How Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden grew, 1950-1970
Twenty years of painstaking record-keeping at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, California unlock mysteries of the golden state's flora.Weather that drives you to the nozzle
With rainfall across Los Angeles less than half the putative average for this time of year, and forecasts making discouraging noises about the prospects for a “March miracle,” it’s time for dry gardeners to water.
As odd as it sounds to be prescribing irrigation after light rains blew through and before summer heat, for lack of meaningful precipitation, late winter is the time to charge unnaturally dry ground. The soil is still porous, so there should be no run-off. Shorter and cooler days check evaporation and native and Mediterranean gardens are growing now, so they need a drink before they slip into summer dormancy in May.
But use caution. This is by no means a recommendation for a return to lawn-style frequent and light watering. It’s not about pushing a lot of new growth. It’s a …
A day in the Mojave
A trip to the Mojave revealed two exquisite gardens near Joshua Tree, CaliforniaCeanothus blues
Rhapsodies about ceanothus tend to come in blue. Ceanothus flowers aren’t any blue, they’re blue sky blue. No, George Gershwin blue. Deep space should have such a blue. The one-upsmanship is understandable. These plants do for blue what roses do for red and pink, though there’s always a know-it-all in the house willing to pipe up that in the case of the ceanothuses ‘Ray Hartman,’ ‘Dark Star,’ ‘Centennial’ and ‘Yankee Point,’ from bud to seed their blossoms can also seem to start mauve, turn lavender, then blue, then Jimi Hendrix purple. Some ceanothuses in the mountains such as Ceanothus cuneatus or ‘Snow Flurry’ aren’t blue at all, but white. …
Sunflower epilogue
Sunflowers are a glorious and effective conversion crop from lawn to native garden, however pruning them is a job worth mention. « go back — keep looking »North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
