Poppy Day

The Theodore Payne Foundation held their annual Poppy Day today. I arrived there just after noon, in time to attend one of the workshops about native plant propagation by cuttings. It was given by a very nice English woman volunteer whose name I failed to catch. I learned a lot in the workshop -- before I had no knowledge of how to propagate plants. These are the steps (roughly) involved in propagation:

• Cut off a few inches of a plant's stem.
• Strip off all the leaves and flowers except for one or two. The cutting can lose too much moisture if too many leaves are left on. You don't want to leave any flowers because they use up the plants energy which you want to be spent on making new roots.
• Immerse the bottoms of the cuttings in water if it is going to be a while before you transfer them into their medium.
• Prepare 2 inch high trays or small pots with a medium consisting of perlite and sand. Other types of mediums can be used, but in general, you want something sterile with no nutrition that can absorb water.
• Add the cuttings to the medium, keep them out of direct sun light, keep them moist, and wait about a month or so until they produce roots.
• Transfer the cuttings to a 4 inch pot with a soil mixture such as SuperSoil once they have rooted.
• When the roots reach the bottom of the 4 inch pot, the cuttings can be planted in the ground.
  

After the workshop, I browsed through the plants in the nursery which were all on sale today. I ended up buying 10 plants:

• Island Bush Poppy (Dendromecon harfordii)
• Hearst Ceanothus (Ceanothus hearstiorum) X 2
• Island California Fushia (Epilobium canum "Catalina") X 4
• Creeping Red Fescue (Festuca rubra) X 2
• Island Snapdragon (Galvezia speciosa)

The Bush Poppy is going to go in the front yard and serve as a hedge near the front door. Surrounding it will be the Hearst Ceanothus. The blue flowers from the ceanothus should contrast nicely with the bright yellow flowers of the bush poppy.

The California Fushia will be planted in the parkway area between my house and my neighbor's house. It will replace the dead grass that has been there since I moved in.

I bought the red fescue to plant as an experiment. I want to see if it is something that will work well as a lawn substitute that my dog can relax on. If it works, I'll buy more in the future and cover a large area with it.

The Island Snapdragon is going to go with 2 others I bought last fall. I just needed an extra one to cover the large area behind by garage surrounding my compost bins.

By the way, the California Poppies I planted in the fall are blooming like crazy now. It is quite a display. I'll try to remember to post a picture of it soon.

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

I had the day off today and decided to take a trip to Santa Barbara to visit the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden which is dedicated to California native plants.

We got up early and made it to Maxwell's just in time for its half price omelettes which they serve until 7 AM. I got the Garbage omelette.

By 8 AM, we were on the road to Santa Barbara. It was raining for most of the trip, but the skies cleared just as we arrived at the gardens. The weather was almost perfect for the rest of the day - just a little chilly at times.

We arrived at about 9:30 AM. The botanic gardens were awesome! Almost all the native plants I was interested in were on display. The garden was divided up into sections like the meadow, the dessert, and the woodlands. There were also sections showcasing plant families like ceanothus and manzanita.

We spend the first 3 hours walking around and saw almost all of the gardens. We then took a break for lunch at The Daily Grind near the Santa Barbara Mission. After lunch, we returned to the gardens for a walk through the Ceanothus Section. This was one of my favorite sections as it showcased many of the plants that I planted in my garden at home, e.g. California Buckwheat, White Sage, and California Poppy.

At 2 PM we went on a guided tour which was led by a nice old lady from Washington who fell in love with California natives and settled in Santa Barbara. The tour lasted about an hour. It was okay, but nothing special. The guide basically took us through a few sections and pointed out a few of her favorite plants.

Before leaving, I stopped by the gift shop and nursery and purchased seeds for the Giant coreopsis and a 1 gallon Monkeyflower to replace one that I planted a few months ago that didn't survive. The Giant coreopsis was a very peculiar looking plant that reminded me of something you'd see in a Dr. Seuss movie. I thought it would be fun to plant somewhere in my yard.

A few California Poppies were in bloom today, but I plan to go back to the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens in the spring when many more wildflowers are in full bloom.

California Native Plant Garden Design Course - Part 3

Yesterday, we finished the 3 part class on designing a garden with native plants at Theodore Payne. In this last class, each student presented his/her design to the rest of the class. We were nervous because we didn't think that our design was that good, but our presentation went pretty well. The instructors said we did a good job :)

Although we sketched our whole property to scale, we only finalized a design for the front yard. It is pretty simple: blue fescue in the parkway and the very front of the yard followed by a section of white sage, and then a section of wooly blue curls on one side and desert lavender on the other. We also want a tree on the left side. We're thinking either a palo verde or chitalpa.

The only hardscape change is a series of cement slabs leading from the front porch to the sidewalk in the center of the yard. Right now we only have a path going south to the driveway, but we usually head away from the house to the north when leaving by foot.

The instructor made a few good suggestions after reviewing our plan. She suggested a few curves in places we had straight lines. She also suggested switching the sections of white sage and wooly blue curls since the sage tends to grow taller and should be closer to the house so as not to block the view of the wooly blue curls from the street. She also suggested that we substitute eriogonum gigantea for the desert lavender in case the desert lavender doesn't grow well in our area. Other than that, she just suggested adding a low flowering accent plant in the corner of the yard. We'll probably go with some kind of monkey flower.

I guess we're ready to start working on the front yard now. We just have to decide if we're going to rip out the existing landscape ourselves or if we're going to hire someone to do it. We know we definitely want to do the planting ourselves. Native plants have to be planted before April so we don't have much time...

California Native Plant Garden Design Course - Part 2

We went to Part 2 of our 3-part landscape design class today at the Theodore Payne Foundation. We brought in our base plan for our house along with some bubble diagrams depicting some general ideas in the garden like a bird bath and a sitting area.

The course outline for Part 2:

• Questions
• Review - Start Creating Your Native Landscape Design
• Select Materials
• Develop Your Final Garden Design
• Soil and Site Preparation
• Irrigation Techniques
• Individual Design Projects
• Work Session

I didn't feel like I learned a lot today. The instructors went over different ideas for designing a garden, but they were very general. The main ideas were to create groups of similar plants, create curvy borders between planting areas, and to create focal points. This is useful, I guess, but I didn't feel like it was getting me any closer to designing my garden. I still have no idea what plants to pick.

I had heard before that native plants won't require any watering or soil amendments. Today, the instructors said that the plants do need watering in their first few years until they become established. They also said that in some cases, you should add compost or gypsum to the soil. One of the main reasons I am interested in a native plant garden is that I wouldn't have to do these things. I think I am going to try leaving the soil as-is and not watering and see what happens. I have planted a few natives already and they seem to be doing just fine with no watering and the unamended soil I planted them in.

At the end of the class, one of the instructors looked at the photos of your yard and our initial base plan. He didn't really have much to suggest except that we try to make some meandering curvy paths -- that seemed to be his thing -- and that we might want to put a tree or two on both sides of our front yard. I'm not sure if I'm going to take that advice since I enjoy being able to see a lot of the street from my front window.

On the way out, I stopped by the Theodore Payne shop to buy some wildflower seeds. I wanted a different color flower to compliment the orange California Poppies that I already planted. The woman there recommended Nemophila menziesii (Baby Blue Eyes). I think they'll look great next to the Poppies.

On the way home, we stopped at Langer's for the good ol' #19. We would have strolled in the park afterwards, but it was raining.

California Native Plant Garden Design Course - Part 1

Yesterday, we began Part 1 of a 3-part course about garden design with California native plants. It was held at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. We're hoping that after this course, we'll be able to replace the landscape of our front and back yards using mostly native plants.

The instructors, Anna Armstrong and Richard Walker, were very nice and very knowledgeable. They have been doing residential landscape design since 1991, but the majority of their work has switched from residential to commercial in recent years.

The course outline for Part 1:

1. What is a California Native Plant?
2. Why Design a California Native Plant Garden? - Sustainability
3. What You Have to be Comfortable With - Nonconformity
4. Get to Know Your Yard - Base Information and Site Analysis
5. Decide What You Want In Your Garden - Functionality
6. Start Creating Your Native Landscape Design
7. Select Materials

We basically received an introduction to gardening with natives and its benefits and then learned how to sketch our yards and the structures that will not be changing. We were advised to sketch on 24" x 36" paper using a #2 pencil. I asked about the use of computer software and didn't receive any recommendations other than Autocad which is very expensive and doesn't run on Linux. Even if I'm able to get a hold of appropriate software, we're still going to do our sketch by hand since it might be hard to print on the proper size paper.

When I got home, I searched the web for CAD software, looking for programs that were free and run on Linux. I found 2 interesting ones. VariCAD is a good looking 3D/2D CAD tool that runs on Linux, but it costs $599. QCad is a 2D CAD tool that also runs on Linux and has a free Community Edition! QCad turned out to be perfect for this exercise. I'll write more on it later...

We're supposed to identify what we want in the garden with respect to functionality. Here are some ideas I have so far:

For the front yard:

• A bench for sitting and enjoying the garden
• A path that leads from the front porch to the sidewalk, possibly curving or jogging to the north which is the way I leave the house in the morning (right now we only have a cement path that leads south to the driveway)
• Two trees in the parkway
• Short paths in the parkway that let people cross from their cars parked by the curb to the sidewalk

For the back yard:

• Area for at least 2 people to sit and enjoy the garden
• Path from end of patio to northern side yard
• Vegetable garden
• Path from end of patio to vegetable garden
• Path allowing the harvesting of fruit from our orange and avocado trees
• Path from the patio to the compost bins behind the garage
• A bird bath
• Possibly an outdoor fire pit
• Possibly a giant chess set surrounded by a bench or two for people to watch

California Native Plant Horticulture

We took the California Native Plant Horticulture class yesterday morning at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. This was the class description:

This class will cover a wide range of topics, including the definition of
native plant, why they're valuable, plant communities, plant requirements, establishment, planting details, pruning, irrigation, maintenance and where to see and buy native plants. It is recommended for anyone who is just getting started with natives and as a precursor to our California Native Plant Garden Design Course.

There were 17 students and two instructors, Ken and Rhonda Gilliland. Both were very nice and enthusiastic about CA natives. The class didn't have much of a structure other than to hand out some materials, define what native plants are, and to answer questions from the students for about 2 hours. Then the class went outside to get a short pruning lesson and to walk around the nursery while Ken and Rhonda answered more questions and pointed out various adult natives growing nearby.

I learned that native plants need no fertilizer, no pesticides, and no water other than what comes from rain. Also, neighborhoods with fewer lawns and more native plants have less lawn mowers and less leaf blowers making for a more peaceful experience.

The highlight of the class was actually not officially part of the class, but an after-class field trip to Ken and Rhonda's native plant garden in Tujunga. They call their property Quail Hollow. They've really done a nice job in their garden which includes many of the plants that you can buy at Theodore Payne. It was very helpful for me to walk around the garden, asking Rhonda about the names of the plants and how she cares for them.

She also showed me what California Poppies look like when they are just sprouting which helped me tremendously because I planted some from seed, and I almost mistook their spouts for weeds and pulled them. They are popping up all over my garden so I should have an impressive display of poppies come Spring.

Here is a picture of the garden at Quail Hollow from 2003:


Next weekend we will begin Part 1 of a 3 part class on designing a California native plant garden. I'm really looking forward to it.