By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Maybe the name's the problem.  If you called them side-gardens instead of side-yards, would you treat them differently?  Leucadia, California, landscape designer Ingrid Rose thinks you might.  "I personally hate the word `yard'," she says.  It sounds like an area where you'd store your composter, your border collie's agility toys, or anything else you don't regularly use, she says.  It does not sound like a space to be in just for pleasure. "But there's no reason these spaces have to be ugly," says Rose.  "There's a lot you can do with them." 

Rose was going to show me some of her favorite side-garden designs on my recent scouting trip to San Diego, but she came down with the flu and had to cancel.  But her comments stuck with me.  When I walked by the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum in the Gaslight Quarter, I couldn't help but notice how similar in size its side-garden was compared to the average residential side-yard.

The enchanting path along one side of the Museum, shown above, takes you over a bridge, past a waterfall, boulders, pockets of plants, and a fishpond before it terminates at a small courtyard behind the building.  The meandering curves of the path foreshorten the linear distance, and the use of boulders and plants create a series of separate pictures to enjoy along the route.  There's no reason you couldn't duplicate this idea in a home garden.  In size the spaces are virtually the same.

Rose and I will reschedule, and we'll have more ideas and images to share with you then.  In the meantime, though, take a look at Julie Chai's  side-yard make-over story for further inspiration.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

For the past 70 years, an industry association called All-America Rose Selections (AARS) has been evaluating roses bred for sale in America, choosing the best ones each year based on their success in national trials. Along the way they’ve developed considerable expertise about which roses grow best in which climates. This year you can see those regional champs online at the AARS web site.

Looking at the way regions are divided up, I was skeptical: how likely is it that a rose recommended for mild, coastal Camarillo can also be best for blistering Phoenix? To find out, I talked with rosarian Keith Zary. As head rose breeder for Jackson and Perkins, he has an office just a few miles from the California coast near Camarillo, and supervises a 40-acre rose research facility in the hot San Joaquin Valley.

He said that the roses recommended for each region actually do well across all the climates within the region. The Southwest Region recommendations, for example, were chosen both for their ability to resist the mildew common along the coast and the heat that that tends to cook ornamentals inland. Good examples include ‘Gemini’ (above), a pink blend hybrid tea from Jackson and Perkins, and ‘Fourth of July’ (below), a climber from Weeks Roses.

Zary said that doesn’t mean performance will be identical across the zone: a rose that blooms most of the summer in Camarillo will have the summer dormancy common to nearly all roses in the desert. But taking these things into account, the recommended roses will give superior peformance wherever you grow them within the region.

The AARS lists are especially useful because they’re current. The commercial life of an average rose is about 10 years (it disappears from commerce within a decade of its introduction), so roses need to be added and deleted as they come and go from the market. AARS does this, so you have a good chance of finding any rose on the AARS lists.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Fritz Haeg is waging war against the American front lawn, and Descanso Gardens has become his ally in the battle.  Haeg--artist, architect, and social revolutionary--lectured at the La Canada Flintridge, California public garden last October on the Edible Estate Initiative, his campaign to replace lawns with ornamental edibles.  The lecture was so well received that Descanso suggested Haeg install a demonstration garden on their grounds.  Installation was completed mid-January and will remain through October.

As you can see from the image below, the installation shows the basic outline of a house with the traditional carpet of lawn on one side and an edible garden on the other.  The edible portion contains citrus and olive trees, vegetables and herbs in raised beds, and meandering paths.  The hope is that visitors, especially frequent ones, will be able to see how dynamic the Edible Estate portion is--evolving over time and changing with the seasons--compared to the monotony of the lawn, and that they'll be motivated to re-examine their own landscapes.  Descanso's staff will also be measuring the input required for both sides--time, water, fertilizer, gasoline.  And also what that input yields--grass clippings vs. pounds of lettuce or tomatoes.
 
Descanso has more photos and details on their website. KCET is tracking the project, too, and has videos of the installation and an interview with Haeg on their site.  Haeg has more information about the Initiative on his site.

Lawn side of the installation

The edible portion of the installation, shortly after installation

Haeg's book cover, showing his project at a Lakewood, California home.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

A hard-working rancher in southern Oregon’s Klamath basin, Bill O’Keefe was no fool: when daily chores damaged the skin on his hands and feet to the point of debilitating pain, he went to his daughter Tara for help. She was fresh out of pharmacy school, and Bill wanted her to develop a creme for his dry, cracked skin. She experimented until she finally came up with formulations to hydrate, soften, and heal his hands and feet. Both worked so well that they've come to market.

I’ve tried each product. After extended hand weeding in sandy, rocky soil, my skin is seriously roughed up, dried out, and often cut or punctured by thorns. I’ve found Working Hands ($6.99) to be an excellent, non-greasy, fast-working restorative.

Healthy Feet ($6.99, originally sold as Working Feet) does the same job on my feet, which are prone to deep and painful cracking. The formulation of both products is nearly identical, but Healthy Feet includes a little allantoin to penetrate the thicker soles of the feet.

You can buy Working Hands at Ace Hardware and Lowe’s. Healthy Feet is sold by Walgreen’s. Both are also available online at www.okeeffescompany.com, and both are still manufactured by Tara O'Keeffe's company in Sisters, Oregon.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Since you can get cut flowers from any supermarket, why bother growing your own?  So you can enjoy bouquets with a little personality, that's why.  The uniformity of supermarket flowers is pretty dispiriting.  If it weren't for the fact they wilt, you'd swear they were manufactured not grown.  But add something from your own garden to the supermarket mix, and suddenly the whole bouquet acquires more character.

Phlox drummondii, shown here, is an annual with that transformative power.  Its tight clusters of small, star-shaped flowers in a range of bright pastels mix well with just about anything you find at the supermarket.  And, as you can see here, those clusters also have sufficient charm to stand alone.  Annual phlox is also lightly scented.  So that's something else it adds to your bouquets.  (As you know, most supermarket flowers have as much fragrance as cardboard.)

Sow seed for annual phlox as soon as danger of frost is safely passed or, in climates with a short growing season, start indoors 3 to four weeks beforehand.  Look for a variety that is 1 to 2 feet tall so you'll have enough stem for cutting.  'Dutch Tapestry' from Renee's Garden, seen here, is a good one.  'Phlox of Sheep' is another.  Care details follow the photo.

Choose a site that has plenty of sun for your annual phlox.  Sow seeds 2 to 3 inches apart, covering them lightly with soil (about 1/4 inch deep).  Water soil and keep moist until seedlings emerge in 10 to 15 days.  When seedlings are large enough to handle, thin until they are 6 to 8 inches apart.  Water regularly — about an inch per week.  Pick flowers generously.  The more you clip, the more you'll get.  Expect a long season of bloom.  P. drummondii will continue to flower until frost and has even been known to survive a light freeze.

Grow a cutting garden

By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Our damp February weather here at the Sunset offices is brightened considerably by spring's earliest bloomers.

Rain and gray skies? Who cares about them when you have the intoxicating fragrance of winter daphne?

Daphne odora `Aureo marginata'

Daphne odora also has one of my favorite Western Garden Book entries of all time:

"So prized for its pervasive floral perfume that it continues to be widely planted despite its unpredictable behavior — it can die despite the most attentive care, or flourish with little attention until you invite all your gardening friends over to admire it, at which point it promptly succumbs without warning, just to show you who's in charge."

If that doesn't make you fall in love, what could?

And if that wasn't enough, get a gander at these marvelous 'Replete' daffodils. They don't have any fragrance, but their peaches-and-cream ruffles are enough to make any day feel like sunshine.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Fourteen months ago I hadn't heard of seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus).  Today I wouldn't be without it.

I planted the variety 'Bountiful', which proved to be exceedingly well-named, a year ago this January.  It was flowering when I bought it, and it hasn't been out of bloom since.  And what sweet, cheerful little blooms they are, too, with those plump yellow-green disks and lavender rays. 

The plant's form appeals to me, too.  It is a very tidy clump — 6 to 10 inches tall and about two feet wide — which makes it a natural for the front edge of a planting bed.  Mine is in a planting strip on the pedestrian side of a low fence in my front yard.  I love that it beams up at my neighbors every day without fail when they walk by.

'Wayne Roderick' (above) is very similar to 'Bountiful' but its flowers are slightly smaller and have longer stems.  Both varieties are very sturdy plants with few pest problems. 

As its name suggests, seaside daisy performs best along the coast.  But 'Bounty' and 'Wayne Roderick' also perform well inland if grown in light shade and watered occasionally, though they'll probably produce few flowers in the heat of summer.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Ten or 15 years ago I started a personal natural history calendar designed to put me more in tune with the garden’s natural cycles.

I did it because I was noticing odd coincidences that seemed worth recording. For example, after a couple of February days in the high 50’s or low 60’s, I always got my first mosquito bite of the season. Then, within 48 hours, I’d hear the first frogs of the year. Two weeks further on, I’d see my lawn starting to look shaggy, and it would remind me that new grass growth signaled the time to overseed bare spots in the lawn.

As the years passed, the list became more sophisticated (and more useful).

I now divide each month into three 10-day parts: early, mid, and late. And I subdivide it into flora and fauna. So if you look at my calendar for late February, you’ll see reports on first blooms of Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ (it’s 10 weeks late because it grows in the shade), Corylopsis spicata, Forsythia intermedia, Hamamelis mollis, the first daffodils, Indian plum, and too many more to mention. Along with this, I’ve recorded a huge number of bird sightings, mentions of river otters and coyotes I cross paths with, and first frog eggs in a nearby pond.

I’ve become better attuned to long cycles (years between events) too: things like tent caterpillar infestations on alders and scale explosions on dogwoods, both of which come every few years, and the corrective population booms of wasps and ichneumons that follow.

I do all this on a Filemaker Pro database, but it would be nearly as easy in a word processing file. It’s fast, and keeps me closer to my garden.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Since the end of the little ice age in the 1850’s, earth’s climate has been warming—no surprise, since that’s what defines the end of any ice age. But given the natural vicissitudes of weather, how do you measure overall change? One way is to track leaf-out, bloom, and seeding dates of plants across North America. There aren’t enough scientists to do that, but there are easily enough gardeners—which is why a consortium of universities in the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) wants your help.

By logging onto Project Budburst and registering, you’ll get a master list of plants being tracked, then be able to enter data from your own location. Everything will be compiled and entered into a master database that was started when the project began in 2007. This year’s tracking began Saturday, Feb. 15.

Past ice ages have come and gone with no apparent help from humans, and the results have been dramatic for all species involved. The present fear is that this time, we’re accelerating the warming process by dumping carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas that accelerates the warming process) into the atmosphere at unprecedented rates.

This might lead to faster and more extreme warming, which could increase storm intensities, raise sea level enough to submerge cities like New York and London, and wreak havoc with our global food supply. Studies like this one may help supply evidence, one way or the other, about human involvement in climate change.

Hear what the West's water experts say

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

My California native garden is a year old now, and it's time to take stock and see what's working and what isn't and make some changes while the weather is still cool. 

There are many winners — seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus), coral bells, Cleveland sage, California fuchsia.   And others that took a little longer to adjust but are finally settling in — 'Louis Edmunds' manzanita, 'Dancing Tassels' ribes, and summer holly (Comarostaphylis diversifolia). 

But there are some plants that obviously just don't like my site or gardening style — island snapdragon, for one. They've had their chance. Time to shovel-prune and plant something else.  I haven't made my final choices yet, but I found some great tools that are helping me shape my shopping list.

Las Pilitas nursery has a design tool on its website that will customize a plant list for you based on your zip code, soil conditions, and the frequency you plan to water. Alter your watering schedule, and the list changes significantly, which is educational.  I found, for instance, I actually prefer the plants on the drier list, which tells me I need to back off on my watering schedule even more than I'd planned.

Tree of Life Nursery's Respecifier is a useful download. It lists landscaping staples we're all familiar with and suggests natives to plant in their place. Toyon instead of pyracantha, deer grass vs. fountain grass, and manzanita rather than Indian hawthorn, for example.  This helps you look at natives from a landscape designer's perspective.

Finally, I like the plant lists on Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden's website. Many of the choices on the Coastal Garden list are already doing great in my garden, which gives me confidence in trying others. Silver Carpet California aster, for instance. Look at Gardening Tips, which covers all the common questions people have about natives.

Obviously these sites are all geared towards California. If those of you who garden elsewhere have found comparable websites you've found useful, please let us know and we'll share them.