May in the garden of my guru

No garden has excited or inspired me more than my friend Emma's garden in Menlo Park, a natural ecology unto itself full of visual sensual interest--color, fragrance, and sound (a yellow jacket's strange, loud clicking noises interrupted our conversation today; a pair of spotted towhees fluttering through were a second distraction in a five minute period).

The example of this garden, with its wide-ranging interest in plants, has empowered me to explore the limits of my space and experiment freely in ways that many garden advice-givers would reject. I'm so glad I've ignored so much advice!

At this point, I feel strongly that gardens should strive to be more than just beautiful, they should be interesting. Beauty has been exhaustively hashed out. I'm exhausted with beauty. The next time I hear about structure, foliage, contrast and repetition I'm going to scream (because I'm tired of yawning). Wake me up when someone wants to talk about making the garden a more interesting place to be.

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Okaaay...rant over. Pictures now!










































































ADDED: In the comments, Pam asks: "But, at the risk of a scream, don't 'structure, foliage, contrast' contribute to that goal? If not, what does make an interesting garden?"

And I replied, Certainly those things contribute, but they are not the only contributors, and those are not sufficient qualities to make the garden interesting. And the conversation is ALWAYS about how the garden is beautiful. How to make the garden function and still be BEAUTIFUL. I'm sorry, so many of these beautiful gardens bore me to tears. Tell me why the garden is interesting, not beautiful.

After all, I can decide for myself if a garden is beautiful.

May garden

My favorite shrub for May/June has started to bloom, Carpenteria californica.



I have two of them side by side. They function as a sort of gate between two sections of the garden.



I enjoy the tall grasses until the flower stems start to break. I find the broken stems... distracting.



Almost all the grasses are California native perennials I grew from seed. I used Festuca californica, Festuca rubra, Nassella pulchra, Nassella cernua, and Melica californica. If I were starting over, I would probably just use Festuca californica and Nassella cernua, with maybe one or two Melica. Anyway, I'm mostly happy with the way it's worked out.



I'm very happy with this corner. I like it even more when the red dahlia comes up next to the cordyline, and flowers.



I cut down the crimson-flowering fava because they were shading out some things I wanted to grow. The cages are all ready for the tomatoes I'll plant in two or three weeks. Usually, I've already planted them by now, but they're not ready. My tomatoes took an incredibly long time to germinate this year. Oh, well.



I cleaned the witch's ball. Amazing how dirty it gets just hanging in the rain.



The tall tree fuchsias are getting more popular here all the time. Fuchsia 'Miep Aalhuizen' grows vigorously all winter and flowers profusely through San Francisco's foggy summers.



Most of the cloud forest asters bloom in winter, but Bartlettina sordida flowers in spring. Usually it's done by now, but we had a long, "cold" winter.



The leaves are huge and fabulous.



Well, the plant is huge. The bottom of the deck is 11' up; Bartlettina would grow right into it if I didn't prune.



I'm excited I might get two apples this fall. Wish me luck!