By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

 When I previewed the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle yesterday, I went with a certain amount of trepidation. This is first show without founder Duane Kelly at the helm, so I wondered whether new management would be able to keep the exhibit quality up. At the end of the day, I liked what I saw. The O'Loughlin Trade Shows people managed to attract first-quality show-garden designers such as Dan Robinson, Karen Stefonick, Susan Calhoun, Phil Wood, and Bob Lily, plus organization such as Seattle Tilth and Flower Growers of Puget Sound.

 The show includes a good mix of serious design, whimsy, green innovation, and downright silliness—something for everyone. There are more chickens than I've seen here before, plus a few goats, fossils, and dinosaur tracks. And that's just in the show gardens.

 Of course many people attend the NWF&G show to check out hundreds of vendors who hawk everything from aromatherapy blends and high quality tools to seeds and collectible plants you can't find anywhere else. 

I personally go for the fragrance—sarcococca, witch hazel, winter-flowering viburnums—and to try to sort out garden trends based on what designers have on display. In that trend category, I made note of water screens, which are sheets or see-through streams of water that fall across window openings or down textured rock. Most were pondless, disappearing into stones that hid recirculating pumps. Vertical garden walls are still on the ascendancy, some for indoor use. I wonder how they'll do over time.

When you go to the show, open daily today through Sunday, be sure to take a digital camera and a note pad. Admission is $20 for adults, $5 for teens, free for kids 12 and under.

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 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

This sweet little front yard in the North Park area of San Diego belonging to Dee Randolph  and David McQuaide made me brake and back up for a second look.  I loved, of course, that the garden designer--who I later learned was Kendra Berger with the firm Revive Your Landscape--used an interesting assortment of drought-tolerant plants instead of a lawn.

But what really intrigued me was the way Berger dealt with the retaining wall. It sets the garden up on a pedestal a few feet above the level of the sidewalk, as is typical of gardens when this home was built.  But the way the flagstone is stacked--especially those staggered edges--makes the wall almost feel like an outcropping.  Especially with the way the plants below it seem to spill rebelliously out onto the sidewalk.  This touch of casualness makes the garden feel contemporary as well traditional--an intriguing hybrid.

Now take a look at the same house before the garden renovation.

Both photos courtesy of Lori Brookes

The garden wouldn't have the same effect without the home's new more neutral colors, would it?  The turquoise paint trim and bright red roof tile might be authentic for the period, but, let's face it, they are not blenders.  By convincing her client to change them, Berger was able to make the house and garden look seamlessly connected.  "Still respectful of the home's style but more Mediterranean in spirit," she says.

To see another of Berger's projects, click here.

North Park, by the way, is a happening area.  Fun shops, galleries, and lots of locavore-oriented restaurants. Three to check out on your next visit to San Diego -- Sea Rocket Bistro, The Linkery, Ritual Tavern, and the Vagabond.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

The Camarillo Ranch Foundation and the Nopalito Native Plant Nursery are co-sponsoring an all-day Native Plant Symposium at the Camarillo Ranch Barn on February 20th.  The Symposium is being run by the Channel Islands Chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

 

They have a great roster of speakers lined up, including:

Owen Dell, Santa Barbara landscape architect, and author of Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies

Bart O'Brien, Senior Resarch Associate at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, and co-author of California Native Plants for the Garden

The all-day Symposium costs $45, which includes beverages, lunch, and snacks, which seems like a bargain to me.  For more details and registration, click here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

In my Pacific Northwest garden, two evergreen shrubs produce great December color: Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide' (red with yellow center) and Mahonia x media 'Charity' (yellow, pictured above). I especially like the mahonia because it gives dependable color in less sun than the camellia, and my two 'Charity' plants grow underneath bigleaf maples without missing a beat (maple roots are tough competitors).

What are your favorites for early winter color?

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I love it when Western gardeners decorate in a style that celebrates the West instead of trying to make their gardens look like somewhere else.  For instance: