By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

I've got a great fall project for you—one I tried and loved. It all started last year when I got a beguiling press release from Sally Ferguson at the Netherlands Flowerbulb Information Center showing how to layer bulbs in big pots for spectacular spring effect. The idea is to plant a layer of daffodils on the bottom, a layer of tulips above those, perhaps a layer of hyacinths next, and a layer of crocus or muscari on top. Sally’s before-and-after photos show it better than I can tell it:

I tried it in three 16-inch-wide, 15-inch-tall pots on my deck. The trick is in the timing. You can choose bulbs that flower in sequence, so you have a really long season of bloom; go for the single blowout display, like the grand finale at a fireworks show; or have early blooms leading up to a fairly impressive display at the end. This last plan is the one I followed. See the following shots, taken on my deck in early May.

It really worked, and I recommend it to anybody. I bought my bulbs from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, with some free advice from Brent to make sure I got the timing right.

You can order bulbs by mail as I did, or just go to a nursery and buy from the new shipment of spring bulbs that usually arrives before Labor Day weekend.

For the record, here’s what I planted in the two containers pictured here. The parenthetical numbers show how many of each went in. Bulbs on the bottom of the list were planted on the bottom of the pot; those above were planted above it in the bottom-to-top order listed.

Cobalt blue pot (foreground in shot on left)
Crocus ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ (20)—white
Muscari armeniacum(20)—blue
Hyacinthus ‘Delft Blue’ (10)—blue
Narcissus ‘Thalia’ (10)—white
Tulipa ‘Apeldoorn’ (10)—red

Gray pot
Muscari armeniacum(10)— blue
Hyacinthus ‘City of Haarlem’ (10)—yellow aging to cream
Narcissus ‘Ice Follies’ (10)—white with yellow cup
Tulipa ‘Apeldoorn’ (10)—red

More: The best bulbs to plant this fall | Planting bulbs in beds

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Few of us grow the shrub (Camellia sinensis) whose leaves make common green and black tea, but most of us grow herbs like lavender, sage, mint, rosemary, and lemon balm. All these fragrant, deer-resistant plants make great summer coolers.

The best recipes I’ve seen for these herbal teas (and many others) are from Log House Plants, a premium grower in Cottage Grove, Oregon. For background about herb teas, have a look at the April 25 edition of Log House's Garden News; for recipes, go to their herbal teas web page.

While you're on Log House Plants' home page, you can subscribe to their free Garden News e-newsletter. It's full of plant profiles, recipes, and background info about plants we all love.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Just as artists learn by studying museum pieces, gardeners do well to study outstanding gardens. With that in mind, I recently took a notebook and camera to The Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia.

It remains one of the world’s truly great gardens because it must: it gets no public funding, so has to be good enough to draw scads of paying visitors. They come because it’s well worth the trip.

Jenny Butchart started it all in 1904 with a Japanese garden, which has matured beautifully in the last century.

The notion of a show garden developed gradually: when the limestone quarry on the south side of the property played out, she used its striking topography to frame a spectacular garden.

Woodland plants, annual beds, perennial borders, spring- and summer-flowering bulbs, roses, water features, shrub beds, and formal Italian garden all followed. Today there’s even a new Mediterranean landscape backed by a 40-foot-tall sheared leyland cypress hedge just north of the east parking lots.

Garden care is nearly all human powered: acres of lawn are edged with hand clippers, not string trimmers, and weeding is done with stirrup hoes and one- and two-tined cultivators. “Expectations drive much of what we do,” says Rick Los, Butchart’s Director of Horticulture. “Our mandate is for the best show, not the easiest.” More than 50 full-time gardeners—nearly one per acre—make it possible.

The bias here is definitely sustainable. “We haven’t used insecticides here in two years,” says Los.

“Insect predators occur naturally; we just had to find out what they are and increase them.” When the right beneficial insects aren’t present, Butchart buys them from Applied Bionomics. “They ship all over the world, and they’re just down the road, so we use their products.” Organic fertilizer is mixed locally, and compost is made on site in prodigious quantities. Roses are probably the last hurdle. Los says that “It’s this climate that makes disease control so difficult”—but they’re studying it.

Los’s secrets to success are simple. “I always come back to the basics,” he told me. “Good soil. Right plant, right place. And if something isn’t right, make it right.”

Ironically, The Garden’s guests are a bigger challenge than insects, diseases, birds, slugs, and deer combined. At the Saturday night fireworks show, kids and a few adults inevitably invade the flower beds in search of a better view. That’s why you see rows of flowering annuals growing in a field near the fireworks display area: they’re quick replacements for their trampled sisters.

Like any garden, Butchart changes from month to month. But unlike most gardens, it never seems to have an off-peak season. Visit when your own garden is in a funk, and make notes on which plants Butchart uses to span the gap between what blooms earlier and what comes on later. (Plants here aren’t labeled, but if you have a digital camera, that won’t be a problem. Take close-ups of mystery plants, and get their names from staff at the plant i.d. station near the Italian garden.)

“Borders are about 30 percent different from year to year,” Los told me, with color schemes changing along the way. This year, there were lots of mixed purple/yellow and purple/red combinations. “It’s just the flavor of the year,” says Los. “Nothing magic.”

Maybe not. But the garden itself is magic, and a great place to learn some tricks that will make your own garden amazingly better.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) just seems to have things backwards. Its leaves emerge as winter begins, but vanish at the beginning of summer (the foliage in the picture below belongs to a nearby daylily); and its fragrant flowers appear on leafless stalks at summer’s end, dying without a trace three weeks later.

But maybe that’s why I like this plant: by being out of sync with everything else, it's good at filling gaps in my garden’s foliage and flower cycles.

You grow these from bulb-like corms sold now. When you shop, you’ll probably find some corms sprouting (maybe even blooming) in the bin.

Try to choose unsprouted corms, but if you have no choice, even the sprouted ones are o.k.: just get them into the ground as quickly as possible. Fortunately, you only have to buy once: corms multiply fast enough that within a few years you’ll have plenty to give away.

My autumn crocuses are single pink ones, but you can also find white and purple-lilac forms, and double-flowered versions.

Though these are called crocuses because the flowers look similar, autumn crocuses are really quite different. Spring-flowering crocuses are in the iris family, have late-winter bloom, and grassy foliage. Autumn crocuses are in the lily family, bloom in late summer, and have 20-inch-long, 1 1/2-inch wide leaves.

Autumn crocuses contain a fascinating, poisonous akaloid called colchicine. It is toxic enough to kill you, so don't ingest any part of the plant. But it also has pharmacological value in the treatment of cancer and other ailments, and it is used to intentionally cause beneficial mutations in plants. Seedless watermelons, for example, were derived from work with colchicine.

Try a few bulbs in a circle around the base of a deciduous tree. I grow mine under a Japanese maple, where they'll soon be making a pool of pink flowers. In the dead of winter, enough sunlight will filter through the leafless tree branches above to give autumn crocus leaves all the sunlight they need to produce another crop of flowers next year.

Autumn crocus grows in Sunset climate zones 2-10 and 14-24 (that's everywhere except coldest mountain regions and low and intermediate desert).

5 more bulbs to plant now

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I donate a lot of used books to the library.  But I didn't really think these donations added up to much.  I was wrong.  The cumulative effect of these donations can lead to big change.  The Sun and Sea Discovery Garden ar the Newport Beach Public Library, shown below, is striking evidence.  It was funded entirely from Friends of the Library book sales, according to Support Services director, Melissa Kelly.

Eric and Chris Fennmore of Front Porch Creations, a Corona del Mar, California design/builg firm designed and installed the garden.

The primary purpose of the garden, says Chris, was to provide an outdoor reading room for children ages 3-7, either as a group with a librarian, or one-on-one with a parent.  But Chris also designed in opportunities for individual exploration as well.  Children can walk--or more likely run--the maze created by the clipped boxwood hedges.  Or they can play with the sea pebbles in the fountain.  Or they can pick up the coloring book designed specifically for the garden, find the sea creatures illustrated in it depicted in mosaic tiles here and there on the paths, read a little about them, and then color the images.

"Kids try so hard to be quiet and good when they're in the library, says Chris, speaking from experience--the mother of three young boys and a frequent visitor to the children's library.  "So I wanted them to be able to burn off a little of that energy here."

Adults feel as comfortable in this garden as children do, says Chris.  "It's sophisticated, not cute."  If you're tempted to visit, though, better not come alone.  Children aren't allowed in this space without an adult, but the reverse is also true.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

A photo of this gleaming steel monolith lured me away from my desk and down to Laguna Beach, California last week.  I'd never seen a wall fountain quite like this before and was eager to get a closer look.

Dustin Gimbel of Second Nature Garden Designs came up with this idea for his client Dan Rinkenberger.  Rinkenberger's garden--as you can see in the photo below--is virtually all slope, and Gimbel decided it needed a strong focal point at the top of the stairs.  "I wanted an art piece large enough and bold enough you would see it from any area of the garden," he says.

Because this flat area near the top of the slope is also an ideal place to sit and enjoy the ocean view, Gimbel thought the art piece should double as a fountain.  "When you're looking at the water, it's nice to hear it, too," he says.  "It adds to the effect."

And to make the most of sunsets, Gimbel thought the fountain should have a reflective surface, but with some texture to defuse glare.  He decided on the diagonally pleated design shown here.

The stainless steel panel is 6' x 3.5' and was pleated by a metal fabricator.  For stability it has a concrete board backing, attached with Liquid Nails, a super-strength adhesive.  The panel is attached to a stanchion and "floats" about six inches off the ground.  The bowl that catches the water is from Pot-ted In Atwater Village and is made of a mix of resin and concrete dust.  "Looks like concrete, but it's lighter and cheaper," says Gimbel.  Spillover flows into a catch basin below the bowl and recirculates.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Last spring as I was making the rounds of garden tours, I came upon a few examples of mosaic art by Ann Murphy, a Portland artist who happens to make a living on staff with the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

Below, for example, is the top of a small tea table she made.

Murphy says that "nature is the inspiration and I often incorporate semi-precious stones and beads into the projects." Prices for tables, globes, and obelisks run from $325 to $500. You can reach Murphy by emailing ann@moonpath.us.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

“You get hundreds of times more microbes coming out the back end of a worm than go in the front,” says Dr. Clive Edwards, who does research in the Soil Ecology Laboratory at Ohio State University. And that may explain why vermicompost tea is superior to conventional compost tea at boosting plant growth and controlling diseases, insects, and nematodes.

Vermicompost tea is made by putting 1 part worm castings into 4 parts water, and brewing it for 24 hours in a unit like one made by Growing Solutions. You can buy worm castings at many nurseries, or produce them in a worm bin (download plans from Oregon Soil Corporation). Use the resulting tea as a soil drench or as a foliar spray. The sooner you use it the better; maximum shelf life is probably around a month.

Dr. Edwards says the tea is helpful in three ways. The most important may be in its beneficial growth regulators, which promote increased seed germination, growth, and leaf size. The tea also helps control diseases such as Pythium, Rhizoctonia, and Verticillium. But arthropod control (arthropods include insects, custracians, and spiders) is what surprised Edwards most. “I thought we might get disease control,” he told me, “but I was surprised when this was also effective against insects.” Applications every week or two can control white cabbage butterfly caterpillars, spider mites, aphids, mealy bugs, cucumber beetles, and tomato hornworms.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have a real weakness for gabions.  Apparently I'm not alone.  Southern Caifornia garden designer Dustin Gimbel of Second Nature Garden Designs shares my fondness.  "I think they're great," he says.  "The material is cheap and installation is quick, so you save clients money two ways."   In addition, they have "industrial chic", the style everyone wants right now, says Gimbel.

Gimbel used gabions to create a combination retaining wall/garden bench in Lucy and David Mercer's garden in Laguna Beach.  Instead of the usual river rock filling, though, he used a combination:  cement block against the slope for more stability; inexpensive gravel in the middle where it doesn't show; and Oklahoma ledger stone as a facing on the exposed sides and top.  Besides giving the bench a more refined look, the ledger stone gives you a even, firm, and surprisingly comfortable surface to sit on. 

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

As happens so often among gardeners, somebody gave me a wonderful blue-flowered ground cover once, with two results: I loved the plant and lost the name. For about a year I thought it was Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which gets Sharon’s well-deserved praise in yesterday’s post. My plant grows the same height, spreads in the same way, has blue flowers and wiry stems, and its leaves turn bronzy in autumn.

But a few things were seriously wrong with my i.d. For starters, my plant has four petals per flower, not five; its leaves are much smaller than dwarf plumbago’s; and its bloom season is in spring, not late summer. There’s good reason for all these differences: I have Veronica umbrosa ‘Georgia Blue’, not dwarf plumbago. (The “Georgia” part of the name is for the Asian Republic of Georgia, not the American state.)

I recommend it for anybody who wants cobalt blue in their spring garden, and who doesn’t have the long growing season that is optimal for dwarf plumbago. Both plants grow from milder mountain climates clear to the sea, excepting desert (but dwarf plumbago can handle high desert gardens).