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

This and That

Even though it is winter my Southern California garden never sleeps. Of course, certain plants take a brief break, but something is always blooming or at least actively growing. That is one reason why I love living here so much. Come, have a look what is going in my yard!

I have two of these urns since about a year or so and liked them the way they were, plain and without anything growing in them. But suddenly this winter I had a change of mind and decided to plant them with annuals. I have chosen white pansies 'Delta Premium Pure White' and dusty miller 'Silverdust' to evoke memories of ice and snow, which, of course, we don't have here.

Here you can see the top of the urn a little closer. The pansies have grown in quite nicely and so did the dusty miller. I am really pleased with this plant combination.




A few days ago my banana-shaped rose bed in the front yard looked like this. The roses were more than ready to be pruned. Yes, I know I am late for my climate zone, but I simply don't have as much of a chance to garden than I would like to and my yard and I just have to put up with that fact. I guess nothing bad will happen because I pruned late in the season, except that the spring flush will be a little bit delayed.

This is how the bed presented itself after I was done pruning the roses. I actually enjoy doing this chore, but here in Southern California we have not only to prune but to de-leaf the roses, too, which can be very time consuming, depending on to how many leaves the rose is still clinging on. I am happy to report that now I am almost done with pruning my roses that are planted in the ground. I don't talk about the ones living in containers, though!

Now that the roses are pruned you can actually see how big the alstroemeria 'Little Miss Sophie' has become. What I really like about it, is that it has formed a nice mound. Many alstroemerias become very tall and leggy here in SoCa and besides the lovely blooms don't look that appealing as to me as a plant, but this one acts differently at least so far. If you look closely you can see that it even tries to bloom through the winter. The alstroemeria is surrounded by four penstemons 'Pinacolada Violet', which also want to flower. Unfortunately they are a favorite of the slugs and snails.

The verbena 'Aztec White Improved' is looking pretty good in the moment. It just started to bloom a couple of days ago and this way brings a little bit of life into the relatively bare bed right now.

Close-up of the white verbena blooms. They are tiny, but because they come in masses they do have quite an impact. I planted lavender colored verbenas last year and had no luck with them at all, but the white ones look promising so far, don't they?

Some pruned roses appear almost like sculptures, like this 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' in the front yard. I have to admit that for a brief time I like this sparse look. If I wouldn't know better it is very hard to imagine that this rose bush will transform itself into a dark green leaved beauty with many lovely silvery pink blooms soon. For me that is almost as much of a miracle like a hatching butterfly.

In the back yard my cymbidium orchids are in full bloom now. I especially love this greenish-white variety.

Here you can see my wine red/pink cymbidium in the foreground shadowing the green/white one. Too bad that I don't know the names of the varieties. I have these orchids since many years now, they even moved with me from the Bay Area down to San Diego. Despite their exotic extravagant flowers they are "no fuss", easy to grow plants for me here in San Diego. They just need to be watered regularly and fed once in a while. Last year I thought about dividing them, but in the end didn't have the guts. So I just potted them up and they seem to be enjoying that. Actually the wine red/pink one had six more flower stalks then you can see on the photo, which I cut off to take indoors and to give away to friends. This orchid is blooming so prolifically.

Close-up of the wine red/pink orchid flowers. Aren't they beautiful?

This is my Hybrid Perpetual Rose Bed, which I planted last year. The roses have grown quite a bit in less than twelve months and this spring I expect them to bloom significantly more than in their first year. From the left to the right you can see 'Yolande d'Aragon', 'Reine des Violettes', and 'Grandmother's Hat'. These were the first roses that I pruned this winter. I think I did it the last week of December. To me it is pretty amazing how much the roses have leaved out already, especially 'Grandmother's Hat'. I can't wait for the gorgeous Hybrid Perpetual blooms to reoccur, again. They were so incredible beautiful last year! I planted two 'Giant Blue' Scabiosa Hybrids (Pincushion Flower) in between them and I am astonished that one is already starting to bloom.

Here you can see the very first bloom of the 'Giant Blue' scabiosa as a close-up! I just love the pale lavender color. Despite their delicate appearance they also make quite good cut flowers. In the front yard in a very prominent space close to the front door I have a scabiosa caucasica 'Butterfly Blue', which has much smaller flowers. It is pretty and flowers a lot, but at the same time it is a pain in the neck to deadhead and when not deadheaded it looks unkempt and unruly. Scabiosa 'Giant Blue' has less blooms than scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue', which means less deadheading, but they are bigger and have therefore the same of even more impact. With limited gardening time I am thinking about how to make the maintenance of the garden simpler in the long run, so I am contemplating to replace scabiosa caucasica 'Butterfly Blue' with another 'Giant Blue' scabiosa.

To the left side of the Hybrid Perpetual Rose Bed I placed an Elephant Foot plant in a terracotta container in between two giant Washingtonia Palms. Nothing, absolutely nothing can survive the root competition in the ground between those palms, for that reason the only way to have something growing in that area is to plant it in a pot. There is nothing wrong with this plant but the Elephant Foot never won my heart. I wanted to give it away like I did with its brother, but it didn't work out, so I left it where it is and still try to decide what to do with it.

The pansies 'Colossus Pure White' that I planted in the terracotta containers briefly before Christmas have grown in nicely and by now completely fill out the pots. Two years ago I planted pansies, too, and lost maybe half of them. I think I planted them too late in the season and it was already too warm, so the tiny root balls of six-pack pansies didn't survive the extreme conditions. This year I was planting them earlier and I was also absolutely diligent with the watering, which means watering them every day a little bit over the first couple of weeks. It worked. I am so glad that I made a second try!

I do like the blue whiskers a lot!

See you in the garden!

Christina