By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

What I like most about this scene from Julia Rice's garden in Cambria (a detail from Monday's post on artistic things to do with a dead tree) is that the color combination was inspired by the chartreuse birdhouse, a present from her husband Monty..

The chartreuse plants with the small white flowers are feverfew. Chrysanthemum parthenium `Aureum'.  You might find it sold as 'Golden Feather.'  The yellow flowered ground cover is a sedum of some sort. The red rose in the background is the climber `Blaze', and there's a darker red Martha Washington-type pelargonium below it.

Now here's the thing.  Despite building a color scheme around it, Julia still isn't convinced she likes the color of the  birdhouse and is thinking of repainting it white.  Shana McCormick of Great Gardens, who took me to this garden, lobbied for keeping it as is, as did I.  But I'm not sure we convinced Julia.  Want to help us?

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

“Simple, but not easy” is how Robert Kourik sets things up in Drip Irrigation For Every Landscape and All Climates (Metamorphic Press, Occidental, CA, 2009; $24.95). That’s an apt description: the basics of drip are simple to understand, but assembling the parts can be work.

Fortunately, Kourik has (literally) been in the trenches before you, and shows the way with humor and common sense. If you follow his lead in putting your garden on drip, you’ll cut your water use in half, have healthier and (very often) more productive plants, and probably reduce your garden’s weed problems in the bargain. But more important than all these, you'll not lose your mind in the process.

About 60 percent larger than the first edition, Drip Irrigation . . . shows how to set up everything from drip for potted plants to full-on systems that can water every plant in your landscape. Kourik explains how to adapt your system to handle water from rain barrels, from gray water collection systems, and from cisterns. 

The book has extra value because Kourik knows plants as well as he knows plumbing. His last book, Roots Demystified, explores what goes on underground when plants take up water and nutrients. Drip Irrigation . . . has an evapotranspiration (ET) section about what happens to the water after the roots take it in. When you understand these things, it's easy to figure out how to tune your irrigation system to your plants. 

Along the way, Kourik gives you a list of suppliers (he's not connected with any of them), a glossary, and The Official List of Pop Murphy's Laws—truisms like "The thought, 'Just one more twist,' instantly produces a cracked pipe or leaky thread." You can see where this is going. Fun book, great info. Buy it and save the world's water supply. To save shipping and taxes, order direct from robertkourik.com. 

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Did you know there are more Monterey pines in Cambria than in Monterey?  Pinus radiata is an ancient forest tree that used to blanket the West coast, certified arborist Blair McCormick of McCormick Tree, told me recently. And Cambria has the largest remaining stand.  Monterey has the second largest.  There are three others, all smaller.

Monterey pine is a weed of a tree, says McCormick.  It grows very tall, very fast.  It also is shallow rooted, making it susceptible to wind.  The roots of Pinus radiata graft together in uninterrupted forest, and the trees hold each other up in storms, says McCormick.  When you start putting residences in the middle of forest, though, you create wind corridors that make the trees more vulnerable. 

Pinus radiata is also subject to a number of diseases, including pitch canker.  So, all in all, Monterey pine tends to be short-lived.  But Cambrians, who love their native pine despite or maybe even because of its faults, seem okay with this.  In fact I'm not sure you can call yourself a native until you have the stump of a dead pine in your yard.  Cambrians don't always stop there, though.

Julia and Monty Rice, whose front yard was featured in Monday's post, built a tree house around their dead pine.  The grape vines they planted below will eventually cover the trunk.

You can also use the stump as a pedestal for a piece of garden art, of course.  But local craftsman Richard Lee took it a step further.  He cut a thick slice from one dead tree, painted it in cheerful colors, and attached it to the stump of another to create a tabletop.  The fanciful birdhouse displayed on the table, as well as the ornaments on the fence behind it, are more examples of Lee's fanciful woodwork.  Lee used more slices from the downed tree for pavers.

You can also turn that dead tree into mulch, as artist Jackie Mathews did with some of the trees that died in her forest retreat.

Or you can turn them into sculpture.  Just by having the tops carved into points, Jackie Mathews made her dead tree trunks look like Brobdingnagian-sized pencils.  The piece on the right, on the other hand, another creation of Richard Lee, is rather totem-like.  He sliced a trunk up into big cubes, stacked them up on top of each other deliberately askew, embellished each cube with painted scraps of wood, and added a metal rooster sculpture done by another artist on top.

Then there are these elfin chairs that seem to pop up overnight in yards throughout Cambria.  They've been a bit of a mystery for some time now.  No one knew, or they weren't telling, who was carving them.  But the local press have spilled the beans so I will, too, though it's tempting to leave the impression they've been happening by magic.  Blair McCormick is the responsible party. 

It's a romantic notion, I suppose," McCormick says about what has become his calling card.  "But I like to remind people there was a tree here."

Blair McCormick, McCormick Tree, 805/927-1749

Fresh Dirt enthusiasts,

Help!

Pop over to my post on today's One Block Diet blog to offer your expert advice on a few gardening questions.

Thanks!
Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

If you want to grow anything you want, including roses, in an area, like Cambria, California, where deer roam the neighborhoods like stray cats, there is no substitute for a good tall fence.  But sometimes tall fences don't look right.  Around a small front yard, for instance.  So here's what you do in that case, says deer-resistant landscaping expert Shana McCormick of Great Gardens, who helped homeowners Julie and Monty Rice create the front yard garden shown below.

1.  Find a list of deer-resistant plants. Study it, decide what you like, make preliminary selections, and then go test them against reality, says Shana.  Walk or drive your neighborhood and see if any of the plants you've selected are doing well in other gardens. Also observe what is thriving, despite deer, that wasn't on your list.  The plants deer will or won't eat varies considerably from neighborhood to neighborhood, Shana has observed. Sometimes even old reliables like rosemary aren't safe.

(Some of the plants used in the garden above, and obviously thriving, are sweet-pea bush (Polygala x dalmaisiana), society garlic, bush germander (Teucrium fruticans), lavender, lamb's ears, and Coleonema.)

2.  Revise your list and trial all the plants you intend to use in quantity.  Buy the largest specimens available to give them a fighting chance, suggests Shana, and test them for at least two weeks.  Tweak your list again.

3.  Now you can plant.  Again, buy the largest specimens you can find, says Shana, and plant in the rainy season if you can when deer aren't so hungry and thirsty.  For further protection, just while plants are getting started, Shana puts out blood meal or Liquid Fence.

4.  Water plants just enough to keep them healthy.  Lush foliage of almost any kind is irresistible to thirsty deer, says Shana.  This is especially important with natives, she says.  "I know deer aren't supposed to eat things like ceanothus or coffeeberry, but they devour them in residential gardens when they're young," she says. "I love natives, but find them hard to get established unless I grow them especially hard."

Another view of the Rice garden:

You can learn more deer-proofing techniques from Shana McCormick at the class on the subject she'll be teaching at Cambria Nursery on November 29th.

Shana McCormick, Great Gardens, (805) 927-1749

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Cambria Nursey tweeted that I fell in love with 'Little Penny' coreoposis when I paid them a visit recently.  And it's is quite true.  And no wonder.  The plant was completely covered with small charming copper flowers that just happen to work perfectly with the color scheme I'm playing with in my backyard at the moment -- red-oranges, yellows, blue-violets.  And `Little Penny' was as nice a compansion to my 'Paprka' yarrow, coral fountain plant, and red yucca as I'd hoped it would be.

'Little Penny' is a 2009 introduction from Terra Nova.  You can read more about it on their website.

`Mango Punch', also from Terra Nova, is technically a 2010 introduction, but there's some stock in the nurseies now.  Cambria Nursery had both coreopsis.  Here's a better look.  That's 'Little Penny' on the left; `Mango Punch' on the right.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Cambria, California, a beautiful little community snuggled in pines and coastal fog, about a four hour drive up the coast from Santa Barbara, feels like horticultural heaven.  Plants thrive in the area's gentle temperatures and moist air, and everything looks beautiful under that soft gray diffused light. 

But gardening here isn't as easy as it seems.  Cambria only gets about 14 inches of rain a year.  Strong winds topple the shallow-rooted local pines with regularity.  And they have a large deer population to contend with.  ("300-lb. gray squirrel equivalents", local garden designer Shana McCormick calls them). But we'll save how Cambria gardeners contend with these things for later posts.  For now, how about a small slide show?

The Butterfly Garden at the Cambria Pines Lodge

A scene from the Redwood Walk at Cambria Pines Lodge.  The pretty silver plant that is lighting up this shady vignette is Calocephallus brownii.

I love the way artists embellish their gardens, and Cambria is full of artists.  This is from the garden of artist Jeanette Wolff, and the crows now permanently residing in her garden are an example of her work.

Possibly the healthiest, happiest tree ferns I've ever seen, thriving under old oaks in the magnificient shade garden of Betty and Harry Pflaumer.

A great place for lunch if you happen to be in Cambria.  The Tea Cozy has "guy" stuff like ploughman's lunch and Cornish pasty as well as tea sandwiches, scones with double Devon cream, and the usual girlie stuff.  And everything was scrumptious.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Visually exposed to the street on all sides, houses on corner lots are notoriously hard to landscape. Fenced, thy look like stockades. Unfenced, they feel like fish bowls. That's why Ross and Jennifer Erickson decided to screen their Boise, ID, garden with a berm.

Here's how it looked before they started.

 

Here's how it looked in process.

And here's how it looked when it was finished last year (this year, it's even more filled in).

 

The process took place in stages. First Ross got free fill dirt from a construction job down the street, having it dumped where the berm was to be. Then he took chunks of concrete from his broken up patio and stacked them along the outside of the berm. After it was all in place, he built a showpiece of a river-rock wall around the berm to give it substance. And finally, he planted the top of the berm with grasses and low shrubs.

The job wasn't easy, but it was straightforward, effective — and neither fishbowl nor stockade. See more amazing makeovers