Of the several junipers that were too common decades ago, the golden pfitzer juniper, Juniperus X pfitzeriana ‘Area’, was the one outfitted with cheery, bright yellow new foliage each spring. Similar but more compact varieties that are more popular now were rare back then, or simply not yet invented. Contrary to the stigma, golden pfitzer juniper is a very tough shrub, which is why so many from decades ago remain in older gardens, and new plants can sometimes be found in nurseries. Once established, they need very little water, or none at all. A bit of partial shade is tolerable, but inhibits color. Angular branches radiate outward, with the finely textured foliage drooping only slightly at the tips. Mature plants get wider than six feet, and taller than four feet. Crowded plants can stand taller than six feet. Golden pfitzer juniper can technically be shorn as hedges, but are so much more appealing if selectively pruned to maintain their natural form. They are at their best where they have space to spread out naturally without pruning.
Oh, the stigma of juniper never gets old! No matter how many cool new cultivars get introduced, and how many specie get rediscovered, they are still though of as those nastily prickly ‘tams’ that were too common in the 1950s. Even some of us who really like junipers dislike tams, not only because they share their stigma with all other members of the genus, but also because they really are nasty and prickly, and not as useful as their overuse would suggest. Are they deep ground cover or shallow shrubbery? They might work for a few years, or maybe many years, but they eventually crash into each other or other plants and pile up into a dense thicket that can not be pruned without being deprived of all dignity.
Erigeron karvinskianus
Seriously, I am not making this up. ‘Drunk Stick’ is what the Spanish name of ‘palo borracho’ translates into. It is one of the few common names of the tree I know only as floss silk tree, Chorisia speciosa or Ceiba speciosa. Yes, it sounds crazy, but not as crazy as what the trunk and limbs looks like. One can speculate why it is known as ‘drunk stick’. I am not certain that I want to know.
It is not as if the previous article about it was inadequate. 
They are not a myth. They are quite real. So are the related and similar deciduous azaleas. There are certainly not as popular or as diverse as the familiar evergreen cultivars, but they have their place.
There really is a bearded iris that happens to be named ‘San Francisco’. It is related to ‘Los Angeles’, but not ‘San Jose’. (I really want to find a copy of ‘San Jose’ for my own garden!) Both ‘San Francisco’ and ‘Los Angeles’ are white with a slight blue highlight, and an even slighter reddish edge that is easy to miss. I can not remember which one of the two is whiter than the other, but the whiter one may lack the reddish edge altogether.
Redwood Glen was the ‘camp’ that we all went to in the sixth grade. It was probably our equivalent of what is now known as ‘nature camp’. For most of us, our experience at Redwood Glen was the longest time we had ever been away from our homes and families. We arrived on Monday morning, and returned home on Friday afternoon. It was something that we looked forward to with great anticipation for the few years prior.
