By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

One to put on your list is the  LA Garden Show at the Los Angeles County Arboretum starting on Friday, April 30th and running through May 2.  The theme this year is 'Living Green: Essentials for the Home Garden".  Display gardens, lectures, and demonstrations will focus on ways to save water and energy with drought-tolerant landscaping.  Growing edibles will also be a major emphasis.

Two of the gardens being installed for the event will be permanent.  One will be designed by renowned landscape architect Nancy Goslee Power.   Power will also be the kick-off speaker and will be signing her gorgeous new book, Power of Gardens.  Power's lecture is 11 am on April 30th. 

 

Nancy's own garden is featured in her book.  Click here to get a hint of what it's like.

The other new permanent garden being installed for this event will be designed by Jeff Moore, the owner of Solana Succulents nursery, in Solana Beach.  He is a master at creating gardens that feel like underwater seascapes.  So expect something like this:

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Not long ago I heard a dozen landscape and nursery pros talking about best-ever garden books. One of their consensus favorites was Perfect Plant, Perfect Place by Roy Lancaster (DK Publishing, New York, 2010; $24.95). It’s a great choice, in part because it was being revised and updated even as these book-lovers spoke. The new edition is out now. Pick up a copy and you’ll see why it gets such high marks.

In a nutshell, it’s a horticultural book of lists divided into two sections: one for indoor plants, one for those you grow outside. Because the book covers so much, I’ll blog it in two parts—house plants first. And even that is biting off a lot, since the indoor section alone could hold its own with nearly any house-plant book in print.

Instead of being arranged as an encyclopedia, plants are organized by use. One section lists those you grow for flowers, another for foliage plants, and another by where plants grow best (sun, shade, rooms with dry air). There are even sections for plants with special uses—ones for beginners, for purifying air—and a final section that caters to lovers of ferns, orchids, succulents, palms, and bromeliads, for example.

Pictures inside are excellent. Perfect Plant, Perfect Place has only a very general table of contents, but after you've had a few minutes with the book, you won't need one: color bars on page edges help you navigate the parts, and a little exploration will lead you to treasure after treasure. In true DK fashion, the book is laid out in a succession of self-contained spreads, so you can open it anywhere and be looking at a complete package about, say, plant propagation, indoor insect control, or houseplants for narrow spaces. If you're looking for a specific plant, just go to the index (plants often show up in more than one category).

Next week I’ll cover Lancaster’s approach to outdoor plants.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

The sun is out, and so are the flowers.  Go find them.  It's not hard.  Lots of people are willing to point you in the right direction. 

The Theodore Payne Foundation, for starters.  You can call their Wildflower Hotline, 816-768-3533 to find out what's popping where this minute.  Or visit their website.  Or, if you live in LA, at least drop by and see their wildflower hill. 

Writer/photographer Carol Leigh's California Wildflower Sheet  is also great.  Fellow wildflower fiends give very specific details re what they've seen and where.

Live near Santa Barbara?  Check out the Santa Barbara Hikes website for wildflower sightings.

Or just head to anywhere there is still a patch of wild land. You'll find something in bloom.  I spent last weekend in Catalina.  I didn't see any masses of flowers like the ones in Anza-Borrego scene above.  But the whole island was gorgeously green.

And there were little sprinklings of wildflowers all along our four-hour hike. It was enough to convince me to get out again next weekend and the one after that and the one after that.  Because wildflower seasons like this one don't happen every year.

Want to go now?  Find help for planning your Catalina trip here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Last week I mentioned my visit to the spring trials at Skagit Gardens in Mt. Vernon, Washington. Along with the fabulous new hellebores, marguerites, petunies, and coreopsis, they offered something that made me smile: Deer fern (Blechnum spicant), that superb evergreen native that graces woodland paths all over the Pacific Northwest.

“Discovering” it is kind of like “discovering” America: it’s been here all the time, and deserves all the praise anybody can heap on it. This plant is tidy, diminutive compared with most of our forest ferns, survives on rainfall alone after it’s established, and fits in as well with exotic plants as with wild ones, which is probably why Skagit is interested. (Many native plants have a reputation for looking a bit untamed around well-bred nursery plants.)

Grow this where it gets partial to full shade and regular water. If you plan to let it naturalize and live in the northern California or Pacific Northwest lowlands, plant it in rich forest duff, or at least soil that’s heavily amended with compost. The plant usually grows less than 24 in. high and wide, but clumps can get much bigger with time. Fronds come in two types: spreading sterile fronds that make up most of the clump, and narrow, upright fertile fronds that have a whole different look.

With just normal garden care, you can grow this in Sunset climate zones 2b-7, 14-19, and 24.

Deer fern also has some fascinating relatives, including two smallish, tender tree ferns that grow in Southern California—one from Fiji and one from South America—and a hardy low ground cover called Blechnum penna-marina (pictured below) that is at its best in mild parts of California, but which will also grow in protected spots west of the Cascades in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Hi Gardeners! I'm in a much better head space than last month in regards to the garden. It seems that spring has sprung (or is about to).

Enjoy!

  

California poppies

Borage -- Self seeded

Arctotis 'Cherry Frost' making a comeback from last year

Strawberries

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I've wanted to grow potatoes in a tower for some time now.

Reasons why it seems like a good idea:

• It saves space by getting the crop to grow up rather than sprawling out in the ground.

• It requires no digging -- you can reach in to grab new potatoes or you can wait until the crop is mature, undo the tower and watch your potatoes tumble out.

• The yield is supposedly two to three times greater -- this garden lore is supported by BOTH Greg Lutovsky of Irish Eyes Garden Seeds and Ronniger Potato Farm (our source for seeds this year). Here's how it works: The plant grows and its stem lengthens, as do the underground stolons from which the tubers grow. Give the stem more height to grow and it will, increasing the space for stolons and thus tubers.

One drawback: It can be more water intensive, so be sure to check your tower frequently in warm weather.

The challenge for growing them in our test garden is to find a method that is aesthetically pleasing because, c'mon, this is Sunset.

Then I found this video on YouTube of a man in Australia with the perfect idea:

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Yes, it's nearly that time of year we've all been longing for.  Tomato planting time.  Take advantage of some of the great plant sales occurring now or soon, such as the one listed below.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

 

The fragrance of variegated winter daphne (Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata') is transporting. It's planted by my front door, so everybody coming and going gets a whiff, and my wife cuts sprigs of it for small vases around the house and her classroom at school. But I think I'm going to replace it with something even better: Daphne odora 'Mae-jima', pictured above.

This 3-foot-tall semidwarf Japanese selection has the same flowers and fragrance as the winter daphne I grow, but its creamy white leaf margins are broader, making the variegated effect more striking; and it holds nearly all its leaves through bloom time. In contrast, 'Aureomarginata' drops more than half its leaves at bloom. (Though 'Aureomarginata' is technically evergreen, some describe it as "wintergreen" because it holds its foliage through the worst of winter, then drops much of it as new leaves come on after flowering.)

You can find this at Northwest retail nurseries; I haven't seen it on any mail-order sites.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

My Annie's Annuals catalog just arrived and I'm wanting everything.

Asclepias, to start with.  A. speciosa, the well-named `Showy Milkweed', shown on the left, for sure.  Besides being a Western native plant and a host for monarch butterflies, this plant has large silvery-green leaves and fragrant flowers.  A. cancellata `White Cotton', a South African native, shown at right, is also gorgeous.  But this is a big puppy, 4' x 4'.  Probably don't have space for it.  Will probably buy it anyway.

 

Then, there's dianthus.  Dianthus has been on my mind lately.  Been missing that spicy fragrance.  The one below looks like a good place to start again.  Dianthus superbus `Fringed Pink'.  "One of the most delightfully sweet scents in the floral world," says Annie.  "Not clove scented," she adds.  "Even better."

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I went to a Skagit Gardens open house in Northwestern Washington a couple of weeks ago to check out new plants for 2010. I saw much that I really loved, but to my complete surprise, the plants that pleased me most were the hellebores. These near-perfect, heavy-blooming evergreen perennials really give the winter landscape life; every garden should have a few. There are so many species and varieties on the market now, I wondered why breeders should be working on more. Scroll through the following pictures and when you get to the bottom I'll tell you.

Helleborus niger 'Josef Lemper' 

Helleborus x nigercors 'Green Corsican'

 

 

 Helleborus x ballardiae 'Pink Frost'

Helleborus x ericsmithii 'Silvermoon' 

What's special about these is that the flowers look out at you—even up at you in some cases—and not down, as do so many other hellebores (probably so they won't get a face full of winter rain in the wild). Look for outward-facing hellebores when you buy them in flower. Many varieties are featured in nurseries right now, while others go out on sale tables in November and December.

Other news on the hellebore front is that Skagit will probably be selling some varieties (such as 'Josef Lemper', at top) as Christmas plants next winter. They bloom then anyway, can tolerate indoor conditions for a couple of weeks, and can be moved into the garden when the holidays are over. Poinsettias, look out!

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

As I warned in a previous blog, visiting SoCalnurseryplants.com, an on-line directory/blog about independent nurseries, just might be dangerous.  It makes the urge to go out and explore just about irresistible.

Last week I didn't resist.  I visited Mimosa Nursery, a tropical nursery in East L.A. owned by Gilbert Guyenne.   I was disappointed Guyenne no longer has chickens scratching around the nursery, as described in a LA Times story about the nursery on Mimosa's website.  No tropical song birds in bamboo cages either.  Not that the nursery wasn't still plenty exotic.

You don't see rows of dwarf juniper like this in any old nursery.

 

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

It annoys me that vases all seem to be designed for the tall stems of flower industry blooms.  They don't suit my more modest-stemmed garden flowers at all.

That's why I treasure the few vases I inherited from my grandmother.  They are meant for garden flowers and anything I cut from the garden looks good in them.  

San Diego garden writer Debra Lee Baldwin likes even smaller vases.  Ones just big enough for a chive blossom or a single wildflower or a tip pruning from a shrub.

They're a fun thing to shop for on trips, says Baldwin.  Gives you a mission, and they're small enough to stuff in a pocket.

You can see just how small the vases she collects are in her photo opposite.  For close-ups of individual vases, see her blog post on Gardening Gone Wild.

Some floral designers aren't crazy about conventional vases either.  Kate Holt of Flowerwild is one of them.  See some of her charming small bouquets here.

No flowers in your garden to cut?  Here are four even beginners can grow.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

  Striking, exotic, and sometimes downright alien looking, orchids practically define the word "fascinating." To see several thousand at once, head for the Exhibit Hall of the Lloyd Center Doubletree Hotel in Portland this weekend, March 6-7, where the Oregon Orchid Society of Portland will be having its 65th annual show.

The show includes something like 10,000 flowering plants, which seems like a lot until you consider the 22,000-plus species that make up Orchidaceae, the largest plant family in the world. Still, you'll get a good sense of the immense range of orchids here, and meet vendors that can sell you truly amazing kinds that will grow on your windowsill—and that you'll never see in the supermarket.

If you take your kids,have them check plants for scent (it ranges from none to fragrance of perfume, chocolate, and dead meat) and for mimicry: orchid flowers can resemble insects, birds and other kinds of flowers. Some flowers even have hinges, trap doors, and booby traps.

It's fun, and you're bound to learn a lot. Admission is $7.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Photos by Andrea Gomez, Sunset staff photographer

We show the below tabletop decor idea from Pasadena landscape architect Heather Lenkin in our March issue as part of our Garden Anywhere story.  Or you can read about it here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Karen Tillou

 

 If you're anywhere near Portland, Oregon, this Saturday (March 6) will be your best chance to get exactly the right fruit tree for your garden this year. The event is the Home Orchard Society's Fruit Propagation Fair—FPF, for short—at the Washington County Fairplex across from the airport on Cornell Road in Hillsboro.

You can mix and match plant parts here as easily as you can assemble a sound system at an electronics store. Say the only space available in your garden for fruit is an 18-inch by 8-foot strip between the sidewalk and the house. Well, at the FPF, experts can help you choose and graft an espaliered tree made from two kinds of apples on a dwarf   rootstock. If you aren't sure which apples will cross-pollinate, they'll tell you. If grafting seems a bit over your head, they'll do it for $3 per tree. If you want to learn, they'll teach you. Really, it doesn't get any easier than this.

A huge selection of scions is free, including apple, stone fruit, pear, cherry, quince, fig and grape; you pay for the rootstock, but you take the grafted tree home for planting the same day. If you don't have grafting tools, those are available for sale at the fair, or people on site can sharpen up tools you bring with you. 

In years past, I've been involved with lots of fruit-related events. In every one of them, I've come away happy that such a good-hearted bunch of people are devoted to growing the fruit we all love. I expect your experience will be the same.

The event runs from 10 to 4; admission is $6 ($10 for families).

 

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

  

At a recent gathering of plant people, one nursery owner mentioned his best-selling tree last year: it was 'Honeycrisp' apple. Take one bite from a 'Honeycrisp' (you can buy them now at nearly any supermarket), and you'll know why: it's got that sweet-tart magic that made 'McIntosh' famous, but with a little less of the tartness. It also grows and stores well.

Planted now, a 'Honeycrisp' tree bare root tree will fruit in two to four years, depending on the rootstock you choose (trees on more dwarfing rootstocks bear fruit earlier, but the more dwarfing the rootstock, the shorter-lived the tree). Optimal climate zones for this are Sunset zones 1-7, 14-17, but Riverside grower Kevin Hauser (Sunset zone 19) has 'Honeycrisp' on his top 20 list.

Like most apples, 'Honeycrisp' needs a different apple variety nearby (even in a next-door neighbor's yard) for pollination. Most apples will do the job, but not triploids like 'Gravenstein' and 'Jonagold'.

If you can't find 'Honeycrisp' at a local nursery, buy it from a mailorder source such as Raintree Nursery.

Learn more about how to grow apples in the Sunset Plant Finder.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator   

Need a bit of inspiration this spring? Head over to Far Out Flora, the blog of two friends I've made in Plant ID class at City College of San Francisco. They are up to all sorts of DIY gardening fun and are always happy to share their tips.

Here are a few of my favorites entries:

• This post about thrift store succulent containers

• This post, in which Matti teaches how to mount a staghorn fern (Matti has been asked to teach classes about staghorns this spring at Workshop. I will keep you posted when the schedule is released!)

• And lastly, this post, about their backyard makeover

They also take lots of field trips to Bay Area gems (here is their post about visiting Annie's Annuals).

You can even keep up with our Plant ID class without waking up early on Saturdays!

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

You can build a condo for solitary bees to nest in out of common 2" x 4".  (Las Vegas Master Gardener Paula Garrett sent us step by step photos and instructions for building those.  To see them, click here.)

Or see our instructions plus tips on other things you can do to help bees.

You can also use an old log, and express your appreciation for the hard work bees perform the way Meredith of the Austin blog Great Stems did shown here.

To see more of Meredith's bee houses, click here.

Or, if you're really ambitious, you can turn a bee nest condo into a piece of sculpture, as Greg Corman does.  See examples here.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I just received my copy of the Western Garden Book of Edibles. And since I had no part in creating it I feel I can brag on the book as much as I want.

As the title above would indicate, I'm not very far into Edibles yet.  I did browse through the whole thing once to see how it was laid out.  But now I'm going through it page by page, and it's been a true pleasure.

The Western Garden Book of Edibles is beautifully organized and meticulously researched.  Knowing my co-blogger Jim McCausland was at the helm, I should have expected nothing less.  Still I'm impressed.

The photographs are also gorgeous and inspring--and there's one or more on nearly every page.  Again, why should I be surprised?  Our trusty garden photo editor, Linda Lamb Peters, was in charge of that department.  Naturally she'd find good stuff.

What is a surprise, though, is how much I'm learning.  For instance, how to meet the challenge of dealing with Brassica pests.

Though I've grown leafy Brassicas like collards and kale, I have yet to try my hand at boccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbages.  I've been a little daunted by the pests I might have to deal with, I guess.  But I've learned the same deterrents work for all of these crops, and, frankly, they don't sound that difficult to do.

You can prevent root maggots, I've learned, by covering the seedlings with row covers. Or, alternatively, by ringing the base of each plant with a tar-paper collar or covering each plant with a cone fashioned from a window screen.  To deter cutworms, make collars from paper cups or metal cans with the ends removed.

That doesn't sound too hard, does it?  I feel empowered. Savoy cabbage, shown below, here I come.

I am also intrigued with the idea it is possible to develop corn seed perfectly adapted to your neighborhood.  You start by sowing an open-pollinated corn that is supposed to do well in your climate.  When the corn has ripened, you leave one or two ears on each plant that had some quality you wanted to perpetuate -- particuarly good flavor or robust growth, for instance. 

 

After the silk has dried,you'd put paper bags over the ears to protect them.  At season's end, you pick the ears, peel back the husks, hang the ears to dry in a place where the kernels will dry completely.  And, once they have, break off the seed, store it in a cool, dark place, and then plant the seed the following spring.

Repeat this process for a few years, and you'll have corn uniquely adapted to where you live.

I don't know where I will find room for corn in my small yard, but, being a Midwest girl and addicted to corn on the cob--and now a corn risotto recipe from Sunset as well, I have to try this.

I'll post more about what I'm learning as I make my way through Edibles. Don't wait for me, though.  I'm only on page 42.  Buy your own copy.

Read what Jim learned researching this book here.

For a little preview of what the book is like also see 21 Best Crops for Your Edible Garden.