Posted on by tonytomeo · 2 Comments

Horridculture – The Wrong Plant In The Wrong Place

The pyracantha in the illustration stayed for a while after this article posted three years ago, but was finally dragged out by a freighter truck that turned right a bit too sharply. It was actually rather gratifying to see its mangled carcass on the edge of the road a bit farther up. However, even then, the so-called ‘gardeners’ still did not bother to remove it, and might have even continued to shear it after death. Heck, it might even be there right now!

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80627This is the opposite of the ‘right plant in the right place’. It is something that horticultural professionals should neither promote nor tolerate when feral plants appear in landscapes that they are getting payed to maintain. This example looks like it is more relevant to the topic of ‘Fat Hedges’ from https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/horridculture-fat-hedges/ , but there is more to this feral pyracantha than that. Yes, it is shorn too frequently to bloom or produce colorful berries. Yes, it looks like an upside-down and halfway buried Christmas tree. Yes, it contributes nothing to the landscape. What is worst of all is that it does not even belong there. It was certainly not planted there on the edge of the curb. There are others nearby, but they happened to appear in spots where they could have actually been assets to the landscape if they had not also been shorn into this weird upside-down…

View original post 351 more words

Posted on by tonytomeo

Star Jasmine

Star jasmine blooms with fragrant profusion.

This jasmine is quite a star. However, this star is technically not a jasmine. Star jasmine, Trachelospermum jasminoides, is instead related to mandevilla and oleander. For many years, it has been one of the most popular vines for home gardens as well as large scale landscapes. It works well either as a ground cover, or as a relatively docile climbing vine. 

As ground cover, star jasmine gets about two feet deep. It will be lower and more refined with shearing, but will likely bloom less. It tries to climb shrubbery and trees, so will need exclusionary pruning. However, on a chain link fence, star jasmine works splendidly as a shorn faux hedge. It grows fast to more than ten feet high, but can get significantly higher. 

The richly fragrant bloom is most profuse about now, and can continue sporadically until autumn. The inch wide and bright white flowers are shaped like stars, and hang in small clusters. After bloom, the distinctly glossy and dark green evergreen foliage is handsome alone. Individual leaves are a bit longer than two inches and a bit broader than one inch. 

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

Fragrance Is Out Of Sight

Lilies are both fragrant and colorful.

Flowers that are both fragrant and colorful are uncommon only because each tactic uses resources. Concentration of effort into one method of appeal or another is more efficient. Diversification generally occurs among flowers that must compete for pollination within a very diverse ecosystem. Otherwise, most fragrant flowers prefer selective specialization.

Consequently, most of the most fragrant flowers are not remarkably colorful. In fact, some are visually mundane. Where they mingle with more prominent bloom, the more visually evident flowers are likely to get credit for ambient aroma. Although many fragrant flowers are bright white, many more are uninterestingly pallid white. Some can be difficult to find. 

They are no less specialized than more colorful flowers, though. Dispersion of fragrance coincides with pollinating activity of preferable pollinators. It is no coincidence that many fragrant flowers are most fragrant in the evening or night for nocturnal pollinators who do not pursue color. Some pollinators may appreciate minor ultraviolet or infrared markings.

Also, fragrant flowers customize their fragrances for their favorite pollinators. That is why floral fragrances are so distinctive. Hummingbirds and most insects prefer rich fragrance during the day. Bats and nocturnal moths prefer sweeter fragrances of nocturnal flowers. Humidity and warmth enhance the activity of most pollinators, as well as floral fragrance. 

Fragrant spring bulbs, wisteria, lilac, mock orange and pink jasmine finished blooming in spring. Star jasmine, night blooming jasmine and various pittosporum should continue to bloom sporadically and fragrantly as long as the weather is warm. Sweet osmanthus and sweet box are a bit less fragrant. Gardenia, although finicky, is famously overtly fragrant!

Posted on by tonytomeo · 2 Comments

Krispy Kritter

After the historically warm weather in the Pacific Northwest, I can guess that this is a common theme there.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80715KThis really is the best climate here. Winters are just cool enough for many plants that require a bit of a chill, but not unpleasantly cold. Summers are just warm enough for most plants that need warmth, but the weather does not stay too unpleasantly hot for too long. Warm weather here typically lasts no more than a week, and is accompanied by light evening breezes and cooler nights. Minimal humidity typically makes the worst of the heat a bit more tolerable.
While much of North America and parts of Europe were experiencing abnormally and uncomfortably warm weather earlier in summer, our weather somehow stayed relatively mild. For a while, it was significantly warmer in Portland than here. It certainly was nothing to complain about. Vegetable plants that crave warmth were not too inhibited by the mild weather. Flowers that typically deteriorate in warm and arid summer weather lasted a…

View original post 248 more words

Posted on by tonytomeo

Nature Is Messy

Although not a sequel to the sequel last Saturday, this recycled article is relevant.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

4This sort of weather pattern does not happen very often. Late spring is normally pleasantly warm, and the weather gets progressively warmer through summer, which typically includes a few unpleasantly warm days. It rarely gets too hot here, and when it does, it does not last for more than a few days, and tends to cool off at least somewhat at night. The air is normally arid. Humidity is uncommon in a chaparral climate.
While so many in the Northern Hemisphere were experiencing unseasonable warmth, the weather here was unusually mild. When the weather became warm, it did so suddenly. There was nothing unusual about the warmth. It was well withing the normal range for this time of year. The suddenness of the change was what made it unusual.
Humidity complicated matters. Again there is nothing too strange about humidity. Although rare, it does sometimes happen. The problem was that…

View original post 322 more words

Posted on by tonytomeo · 22 Comments

Six on Saturday: el Catedral de Santa Clara de Los Gatos

To everyone else, it is merely the Memorial Chapel. I prefer to think of it as el Catedral de Santa Clara de Los Gatos. It is a long story. Not only is it my favorite building that I work around, but it is outfitted with one of my favorite landscapes. Floral color is limited to white! My favorite color! There is not much to the landscape yet, but there will be later, particularly as the removal of adjacent trees improves sun exposure. Relocation of lily of the Nile is untimely, but necessary.

1. White lily of the Nile are a perfect fit here. They will function like a low hedge between the sidewalk and the roadway, without getting high enough to obscure the façade of the small Chapel.

2. Since the roadway is more than five feet below the sidewalk, the dense border of lily of the Nile will make the retaining wall seem less precipitous. The shading Douglas fir will get removed.

3. Double white angel’s trumpet was also a perfect fit when it was relocated here from the same garden that the lily of the Nile came from, but got majorly distressed by spider mite infestation.

4. It is recovering splendidly now, and is even developing floral buds again. Its future is uncertain though, since mites may continue to be a recurring problem. It lives next door to the Chapel.

5. Zonal geraniums presently provide the most white bloom here, although I can not take credit for them. Someone else put them here. I merely pruned them back when they were overgrown.

6. This is not what it looks like. This gentleman may seem to be expressing his opinion of the exclusivity of the white garden, or perhaps my predilection for white, but he is merely being silly.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

‘Angelina’ Stonecrop

‘Angelina’ is a bright chartreuse stonecrop.

Until the patent expires, unauthorized vegetative propagation (cloning) of ‘Angelina’ stonecrop, Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’, is still illegal. However, it regularly flaunts its own unlawful proliferation wherever dislodged bits of stem can find anything to take root into. It can be just as happy to root into cracked concrete as in bare soil. Yet, it is a surprisingly complaisant small scale ground cover that cascades only several inches over stones, low retaining walls or the edges of planters.

Without getting more than four inches deep, stems root as they creep indefinitely but slowly along the ground. The bright yellowish evergreen foliage and bright yellow flowers that bloom about now contrast nicely with darker green or bronze foliage. Exposed foliage can get blushed with orange in winter. Shabby plants regenerate vigorously after getting pruned back. Pruning scraps sprinkled over bare soil and lightly mulched with finely textured compost will happily but illegally grow into more of the same. ‘Angelina’ stonecrop likes somewhat regular watering, but can survive with less.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 2 Comments

Plants To Cover New Ground

Ground cover plants are quite variable.

Lawn is both the most common and the most horticulturally incorrect of landscape features. Not many landscapes lack lawn. After all, it is the most useful part. Yet, with few exceptions, it requires more water and maintenance than anything else, and in most situations, than everything else combined!

Other groundcover plants are not nearly so greedy. Some need only occasional attentions. Most want less water, and some need very little water or none at all once established. No other groundcover functions like lawn. However, they each have particular advantages.

Ideally, groundcover plants do more than just look good. Most cover otherwise exposed soil so that weeds or other unwanted plants do not dominate. Some groundcovers help to stabilize soil. A few even work as living mulch so that soil does not stay too harshly exposed for other plants to be comfortable in it.

Low growing shrubbery, like creeping ceanothus and some types of juniper, can get too deep and unmanageable for confined areas. They tend to work better where they have room to spread outward uninterrupted. Otherwise, the edges can get quite shabby if they need to be pruned back for confinement. Some sprawling cotoneasters tolerate pruning better, both on top and the edges.

Coarse vines, like honeysuckle, naturally stay low where they have nothing to climb, although they need occasional pruning to stay tidy and confined. High branched trees, like most types of eucalyptus, are beyond the reach of busy tendrils or twining vines. However, Algerian and English ivies, although considerably tidier and uniform, can cling directly to the trunk of any tree to become a wicked mess out of reach!

Old fashioned Hottentot fig (freeway iceplant) can be aggressive where it needs to be pruned around the edges, but is actually quite complaisant otherwise. It does not pile up too deeply because older stems decay as readily as they get overwhelmed by new growth above. Vigorous growth is an advantage for filling in quickly, and subduing weeds. ‘Real’ iceplants are smaller, more docile around the edges, and much more colorful when they bloom.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 3 Comments

Horridculture – Stub

The good news is that, after three years since this article posted, this little black oak is developing nicely, and should get pruned to improve structure this winter.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80620.JPGHow can a professional ‘gardener’ leave such a stub on the little California black oak in Felton Covered Bridge Park. It is not as if it is high in the canopy of a large tree, and out of reach to an arborist. This one is right at eye level, exactly where someone getting out of a car parked in the adjacent parking space would run into it. The entire tree needs some major corrective pruning, which would include the removal of significant limbs and portions of the canopy, but that is only because of years of neglect, and is another story. Right now, we are focusing on the eye-level stub.

It is not easy to see in these pictures because the lower branches are so congested. The stub extends from the lower left to the upper right in the first picture. It is right in the center of the second…

View original post 148 more words

Posted on by tonytomeo · 2 Comments

Oleander

Oleander, although pretty, is famously toxic.

Prior to the appearance of oleander scorch disease in the early 1990s, oleander, Nerium oleander, was almost too popular, and for good reason. It is remarkably resilient to harsh conditions. It had been one of the more common plants within freeway landscapes since freeways were invented. Now, new plants are rarely available. Only older plants remain.

White, pink or red bloom is most abundant through warm summer weather, with sporadic bloom continuing through most of the year. Some dwarf cultivars bloom with peachy pink double flowers. Plants with enough room to grow wild without much pruning bloom best. Frequent shearing deprives the healthiest oleander of its blooming stems prior to bloom.

The biggest oleander get as tall as fifteen feet, so can be pruned up as small trees, either on single trunks or multiple trunks. However, because their limber trunks can not support much weight, occasional pruning is necessary while trunks develop. Such pruning limits bloom, so should happen mostly at the end of winter. Straight single trunks need staking. Oleander wants warm and sunny exposure, but is quite undemanding.