By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer
Photographs by Mark Turner, Turner Photographics

Most of us are pretty good at separating our camellias from our lobelias, but sometimes wildflowers don’t come as easily. When I’m struggling to put a name on a lovely wilderness blossom, I go to a couple of web sites for help.

One is Mark Turner’s Pacific Northwest Wildflowers, which is easily searchable by common or botanical name, color, flower type, and more. When you click to a flower's page, you get range maps and cross links to other sites that also have information about the plant in question. This is incredibly user friendly, and has some of the finest photography you’ll find on the web—and pictures are large enough to tell you something. Turner is the horticultural photographer whose work fills Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, coauthored with Phyllis Gustafson and published by Timber Press.

The University of Washington’s Burke Museum also hosts an excellent wildflower site. Called Washington Flora Checklist, it is also searchable in multiple ways and includes range maps, external links, and photography.

In the end, you'll probably bookmark and use both of them often. Sites like these make the internet a blessing.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Asked to do a garden design for Dot and Russ Carson in Tualatin, Oregon, designer Phil Thornburg was faced with a blank wall that flanked the patio. His solution was ingeniously simple: treat it as an easel, frame it with a trellis covered by golden hop vine, and add water, sculpture, and color with a fountain and potted perennials.

We think it’s picture perfect.

Thornburg is at Winterbloom Inc. in Tigard, OR; 503 598-0219.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Turf grass requires an alarming amount of water to maintain--about 46 gallons a year per square foot.  So thank goodness more homeowners are questioning whether or not they really need it and rethinking their entire landscape.

Sometimes, though, you've just got to have lawn.  If you need a play surface for young toddlers, say.  Or something that stays cooler than concrete or flagstone under bare feet when you step out of a pool. Especially if you live in a really hot area such as Phoenix or Palm Springs. Or maybe you just love the way that carpet of lush green makes the rest of your drought-tolerant landscaping pop, accentuating the difference.

If you don't want to give up your lawn for one of these reasons or others, consider replacing it with artificial turf.  The product has gotten much more realistic in recent years.  The very natural looking lawn in the photo below, for instance, is totally fake.  This example is from the home of Nate Downey and Melissa McDonald who live in Santa Fe.  They own Santa Fe Permaculture, a landscape design firm specializing in sustainability.  So they are very aware of water scarcity.  Yet they wanted a soft surface for their sons Liam and Keenan (5 and 3, respectively) to play on outdoors.  Installing artificial turf under the canopy of their big Siberian elm was their solution.  They chose SynLawn rye because they thought it was very natural looking.

Here's another situation where artificial turf made sense.  Tom Schaller, an architect living in Venice, California, installed a small, modern dipping pool in his front yard.  He envisioned lawn to complete the design.  (Hardscape would have made it look too severe, and a less flat ground cover would have changed the clean overall effect.)  But Schaller didn't want to be irresponsible and consume that much water.  So he installed fake turf.  He got the look without the guilt.  As it happens, he also chose SynLawn rye.

Realistic looking turf, as in the examples shown here, isn't cheap.  Premium products cost $6 a square foot or more.  But some water district offer rebates that will cover at least part of the costs.  The Western Municipal Water District, which supplies western Riverside County, for instance offers a rebate of 30 center per square foot. And the Helix Water District in southern San Diego County rebate offers $1.00. 

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Photograph by Ebbe Roe Yovino-Smith for Sunset Magazine

I love big pots filled with plants. I just hate moving them, as I must every summer when I reseal my cedar deck. That’s why I was so happy to discover a simple two-person sling designed make pot moving easy.

Called PotLifter, it really works: just fit it around the container you want to move, put somebody on the other side, and the two of you can lift ergonomically, share the load, and get the container safely and relatively easily from point A to point B.

Invented by a Mercer Island gardener, it employs high-tech polymers that can hoist 200-pound loads up to 26 inches in diameter (it even works for rocks and log rounds).

You can find PotLifter in some retail nurseries, or order it from PotLifter.com for $29.95.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Beautiful bug; big problem.

The shiny black insect nestled in the petals of a white rose, seen above, is rather gorgeous in a sinister sort of way.  But, unfortunately, Diaprepes abbreviatus, commonly known as the citrus root weevil, is a serious menace to the California citrus industry.  This Caribbean insect made its way to the U.S. in 1964 in an ornamental plant shipment from Puerto Rico to Florida.  It then made its way to Texas.  And in 2005 it showed up for the first time in Southern California. Since it has been sited in Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Yorba Linda, Long Beach, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Oceanside, Rancho Santa Fe, and elsewhere.

D. abbreviatus is a large, colorful weevil, 3/8 to 3/4 inch long, and can range in color from gray to yellow to orange and black.

The adults feed on leaves and leave semi-circular notches on the margins.  They may feed on fruit as well.  But it is the larvae stage of the insects that is the real threat.  When the grublike larvae fall off the leaves, they burrow into the soil and start feeding on the plant's roots.  They can kill a plant by girdling the root system in as little as 8 months.

In addition to citrus, D. abbreviatus feeds on avocado, guava, peaches, hibiscus, palms, Indian hawthorn, Brazilian pepper, and oaks.  In all it threatens about 270 plant species.  (Despite this picture, it does not appear to harm roses.)

If you find an insect you suspect might be the citrus root weevil, please notify the California Department of Food and Agriculture on their hotline.  800/491-1899.  The Deparment will inspect your plants and treat with insecticides if needed.

For more information on this pest, see the UC Davis publication 8131.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

From country casual to clipped English, from Northwest woodland to Japanesque, next Saturday’s Association of Northwest Landscape Designers garden tour is one of the best ever. On the press pretour I found a surprising number of unusual plants—everything from the beautiful clumping Chusquea culeou bamboo to South African Arctotis daisies—plus an inspiring assortment of plant combinations and design ideas. My garden will certainly be the better for it.

All gardens are just south of

Portland, and many are hidden: you’d never find them apart from the tour. Most are perfectly maintained, and have excellent garden art pieces.

The tour is Saturday, June 28, from 10 to 4. You can purchase tickets at three of the tour gardens, and from several Portland-area nurseries: all are listed on the ANLD web site.

By Sharon Cohoon,Sunset senior garden writer

Using industrial materials such as rebar in unexpected ways in residential gardens is one of Margaret Joplin's  trademarks.  So it's not surprising to see the same theme at work at Pure Beauty, the garden decor shop the landscape architect recently opened in Tucson, Arizona.

Take this cool glass pot, for instance.  In its former life, it was an industrial light fixture.  But when Joplin passed an office supply store that was remodeling and obviously planning to discard its light fixtures, she envisioned a second life for the vessels and bought them all on the spot.

photo by Tim Fuller          plant used, Agave gemniflora

Joplin filled the light fixtures with black Mexican river rocks, tucked in nursery plants still in their containers (the rocks will hide the black plastic), and created a smart new container idea.

When she used up her original supply of light fixtures, Joplin found more at a contractor's scrapyard.  You could do the same.  These fixtures are 24 inches in diameter and 12 inches.

For more repurposing ideas from Joplin (steel containers with built-in trellises made from industrial scrap, for instance), visit her store.  Pure Beauty is located at 2719 East Broadway in Tucson.  Store hours are 9-5 Mon.-Fri. and 10-3 on Saturday.  Phone (520) 623-8068.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Scouting Colleen and Harvey Schwartz’s garden in Bellingham, Washington, I was taken with their use of craftsmen and artists to make the garden even more of a visual treat.

Let’s start with two of their gates: I liked one for practical reasons, and another for beauty when “ordinary” would have been functionally good enough, and a lot cheaper.

The beautiful gate leads into a very private, courtyard-like patio that is itself made lovely with vegetables and ornamentals. The patio is walled off so that the Schwartzes can have some modicum of privacy when they indulge in outdoor showers, which the courtyard has also provided for. But they like knowing who’s dropping by, so they purchased a moon gate made by David Helm fitted with a ceramic sun sculpted by Chris Moench. It makes for great counterpoint, and probably has spiritual significance beyond the obvious, but you'll have to ask Harvey about that.

The practical gate is, at its heart, a cattle gate that separates the driveway from a catch-all storage area. The problem with cattle gates is that you see through them, so the Schwartzes commissioned Tom Burton (Tom’s Bamboo) to conceal it with a beautiful bamboo façade.

For the deck, they bought an octagonal table from Don Shapiro (360 224-1951). It is certainly as effective as King Arthur’s round table, and for all the same reasons.

And for a front-yard patio, the Schwartzes chose to do another circle, this time in stone. The craftsmen were, this time, $10-an-hour student laborers from Western Washington University. If this circular stone patio is any indication, they all have bright futures ahead of them.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

When The Foundation for Tigard Tualatin Schools puts on a garden tour, pay attention. I did the pre-tour earlier this week and saw at least three landscapes that you can expect to see in the pages of Sunset during the next year or two. You'll get your chance to check these out for yourself tomorrow, June 20, between 10 and 4.

Taken together, the landscapes cover a wide range of horticultural interest, making the most of fruits and vegetables, roses, wildlife gardening, ornamentals, and patios set up for outdoor entertaining. Each garden also handles site problems well, showing what you can do on extremely steep slopes, on corner lots, and in situations where neighbors and traffic would be in your face if you didn't landscape them out.

The tour is actually just the second part of a two-day event. The first part is a free art show and sale that runs from 6 to 8:30 this evening at Tigard High School (9000 SW Durham Road) today.

To go on the garden tour, which also features plenty of garden-inspired art, you'll need a $20 ticket; click here to find out where to get it.

Which gardens will likely get published in Sunset? That's for you to guess. But if you feel strongly about any, let me know which and why. I'm all ears.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Next to questions about peonies and impatience over their slow-growing tomatoes, the question we heard most at the Sunset Celebration Q&A booth two weekends ago was what should I plant in my front yard instead of lawn. Most people were merely thinking of replacing one type of carpeting plant with another that required less water.  And that's an improvement, for sure.  But there's a lot more interesting things you could do with the space.

Why not make the whole thing one mixed border filled with flowering shrubs, Mediterranean perennials, herbs, ornamental grasses, and succulents with pathways weaving through them?  That's what Rick Cole, the city manager of Ventura, did with his front yard, shown opposite.  The combination of kangaroo paws, Spanish lavender, purple fountain grass, and Cedros island verbena provides color year-round and lures in butterflies and hummingbirds in squadrons, says Cole.

The garden was designed by Michelle and Jeremy Walker of Blooming Gardens in Ventura.

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