Goodbye to a much loved cat

I had to say goodbye to my favorite cat Tango. I love all my cats but she was my favorite, the one who cuddled me the most. My cats are indoor cats. They all definitely want to go outside and we do let them in a very supervised manner. When they dart out unexpectedly they almost always run under the porch and wait until we are bored waiting for them and then they jump over the damn fence into the neighbors yard or worse, the parking lot behind us! Why cats! Why do you do it?!

Tango, a usually very mild mannered cat, was very very bad and would immediately jump over the fence to lounge in the neighbors yard.

Here is Tango at the Golden Hour.

Anyway, I brought Tango home from the vet in the hopes of having a home euthanization. So she did get one last glorious romp in the backyard. She got to drink from the fountain, smell all the plants, and watch the birds and bees one last time.

I was not able to get the at home euthanization in time for her so I did have to bring her back to the vet the next day. She was ready and it was her time. <3 As I sobbed in my car afterwards I realized that this is the only cat I have ever had to do this for as an adult. It was so hard and so sad.

A light orange cat out of focus and glowing with backlit sun

Dennis Mudd Home Garden Tour

I’m a big fan of the APLD International Design Conference. This year it was in San Diego and was delightful. Absolutely packed with amazing speakers, tours, and activities. Every year I swear I will take good notes and post in a timely manner before I have forgotten everything that happened. Every year I fail at that goal and this year is no different. I can see in my Notes App that I started to take notes but they are very bad and useless. So here we are once again posting vaguely but with lots of lovely pictures. :)

I posted last week about Easyscape so I thought I would at least get out a post about touring the home garden of Dennis Mudd the founder of Calscape and Easyscape. you can watch Dennis give a presentation about his landscape here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eilqQPUr3a4

Some entryway photos. the cool thing about this circular drive was that it is also a dry creek. One area is built so that it floods when it rains and it slows and directs the water to the landscape and allows the water to percolate back into the earth.

Dennis and his wife also were generous enough to open their house to us as well. I’ll just post a few pics of some details in the walls and flooring… and the dog, of course.

Some plant and hardscape pics:

They filled in their pool to create a lovely pond water feature.

The outdoor kitchen and dining area had amazing vines climbing through the willow - I believe a grape and a (non native)trumpet vine - covering the entire area. It was so lovely and I can imagine sitting under it eating your wood fired pizza must be amazing.

a delightful approach to a gate.

Messing about with Easyscape

If you are a big Bay Area plant nerd you are probably familiar with the website Calscape that is part of the CNPS (California Native Plant Society). It is an invaluable resource for native plants in California. They tap in to the Jepson Herbarium* database which you can find here. They did recently update the website and add some new offerings to help people design well with native plants. You can find inspiration, example planting plans, and find certified native plant designers (including Wild Things Garden Design)!

At the most recent APLD International Design Conference in San Diego we were able to tour the home garden of Dennis Mudd the original creator of Calscape. It was a gorgeous garden! But he was also in the process of rolling out his new offering - Easyscape. This is an on the go design tool that helps you design your native garden based on native plants that are local to your area.

How it works:

Input your address and the web app will pull up the google map of that address, then you can choose a plot category -low water, part shade, etc. You can then choose your plants, hit the design button, and then place plants from the list directly on to the map. Is it a tad kludgy rn, maybe. But I love the idea of making this intimidating stage so easy. Do I think you still need a designer that is familiar with the plants, yes.

So you can see here it looks quite a bit like Calscape. The pictures are nice and you can click on them to get to a plant info page. And in the picture below you can see the design tool. You can add plants at the correct size, make landscape areas and label them, etc. I haven’t messed about with it extensively yet.

Do I think the Emeryville City Hall landscape could use some upgrading? Yes, I do. :)

Jepson Herbarium at UC Berkeley - I am VERY excited that I will be getting to tour the Herbarium this October for Parent’s Day at UC Berkeley. Although, for some reason I thought that this was NOT open to the public. I think it is though. See info about visiting here: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/main/guidelines.html

Fuchsia procumbens

This is a ground cover I have long been attempting to grow in my own yard. I’m sure I have bought at least four of these plants in the past and I am happy, very happy, to report that this fifth attempt is going absolutely gang busters*. This time I have planted this in our sideyard where it is very shady int he winter and gets partial sun in the summer.

Fuchsia procumbens close up with small heart-shaped leaves and a funky flower.

This plant is a low creeping ground cover with small heart-shaped leaves and a super cool and really weird flower. The flower has no petals but has a yellowish green tube with yellow and red and purple sepals. I have read that this plant does produce edible berries but mine has not done so.

I bought this at Annies Annuals, now Curious Flora. I’m not sure if they are currently growing this plant. I was interested to read on the wikipedia page that this is a coastal plant native to New Zealand.

I _think_ this is rooting as it creeps along. You can see in the second picture above that it is happily trying to crawl up the house. One of the reasons I am so hot for this plant is that I am a big believer in “green mulch”. That is, using low plants to cover the mulch in a landscape as another layer of soil moisture retention. This can also help with soil erosion and provide habitat, etc. And really, I just don’t love the look of landscape that ends up being large swaths of bare mulch.

  • *Sometimes I find myself using an expression and then thinking ‘why did I say that? what does that even mean?!’.

  • Here is what Dictionary.com says about it.

    • Idioms

      1. like gangbusters, with great speed, intensity, vigor, impact, or success.

        The software market was growing like gangbusters. The hockey team came on at the beginning of the season like gangbusters.

      2. go gangbusters, to be extremely successful.

        The movie went gangbusters.

  • Another recent thing I said was ‘Can we swing it?’ and then I wondered why the heck I said that. I wonder if this is from baseball.

    • 1. informal To make (something) happen or come to pass; to manage or arrange (something) successfully.

Local Nursery Visits - Cactus Jungle - Berkeley, CA

I do spend many hours at wholesale nurseries for work but there's something special about wandering into smaller retail garden centers that I totally love. In any city I visit, I look up the retail nurseries and try to visit them. The Bay Area has an absolute wealth of cute retail nurseries that I love to visit.

Don't get me wrong - I still get a thrill when I visit a big wholesale nursery with rows and rows of amazing plants. It can be fun to bring clients. They're the workhorses for our industry and I appreciate that.

But a cute little neighborhood boutique nursery? I love it. The employees need to sell that stuff and they make the best displays. It's not just about the plants, it's about all the cute tchotchkes and garden accessories your heart desires.

The staff at these smaller establishments create little moments of delight around every corner - a painted pot paired perfectly with a bright succulent, a collection of native plants arranged to show how they might complement each other in your garden, or some colorful combination of Fermob furniture that helps you picture those items in your own garden. I often have clients who have visited Flora Grubb or Flowerland on Solano that come to me gushing with excitement and are inspired by visiting these nurseries. And I feel the same way when I go to them!

The difference is in the intention, I guess. Wholesale nurseries know we need them regardless - we need their inventory and they know it. We are there to pick up 25 Lomandras or whatever and don’t have time to linger. The smaller retail nurseries craft experiences, not just inventory. Their employees have both the time and directive to create inspiring vignettes that make you imagine possibilities for your own space.

We stopped by the Cactus Jungle in Berkeley (I did not realize there was a location in Marin too! I’ll have to do a nursery crawl on that side of the bay soon) on our way to another errand this weekend. I don’t remember it having a cute little boutiquey indoor area but it has honestly been a looooong time since I stopped in here. The staff was nice and helpful. We told them about how we rampantly kill every air plant we buy and they sympathized. LOL. They haven’t quite reached the cuteness heights of Flowerland but it’s a lovely nursery and everyone should visit it.

Grey and traditional terracotta pots

I have recently noticed these grey terracotta pots everywhere. I really like them! We did buy a smaller shallow one and have started potting it up with succulents. I’ll post a pic of that at some point. We do also have to go back to get a few more pots and one cool succulent T. is still thinking about. OMG what if someone else bought it already?!?

A landscaping project is never done...

Landscapes are ever evolving. Plants die and circumstances or tastes change. It is one of the reasons I like landscape design but I also see that, for some folks, it can be a source of frustration. “I just spent all this money on plants! Why do I have to spend MORE money on plants?!!!”

You don’t HAVE TO but it is awfully nice to go in to a mature landscape and fill in little gaps or just see what has worked and what has not worked. Plants are living things and, as such, can be squirrelly little shits. One plant thriving and the same plant, two feet away, has died a painful death. Maybe there is slightly less light in that spot or maybe the irrigation clogged and the plant wasn’t getting enough water for months, or a gopher moved in, there can be all kinds of reasons.

I’m thinking about this because we have visited a couple of our installed gardens this week. I swear we started designing this, like, back in 2017. I post about it several times before here and here.

These are the two concept sketches I made probably in 2017ish.

The tree I posted about in that last post ended up NOT bouncing back and spent several years looking like shit and making everyone sad. I’m so sorry we failed you sweet tree! :( We decided to replace it with a 36” box Arbutus marina. Here is the loyal little Ditch Witch bringing the chonky new tree in.

There are a couple of other spots in this landscape that just need a few more plants to fill in. There is also one-planting bed that is like, half sun, half shade under a big tree. Everything in that bed seems to fail and I’m just not sure why... Root competition? Dogs running rampant? Gophers? Compacted soil? IDK, but I want that bed to look as nice as the other areas in the landscape. Sadly, also, one of the counters in the outdoor pavilion kitchen cracked. It just wasn’t on a stable enough surface and was flexing too much. so that also has to get replaced. A TOTAL BUMMER!

Here are some nicer shots of areas that are working. Check out those crazy Senecio Skyscrapers! And in the 4th picture you can see the happy, relocated palm! That bed needs a few new plants though.

I have never been a dog person but since starting this profession I have come around. I could never be a dog owner but I do love meeting everyone’s dogs! Please behold this absolute sweetie face of a German Shepard puppy!!

Picture of a german shepard puppy with big, soft ears lying on concrete in front of a pretty garden bed.

Here’s a pavilion shot. Obviously, you can see the kitchen is back under construction. :(

Bay Area Trees for Fall Color

I grew up mostly in the south in place without a lot of fall color. It got cold but the trees were mostly tall pine trees. They always seemed kind of depressing and dour. but I did like braiding the needles when I was little.

The Bay Area is not exactly know for fall color either. But there are several trees that can really bring it! Every fall I think, oh yeah I should document what trees are doing what right now and that time has finally come! This thought often occurs to me as I am driving through a particularly colorful street. And, yes, I did stop in the middle of the street to get this shot.

Street lined with colorful orange, red, and yellow Pistacia chinensis trees in the fall.

Pistacia chinensis - Chinese Pistache is a great tree for a streetscape or a residential setting. It doesn’t get too big, grows at a decent rate, provides a nice dappled shade and this amazing fall color. Here you can see an example of a 24” Box Keith Davey specimen at the nursery.

Lagerstroemia indica x fauriei 'Muskogee' is a nice crape myrtle that does well in this area and has gorgeous fall color.

Also consider this non native Buckeye - the Aesculus Early Glow. See some better pics here.

Next we have the Liriodendron tulipifera. This tree is in the magnolia family and has a really cool flower! I feel like I don’t actually see this tree very often. It does get HUGE soft may be that it is just too big even for the larger suburban neighborhoods in the East Bay. It is really pretty though!

Nyssa silvatica - Black Gum tree. This is another great tree for fall color. I’ve never spec’ed this tree but every time I see it I wonder why. Here is one in the background of this lovely patio at one of our projects.

In the nursery you can see this one has some set fruits. I don’t think it is a super messy tree though.

There are a million different Prunus varieties. When I first moved here the Prunus leaves fallen in the streets all yellow and red and spotty madame take up watercolors and sketchbooking. I don’t have the patience to figure out which ones these two are but I love how the leaves look intermingled on the ground!

Okay, one more. This Cercis is just looking very lovely with it's yellow leaves spread out under it!

All the Acers and Cornus trees have great fall color too.

The Story of Four Winds True Dwarf Citrus

Book Review: The story of Four winds growers true dwarf citrus by Floyd C. Dillon and Donald Dillon

I can’t remember where I picked up this little reprint. It says it is a  reprint from the California Horticultural Society and has lots of pictures attributed to Sunset Magazine. The dates listed are 1957-1961. 

I think this line from the first page is interesting, “Gardening habits were changing from the pleasure of growing plants to that of making outdoor living more pleasant.” Not only that but I bet the space constraints in many areas of California were driving the desire for patio sized trees.

I love this glimpse into the development of dwarf citrus and some insight into how people were thinking about their California gardens and how that was developing in the post WW2 years as Mid-Century Modern was appearing, etc. I’ll keep that for another post though.

I don’t really know much about grafting (although my partner has been doing some very cool grafting in our yard recently, I should write about that!) This little booklet goes into the exact root stocks that they found to work with each type of scion. For instance, the ones rootstocks that worked with grapefruit were not good for the Eureka Lemon. Okay! I love these dedicated plant nerds figuring all this out! Also, apparently they had a special club called the Lemon Men’s Club. 

Here is what the Huntington Library Archive has to say:

“The Lemon Men's Club, based in Los Angeles, California, was started in 1904 as a service, education, and advocacy organization for the lemon industry in Southern California, including lemon associations, shipping houses and growers. Frederick Arthur Little (1868-1965) was a leader in the California citrus industry. Born in England, Little moved to Canada and then Ontario, California, in the 1880s, where he started a lemon grove. In 1896, Little moved to Santa Barbara and helped organize the Santa Barbara Fruit Exchange before returning to Ontario in 1898, where he organized the Ontario Fruit Exchange. He later worked as packing house superintendent for the Arlington Heights Fruit Company in Riverside County and managed the Arlington Heights Fruit Exchange. Little was an active collector of materials related to the history of the citrus industry.”

Ooo, another fruitful (hahaha) link here to a write up called ‘Mrs. Bryant Again Entertains Lemon Men's Club at Field Day Meeting - The California Citrograph June 1933’. Okay, what a great rabbit hole this is turning out to be. I have a bunch of links open now about Susanna Bixby Bryant who inherited her family's ranch in 1891 and turned it into a botanic garden featuring native plants! . Damn, that is so cool. She hired the Olmstead’s firm to design it later on and then the whole thing got moved after her death? Anyway, I’ll need to read up to this more later.

Back to dwarfing citrus trees - It seems like the next big innovation was a different grafting technique called ‘twig-grafting’. I have not read up on that but it seems this method hinders the development of the taproot of the tree and that must help it stay smaller. 

The rest of the booklet talks more in depth about specific varieties. One variety mentioned that I can’t remember ever noticing is the Ponderosa Lemon. These produce really, really big lemons and I can see that they are a variety available for purchase. I’ll have to keep my eye out for them at the wholesale nursery. I think it might be a fun one to grow!

The Madonna Inn Secret Garden

This was my first time staying at the Madonna Inn. I’m a fan, for sure now. So pink! So over-the-top opulent! We stayed in The HideAway Room which was a tad dank, if I’m honest. But who cares?! I got to shower in a pretend grotto!

The pool was great.

We only stayed at the hotel for like under 16 hours. We had to check out and rush off in the morning to go tour CalPoly. But I did jump out and take a few pictures of the Secret Garden.

I dig this entirely secret garden that literally no one knows about!

I’m always paying attention to color combinations in plantings. Peachy pink with purple, pink with dark maroon, dark red and yellow. All super pretty for a lovely cutting garden.

Mission San Juan Bautista and Mission San Miguel

My son and I headed down to Southern California lat week to visit colleges.

We took the 101 down and went to a couple of CA Missions. The first one was the San Juan Batista Mission. There was a lot going on! Live music and Mass outside, I think. Someone there is having a blast making succulent containers.

Visiting California's missions is always pretty interesting. I didn’t grow up here so I never had the elementary school missions curriculum that so many here tend to have. Instead, I had mad amounts of Texas history shoved down my throat. I really like visiting old historic sites in general. The missions do make me feel pretty sad though. I can't help but feel unsettled by how the missions' darker history is often glossed over. While they do often have exhibits about the pre-mission cultures the devastating impact these institutions had on indigenous peoples and their cultures should be more prominent.

This visit was a tad different from my previous visits as it was Sunday. It was CROWDED! And, I have to say, the activity and joyfulness of whatever was happening was really nice to see. Like, the past was some pretty horrific treatment of the indigenous population but now, at least, they seem to be vibrant centers for local community celebrations.

The other mission we visited was the Mission San Miguel. This mission has a larger museum and it was also very busy! There was live music, immense amount of tacos being made, and a quinceañera or two happening as well.

Baskets! I love basket weaving. They had a really nice exhibit of the different plants that were used and a display case filled with examples of baskets from a variety of indigenous cultures.

Some architecture and church pics. I only took one picture in the church because a girl was having her quinceañera photoshoot. I wanted to take a picture of her and her amazing fluffy purple dress but I did not! Every picture I took I was secretly seething because they just put signs everywhere and on every wall and door. So ugly! I tried hard to get the least amount of ugly signs in my photos.

Atlanta - Day Four

Day four was the day of the wedding but we had some time beforehand to take a walk to the Jimmy carter Presidential Library. I gotta say, I was underwhelmed. The map and descriptions made it sound better than it was. And it was hella hot out. Here I am looking sweaty yet pretty obviously Presidential. Hahahaha.

There were some nice, serene moments in the garden.

We walked to and from the library on the Freedom Park trail. There were many squirrels. I was unsure what this tree with the bean pod looking things was.

Then off to the wedding where we looked very cute.

The wedding venue was really pretty. The bride had, hands down, the best wedding dress ever. Some silliness with old friends. The flowers were all hand picked by the bridal party and arranged for the tables. So pretty!

I’m sorry to say that it all went downhill (in a good way) after the bride and groom left in their Georgia Tech themed car. :P

Exploring Atlanta - Day Three

Day Three!

We decided to walk to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens

The greenway walk on the way there was pretty nice with lots of people out and about. Also, seen... a dog restaurant with a hilarious promotional photo I did not photograph. There was a huge open air market getting set up and what looked like an epic bouncy house festival with a million huge bouncy houses.

The Botanical gardens were setting up their Alice in Wonderland exhibits. Some are there all the time and some are new for this event.

It is always inspiring to see gardens in places you are not familiar with. I loved all the sculptures. the first one was this pair of wire birds sitting in really pretty swathes of green grasses. I just love how the color blocking draws the eye to the birds and the water feature.

I don’t think we managed to see all the Alice in Wonderland themed sculptures. This Earth Goddess woman is part of their permanent exhibits.

Some of the more specific Alice ones were the Cheshire Cat, Alice falling down the well, the queen playing crochet, and the shaggy dog (also in the permanent collection) made out of Carex testacea.

Oh man, there’s just a lot! There was a little conifer collection. I love confers ever since touring the conifer garden of the President of the American Conifer Society in maybe 2016-ish(?). A few pictured here in hypertufa pots making me want to try making hypertufa pots again…

We headed in to the Conservatory next.

They had a really great cloud garden. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many times I have attempted to insert one of these into a clients garden. LOL. At this point I should just try putting one in my own tiny backyard landscape.one can buy round pruned plants from many nurseries. Cloud pruning - or Niwake style pruning - is just pruning hedges into cloud-like shapes. I feel like I want to make joke about all the CA native plants I see horribly box pruned around here. A video about cloud pruning in case you are wondering how this is different from box pruning.

Anyway, check out these balls.

More plant pics incoming. I almost didn’t go into the orchid garden for some reason. I am glad we did.

There were many nicely designed containers all over the gardens. I love this cobalt blue and peach color combo! I really want to spend more time designing containers. I have a couple in my yard that are in sore need of replanting.

We were so hot and exhausted at this point. We ate at the fancy restaurant there and then on the way home we rented those Lime scooter thingies. My first time doing such a thing and I was terrified. But it ended up pretty easy to pick up how to do it and we made it home. I will say those, money-wise, it was way more expensive than just getting an uber or a ride share.

Then, we were off to the beer garden party for our friends’ wedding. I kinda wish I had a pic of my dress because it is my new favorite. I wore it with sneakers because my feet were tired from walking all over the garden!

Exploring Atlanta - Day 2

We are within walking distance to a place called Ponce City Market and I see they have a breakfast restaurant called Pancake Social. It did not disappoint. Behold the custom tiled floor. Pancakes were a bit gluey but still good.

After exploring the market a bit we we attempted to take the bus to Fernbank. We failed and ended up calling an Uber because the bus never came. Fernbank is a Natural History Museum with some attached gardens called Wildwoods and Fernbank Forest.

First, dinosaurs!

Y’all, it’s hot out okay? I am pink and frizzy.

On to the other garden walks. This portion is a raised wooden walkway with some really lovely cathedral like structures. In some of these photos you can see stone walls. Those are part of the original land granted to the museum by the Harrison family. After the raised walkway , there are more paved paths and then you can walk through the rest of the old land on some rockier trails. I was not wearing the correct shoes. And I swear I took photos but… I don’t see them in my photo roll. I might actually have been too hot to take many photos.

We headed back into the museum to see the show about polar bears but first we stumbled on to my favorite natural history museum thing… dusty old dioramas. I swear, I just love them. I don’t know why. Again, where are all my pictures?!

This whole series of sequential dioramas of a dinosaur dying and being buried was epic.

A dusty ground squirrel and two raccoons harassing a turtle. Heh.

Exploring a bit of Atlanta - Day 1

We made it to Atlanta!

Is it just that I am old now that a flight across the US utterly knocks me out? It ends up being an entire day of travel, and then I am left feeling grubby and dehydrated.

Before traveling, I tend to do a lot of googling of the location, and I made a saved places list in Google Maps. After I figure out the hotel, I google to see if there are any gardens close by or any gardens/landscapes in the city that are noteworthy that I think I might want to see. In this case, I settled on the Hotel Clermont - a refurbished motel and apparently a local iconic establishment. There is a local neighborhood shared garden just around the block! Perfect! What else looks good? The Atlanta Botanical Gardens and some place called Fernbank. That is really all we'll have time to squeeze into this visit.

Anyhow, we made it here, and I LOVE our hotel. It is so freaking cute. Great details, lobby is super nice, a bar and a restaurant, and a rooftop bar as well. Did I steal a Clermont Hotel pen? Yes, yes I did.

two happy looking people relaxing in a hotel lobby holding plastic cups of champagne.

We arrived, checked in, dropped our stuff off, and headed to the bar where we had some delicious cocktails. Then we walked down to the Atlanta Goddess Garden - https://www.goddessgardenatlanta.com/about. The weather here is... sultry. It all feels sort of primally familiar even though I am no longer acclimated to this kind of humid heat. It's nice to have a warm evening walk though.

This garden has a wild and overgrown feeling. Walking along the paths, there are many small shrines, seating areas, and spaces for growing edibles. There are also a lot of rats scurrying in the undergrowth, so I'm unsure how they can sustain any veggies or herbs!

Here is the description from their website:

"Created by Shasta Zaring in 1990, the Goddess Garden Atlanta is an urban wilderness habitat and healing sanctuary nestled in the heart of the City of Atlanta. It is a sacred space dedicated to the Divine Feminine in all religions, paths and cultures. Altars to Goddesses from various world cultures adorn the paths and are tended by the Garden's keepers.

This one-acre private preserve, open to the public during daylight hours, is cultivated without the use of pesticides and herbicides and is a certified Audubon Society Wilderness Habitat. Located just off the Atlanta Beltline, the Garden is in walking distance to many city attractions, such as Ponce City Market, Historic 4th Ward Park, Carter Center and Little Five Points."

So it is privately owned but publicly available space. I wonder if they have to worry about insurance. Apparently, they have classes there, an attached AirB&B, and does seem like a nice place to go and chill in some lush green space! i can see that it is def. a labor of love for people in the neighborhood!

After our stroll we headed back to the hotel, drinks on the rooftop bar, and some dinner.