"M" is for Mediterranean Gardens, "N" is for Never Mind

The expression, "a day late and a dollar short" comes to mind. I was in Los Angeles visiting the girls last week...missed "M", but didn't know until a second ago that we've moved on to "N". So, for ABC Wednesday, I give you "M"...and as Rosanne Rosanna Danna would say... "Never Mind".

Shown above...tomato, sunflower, Mexican and Pineapple Salvias, succulents (all from my garden), blue pots from High Hand Nursery, Fair Oaks Village where the chickens run free, eggplants from the Loomis Eggplant Festival, and a fountain, cuz you gotta have water!

From Wikipedia, Mediterranean Climates: "A Mediterranean climate is one that resembles the climate of the lands in the Mediterranean Basin, which includes over half of the area with this climate type world-wide. In addition to the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, this climate type prevails in much of California, in parts of Western and South Australia, in southwestern South Africa, and in parts of central Chile."

So...we have Provence, Algeria, Greece and Italy, parts of Australia, Santiago, San Francisco and the Napa Valley, and, you guessed it, SACRAMENTO! We may have uber-long growing seasons and the summers can get really hot, but we're in good company. Learning how to garden in this climate can make the experience a great one...and one of the secrets is the right plant in the right place. The Napa County Master Gardeners have a nice write up on Mediterranean climate gardening on their website. Another resource is the international Mediterranean Garden Society.

For the ABC Wednesday project, my pick is "M" for Mediterranean. Mmmmm...now, if I could just get a little Aegean Sea or some coastal Pacific Ocean breezes in the mix, it would be really "N" for nifty! Oh, never mind.

My Top Three Lavenders

Welcome to another round of ABC Wednesday! For this week's letter, "L", I've choosen one of my favorite plants, Lavender. This native Mediterranean shrub has a wide variety of colorful and fragrant flowers, is easy to grow, and is useful for cooking, crafts and perfumes. It's been grown for centuries, and as such, has woven itself nicely into our humanity.

Three of the best known lavenders are:

• Lavandula angustifolia, English Lavender - a rather skinny flower stalk, probably the most widely planted and hardiest of them all. I like this lavender because it makes me feel English. Might I have a cup of tea?


• Lavandula dentata, French Lavender - toothed leaves (thus the dentata. I like this lavender because it makes me feel French. (Also, I like knowing that the latin root has to to with teeth.) Ooh la la ...



• Lavandula stoechas , Spanish Lavender - twin rabbit-like petals, many colorful hybrids. This lavender makes me feel Spanish! There are many new hybrids of lavender with outstanding colors coming into the nurseries these days! Ole!

Growing Lavender: Evergreen in the Sacramento Valley (which is one of the 5 Mediterranean climate areas in the world!), lavender is easy to grow. It prefers well-drained soil and little or no fertilizer. Mulching is best done with non-organics, like decomposed granite or pea gravel.

Pruning is necessary to keep lavender within bounds (unpruned lavenders can become sloppy with a lot of central wood...ask my sister, Julie, her lavender has a mind of its own) and should be started when the lavender is young. Prune with caution, however because if cut back too much (into the wood) they may not come back.

Good References: UC Davis' recently published Arboretum All-Stars lists lavender amongst the "100 tough, reliable plants that have been tested in the Arboretum, are easy to grow, don’t need a lot of water, have few problems with pests or diseases, and have outstanding qualities in the garden".
For more information about lavender, get a copy of The Sunset Western Garden Book (see link at right). It's the must-have reference for gardeners in the west U.S.

ABC Wednesday: "J" is for Junk!

Welcome to the weekly online collaboration known as ABC Wednesday! My choice for the letter "J" is Junk. These birdhouses were on display at last weekend's Perennial Plant Club Sale in Sacramento. Aren't they charming? The green roof was made from an old Doughboy pool liner!

My friend, Lynn, at Inside Red Studio is a garden designer and an artist who especially loves working with recycled materials.

Back last Fall, I posted a couple of items about these great these outhouse/tool huts made by a father and son in Davis out of wood scraps and junk found at the dump.

I really admire these artists' ability to take some ordinary and discarded thing and with imagination and creativity, turn it into art. It's really something.

ABC Wednesday: "I" is for IPM

ooh, ooh, ooh...10 more minutes to go...I have to choose. I think I'm going with something dull and academic, but which I think sounds worthy...it's

Integrated Pest Management (or)

IPM

This year my green goal is to become more organic gardening friendly...IPM could help me with that, I'm sure, if I only understood it...I think I'll pass this off to a blogger I admire, a recent Master's Degree recipient from the UC Davis campus...I'm sure she had to digest it all.
Till then, however, here's the link to the program, http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/

Whoops, 2 more minutes! PUBLISH!

"E" is for Euryops

This is my first contribution to the online collaborative project, ABC Wednesday, a weekly posting of items relating to a particular letter. This week it's the letter "E."

There is something to be said for the "faithful retainer." The person, plant, friend who is constant and dependable, but somehow, for this, less valued. Every gardener has the plants in their area that grow without fail...I'm sure this is true...and this can make them seem common, whereas to another, they would be prized. Such is the case in Sacramento with Euryops. What would you say to a shrub that bloomed thru winter with yellow daisy-like flowers when its neighbors had dropped everything but their thorns? My experience with Euryops is that I can abuse this plant, with neglect and artless pruning, and it says, "I'm there for you."
According to the Sunset Western Garden Book, the easy care and extremely long flowering season of Euryops pectinatus' make it a good filler, background plant or low screen. So there!