For Spring

I'm struggling to put together my online plant orders for this spring. 

Spanish Flare hellebore, Pink knockout rose, May Night sage.
David Verity cuphea, Bees Knees petunia,
Palmer penstemon, Blue ice amsonias, 
Gomphrena, Crystal Peak physostegias

I want some things I've had before, like the David Verity cuphea for the pot behind the deck, and a couple more Blue Ice amsonias to add below the privet. 

Those I can get from Select Seeds. They're in CT -- a long way and a lot of shipping cost for just 3 plants but no one else had David Verity.

Whiteflower Farm has the blushing pink Knockout rose I want and a May Night salvia to put in the dining room window garden when I take out the anemone. Again, a long way to ship.

I added a Spanish Flare hellebore to go with the one I just planted below the aronia under the aspens. And a Bees Knees yellow petunia for the brown urn by the back fence. 

And a red gomphrena to put in the pot with the bush clematis. So that's a bigger oder, 6 plants in all.

Bluestone Perennials has a dwarf, compact gaura called Little Janie that I want to put at the entrance to the birdbath garden when I expand the circle into the gravel. Two plants, flanking the opening. I specifically wanted gauras, but small ones.

To add to the order, I'll get 4 more Crystal Peak obedient plants. They are lovely, such a pretty clear white, but struggled in the ground. They'll fit in small containers that I can tuck into spots in the gardens.

Armeria maritima, Appar blue flax
Bumblesnow salvia, Little Janie Gaura

From High Country Gardens I ordered 2 Palmer penstemons, but not for the common area, where they grow wild. I'll put one in the driveway strip where the sedum was, and find a spot for another. They can be kept tidy I think, and up close they are fragrant.

← I ordered some new to me plants.

From High Country Gardens a white flowered armeria that is tiny and can be tucked in around the birdbath garden or at the front of the kitchen garden. 

Also 4 Appar blue flax for various spots. It's vase shaped and small, may get raggy after blooming, so tuck it in with other plants.

These two plants like it hot and dry and lean, so I don't need to worry too much about emitters for them

Bluestone's white flowered salvia, Bumblesnow, is a new salvia variety for me. It's small, and I loved the name. 

And Little Janie is new to me as a dwarf guara, although I've grown other gaura varieties.

Some more plants I decided to get:

Fragrant tobacco and Little Adder agastache

Select Seeds has a dwarf version of the Black Adder purple agastache I have, called Little Adder. It is about half the height of Black Adder and might be better in the pot by the deck. I can plant it somewhere or give it to Greg.

Select Seeds also has fragrant tobacco, and I'll plant them (3 grouped) in the ground near the garage door for height, rather than behind the deck in pots. I'll have to see if they can be kept watered and if they'll tolerate the hot afternoon sun and reflection from the wall.

It's taken me forever to figure out what I want to order. I have such specific needs, and can't find all I want from any one nursery. So I am assembling multiple small orders.

I'll shop Payne's and Newman's locally this spring too. I don't want to over complicate and stuff my gardens, but I want a layered, fuller look in places. 

It's so hard to balance editing down and opening up spaces with my wish for more complexity.

The Circle Garden

Here's a take on what I'm trying to do with the garden circling the birdbath. This picture shows a tree on the right (mine is the crabapple) and one further over on the left (my redbud sits there), with a circular path ringed by plants and a feature in the middle.

I really need my outer ring plants to fill in and provide structure and definition as this shot shows. My paths aren't wide enough I know. And I need more plants, to give depth to the single file of small plants I have now.

I'd like to bring plants out under the crabapple the way this does. My birdbath sits in a pool of thyme, rather than the rock base shown here, but the idea is the same.

And here's another rougher example, an approximation, really, of what I want.

Intsead of a potted plant in the middle I have the birdbath. 

But like the first photo it has a straight entrance into a circle, but the entrance is flanked with matching plants -- here they have two pots. My entrance area is much smaller of course and I'm thinking of using just two low, small plants (dwarf gauras).

Radio Red at Zero

It was 0° this morning when I got up. Our front doors have buckled a little and cold air pours in through the top. I stuffed some towels into the top edge as best I could. The kitchen door leaks air too.

I'm worried about the Radio Red Autumn sages I put in the ground this fall. They are hardy to zone 7 and that means the coldest they can take is 0°.

Santa Fe is sometimes shown as zone 7, but more often zone 6b now, but either way the reality is more severe. 

Combined with dry ground and intense sun in winter, the harsh effects of cold temperatures are heightened I think. 

And our growing season is shorter --we consistently have cold freezes earlier in fall and later in spring than the dates expected for zone 6b or 7. 

One strategy is to mound leaves over the plants and put a bucket over. 

But the leaves blow about on a windy day, and the bucket too. The bucket has to be removed when sun hits so it doesn't overheat even on a cold day.

That seemed like too much.

When I bought these salvias, Newman's was selling them in large quantities as hardy perennials, not tender or annual plants. I asked about hardiness and they said they'd be fine in the ground here.

Spring will tell . .  .

Soft Snow

Light snow this morning, warm coffee, feeling snug. The tiny flakes are drifting down very softly. Not much is accumulating.

A classic winter morning and I feel cozy. 

But I'm also feeling housebound and sluggish and tired of hearing the furnace bellow. It's been cold for a good week now -- not terrible, but too cold for a walk outside and I'm just sitting all day, reading, surfing sites and napping. Ugh.

I finished updating the info for 2024 on my plants blog, and now need to get focused on planning for 2025, but can't quite get started on that.

Winter.

❆

California Memories

View from the Getty gardens

This was my post on my prior garden journal the spring we went out to California and saw Tom and Z's new house, the Getty, and Huntington Gardens. California in its glory.

That was in 2017. Before grandkids arrived. 

Before the fires.

The White Bowl

The ornamental oregano that is in the white bowl now isn't doing it for me. I don't like the look of this variety even though it thrives and it drapes over the lip of the bowl nicely enough. (It's Origanum libanoticum).

I do like the combination of orange zinnias and draping oregano though.

One year it was orange pansies in the bowl. I just like the combination of short orange annuals, graceful oregano falling over the side, backed by the bright blue door.

But I like Origanum Kent's Beauty oregano much better than what's there now. It's a prettier plant, greener and softer looking. But it didn't always winter over for me in the bowl.

I had Kent's Beauty in oblong containers on the plant stand out front one year, and last year I put a bunch of Kent's Beauty in the green trough by the front door, in place of red geraniums.

The year I grew Kent's Beauty in one of the small terracotta oblong pots and had it on the patio table it was lovely. But I decided not to have a plant on the table -- I'd rather keep the table clean and open for food and drinks.

I have an "extra" container of Kent's Beauty already -- I had just put it in a pot and placed it at the back of the potting bench curve in shade to fill an empty spot. I can take out the oregano in the bowl now and transplant the extra Kent's Beauty there.

I thought about making the white bowl a mini herb garden, convenient right there by the back door and a way to grow herbs for cooking. 

But Jim doesn't really use fresh herbs, he likes his collection of dried herbs. I like some fresh things like basil and cilantro and parsley and lemon balm, and feathery dill, but they all get so big and are hard to keep looking good. 

And I would never use very much. I've tried herb gardens before and never got the hang of it.

So here's what I'd like to do with the white bowl next summer:

• Replace the oregano there with Kent's Beauty. 

• Add a basil plant or two, it's the only herb I like growing and I use it for pesto and garnishes.

• Maybe add a blue leaved sage like I had one year back east. And lemon balm.

• Orange Profusion zinnias if I can get them. Or orange pansies.

That would make a nice full combo in the white bowl using just a few smaller herbs.

A Blank Wall

Now that the Chinese privet is gone, this open wall needs something. It's the focal point you see from the deck looking down the yard. It's in deep shade by the wall in the morning but bright hot sun in the afternoons.

I'm planting the Windwalker Red salvia where there are emitters, but there's space behind, closer to the wall, for something taller or something structured.

> I thought about a stand of hollyhocks. What could be more classic "Santa Fe" than hollyhocks by the doorway? They would provide drama and a visual focus. 

But they are coarse plants, and perhaps too big for this space. I'd need to let them grow to see anything, and there would be nothing in spring or winter.

> I thought about a tightly grouped planting of several nicotiana alata plants. I liked them in the pot behind the deck, and they would be more elegant (and fragrant) than hollyhocks, although not as tall. But again, nothing to see in spring or winter.

And the site might be too harsh in the afternoon sun with reflected light off the wall. The big tobacco leaves might scorch, and the flowers -- so pretty and fragrant in the cool of the day, close up in the afternoons. 

Another option that doesn't involve planting things is to put the black mesh patio table by the door. 

I actually like the simplicity of it with a green watering can and a few pots in that empty spot now as you look down the yard. 

It keeps the side of the doorway open feeling, but gives some structure, repeating the black metal of the patio things.

But it's not much, the scale of it is small and I am ditzing over what to put on and around the table. I'd use more containers, different levels, potted herbs. 

Or try strawberries in the long plastic troughs again? 🍓

An alternative to the small table would be the two metal plant stands that are in the garage now.

But I'm concerned it might look fussy and staged and too small.

I guess I need to experiment with some container arrangements and see how this would look.

Panchito

Calm and sunny today, after a cold blustery day yesterday. The day is in the 50s, but in the sun it is warm and nice sitting outside. It got a little breezy in the afternoon.

I hand watered a lot of things today. It isn't much or very deep, but it helps. After our big snow storm in October, we haven't had a drop of moisture. Keeping things watered by hand from a 2 gallon can is hard.

The Panchito manzanita I got last summer from Plants of the Southwest has clean looking evergreen foliage in the brown dormant garden now.

Something to look at, although the leaves are bronzy yellow green now, not the deep glossy green of summer.

It does lean forward in an odd way. It was full and well shaped when I bought it, but it struggled at transplant and dropped leaves and got kind of leggy and tilted.

I'm hoping it fills out and settles in this year.

I think I need another. I'll take out the black hollyhocks by the gate and perhaps transplant them to the group of hollyhocks by the rain barrel, and in the narrow little spot by the gate I'd put another Panchito manzanita. 

A low manzanita under the vase shaped butterfly bush would fill that spot nicely and be something to look at in winter.

Both Sides of the Door

The Chinese privet is gone now and the garage wall is a blank expanse that needs something against it. I like the open feel and the fact that the blue door is no longer crowded. The redbud can grow into something in its open space now.

But the corner right by the door needs something. So I stuck the little square mesh patio table there, put some pots on it, and it's . . .  something. Some structure at least. I actually like the way it looks and the black metal picks up the black accent of the patio furniture.

Keep in mind there will be greenery, the growing crabapple and other things to look at down the yard. 

Another problem is presenting now that the area is so opened up. The tilted juniper by the door looks silly. It lives in absolutely no soil whatsoever, just four inches around its stem. 

The garage, driveway beyond the gate, patio stones and slab stoop are all impermeable and there is not a spot anywhere near this tree that gets water. I do not know how it lives. Junipers like dry conditions, but this is extreme.

It's so structured and stiff and provides no shade or garden interest. It hides the wall sconce light. 

But it does provide screening from the driveway. As you come up the drive and approach the gate, you'd see straight into the back yard over the gate if that bulky tall thing wasn't there.

You'd look right across to the neighbor's wall and from the road we would be visible, partially, coming and going to the garage side door.

The awkward branches that jut out need to come off. I can hire it. I have the number for the landscape maintenance (and snow) guy the neighbors use. → 

   

I guess I'll keep it. Nothing else tall, evergreen and screening could be planted in the few inches available there. 

Maybe a container with a tall narrow evergreen would work? 

Not as tall, but enough to rise above the fence but not hide the wall sconce. Not sure I can find anything suitable and that seems like a lot of trouble.

Trimming the branches won't do anything to make it less stiff and tilted, but it will be a little less awkwardly goofy looking perhaps.

A New Year, New Blog

The way I was keeping my journal of gardening tasks and commentary was getting cumbersome. 

It was a long continuous post sited on my "Plants" blog, and as each string of observations and photos got longer, I had to break up the text into separate posts by season, and that begged the question of why I wasn't simply keeping a blog journal. 

Each observation could be its own post -- titled, dated and easily searchable.

So here we are.