Poppy Print goes live

The return to the Theodore Payne Foundation of some of Jane Pinheiro’s botanical watercolors is among the subjects covered in the summer edition of the Poppy Print, which has just gone live online for non-members. Also read it to learn about the foundation’s new executive director, Lynnette Kampe, then proceed to summer gardening tips, a schedule of classes, and a nifty gallery of our local lizards.

The Dry Garden: Zausch and Di

Timing is everything when you’re a plant in a place with little water and lots of competition. Our native California fuchsia, Zauschneria californica, has patience. It remains sedate as the native sages and lilacs burst into spring blossom. Then, as the early bloomers slip into summer dormancy, this discreet gray-green shrub flowers, and flowers, and flowers, often straight through autumn.

Click here to keep reading about Zauschneria californica and its Uruguayan counterpart, Dicliptera suberecta, in The Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times. Or, if you’re too mad to think about good flowering plants for hummingbirds because you really, really hate someone, buy them this book, reviewed today in the Los Angeles Times.

The Dry Garden: Coyote mint

Paradise is at once so attainable and so far away.

This column was going to be about how the most immediate and affordable thing that Southern California homeowners could do to reduce our collective dependency on fossil fuel would be to rip out lawn. But events in the Gulf of Mexico are too crazy-making to be sure that it wouldn’t be the garden-writing equivalent of picking a fight at the dinner table. So this column is about coyote mint. Click here to keep reading The Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times.

The Dry Garden: Matilija poppies

Two unrelated and equally magical things happen in Southern California in late May and early June. By night, courting mockingbirds sing all night. By day, the Matilija poppies begin their all-too-fleeting bloom. The shame is, while most everyone who sleeps becomes aware of the mockingbird’s song, not everyone with sight will encounter the Matilija, which is, without rival, the biggest, silliest, loveliest and most poignant of California wildflowers.

Click here to keep reading this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times.

The Dry Garden: Hummers and snapdragons

Channel Islands native Galvezia speciosa amounts to a year-round hummingbird feeder on a negligible water budget. Cal Poly Pomona landscape architect Bob Perry recommends the hybrid 'Firecracker' (above) as being compact and therefore suitable to many gardens. Photo: Bob Perry / Land Design Publishing

If you are considering a hummingbird feeder, try buying a plant instead of a bottle.

For what seems like a year-round fountain of nectar, make that plant a bush snapdragon. Galvezia speciosa, as this Channel Island native is more properly known, flowers four out of four seasons and 365 days a year. Its bright red tubular blossoms clearly evolved with hummingbirds as pollinators, and the birds will stake out your garden the instant the plant goes in the ground.

They are very hard to kill; Galvezia’s only weakness is susceptibility to freezing. Other than that, they can be used throughout most of Southern California. The bright green foliage…

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