds and their favorite is the pink and white Nicotiana.

So what are your favorite garden critters?  Anything exciting visiting your garden this summer?

 

 

 

 

July Blooms

Even though I have been really busy I try to take the time to snap a few photos in the garden.  Here are a few of the things that are blooming now.

Epilobium ‘Marin Pink’

I think this Epilobium is sort of insipid. I would have been happier with the standard bright red blooms rather than this pale salmon cultivar. But one of my neighbors loves it.  Maybe in the fall I’ll dig it up and give it to her.

Nothing insipid about Mentzelia lindleyi.  This is another California native annual I grew from seed.  They are doing well despite the fact that I left them in little two inch pots way longer than I should have.

Scabiosa stellata ‘Stern Kugel’

This plant is grown more for the ornamental seed heads than the flowers.  The blooms are typical pale blue Scabiosa flowers but they very quickly go to seed.  This was very easy to grow but I am not sure I will grow it again.

They are more a novelty plant and aren’t that ornamental in large quantities in the garden.  Maybe a few tucked in here and there would work but I planted about a dozen of them and from a distance it just looks like I have a bunch of dead plants in my garden! And lots of grass coming up.  Please ignore the grass.

Didiscus caeruleus (aka Trachymene caerulea) on the other hand is very ornamental.  It is an Australian annual and is very drought tolerant, and while it was super easy to grow from seed, it did take them about six months to bloom. They are amazing as a cut flower lasting about two weeks in a vase. Does anyone cut flowers from their garden? I almost never do.  Sometimes if something snaps off in the wind I will bring it inside. I love the idea of a cutting garden but in reality I would rather just enjoy them outdoors.  If I bring them inside I’ll just have a mess of flower petals to clean up inside.

They are also available in pink and white but one of the things that makes them so neat is that blue is not a common color in umbellifers.

The red seed heads are ornamental too.

Moluccella laevis is still going strong.

Gaillardia X grandiflora ‘Mesa Yellow’

I finally finished planting the bed in my fenced backyard. It is mostly Salvias but I have been so happy with the Gaillardia in other parts of my garden I couldn’t resist adding these yellow ones.

Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was a chance hybrid seedling found by an Australian gardener. Maybe a mix of S. buchanii and S. vanhouttei?

Finally the baby quail in the neighborhood are growing up.  A pair of proud parents brought seven little babies around the other day.  They grow so fast! Already out of the tiny walnut stage and growing in their first feathers.

Hopefully I’ll have more time soon to post some new updates. I’ve been taking some photos so that I can post an update about what worked and what didn’t work in the path garden.  Look for it soon(ish)!

Good Stuff!

My last post on the state of the garden was a bit of a downer and in the comments a few folks thought I was being too hard on myself.  Never fear there is a lot of good stuff going on in the garden!  I’ve been really busy the past few weeks but I’ve been saving up cool pictures of some of the exciting things that are working really well.

This plant was labeled Aloe aristata X Haworthia but doesn’t regular Aloe aristata look more or less like this?  At any rate it is a beautiful foliage plant with nice blooms too.

I love Viscaria oculata ‘Blue Pearl’.  This make me think of a blue star fish reclining on a water color painting.

Moluccella laevis (AKA bells of Ireland) is a popular cut flower with florists. It is actually from areas of the Mediterranean middle east and has a reputation as being a bit difficult to grow as it doesn’t like hot humid weather.  Well that is something I don’t have to worry about here.  It is generally 65 degrees every day and the only humidity comes from fog.

Moluccella is in the mint family and the white flowers (surrounded by the showy green bracts) resemble Salvia flowers with large lower lips.

I first posted a picture of Lupinus pilosus in my silver post when it was just starting to open. As you can see it continues to live up to its description of “heartbreakingly beautiful”. Put it on your wish list at Annie’s folks!

Clarkia rubicunda ssp. blasdalei has been super annoying to get a good photo of. So many flowers and all on different planes and levels so getting the correct focus has been a hassle. But this one came out reasonably well. And what a great California native this turned out to be.

You can greatly prolong the bloom time of California poppies if you constantly dead head them but I have close to two dozen plants of several different cultivars and there are only so many hours in the day.  Once most of the plants were more seed pods than blooms I cut them back all the way to the ground.  All except Eschscholzia ‘Mahogany’.  This one is such a beautiful color and in such a prominent spot that I have been keeping up with the deadheading.  The plant is covered in powdery mildew now and the flowers are fewer than before but it has been worth keeping it going. As nice as it is I am not sure I can recommend this cultivar. As I mentioned earlier in the year out of the three plants I bought only one was this color.  The others were just generic California poppy orange and I pulled them out.

Next to the poppy is Gaillardia aristata ‘Gallo Red’.  A nice compact little mound covered in deep red flowers.  Deadheading these is a prickly affair. I recommend gloves as I think I had some sort of allergic reaction afterward.  But well worth the itchy hands.

It is hard to believe that Echium ‘Mr. Happy’ was just a four inch pot when I planted it in late February.  He is a monster now!  Next year when he blooms he can reach 15 feet tall (if the strong Los Osos winds don’t knock him over). In retrospect I planted the larkspurs much too close.  I didn’t realize he would grow so big so fast!

Berkheya purpurea is definitely a weirdo of the plant world. Silvery spiny foliage that looks deceptively soft but is painfully sharp followed by a tall inflorescence with a clump of purple daisy flowers at the end.

The poppies have come to an end but there are still some fruit hanging around. I’m going to save seed and sprinkle them around next winter. The fruit of the genus Papaver is a capsule and most of them are pretty fantastic looking but perhaps Papaver somniferum most of all.

Building My Garden Part 3 – Mediterranean Bed

I got tired of being sick and lounging about so yesterday I jumped into action and started planting one of my new gardens beds.  It is a large island bed that is home to a purple leaf plum.  I was going to get rid of the plum but it was one of the few plants that my landlady has an emotional attachment to. I considered moving it but she was too worried it wouldn’t survive so I had to modify my plans.  Not a huge set back in the scheme of things.  I’ve wanted a mediterranean garden (lowercase m for describing the garden style. upperclass M for describing the region of the world) for a while now.  It didn’t really matter where on the property it was.

OK I know it doesn’t look like much.  You have to remember that even though I live in California it is still February!

Just try and imagine what the plants will look like three months from now at the start of spring after months of cool weather and winter rains.

Come on!  I know you can do it!  Stop laughing.  Picture the plants all big and in bloom and imagine that I have put down some nice mulch.

Gardens always look a bit sad in photos when they are first installed and for a few moments I always despair a bit.  But I have a mind that imagines gardens and I just walk around the bed picturing what each plant will look like once it is full sized and bursting with flowers.

This isn’t just a garden for fun. Mediterranean style gardens are perfect for California so are a big share of the type of gardens I design.  It was important to me to be able to grow and experiment with some of the plants that I use in designs.  You can be an OK designer reading about a plants growing habits and dimensions and looking at pictures but I to be really good I think you need to grow the plants you work with.  Most of the plants in this bed are from Native Sons, a wholesaler that specializes in plants for our mediterranean climate here in California.  By growing their plants at home I can get a better idea of how these plants will look in future designs and play around with some nice combinations.

Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’ is a plant I have coveted since it first came on the scene about ten years ago.

Eryngium planum ‘Jade Frost’ has beautiful variegated foliage that will really set off the metallic blue flowers once they color up.

Dorycnium hirsutum is a small fuzzy leaved shrub with pale pinkish white pea flowers.  At the bottom of the plant you can see a bit of the chicken wire sticking out that I used to cage the root balls of my plants.  It was kind of a pain but worth the extra planting time protecting my plants from gophers rather than crying months from now when an established plant is devoured from under ground.  The only plants I won’t cage and am confident won’t be eaten are Euphorbias.  I also didn’t cage a rosemary, Salvia, and Nepeta as an experiment to see if the things that make them unpalatable to rabbits and deer will work against gophers.

Plecostachys serpyfolia forms beautiful silver mounds about a foot tall and four feet across.

Have you ever seen a plant in a book or magazine and coveted it for years before you could grow it? Maybe it isn’t something that will grow where you live.  Maybe it is something that is so rare in the trade it took you forever to track one down. I still remember the first time I saw Helianthemum ‘Fire Dragon’. It was back when I was in school almost ten years ago and I was on a bus from NYC headed to my dads house for the weekend. I was reading an article about a Colorado rock garden in a magazine that had just arrived and this plant caught my eye.  I memorized the name and lamented the fact that I lived on the east coast where Helianthemums don’t do particularly well.  Well when going over the list of plants available at Native Sons last week this name jumped out at me and I knew I had to have it for my garden!  Just imagine in a few months it will be covered in tons of little reddish-orange flowers.

I am really looking forward to seeing how this garden turns out.  Aside from the plants pictured above the garden will feature Rosmarinus ‘Tuscan Blue’, Salvia ‘Aromas’, Nepeta X faassenii, Eschscholzia ‘Moonglow’ and ‘Buttermilk’, Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’, Epilobium ‘Marin Pink’, Stipa gigantea ‘Pixie’, and Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies’.  There are still a few spots left for Lavenders (I’m still trying to decide which species and cultivars I want to grow) and some other choice plants.

Remember I complained about birds attacking my mesembs and seedlings the other day?  This is what a Conophytum that has been attacked by a birds beak looks like.

And a Lithops.  I might have thought they had burst from too much water if it wasn’t for the fact that other small plants were completely torn out of their pots and my nearby seedlings were also nibbled on and torn up.

Now my precious little year old Mitrophyllum dissitum seedlings are protected with bird netting.  I’m so relieved the bird didn’t find these plants.

In fact all my seedlings are protected with bird netting now.  Hopefully by next year I’ll have a greenhouse.

Building My Garden Part 1

So I finally am living in a house with a yard again and of course want to get planting right away. But it was important that I start with a strong foundation before anything goes in the ground.  Remove the old shrubs, prepare the soil properly, and do some light hardscaping first.  It may seem crazy to do all this work on a rental but I hope to be here for a while and I am able get discounted prices on most of the materials.  It is also important to me that I am able to grow the plants that I am designing with and see how they work in this climate so in the scheme of things it seems well worth it.  Plus I NEED a garden again.  I’ve been too long without one.

You may remember from last month some of the “before” shots I took of my new Los Osos home.  There is also a large side yard to the left of the shot out of frame but for now I am focusing on the front of the house which I will be able to see from the kitchen and living room windows.

It is a nice sized yard.  Seventy feet wide by forty feet deep.  I got to work immediately killing the lawn. I did use Roundup which I know won’t be popular with some people but the lawn was Pennisetum clandestinum (kikuyu grass) which is pretty nasty stuff and hard to get rid of.  Once the garden gets going I am pretty low tech when it comes to the use of chemicals so I feel like this one time use to replace a lawn with less water thirsty plants is justified.

Once the lawn was mostly dead I set about tilling it to break it up a bit. I’m not the strongest person. In fact I am as weak as a baby bird so just getting to this point and I already felt like someone had picked me up and shook me.  But I was determined to get it done.

I just finished before night fell but I was a mess afterward.  If I see that tiller again I will back away while making the sign of the cross and hissing.

I was still pretty shaken up the next day but luckily I had helpers.  My friend Gabe of Gardens by Gabriel came to offer me his expertise and I hired his employee Victor for the day as well.  The first task was to prepare the pop up lawn sprinklers for conversion to drip irrigation.  The lawn has four zones and thirty(!) sprinklers.  We chose one from each zone to act as the converter and the rest were capped.  I saved us time before hand by mapping out the entire yard and figuring out which sprinklers belonged to which zone.  I also have a fair idea of how I want to divide up the different garden areas which helped us in choosing which ones to cap and which ones to save to create the most efficient irrigation zones.

A lot of the heavy lifting was made easier with the Dingo tractor!  I cut back this Euryops growing through an Abelia but it still had a huge root mass and was very heavy.  The Dingo popped it out in a few seconds.  Gabe owns the Dingo but if you are doing a lot of heavy garden work you may want to look into renting equipment like this.  The amount of time saved may be worth the money spent.  Some old shrubs (like this one) were removed and disposed of but a few others were replanted in other parts of my yard or my landladies yard.

The Dingo has several different fittings for different jobs.  Aside from the fork used to dig out the plants it has this bucket for digging and lifting.  The path from my front door abruptly and weirdly ends about half way to the street so I am continuing the path with large (very heavy) 2 x 2 cement pavers.  If we didn’t have the Dingo we would have had to dig out the path by hand.  The clumps of dead grass and soil that were removed will be used as a base to create berms to add interest to the flower beds.

There are some drainage pipes at the edge of the driveway that lead away from the house but as you can see they are clogged and I had a bit of flooding in last weeks storms.  I wouldn’t want this to get any worse as our winter rain can be very heavy at times (not this year so far but last year was crazy).

So the drainage pipes were dug up and the mud and sediment flushed out of them.  We’ll fill in this area with gravel to provide some more drainage so the water doesn’t pool on the surface.

The pipes were old and cracked and full of debris so after they were flushed leaks were found and repaired.

Here is a clearer shot of the new path dug out with the drainage and irrigation pipes running across it.  This is the sort of job I could have never done without the expertise of Gabe and Victor.  Remember I’m just the plant guy.  I have a lot to learn when it comes to this sort of stuff.  It isn’t as much fun but it is important to get it right for a successful trouble-free garden.

A base of landscape cloth is laid out to keep the sandy soil from rising up and shifting the pavers.

All laid out and pinned down and ready for some top dressing.

The pavers will rest on a base of decomposed granite and sand.

The Dingo comes in handy again for quickly spreading the decomposed granite and Gabe rakes it out.  Aside from taking pictures I also wandered around in a daze looking pretty.

A smaller path from my front door to the back yard gets the same treatment.  That bed used to be filled with Hydrangeas and Aucuba.  Gross!  The Hydrangeas were moved to the backyard.  The Aucuba went to the compost. I do not fancy them.

A layer of DG put down. Those are the control valves for zones 3 and 4.  One will be for moisture loving shade plants.  The other for dry, sunny, natives and annuals.

OK I didn’t just wander around taking pictures and looking pretty. I moved some climbing roses from my backyards chain link fence to this white wooden fence.  I think they are going to look so pretty rambling along it.  Anyone who is gardening with rocky clay soil is going to hate me.  My soil is so sandy and easy to work with I was able to pop the roses right out and dig a huge hole for this one in less than a minute.  It will need plenty of compost to amend it but it is such a dream to work with.  My first garden I pretty much had to dig out a fifty pound boulder every time I wanted to plant a 4″ annual so this is a welcome change.

We spent ten hours working in the garden.  The irrigation and fixing the drainage was so time consuming we didn’t finish.  This is what it looked like the next day.  The paths are ready for their pavers, the irrigation is converted, the drainage will hopefully keep my driveway flood free, and a lot of old shrubs were removed.  Clumps of grass and old soil were piled up to create berms and some compost has been piled up on top of them.  This Saturday we’ll lay out the pavers and add some other finishing touches like spreading out the rest of the compost into berms and rake it out nicely in preparation for the plants.  It doesn’t look like much now so you will have to use your imagination.

And speaking of plants I thought it was important I had some on hand so I would be ready to plant as soon as we are done with the prep work.  So I took a trip down to wholesaler Native Sons in Arroyo Grande.  Even though they are not open for retail customers their website is worth checking out if you are a gardener in California.  Many nurseries from north, central, and southern California carry their plants.  If you see something you are lusting after maybe your local nursery can place an order for you.  They have a great selection of native and other mediterranean climate plants for California gardens.

I came home with three and a half flats of plants! The big Cantua buxifolia on the right is from Farm Supply Company in San Luis Obispo. Another great local resource for me to shop in.

So the rest of the work should be finished on Saturday and then I’ll get planting right away. So look for updates on the rest of the garden building next week and hopefully pictures of a beautiful blooming garden aren’t too far in the future.