End of Month View - The White Garden Bed

And finally the spring blooms of the plants, mainly the roses, have brought some much needed white color into the White Garden Bed! There is quite a bit of change to observe between the March and the February photos and I am so happy about that.

March 2015

 February 2015

Besides the fact that some plants have started flowering recently, I made some small changes to the bed as well. I placed my white statue that was formerly beautifying the Hybrid Perpetual Rose Bed into the White Garden Bed and like it there quite a bit. I also planted four new plants, two heucheras 'Venus' and two dichondra sericea commonly called 'Silver Ponyfoot', in the center of the bed, which albeit tiny also make big difference to me.

Here is a close-up of the white statue. It was made by an artist friend of us and was a house warming gift when we bought our first house here in California. Needless to say that it is very dear to me!

This photo offers you a closer look at the heuchera 'Venus'. I am completely in love with this small plant because of its silvery-white foliage and the beautiful veining on the leaves. It is supposed to produce creamy-white flowers in the spring, which would also go well with my white color scheme. The plant label said, that the heuchera would like partial sun or partial shade best, so it is planted in ideal light conditions, but I wonder if our climate is not too hot and dry for a heuchera to be happy. Time will tell! For now the plant responded to the transplant from the container into the ground well and I enjoy it as long as I can.

Both dichondra sericea 'Silver Ponyfoot' are struggling after transplanting them into the ground and that is mainly my fault. These plants were sitting in pots for over a year and when I removed the black plastic container the roots were completely pot bound. To loosen them up I serrated the root balls in various areas with a knife, but I might have over done it a bit.

The other one, looks much worse, leaves are even dying in the center of the plant. My gardener said that this plant is growing like a weed in his home town in Mexico, so I hope that indicates that it is a tough plant that will come around and survive.

Here is the trio of the newbies to the White Garden Bed: The white statue and the heuchera and the dichondra sericea. I love how the silver color of the dichondra is picked up by the heuchera and vice versa.

March 2015

February 2015 

The photo of the center of the White Garden Bed shows, besides the flowering roses, two more things that are standing out by the end of this month. One is the flowering alstroemeria Princess Lilies 'Claire' in front at the foot of the left cycad (Sago palm). And the second is that the left cycad is producing a new layer of fronds. 

Last month I was still wondering what exactly the color of the alstroemeria would be and I am very pleased about this creamy white nuance that the flowers have been taking on. The plant blooms obviously profusely and could take the heat wave that we were having recently in a blink of an eye. I am starting to get the feeling that this one is a real gem. 

  

Zooming in even closer, the beauty of the flowers is even more evident. The little dark "freckles" on the blooms are so charming!

This image shows the center of the cycad, and you can clearly spot the layer of the new fronds in the middle of the plant. I can't tell you how glad I am about that the cycad is able to produce a new top layer of fronds, because I think the plant hasn't done it for about two years and the older layers of fronds have become quite ratty looking and are badly burned by our hot sun. This is not so obvious on the photos, but trust me, it is truly the case. Can't wait to cut the lowest layer of fronds off!

March 2015

 February 2015

The last wide angle shot of the White Garden Bed taken from the left side looking over to the right. The roses from the left to the right are: 'Pope John Paul II', 'Chandos Beauty', 'Moonstone' and 'Auckland Metro', all Hybrid Tea roses. The one that truly stands out is 'Chandos Beauty'. This rose has been doing fabulous this spring and just looking at it makes my heart leap. 

That being said, 'Moonstone', the rose in the middle of the cycads, really sucked this month. It got infected with rose rust so badly that I decided to partly de-leaf the rose. The new shoots were then severely plagued by powdery mildew and have been partly removed as well, including the flower buds. Therefore there are only a few blooms on it. That 'Moonstone' can get rust and powdery mildew in my garden is nothing new, but getting it in spring this badly is. I am seriously considering to remove it, since it is taking up such a prominent position in my backyard and I am sure, that I am able find a more healthy rose for my organic non-spray garden.   

Here is a close-up of 'Chandos Beauty'. This rose has been almost completely healthy this spring, despite the fact that it is living in the same conditions like 'Moonstone'. 

from the left to the right: Pope John Paul II, 'Chandos Beauty', alstroemeria Princess Lilies 'Claire'

Writing this post has made me realize, that besides one little glitch, I am just saying 'Moonstone', how satisfied I am with the White Garden Bed in the moment and I will enjoy it as long as it lasts. Of course, I still do have some plans to improve it, though. Please stay tuned! 

This is my contribution to Helen Johnstone's End of Month View meme at The Patient's Gardener's Weblog. Thanks for hosting it, Helen! Please click on the link and find out what other gardeners have to show at the end of March.  

See you in the garden!

Christina

Making Changes to the White Garden Bed

A couple of posts ago I was writing about that I was not completely happy with my White Garden Bed in the backyard and that I wanted to make some changes to this area (click here to see the initial post). Today I am sharing with you, what I have done so far.




The project started out with an impulse plant buy in December 2011, which you can see in the photo above. It was the Christmas week and I felt I deserved a treat, so a trip to a local nursery let me come home with this random selection of white-flowering and silvery leaved plants simply chosen because I liked them. At that point I had no idea what I really would do with these beauties.

Also still waiting in the garage to be planted at that time were these amaryllis belladonna bulbs 'Fred Meyer Whites', common name belladonna lily or n---- lady, which I bought in autumn 2011.

Here is a photo to show how the bed looked, before I started out to make changes. It was taken in November 2011.

In the photo above the white 'Iceberg' rose in the middle between the two cycads is taken out already (for those of you who worry, no, I have thrown it away, it went to another good home). On the other hand the white flowering irises or what was left of them, which were planted behind the white column I tossed angrily into the trash bin. I was so disappointed that they simply refused to grow and flower for me. As a substitute for the irises the white flowering anemones are planted behind the white column now. The lamb's ears in front of the column were looking pretty ratty and I decided to cut them radically back and see if they will come back with nicer foliage. Also the dusty miller 'Silverdust' and the artemisia schmidtiana 'Silver Mound' are removed so that I could have a fresh start in that section of the bed. My husband had started to dig a monster hole for the rose that should go in between the cycads. I wanted the new rose to be more set back in the direction of the fence than the 'Iceberg' rose was, so that I can walk on the rim of the pool without getting poked.

The belladonna lily bulbs started to leaf out briefly after planting.

The bees loved the anemones and so did I.

I had planted seven anemones, but one died. So I learned that next time I do a planting like this I will keep one or two extra plants at hand as a replacement in case I loose one in the area, which is very visible. It probably will be impossible to find the same variety of anemone to replace the one, which died on me, but I will still try. It would be so nice to fill that little hole in the planting.

This is how the bed looked last weekend. The lamb's ears in front of the column have recovered nicely, except of the middle, so I decided to plant white pansies Delta Premium 'Pure White' there.

'Pope John Paul II' is outdoing himself this spring producing big, gorgeous, white, sumptuous flowers. Last year the first flush was ruined by thrips, but this year the blooms are almost free of blemishes They look amazingly good for a white Hybrid Tea rose, which is not sprayed. White is my favorite color, but good white Hybrid Tea roses are so rare to find. White blooms show the slightest assaults by insects and can look ruined very quickly, but not so this year. The Pope is really showing off.

 

One close-up of the 'Pope John Paul II' flowers. They remind me of big, delicious, vanilla ice cream scoops. The fragrance of this rose is breathtaking. I think I need more than one Pope in my garden in the future.

The 'Iceberg' rose to the right of the little bed around the white column is also almost ready to burst into its spring flush. Should look lovely!

In the photo above you can see the belladonna lilies planted in a half moon shape behind the anemones. Right now they don't look like much but they add green foliage to this part of the bed and let it appear more lush. So I am quite content with them. I am wondering when they will bloom the first time in the garden, though. The anemones were blooming non-stop from December until now, which is a much longer flowering season than I expected. They are a little bit past their prime but still looking pretty good.

I was pondering the question what rose to plant between the two cycads forever since this is a very prominent position in the backyard. In the end I decided on 'Moonstone', a Hybrid Tea rose bred by Tom Carruth in 1998. I have seen absolutely stunning flowers at rose shows of this variety and just couldn't resist it. I know that usually rose exhibitors spray their roses quite a bit and that a rose, which can be beautiful for them with all the pesticides and fungicides used to protect it, can be a looser in my organic no-spray rose garden. But I spoke to a member of the San Diego Rose Society, who is quite knowledgeable about roses and she assured me that she believes that 'Moonstone' can be grown successfully without spraying in San Diego. I so hope that she is right!

So far 'Moonstone' has grown quite a bit since I planted it into the ground from a two gallon container. The rose is grown own-root and came from Heirloom Roses. It has some rust in the moment, though. I try to remove the infected leaves and hope that 'Moonstone' will become more healthy as the weather is getting warmer and as it matures.




Here is a close up of the latest bloom of 'Moonstone' that was just developing when I took the photos for this post. I assumed the pink edges of the rose petals would be a little bit of a less intense pink and I hope they will become a lighter color as the weather warms up. Even though this a a white bed, I thought that a bi-colored rose will loosen things up a bit and will overcome monotony and boredom that can occur when planting a one color scheme bed. Right now I am not so sure if the pink is a bit to garish for what I had in mind, though. Time will tell for sure and by the end of this year I will know more. If I don't like it there I can always transplant it.

One last look at the White Garden Bed from the other direction. Even though it still a little bit bare in the middle and to the right side I like it quite a bit. My dream would be to plant the bed as densely with plants as I did around the white column and I hope I will get there in time.

Wishing all of you a good start into the new week.

See you in the garden!

Christina

A Critical Look at the White Garden Bed

Ever since I have seen the first photos of the White Garden at Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West's and Harold Nicolson's famous garden in England, I have dreamed of having a White Garden myself. Because our property is small I can't have different garden rooms devoted to specific colors and schemes. However, I did not want to have a garden completely planted with white flowering plants so I had to restrict myself to a White Garden Bed only. On the photo below you see my first attempt to create this bed. I tried to introduce white color to it not just by planting white flowering plants but also by the use of plants with silvery or gray foliage. This is how it looked in May 2011 when the roses were in full spring flush. 

On the first glance the bed appears fine (at least to me), but there are some drawbacks. The three roses to the right are 'Iceberg' roses and even though I love them dearly and they are my most prolific bloomers out of all the roses that I am having they simply have gotten too big for this bed. It is not very well to see on this photo but especially the middle one constantly pokes me everywhere when it is time to be deadheaded. It is planted too close to the rim of the pool and the two cycads which flank it on both sides. I also don't like that it is growing quite a bit into the cycads when left to its own devices and needs to be constantly controlled for size for that reason. Besides after looking at three 'Iceberg' roses for three years I have to admit that I started to find this view a little bit boring even though the roses themselves are quite beautiful. Last but not least because these roses bloom so vigorously they need to be constantly deadheaded. The petals are not supposed to fall into the pool, because they change the chemicals in the water as they decompose. So this bed requires deadheading at least every second day (no, I am not exaggerating!) from spring to autumn when the roses are having their flushes. I am simply not able to do that anymore. So for these reasons alone I was longing for a change.




But there was more I was not satisfied with. In the photo above you can see the same bed in September 2011. The lamb's ears planted in front of the white column look pretty bad. Their leaves have taken on a yellow/brown color instead of the lovely green/gray that they are supposed to be. Behind the white column I had planted a half circle of white flowering irises to mirror the half circle of the lamb's ears in the front. Unfortunately these irises were a complete failure. I think the whole time they have been there I got one or two blooms out of them. 

Here you can see the irises a little bit better. They are almost diminished. I don't know why, but irises don't want to grow in my garden no matter what I try to do to help them along.

The photo above shows the same bed from the other side. Underneath the cycad on the left I had planted dusty millers in a circle around the trunk of the cycad, for their beautiful silvery/whitish foliage which did pretty well, but grew a little bit too large for the portions of the bed in my opinion. Underneath the smaller cycad to the right I placed five plants of artemisia 'Silvermound' in a circle to repeat a similar look like the one I was after with the cycad to the left. Unfortunately, three of the plants died and the two surviving ones were never happy and refused to reach a size that had any decent visual impact on the bed.

So by the end of last year I decided it was time for a make-over of the White Garden Bed. After having a critical look at photos of this part of the garden and analyzing what worked and what didn't I wanted to change the following things.

1. Take out the white 'Iceberg' rose in the middle of the bed and plant another white or nearly white rose instead of it, that is getting less wide than the 'Iceberg' rose and also position it further backwards in the direction of the fence, so that I don't get poked when I walk along the rim of the pool to deadhead and can also reach it better from the sides. Believe it or not, I want a rose that is less floriferous or clings better to its blooms than the 'Iceberg' so that I don't have to deadhead every other day in the high season. I also desire a rose, whose flower shape contrasts a little bit with the flower form of the 'Iceberg' roses. My hope is that a rose with a a different tone of white or that is not completely white and has a different flower shape than the 'Iceberg' roses will give some more interest to this bed.  

2. Remove the irises and replace them with a white flowering plant that is actually flowering at least once in a year so that the area around the column looks more full, lush, and complete.

3. Try to either revive the lamb's ears or take them out and replace them with something else to make the front area of the column look better.

4. Take out the dusty miller and the remaining two artemisias 'Silvermound' and replace them with either new dusty millers or other plants that catch my fancy.

5. Find the silver gazing ball in the garage that was intended to go on top of the column.

6. Use more white flowering plants and not mainly rely on the roses and on grayish foliage plants to provide the white color to that bed, also with the intention to give it more interest.

These considerations were the starting point for the make-over of my White Garden Bed. I will share with you on my blog the process of changing this bed hopefully to the better in the future. Stay tuned!

See you in the garden!

Christina

Garden Happenings in July

Since I am back from England it has become quite hot here in San Diego inland with temperatures being in the low to mid 80s in the daytime and I am pretty busy deadheading and watering, watering, watering. Other than that I can only do small projects mainly on the weekends, because there is just no time left for more.

(you can click on the photos to enlarge)

I love this photo of 'Grandmother's Hat' dropping her petals early in the morning of what will become a hot summer day. I feel it represents summer so well.

 

One little project I am working on is to fertilize all the roses for the second time in the growing season. In parts I have to spread organic compost beneath them again. It would have been better, if I had been able to fertilize them earlier, since my roses are looking a little tired by now and are not blooming as profusely as they could, but better now then never, right? I am feeding them again alfalfa meal and Bio-Start an organic fertilizer that is recommended and sold this year by the San Diego Rose Society. This fertilizer is much cheaper than the E.B Stone organic rose fertilizer. I am curious to find out if it is also as good as the latter. I am completely done fertilizing the roses in the front yard and most of the roses planted in the ground in the backyard are fed already, too. But then I still have to get to all the roses in the containers...

One of my cycads is working on its own project. After two years of just sitting there it is finally producing a new layer of fronds. It is just about time because the old fronds have become yellow and brown and do not look that great anymore. Soon the new layer of fronds will replace them visually and I can cut the old ones of.




Here is a bigger photo of the "White Bed", taken just a few days later. You can see how much the new layer of fronds has already grown. Cycads do not grow continuously and have long periods where they just rest, but when they produce a new layer of fronds then these cycads do that at an amazing pace. The 'Iceberg' roses are working on their second flush this year.




Same bed photographed from the other side. Can you see the very small silver leaved plants in front of the second cycad to the right?




I believe this plant is called artemisa 'Silvermound' and I think it is very pretty, but somehow it does not like to grow in my garden. I would have wished that by now they had filled in like the 'Dusty Miller' surrounding the other cycad to the left. I planted the artemisa 'Silvermound' in December last year and they just have started to put on a little bit of size, but still do not look happy. I will wait a little longer, but if they do not behave they get replaced with something else. I am running out of patience...

My gardenia 'Veitchii' was blooming so beautifully and profusely, but now is coming to an end or is just taking a "breathing break", I am not quite sure, yet. It is supposed to be an ever-blooming gardenia, though, whatever that means. By now unfortunately I only get very occasionally a bloom like you can see on the photo above.

'Yolande d'Aragon' is still repeating very well. I find the flowers so sumptuous and lavish. Again another symbol of the of summer to me.

Because I ran out of organic rose soil when my husband and I were planting 'Mme. Ernest Calvat' (click here to see the previous post about that) I had to drive to the nursery. Even though I am on "plant buying stop" until I have reduced my pot ghetto I could not leave without this alstroemeria 'Little Miss Sophie'. I was so smitten with the white flowers with the very pale pink stripe in the middle of each flower petal. Most alstroemerias that I have seen here in California are much more bold, which is not so much to my liking. Interestingly when I googled this one I found out that it is bred in England in Chichester in the county of West Sussex, an area that we just visited when we were on vacation. What a coincidence!




What also came with me from the nursery visit are these herbs. To the left two Sweet Italian Large Leaf Basil plants and to the right Curled Parsley. I am looking forward for these to grow and later spice our dishes. For some reason I have had trouble growing parsley here in San Diego previously. Maybe it is simply too hot for parsley? I am curious to see how this one will fair.

'William Shakespeare 2000', still a relatively small rose in a two gallon container, is really willing to bloom, but I would wish that he also would show more willingness to be disease resistant. The rose is still mildewing quite a bit, but so far it does not seem to affect its ability to flower. I so hope that it will grow out of this problem.  

A rose that has already grown out of its mildew problems is 'Green Ice', a miniature. I got this rose from my Rosarian friend Stephanie. Thank you so much again, for this cute little guy, Stephanie! It has given me already so much pleasure.

This is 'Storm Cloud' a tall, very dark blue late flowering agapanthus, which just has started to come into its own in my garden. On my monitor the color is not captured properly by my camera. It is darker and more purple/blue in reality.

Here is another shot of the same agapanthus. I am so in love with the color!

One more photo of 'Grandmother's Hat'. She is one of my favorite Old Garden Roses and I am surprised that she can take the heat so well. Her petals are thin, but she is not crisping as much as I thought she would.

'Zephirine Drouhin' is repeating well for me for the first time this year. The citrus fragrance is truly outstanding, but the whole bush is not looking so pretty right now. There are a lot of yellow leaves and the tall bush (at least 8' x 8') looks a little bit unruly.

The 'Endless Summer' hydrangea is still going strong. I am very pleased with this plant, so much so that I got two more hydrangeas: 'Penny Mac' also a repeat flowering one and 'Nikko Blue'. I am very curious to see how they will turn out.

Close-up of a hydrangea flower. They are so perfect and pretty. 

There are many more things happening in the garden right now, but I will finish for today! Hope you are having a great summer!

See you in the garden!

Christina