CA cottage garden in winter

From now until February is the dreariest time of year in my garden. The leaves have fallen off all the trees - in an area where so many things are evergreen, why do I have nothing but deciduous trees dropping dead leaves everywhere? - and flowers are more sporadic, less showy than spring and summer.

Still, there are lovely vignettes, the art of photography being that which can make much of little. Here and following are 15 photos I took last week. For all of those suffering in the snow and ice, hope this brings a little green cheer to your day to lift your spirits for the upcoming holiday!

This is the front yard, as seen from the sidewalk. We have small houses and small lots compared to other regions. OTOH, it makes gardening more manageable, LOL.

This is the RH-side front yard bed - I'm replanting the middle front of it, as the silver helichrysum got ratty-looking and it really needed more depth to the look. I divided one of the agapanthus, added a bright little yellow-variegated agapanthus, then backed them with bearded iris, a red kangaroo paw, and an Artemisia 'Powis Castle' I hope will fill up the entire center.

Pooh - I goofed on the above 2nd photo - here's the closeup I meant to put in:

These bearded iris rebloom at least twice a year and are incredibly vigorous. They spread so fast I can divide every 12-15 months! As my gardener said, something this fast-growing should be edible, LOL. I have them in every bed, since the flower color and foliage seems to go with everything.

This is one of our 3 Meyer lemons. About 7 yrs old, it grows on a standard in the front yard. It gets the most sun, and produces very well as long as I feed it regularly.

This is about the most fall color I get in from my trees. This is a variegated sweetgum, with lovely yellow-green leaves that turn yellow with a hint of pink in the fall. So far none of the dreaded gumballs, either. It's a much more manageable size for a city lot, supposedly only getting about 25-30' tall.

Moving down to the south-facing side yard as we circle around my urban lot, this is a pretty vignette of plants that breaks the rules on never putting variegated plants together. Here's three of them side-by-side: variegated boxwood, variegated liriope, and a fancy-leaf pelargonium hybrid "Vancouver Bicentennial." Although you can't see it, there's actually yet another variegated shrub just past these - a variegated Rhamnus that shoots vertically about 12' in the air.

OK, there's a little more fall color that I forgot about - here's a Japanese maple putting on a show. It's in front of a yellow cestrum and next to a Tagetes lemmonii in full bloom. Those weeds in a row at its feet are the leaves of arum lily bulbs - ugly flowers, strange bright red corncobb-y seed heads. But the leaves are lovely, with dark variegation.

This is a close-up of the Tagetes lemmonii. I love the foliage of this plant - the color is gorgeous. A rich dark green-black, with a fine-cut laciness to the texture.

Here we stand at the bottom of our lot, looking upwards towards the garden shed (and the house still further up, which can't be seen). I love the foliage in this bed, which encircles a slowly dying walnut tree. The bright pink of the 'Sundowner' phormium (New Zealand flax) contrasts against an erysimum 'Bowles Mauve', a 'Limelight' helichrysum groundcover, with an Artemisia 'Powis Castle' (that hates the winters, getting a little ratty-looking) behind them all.

In the distance you can see the clump of giant white callas coming back for their winter show. The trellises mark the property line between our lot and the neighbors.

This 6 yr old Meyer standard produces less than the other two. It's in a moderately shady spot, but because it tends to lean outwards into a path which is constantly used, I'm always clipping it back to discourage it.

This Meyer is actually the first one we ever had, grown from an seed sprouting from our neighbor's Meyer. It's about 12-14 yrs old now, and as you can see from the slightly off-beat shape, Improved Meyers really are bushes, not trees. My husband accidentally cut half the plant down to the ground about 7 yrs ago, and it's had this strange shape ever since! Interesting enough, it grows in complete clay, gets hardly any sun (mostly bright shade), but still gives us about 125-150 lbs of lemons every year.

Continuing back up the slope towards the house, on the other side of the 12 yr old Meyer is a bed which is seldom watered and lives mostly on runoff. Still it thrives, and this shot shows three pelargoniums lined up. The first one is just starting to bloom with white flowers. The second is variegated with orange-red flowers, and it sits next to a yellow variegated euonymus. The third pelargonium has dark variegated leaves and true red flowers. It sits next to a coleonema 'Breath of Heaven', and there's a closeup photo following below.

Here's that last pelargonium, with the coleonema peeking up around it. They really complement one another beautifully.

This plant has the most beautiful leaves of any in my garden. It's totally sited in the wrong place but so established now I would probably kill it if I tried to move it. It is a Tibouchina heteromalla, with spikes of bright purple blooms - when it blooms at all; it hasn't bloomed two years out of the five we've had it.

In the bad freeze we had in 2006 I thought I lost it, but surprisingly it came back quite well. Leaves, that is; it refused to bloom again this past summer!

This message was edited Dec 18, 2007 8:01 AM

The last shot is one of my north-facing shade beds. It lives totally on runoff and virtually no care. I had a star jasmine in here and had to rip it out; it was eating the trellis and had nowhere to go! I settled for putting another variegated aucuba 'Gold Dust' in its place. So now the bed does not offer much variety: aucuba, hellebore, aucuba, all punctuated by the spikey leaves of that bearded iris that's everywhere. I still like it, though, and it takes absolutely no care, no feeding outside of a little bone meal for the iris, with no pests to be found.

This message was edited Dec 18, 2007 8:02 AM

Thanks for sharing the photos of your beautiful garden. Please share one more thing: your feeding regimen for your meyer lemons. I have two in large containers, because I put them in my greenhouse during the winter. They are shrublike, but I hope to get a few lemons from them to impress my two youngest grandsons. I have tibouchina that I cut back every year - they bloom, but it's at the end of our growing season. They had nice purple blooms on them when they were zapped the last two days by our first sub 30 degree early morning freezes. Again, thanks for the pics. We don't have severe winters like the folk up north, but we still can't have things like you can.

peony01, Meyers are fairly unique amongst citrus because they fruit heavily even when young. The taste improves as the plants get older, which is typical for citrus - they don't start entering maturity until age 7-10 yrs.

Give them as much sunlight as possible. Gro-lights would be recommended. I think lack of light is the major reason why the potted Meyers generally don't do much for most folks. In coastal Northern CA I can grow sun-loving plants with less than 2 hrs of direct sun - sometimes no direct sun at all! - because the shade areas are actually quite bright all year long.

Feed them citrus fertilizer monthly. I also use liquid iron (works much better than granules) 2x yr. In a pot, I'd also flush the soil regularly, since salt build-up will retard growth and fruiting. I'd use the largest pot possible - citrus are dependent upon a good root system. Good luck!

These photos are lovely, jkom. Thank you for brightening this Ohioan's day. Usually in December the sun disappears behind cloud cover and we don't see it again until late February / early March, hence the Groung Hog Day myth. When the bright light reappears, some of us are a little frightened until we remember it's SUPPOSED to be there. :)

I dunno which is worse, the months of darkness people get above the Arctic Circle, or the months of grayness we get here in some of the northern states. At least in Alaska and the northern parts of the Canadian provinces people see stars once in a while, and maybe the aurora. :)

-Joe

P.S. Did you say "gardener" a few posts up? I've fantasized before about having help, or hiring a designer, but my garden is still the one area in my life where I the control freak in me expresses himself completely. :)

jkom51 - Thanks.

Oh, man, I would love a Lemon Tree!!!!

But I digress...stunning as always jkom. I've always loved the house and the front yard and really, that photo of your landscaped home is just lovely, and especially in the dead of winter. (Remember all the plants that you were surprised made it through your awful freeze? That's what the whole place looks like here!)

Suzy

I don't get it . . . where is the snow???? lol

joegee,
I do use a local gardener on occasion. We don't have a pick-up truck nor have any handy nearby friends with one, so I used his services mostly in the beginning phase of our landscaping - these days it's no more than once or twice a year.

The soil here is awful - heavy, greasy, adobe clay. We did most of the hardscape and planting ourselves, but I hired his services to do the following:
-- rip out the decades-old weeds, ivy, and blackberry vines that had taken over virtually the entire property.
--dig out the top 6-8" in all the front and both sides, replacing it with top-quality compost from the municipal services (where his pick-up truck was needed; they don't deliver).
--install a much-needed French drain along the north side of the house
--install a dry concrete second patio, edged by curving concrete block beds to form big planter beds around two old trees. My husband suffered a stroke halfway through the landscaping install, and I didn't want him doing that kind of heavy DIY work any longer.

Nowadays, I mostly use my gardener for big jobs that are hard for me to handle by myself. I have three medium-sized young trees I want moved, for instance, so I'll have him do all that at once. There's a silver maple on the property, and it's easier to have him top it every other year, instead of having a big gaping hole in the landscaping for the next fifteen years, LOL.

As this is not our "forever" house, I've already made plans to revamp the landscaping in the front for resale appearance, when we decide to finally "take the money and run." I'll have him do that tear-out/install as well.

This message was edited Dec 19, 2007 7:52 PM

Jkom,

Wonderful garden! We're almost neighbors, as I live in the hills above Redwood City. I have toubichina's, also in the wrong location (ie. too much shade), planted 3 falls ago. We planted them in the fall & they bloomed through most of winter.... then, nada the past two summers , (my neighbors start blooming mid-summer), until I start fed them "bloom" fertilizer - now, they're blooming like crazy & will continue to do so through the winter, unless we get frost like last year.

Liz

I grew up in the bay area and my aunt lives in Oakland. She lives up on Monterey. Seeing the photo of your home brings back such memories for me. I really love that area.

Gwen

I'm so jealous!! Can you guess what it is like here in the midwest right now?!
Everything is frozen!.......and more on the way !!

Your pictures are beautiful & inspiring.......please keep them coming!
I can hardly wait to see my Iris bloom this Spring, so I'll be content with looking at yours!