By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Writing the story Flowers without Fuss inspired by Los Angeles urban farmer Tara Kolla and her experiences growing organic cutflowers for her local farmers market, was pure pleasure.  As you can well imagine, seeing Tara's exuberant smile below, this gal is fun to be with.

But researching this story was also an inspiration.  I used to grow a few cutflowers in my garden every year, but then, for some reason I stopped.  Why?  As Tara reminded me many of them are easy.  (Read about them here.)  And the rewards are so great. Home-grown cutflowers have so much more character than standard floral industry fare, which tends to look, well, industrial.  Stamped out instead of grown.

So, go on, plant some sweet peas, Tara's very favorite cutflower.  No, even in Southern California, it's not too late.  But do it quickly.

Another reason to grow at least some of your own cutflowers is that is is good for the planet.  Many of us try to buy as much produce as we can locally instead of shipped in from as far away as Chile.  But we may not give a second thought to where our flowers come from.  Mostly Latin American now, says Tara.  And Amy Stewart confirms that in her book about the flower industry, Flower Confidential.  Three-fourths of our flowers are imported, say Stewart, most from Latin America.

That's what makes it so sad that Kolla has been squeezed out of the cutflower market.  Not forever, we hope.  Turns out the City of Los Angeles has decided that growing cutflowers for sale in your backyard is illegal because they don't fit their definition of truck gardening under the Truck Gardening Ordinance.  That Ordinance is being interpreted to apply only to vegetables.

Kolla and a like-minded group of urban farmers are trying to have that ordinance changed.  You can read more about their campaign at Urban Farming Advocates website or at Tara's website. Or see my previous blog.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Larry Grammer, a designer at the California Cactus Center nursery in Pasadena, wins numerous awards at cactus and succulent shows for his staged pots.  San Diego garden writer Debra Lee Baldwin passes along many of Grammer's tips in her new book, Succulent Container Gardens. 

Start with container that suits the plant's proportions and overall shape.  Place the plant in the container off-center and rotated forward at a slight angle to face the viewer.  That allows the viewer to admire the plant's beauty and symmetry, says Baldwin, without standing directly over it.  It also tends to look natural, she says, because that is the way plants are often seen in their natural habitat.

Tilting the plant forward, though, exposes the root ball in the back and dips the leaves into the soil in front.  Grammer solves both issues by tucking in rocks.  The rocks hold the plant in place and become part of the composition.

The finishing touch is selecting a top dressing that compliments both plant and pot in texture and color.  (The California Cactus Center, incidentally, has a huge assortment of top dressing.)  Here are two examples, showing how it all comes together.  Both were designed by Grammer and photographed by Baldwin.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

A dozen years ago I planted a Japanese maple by my front door,  dearly hoping it would never get verticillium wilt, which is to maples what the black plague is to people. 

 But three years ago leaves on a few branches on one side of the tree started to wilt. Then branches started to die back, and when I cut them out a telltale dark stain showed in the wood. Eventually the bark on the trunk split, and it became clear that I’d have to remove the tree. How sad.

The disease that savaged my tree is most likely verticillium or maple wilt. This fungus lives in the soil, then enters the tree through its roots, and eventually clogs the xylem (the vascular system that carries nutrients and water up into the tree), where it releases cell-killing toxins. When enough xylem is infected, branches die. When the xylem around most of the trunk is infected, the tree dies. There is no cure, though sometimes well-cared-for trees wall off the disease and outgrow it. And once verticillium is in your soil, it stays for a dozen years or more, so you can’t replace your lost tree with another susceptible variety.

So where do I go from here? I'm sending a slice of the wood to Jenny Glass, who diagnoses plant evils for Washington State University. If she says it's wood rot from an injury, then I can put another maple back after I dig out this one's stump. But if she confirms that it's verticillium, then I have to avoid replanting with susceptible trees, and only plant resistant or immune trees. I'll base my decision on the following three lists.

Here are common susceptible trees—those I can’t plant in verticillium-infected soil: most maples (Acer), horsechestnut (Aesculus), tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), silk tree (Albizia), Catalpa, carob (Ceratonia), redbud (Cercis), fringe tree (Chionanthus), camphor (Cinnamomum), yellow wood (Cladrastis), smoke tree (Cotinus), carrot wood (Cupaniopsis), quince (Cydonia oblonga), persimmon (Diospyros), Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), ash (Fraxinus), flannel bush (Fremontodendron), Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus), walnut (Juglans), goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria), tulip tree (Liriodendron), most magnolias, sour gum (Nyssa), olive (Olea), avocado (Persea), pistachio (Pistacia), Prunus (cherry, plum, apricot, peach), pin oak (Quercus palustris), locust (Robinia), elderberry (Sambucus), Sassafras, pepper (Schinus), Sophora (Chinese scholar tree, Japanese pagoda tree, mescal bean), lilac (Syringa), elm (Ulmus), and Viburnum.

Here are those that can be either resistant or susceptible, depending upon cultivar and strain of verticillium: serviceberry (Amelanchier), dogwood (Cornus), poplar (Populus), and linden (Tilia).

And here are ones that are resistant or immune to verticillium: native maples (Acer circinatum, Acer macrophyllum), most red maples (Acer rubrum), manzanita (Arctostaphylos), birch (Betula), boxwood (Buxus), hornbeam (Carpinus), pecan (Carya), chestnut (Castanea), Ceanothus, hackberry (Celtis), katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum), citrus, conifers, hazelnuts (Corylus), hawthorn (Crataegus), dove tree (Davidia), eucalyptus, beech (Fagus), fig (Ficus), ginkgo, honeylocust (Gleditsia), witch hazel (Hamamelis), holly (Ilex), walnut (Juglans), sweet gum (Liquidambar), Magnolia kobus, apple (Malus), mulberry (Morus), oleander (Nerium oleander), Parrotia, sycamore (Platanus), firethorn (Pyracantha), pear (Pyrus), white oak (Quercus alba), southern red oak (Quercus falcata), willow oak (Quercus phellos), southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), willow (Salix), mountain ash (Sorbus), Stewartia, Styrax, California bay laurel (Umbellularia californica), and Zelkova.

You can find online information about most of these on Sunset's Plant Finder.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

The best way to make the most of a beautiful succulent is to shop for a container that repeats some of its defining characteristics, says Debra Lee Baldwin in her just-released book, Succulent Container Gardens.

Below are two good examples from her book.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

In the post above we show two pots that perfectly compliment the plants they contain by repeating some of their most distinctive characteristics.  The examples are from  Debra Lee Baldwin's new book, Succulent Container Gardens.

Below is another example of the art of repetition, this time from Baldwin's own garden in Escondido.

 By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Reading the Gossler’s new shrub book reminded me how much I like the witch hazels...and how strange they are, with their thread-like flower petals and the clean, sweet fragrant that somehow holds its own in cold winter air.

I was introduced to witch hazel extract long before I knew about the plant. My mother, a nurse, kept a bottle of this astringent around as a topical treatment for everything from acne to hemorrhoids. As a boy, I thought of it as an odd, gin-like magic potion: why else would it be called “witch” hazel? W.J. Bean (Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles) apparently thought the same thing, but we both may have been wrong. It turns out that the “witch” part of the name probably came from the middle English root word “wiche,” meaning “flexible.” We see the word again in wych elm (Ulmus glabra), whose flexible shoots develop their full expression in Camperdown elm.

As the story goes, when Europeans who settled North American noticed the similarity between the leaves of Hamamelis virginiana and those of European hazelnuts, which they used to make divining rods, they called the American tree witch hazel. 

My ‘Arnold Promise’ witch hazel (shown here) has been filling the garden with color and sweet fragrance for nearly three weeks now. Like most other Hamamelis x intermedia varieties, this cross between Chinese (H. mollis) and Japanese (H. japonica) witch hazels blooms at the same time as both of its ancestral lines, in winter and early spring. The Southern native witch hazel (H. vernalis) does the same, but the east-coasts native, H. virginiana, flowers in autumn, just as the leaves are coloring. This last one becomes a small tree; the others top out at 10 to 20 feet. 

 Every winter about this time I nip off a few inches of flowers to put in a vase indoors, where they perfume the house for a week or more. If I’m lucky I’ll get a seed pod too (left). These tame looking fruits, which are from last year’s bloom, open up the day after they’re exposed to warm indoor temperatures. That’s when the fun starts. Without notice, they shoot black seeds up to 30 feet, caroming them off walls, appliances, and pets. If you want to save the seeds, slip a sandwich bag over the pod. 

 You can plant the seeds if you’re patient and don’t mind risk. Witch hazel seeds commonly take up to two years to germinate, then even then grow slowly and unpredictably. W.J. Bean quoted a propagator as saying that “you sow seeds, and you may get anything.” To be fair, the reference was to Japanese witch hazel, which is more variable than most.

Witch hazel flowers grow mostly upside down, as shown at right. (The picture at the top is of a spray of flowers that has been cut and reoriented so you could see the flowers at the base of the petals.) This downward orientation is something you only notice up close; from a distance, it doesn't subtract a thing from the plant's beauty (below). But it does help keep rain out of them. 

Default petal color is pale to golden yellow, with hybrids producing petals in shades of orange and red as well. H. vernalis also has reddish petals. And the petals themselves have a lovely crumpled look, except on H. mollis. These are worth looking at closely. An overwintering Anna's hummingbird does just that in my garden, often sunning herself among the flowers when she's not sipping the nectar, which must be one of her only winter food supplies.

Finally, remember to put these where you can enjoy not just their winter flowers, but their autumn color. The witch hazels, Hamamelis, gave their genus name to their whole family, Hamamelidaceae, which includes such fall color champs as Disanthus, Fothergilla, Liquidambar, and Parrotia.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that my 'Arnold Promise' witch hazel, shown below, is planted way too close to the Fargesia behind it. Big mistake—the mother 'Arnold Promise' plant in Arnold Arboretum reached about 20 ft. tall and wide—but these plants transplant well (the one shown spent the first four years of its life in a big pot on my deck). I'm sure you'll get it right with your plant the first time. But don't delay: these are in flower now, so you can see just what you're getting when you buy.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Despite having visited Santa Barbara many, many times--two dozen at least--somehow I never managed to make it to their their sweet, little Zoo. (It's rated one of the best small zoos in the country.)  Last December, though, I finally got there.  And now I doubt I'll ever pay pay the city a visit without dropping in.  Don't make my mistake.  If you haven't yet been to the Santa Barbara Zoo, drop by the next time you visit the city.  Here's a few reasons:

It has a California condor exhibit.  There are only two other zoos in the world who can say that--the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City.  Santa Barbara's' exhibit, which opened last year, is the newest.  The four juvenile condors it houses seem quite at home.  Maybe it's seeing the Santa Ynez Mountains, which are part of the condor's historic range, in the background.

  Depite its modest 30-acre size, the Santa Barbara Zoo also has all the major hitters--elephants, giraffe, gorilla.

But if you have a young child, there is something else at the Zoo, that might be even more compelling--the simple grass slope in the Kallman Family Play area.  Children will roll and slide down it contentedly for hours.  

 The Hilltop Fountain, shown below, is also guaranteed to be a big hit.

Kids can't resist water, of course.  But now that the fountain has been renovated and holds koi, just try to keep them away.  Santa Barbara landscape designer Alida Aldrich handled the fountain's redesign, and I want to thank her for luring me here to check it out.  Otherwise who knows how many more years might have gone by before I finally discovered this Zoo?

Photo credits:

Elephants, condor, gorilla, pigeon Scott Craven; children with lions, Mehosh, lion grooming, Juli Cromer; children on grass mound and fountaini, Dean Noble.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I am posting this clay sculpture I saw in Owen Dell's garden in Santa Barbara mostly because I think it is beautiful.

But it also illustrates my favorite way of experiencing garden art. Sculpture doesn't always have to be on a pedestal on center stage shouting "look at me, look at me."  Sometimes it is more effective if it is almost hidden. 

Dell's voluptuous goddess, for instance, is tucked away behind his home office in one of the remotest parts of his garden.  So when you finally find her you feel like you've stumbled across a nymph in the woods.

 Dell found this beautiful clay piece in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  The artist is Surapong "Neung" Jindatham.  Sorry, I'm not finding anything about him on the web.  So, if you find a link, please let me know.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Any time you spread out papers you need to keep refering to, along comes your cat and makes herself comfortable right in the middle of them.  You would think we'd find this predeliction annoying.  Instead somehow we always find it sweet. This picture, found on Pasadena landscape architect Heather Lenkin's blog, showing her cat Minnie demonstrating this behavior, makes me miss my long deceased cats.  Thought I was over that.

  Lucy, my love, you may need to learn to share my office.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Jean Dodier (top) and Kris Freitag

Because great gardens take decades to grow, it’s all the more tragic when they succumb to bad financial times. The economy will recover, but Portland’s Berry Botanic Garden may not: its board of directors has decided to transfer the garden’s internationally famous seed bank to Portland State University and sell the 6½ acre property.

 The garden was started by Rae Selling Berry in 1939. An avid plantswoman and subscriber to various plant-hunting expeditions, she amassed a fascinating collection of rock-garden plants (pictured above), primulas, lilies, ornamental trees, and species rhododendrons, all living comfortably with the native plants that have always grown on the site. In 1977 the site became a nonprofit botanical garden open to the public, and within 6 years, it opened a first-of-its-kind seed bank to preserve rare and endangered plants of the Pacific Northwest.

 Set in a residential part of south Portland, the garden has limited public access, and visitors have to make advance reservations (very easy to get) to see it. Such a low profile makes it a place you can usually enjoy in solitude, but the small number of visitors has contributed to the garden’s financial crunch.

At this point, the garden will continue to be open for visits, offering spring classes and a plant sale as in past years. But no plans are being made after summer. Everything depends upon whether the garden is sold. 

Only the garden’s seed bank appears to have a secure future: a science building at Portland State is being remodeled to house a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault. The future of the plant collection will depend upon the buyer. The directors would love to sell to a garden enthusiast who would keep the landscape intact, but wishes are just wishes at this point.

In any case, this may be your last chance to walk through one of Portland’s great plant collections. Go now to see the garden waking up, or go in April or May to see the venerable landscape of species rhododendrons in full flower. I hope it’s not their last hurrah.