By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Joe Williamson, who was beloved garden editor of Sunset Magazine for decades, had a particular fondness for broadleaved evergreens. He called them "Western privilege plants" because those of us who live in mild parts of the far West can grow more kinds of them than gardeners at the same latitudes anywhere else in the country.

His personal favorites were Eucalyptus (still the most widely planted non-native trees in California), but he was nearly as crazy about tea trees (Leptospermum), all kinds of citrus, camellias (left), Aucubas, gardenias, Natal plums, and any number of native oaks. When I moved to the Washington State in 1978, I expected my choices in such plants to just about vanish.

Was I wrong. There are dozens of possibilities, all of which can give mass, structure, and substance to the winter garden. Here are some favorites, each of which gives you at least one extra reason to love it.

Trees
•For winter flowers, my favorite is strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. This garden-scale evergreen produces its small, white, urn-shaped flowers in late fall and winter, giving overwintering Anna’s hummingbirds a nectar source when not much else is available. Its golf-ball-size red, yellow, and green fruits appear after blooms fade.

•For fragrant leaves, Eucalyptus is still unbeatable, and there are many kinds to choose from. Crush the leaves to get that penetrating, cough-drop scent.

Shrubs
•For intoxicating late-winter fragrance, grow Daphne odora. This plant seems to do best near a sidewalk (liking the lime from the cement, perhaps?); out in the open garden it does fine for a few years, then commits daphnicide.

•For bluer-than-blue winter berries, Dichora febrifuga (pictured at right) is unsurpassed. This is a good choice for growing in half shade.

•For fragrant foliage, go to a nursery and rub the leaves of any small-leaved rhododendron between your hands, then smell your fingers. Most rhododendrons that have small leaves have a rich, totally unexpected piney scent that you’ll love.

Vines
•For vanilla-scented March flowers, grow Clematis armandii. Run it along a fence or deck rail: you’ll never again be without it. That's it scrambling over an entry arbor at left.

Natives
•These make a list that could fill your garden. Try wax myrtle, manzanita, Ceanothus, coyote brush, several evergreen oaks, salal, evergreen huckleberry, twin flower, California bay laurel, tanoak, rhododendron, and Oregon grape, to name a few.

Madrona (Arbutus menziesii, pictured below) is one of my own personal favorites. It thrives in full sun and terrible soil—just witness the colonies of madronas that spring up on steep road cuts along Interstate 5 in Washington and Oregon—and gives you back wonderful peeling red bark that reveals tan and green bark beneath. It's hard to establish in the garden (hates transplanting) and can get leaf spot, but I love it anyway.

Joe was onto something. We really are rich in categories of plants that most American gardeners can only dream about, and broadleaved evergreens in particular make our gardens better places in all seasons, not just when the weather is warm.

What are your own favorites?

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

  Long ago, well beyond the reach of the statute of limitations, a friend of mine shot a crow whose gang was vandalizing the vegetable garden behind his barn. From that day, every time he walked from the house to the barn, the crows withdrew to the treetops around his field and cawed at him.

This made my friend, a math teacher, wonder how bright crows really are. He asked his son to walk with him from the house to the barn. The crows flew off. He sent his son back to the house alone. The crows stayed away. It was clear to the birds that if two went into the barn and one came out, somebody was still inside with the shotgun.

The next day he took his two sons to the barn with him, and again the crows flew off. He went back to the house with one of the boys, but the crows stayed away. They knew that three less two equaled one trigger-man left behind.

The following day he took his two sons and his daughter out to the barn, and off flew his nemeses. He returned to the house with two others, but the crows stayed away.

The next morning his wife joined the gang, but when only four exited the barn the crows knew that not everybody had left.

Finally he called a neighbor to come over and join the daily trek. All six people entered the barn, five returned to the house—and the crows returned to the vegetable patch.

They can do subtraction up to five, my friend surmised, but not six. Judging from all the crows in the neighborhood, that's all the math you need to be a successful crow.

By Sunset garden staff

Maybe seed companies and wholesale growers are trying to tap into the strong interest in edibles, but we've definitely noticed that a lot of new blooms have delicious names as well as flowers.  Here are a few that made our mouths water.

`Cherry Brandy' rudbeckia

Julie Chai thought this flower's berry-red blooms were the exact same luscious shade as ripe Bing cherries.  She also loved that new cherry color makes this a true departure from the familiar gold rudbeckia. Flowers reach 3 to 4 inches across on 2-foot-tall plants.  Source:  Thompson & Morgan.

photo courtesy of National Garden Bureau

`Mac `n` Cheese'  and `Tomato Soup' echinacea

Kathleen Brenzel calls these beauties "comfort food for garden beds--warm, spicy, and reliable."  She loved seeing the long-lasting summer perennial cone-flower in these excitiing new hues.  To make the most of their hot colors, she'd surround them with blue-flowered catmint.  Terra Nova Nurseries propagates these plants.  Click here to find a retail source near you.

photo courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.

`Raspberry Swirl' dianthus

Sharon Cohoon thought this flower looked as delicious as an ice cream parfait and smelled as spicy as a pfeffernusse cookie.  She also liked how blatantly feminine it looks with its ruffled edges and show-off colors.  Plants are available in 3-inch pots from Park Seed.

photo courtesy Plant Haven, Inc.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Jim McCausland reviewed Roots Demystified last March. I attended the Ecological Farming Conference last month and had a chance to hear author, Robert Kouric, speak about his book.

His lecture focused mainly on trees, and it blew my mind. Robert talked about many of the myths we believe about roots and how these false beliefs affect our gardening practices. We tend to think they grow straight down, or at most, as far out as the canopy reaches up above. Actually, Robert says, they sprawl outwards -– sometimes hundreds of feet beyond the canopy -- and most are found in the top in the top 18 inches of the soil.

This explains why, despite constant effort, our city sidewalks are lifted and cracked by roots that crave the rich, aerobic zone close to the top yet have nowhere to go.

He also criticized the trend found all over the country (even in our own Golden Gate Park!) of mulching heavily around the bottom of a tree trunk. Robert warns greatly against making these "mulch volcanoes" (an emerging term for this practice) because the base of the trunk can rot or become diseased.

He offered some ideas of how to help your trees thrive, including my      favorite -– permeable landscaping. This allows water and air to penetrate the soil, essentially allowing the roots to breathe where there might otherwise be concrete. Permeable landscaping also absorbs precipitation, feeding roots in your garden, rather than draining away to the nearest storm sewer.

My new favorite organization, PlantSF, has pictures of permeable landscapes.

I was just in the test garden (where the only constant is change) digging up my favorite plant, an Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia). I thought of Robert’s talk and started gingerly pulling up a root as far as I could. Sure enough, it extended much farther than I would have expected, into another bed (and that's just where it broke off).

I love science books written for gardeners. Roots Demystified is a great one. Order it here.

Common Ground in Palo Alto will be hosting Robert on Saturday, March 7 from 2:00 - 4:00. The class costs  $28. To register call 650-493-6072. Check out all of Common Ground's upcoming classes here.

It's that time of year! Here are some garden events to add to your March calendar:

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

March 6-8, San Francisco
Check out more than 150,000 varieties of orchids, and shop, at the Pacific Orchid Exposition. (www.orchidsanfrancisco.org or 415/665-2468)

March 14, Palo Alto
Learn how to plant a spring veggie garden from a Santa Clara County Master Gardener at Gamble Garden (www.mastergardeners.org/events/2009/all-about-planting-spring-vegetable-garden)

March 15 till June 1, Ben Lomond
Love Apple Farm  tomato seedling sale—Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday till June 1 (or until supplies last).  Look for at least 100 different varieties; selection is subject to availability. (growbetterveggies.com)

March 18-22, San Mateo
San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. Display gardens, seminars, and the marketplace will include native plants, edibles, drought-tolerant garden ideas, and other sustainability-related topics and products. (gardenshow.com or 415/771-6909)

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Feb. 27-March 1, Del Mar
"Don't Move--Improve", San Diego Home/Garden Show at the Del Mar Fairground.  Includes display gardens, plant marketplace, exhibits, speakers. (www.springhoomegardenshow.com or 858/350-3738)

March 1, San Marino
Bonsai-a-Thon at The Huntington.  Exhibits, demonstrations, prize drawings, and bonsai plants and products for sale. (www.huntington.org or 626/405-2100)

March 7-8, Irvine
"Prelude to Spring", UCI Arboretum Winter Bulb Festival.  Enjoy the beds of blooming bulbs and the opportunity to buy same.  (http://arboretum.bio.uci.edu/ or 949/824-5833)

March 14, El Cajon
Water Smart Plant Fair at The Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College.  Plant vendors, lecturers, design consultations, and more (www.thegarden.org or 619/985-8337).

March 19-22, Fullerton
Monster Tomato and Pepper Sale at Fullerton Arboretum.  Over 200 varieties of tomatoes for sale--as well as peppers and chiles--including 'Sunset Red Horizon', an heirloom tomato named for Sunset Magazine. (www.arboretum.fullerton.edu or 714/278-3407)

March 20-22, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara International Orchid Show, Earl Waren Showgrounds.  More than 50 orchid exhibitors plus demonstrations, and orchid-themed art. (www.sborchidshow.com or 805-969-5746)

March 21-22, Encinitas
Herb Festival, Spring Plant Sale, and Tomatomania at Quail Botanical Gardens.  Herb-related products, lectures, tas.  Hybrid and heirloom tomato seedlings.  (www.qbgardens.org or 760/436-3036)

March 21-22, Arcadia
Ikebana International Show and Sale at The Arboretum of Los Angeles County. (www.arboretum.org or 626/821-3222)

March 21-May 17, Saturdays & Sundays, Claremont
Spring Garden Walks at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.  Enjoy a guided tour through the Garden's wildflower displays and native plants collections.  (www.rsabg.org or 909/625-8767)

March 27-29, Encino
Tomato Mania at Tapia Brothers Stand.  Nearly 300 varieties of hybrid and heirloom tomatoes for sale.  (www.tomatomania.com or 818/905-6155)

—Sharon Cohoon

ROCKIES

March 28-29, Littleton, CO
Colorado Cactus and Succulent Show and Sale. This sale has hundreds of very unusual cacti and succulents, both hardy and non-hardy varieties. Experts are on hand to answer questions. (720-962-9070, http://www.ccss-online.org/)

—Marcia Tatroe

By Debra Lee Baldwin, Sunset guest blogger

A lovely independent nursery in north San Diego County, Buena Creek Gardens, changed hands a year ago. I've been going to Buena Creek for years, and hoped the new owners wouldn't pave paradise and put in a housing development. Previous owners Steve and Donna Brigham had planted the 4-acre property in San Marcos with rare and unusual trees, and had installed butterfly and dry-climate display gardens.

No worries: new owners Steve and Shari Matteson are pursuing a lifelong dream of propagating and cultivating ornamental plants. And like the Brighams, they have seasonal plant sales. Recently, local musician David Moyer was there, playing his guitar and serenading guests. I sipped complimentary coffee while touring the newly renovated "El Shakito"---a formerly run-down cottage the Mattesons have turned into an airy indoor-outdoor garden shop.

Buena Creek Gardens always has been magical, with an entry area sheltered by an 80-year-old pepper tree. Strings of small, round mirrors hang overhead, creating bright dots that dance along the ground. 

I do miss Sally, though, the Brigham's fluffy white cat (named after the 'Sally Holmes' climbing rose). Cheshire-like, she used to catnap in the pepper tree, observing the goings-on.

Buena Creek Gardens is located at 418 Buena Creek Rd. San Marcos, CA 92069; 760-744-2810.

from Sharon:  I agree with everything in Debra's post.  My first chance to visit Buena Creek Gardens after the transfer was in December.  And, like Debra, I was relieved to find that none of the old charm had been lost.  The Mattesons are using the setting they inherited with great flair.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Driving past a grove of Oregon white oaks high on a hill overlooking the Columbia River, people gawk at a Wild West-looking row of buildings that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be one of the coolest chicken coops anywhere. Built by Geoff Thompson, it's clean, comfortable, sanitary, safe, and easy to maintain.

What more could a chicken want?

By Lisa Albert, Sunset guest blogger

Anyone can have a great summer garden in the Pacific Northwest. Creating a fabulous winter garden, on the other hand, well, that takes some effort.  But it's well worth it.

My admiration for the garden in winter began more than a decade ago when I read Dan Hinkley’s Winter Ornamentals: For the Maritime Northwest Gardener (now out of print, unfortunately). Within its pages, I discovered delectable plants to brighten gray days, including a few with tongue-twisting names, such as Stachyurus praecox and Abeliophyllum distichum (white forsythia). I don’t have space for all the plants Hinkley made me crave, but I have made room for some of them. My garden is the richer for it, not just in winter but throughout the year.

The show starts in October with the clean white blooms of Camellia sasanqua `Setsugekka' (pictured below) near my front door. This year’s unexpected ice and snow cut its display short, but generally it will continue to bloom until late January or early February.

About the same time, a heady aroma wafts from my Goshiki false holly (Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki’.  It doesn’t flower when young – I think mine were at least 6 years old before they bloomed – but its stunning foliage more than makes up for their tardy appearance.

Hellebores have been all the rage for several years now and with good reason. I love these sturdy, easy to grow, evergreen perennials for their winter flowers in white, pink, peach, deep purple, green and now yellow. The flowers of the new hybrids come in amazing variations including doubles so it’s best to buy them in bloom.

Sweet box (Sarcocca confusa) is another favorite.  I love to watch visitors approach my front door at this time of year. Their purposeful march slows as they try to find the source of the sweet fragrance that teases their noses.  They're always surprised to learn it comes from this shrub's insignificant flowers.

Now is the the time to shop for these and other winter interest plants at your local nurseries, but be prepared for temptation. On a recent garden center jaunt, I couldn’t resist the crisp fragrance and golden yellow starburst flowers of an ‘Arnold Promise’ witch hazel (Hamamelis × intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’.

For more great choices for the winter garden, see this article in The Oregonian.  And this one on the Rainyside Gardeners website.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photographs by Erina Kong
 

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show seems as connected with spring in Seattle as birdsong. Take it away, and I get that vague melancholy that comes from reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I just can't imagine Seattle without the show. But after 21 years producing the third largest flower and garden event in North America, Duane Kelly is bowing out; so this week—now through Sunday—may be your last chance to see it for yourself.

I previewed the show yesterday, and was wowed: the 23 competitive show gardens are outstanding. One of my favorites was a rooftop garden (bottom) planted with grasses and bamboos designed to blow in skyscraper breezes, plus living carpets, walls, and even a tabletop planted with succulents.

The show also includes two outstanding native plant gardens. Ask any garden writer to name a well-executed native landscape outside of nature, and you'll be faced with a long pause. We can all think of gardens with a cobalt blue Ceanothus here, or a stunning Romneya there, but cohesive whole native gardens? Rare as hen's teeth. This year's show, however, has two good ones.

There are also two or three impressive Asian-influenced gardens. One, a very large Thai garden, has three distinct sides; I loved two of them (you guess which). A Japanese-influenced garden with a moon gate is an absolute stunner whose large trees are underplanted with warm-colored grasses and interspersed with a glass dry stream bed, a woodland section, and linear stretches of ground covers, polished stone, and wood. It's a garden I couldn't duplicate ever, but would love to take home.

Finally, Sunset editor Julie Chai and I were very much taken with a large garden that seemed the ultimate study in greens. Built around an outdoor kitchen and edged on one end by aspens on the other end by chalky white Himalayan birches, the garden was all at once restful and uplifting. Plantings were arranged in colonies, as they are in nature, and the hardscape was perfectly executed.

The show is also the best-ever source for tools, orchids, and all manner of plants, garden art, seeds, bulbs, clothes, and more. Go early and give yourself plenty of time—because there may be no next time.

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show is inside the Washington State Convention Center, which straddles Interstate 5 between Union and Pine Streets in downtown Seattle. Show hours are 9 to 8 Wednesday through Saturday, 9 to 6 Sunday. Tickets are $20 for adults; for full pricing info, click here.

By Hazel White, Sunset contributor

Surreptitiously planting seeds, bulbs, vegetables, even trees, in public dirt is the new horticultural front-line. Some people do it by night, fearing police or private security might question them, or a neighbor might get mad. At the very least, there’s the risk of someone stealing the plants. Nothing like this has happened to Annie X, though she’s been awfully brazen. A 30-something web designer, horsewoman, daughter of a plant pathologist and a keen gardener, she wanted a garden of her own, so she marched across Pennsylvania St. in San Francisco and started making one, on a wide open stretch of land where traffic exits Hwy 280. That was in December, and what’s happening so far isn’t trouble but an outpouring of community support—with all the plants neighbors are dropping off at this site, the space will soon be lush come spring. 

Several West Coast guerilla gardens are listed on the community board of the Guerilla Gardening website, where you can sign up—with a pseudonym of course—and learn how to deploy a seed-bomber.

Hazel White writes the monthly "What to do in Northern California" page for Sunset's Garden section.