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Summer 2009
The summer season is on and
beautiful summer plants are blooming prettily in local nurseries all
around the country. Check out the new varieties, bred to be tough,
pest-free, and reblooming, dazzling good news for gardens. Petunias have
always been hard workers and the new Blue Velvet, Double Wave Petunia,
has big, double flowers and deep green foliage. See it at
www.wave-rave.com.
 Free
flowering, mounding Lantana Citrus Blend is stunning and a proven
winner.
Tigereye, a bright yellow
Rudbeckia has lots of blooms and is disease resistance, from Burpee. We
all love bleeding hearts, and the latest Burning Hearts has deep
rose-red flowers with blue-gray foliage. This plant is hardy to zone 3
and will be lovely in your garden! The new Celosia Caracas has brilliant
purple flower spikes that bloom continuously for weeks. Campanulas have
been a favorite in the home garden since grandma's time, and Sarastro is
gorgeous with dark purple bells covering this mounding plant like none
other. Hardy to zone 5 is good news.
Ask for these new delights at
your local nursery or garden center. While you are looking, check out
the other wonderful perennials and annuals in many colors, heights, and
growing habits to enhance your garden. There are plants and shrubs that
would love to go home with you! Soon the fragrant summer lilies will be
in bloom and if you missed the planting, buy them potted. July 09
A Visual Punch to your Gardens June 2009
Are your lovely daylilies blooming? Mine are! Tall, a rich gold color,
and with seemingly a zillion buds ready to bloom. I love them against
the rosy-hued Aaron's Beard. I simply must make time to get over to the
Amador Flower Farm! I want bright yellow daylilies, and deep burgundy
ones, and brilliant crimson beauties too! Although garden centers are
lively this time of year with so much in bloom, so much color and
varieties, I always find myself looking for the unusual. I want the
plant I read about in Horticulture, the flowers that graced the cover of
Fine Gardening. I want something exciting, different, that will
give a visual punch to my gardens.
Hellebore's litany of garden traits, evergreen, cold hardy, and pest
resistance, sold me
 along with their beauty. Known as the
Lenten Rose, they love dappled light so I grow mine under our young
Crepe Myrtle tree. In West Point, I grew them under a pine tree. Usually
blooming in winter and early spring, they are hardy to 20 degrees below
zero. And deer do not like them! That's a plus! Buy a plant already
flowering as they take two to three years to bloom. I love the deep
burgundy paired with the soft green shade. They are striking planted
near white snowdrops that bloom around the same time, in early spring.
Hellebores are elegant and bring under story excitement and color to
evergreens like pines, and firs. The different strains are lovely,
single petals, double rows, semi-double, bowl-shaped with round petals,
and ruffled petals. One I really like is the spotting on a rose-colored
petal so dense it almost melts into the rosy background. Gorgeous!
Photo by Eva Dunn
Hot, hot days gave way to rainy, overcast days in our first summer
month, June. How confusing is that for our plants! Especially our
heat-loving tomatoes that we just put into the
ground, dutifully
waiting til the ground was 'warm enough to sit on' as garden books
advised. Hopefully it will not affect the plants too badly. There is
nothing like a home-grown tomato! Farmer's Markets are beginning this
month everywhere and soon you will be able to get great tasting
tomatoes. If you want to grow your own, you really don't need a lot of
room or tools. A large half barrel works well for not only cherry
tomatoes, but old favorites like Brandywine and Early Girl, too.
This year sass it up and try green striped tomatoes; yellow canary,
small
 like sweet 100's; Yellow Pear, small
pear-shaped sweet tomatoes; and Orange Pixie, all which will jazz up
your salads, sauté's, and summer's grilled kebobs. Tim's daughter Chalia
has corn already growing in her Imperial Beach garden! The flowers there
are amazing, Bird of Paradise, hibiscus shrubs, and a trumpet plant, a
gorgeous shrub! In the herb garden she grows Borage, a lovely perennial
with fuzzy stems and dainty, Periwinkle blue flowers that taste like
cucumber! Wonderful in a salad. The vibrant orange Trumpet vine (photo
below) covers her patio and cascades down the sides, a show stopper!
Plant something new in your garden this year, something that takes your
breath away! Photo:
Chalia's Trumpet Flower scrambles
up to the roof, photo by Eva Dunn
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Blooms Galore May 2009
After some cold, rainy days May has finally brought us balmy winds and
sunshine! Our gardens are blooming in happy profusion; I spy one lovely
and am distracted by another just behind her, and the billowing, silky
peonies are spectacular! They are worth waiting for, this one bloom
time. Perfect, they resemble roses, but are larger, fuller,
multi-petaled beauties.
Iris stand tall and the soft, pastel colors complement the fresh green
of my garden. I love lavender so I have deep, royal purple Iris, soft
pale lavender colors, and tawny, peachy ones. Some are from my aunt
Glorya's gardens who has since passed away, so they are special to me.
She just loved the springtime! The Rhododendrons we brought from Oregon
are blooming, so many lovely reddish-purple blooms and buds crowding the
small plants. After their bloom time, they will be put into the ground,
in afternoon shade, where they will get larger every year. These are
cold hardy and reliable bloomers, resembling azaleas.
Photo: Peonies in the Dunn Garden, photo by Eva Dunn
Springtime is a good time to get your hardscape ready for all the
bloomers in your gardens. You can put in large pavers in-between the
shrubs and plants, set out large decorative pots for accents, and even
plant roses in some to set just there where the sun hits all day long.
Design a mini-garden in a lovely pot, put in soil-less potting mix and
timed-release fertilizer. Choose annuals with bright color, and greenery
that will anchor the arrangement and make your creation look lovely.
Make it full and lush, an instant garden!
 Remember
your combination of colors in the gardens, like planting Lamb's Ears
next to pink carnations which are planted next to Blue Fescue, a
blue-grey grass that grows in tidy clumps. It throws up tall, arching
spikes in the fall. A fragrant Don Juan climbing rose leans over and the
whole effect is charming with a pop of color. There is this gorgeous,
big blossomed, pink climbing rose in between the two tin walls of our
shed and garage that is blooming now, and she is spectacular! She blooms
early but has so many blossoms that she is in bloom for weeks!
Photo by Tim Dunn
 Our
fragrant wisteria just finished blooming; a fantastic white Clematis
tree with hundreds of blossoms was amazing, and now our Aaron's Beard is
blooming, russet and white. It is so nice when for every month of each
season, something wonderful is in bloom! Select plants to fall lazily
along your pathways. There are so many annuals you can pick up at your
local garden center that will bring delight to your gardens, and joy to
your heart as you look out and see the lovely landscape that is your
home. Be sure to remember shade and fruit trees, wonderful additions to
the home garden. Still time to get those in the ground, ready for a
summer harvest or summer shade.
Photo: 4yr-old Wisteria blooms profusely, by Eva Dunn
Select one that will
work double duty for you, bringing either amazing fruit in summer, or
fall color to your yard, even lovely limbs in the winter. Evergreen
trees too will be a good backdrop for winter season. Have fun in the
garden!
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A Gardener's Dream
April 2009
These
past two weeks have been a gardener's dream! Lovely weather, sunny with
blue skies, yet not too hot, for some real work in the garden. It is
planting time! Garden shops and nurseries are a blaze of color with
hundreds of selections along with shiny new pruners, trellises, copper
edging, sparkly wind-chimes, and huge, cobalt blue planting urns for the
porch.
Oh,
don't forget to go to the Amador Flower Farm for your daylilies...over
85 varieties of tall and short beauties in a myriad of colors. Mike
Spinetta says to be sure to check out Steiner Road in Shenandoah Valley;
it is ablaze in glorious Narcissus! Now, some great news...one of your
neighbors has created an award-winning video on wildflowers! Here is the
story sent to the 'Good News' paper!
Video on Mid-Sierra wildflowers
wins accolades
 A wife’s
desire to showcase her husband’s wildflower photography has resulted in
an award-winning documentary high-lighting wildflowers of Calaveras and
other foothill counties. "Al Lockwood, Photographing Wildflowers of the
Mid-Sierra," is a 19-minute DVD. Crafted by his writer-wife, Sunny
Lockwood, and Calaveras County videographer Larry Vile, "Wildflowers"
reveals in gallery-quality fine art images with the stunning color and
grace of more than 50 regional wild-flowers.
Lockwood’s images have hung in the Prestidge Gallery in downtown Angels
Camp, as well as other galleries in the foothills and in the San
Francisco Bay Area. When the  Calaveras Public Access TV studio announced a "Best
Video Contest" last year, Sunny, who works part-time at the studio,
decided it was time to pull together her husband’s photo art and create
a DVD that revealed the beauty of the flowers and Al’s approach to
photography. She wrote a script, got Al to select about 60 slides from
his library of 5,000 images and, working closely with Larry Vile,
produced a video to enter in the contest. In January her effort paid off
when "Al Lockwood, Photographing Wildflowers of the Mid-Sierra" won
third place in the Best Video Contest. The DVD is available at Prestidge
Gallery and The Aeolian Harp in down-town Angels Camp, Danielle's Hair
Design in West Point and at the Calaveras Arts Council Gallery in San
Andreas. April 2009
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Planning your 2009 Summer
Garden
March 2009
Spring
is right around the corner and the weather has been absolutely gorgeous.
The lovely and hardy Narcissus have been blooming since February suns
warmed their bulbs into bursting into bloom. Sweet smelling with tiny,
white blooms, they promise spring way before it arrives.
Now is
the time to finish planning your 2009 garden. If you are doing a
vegetable garden, I know you are getting excited at the thought of all
the heirloom tomatoes you have envisioned for this year's harvest.
Luscious, ripe tomatoes dripping from vines, laying across the raised
planters they share with the peppers and squash. Homegrown beauties more
flavorful than the next. You can almost taste them in salads, soups,
sandwiches, grilled and roasted. Ah, summer!
Choose
different colors, gold's, yellow's, pale green's, bright red's, to
delight the salad lovers in your family. Select huge beefsteak and
Brandywine tomatoes for amazing sandwiches and vegetable platters. Try
Sun Gold, White Queen, Sweet 100, Basil, Stuffer, Peach, and
Persimmon varieties for
some excellent heirlooms! Again, if you have little room to garden, or
that wretched clay soil, use containers. Potted plants, whether they are
vegetables or flowers, make moveable containers and give your landscape
an interesting, colorful lift. Plant your patio tomatoes in an old
bucket or tub right outside your back door for fresh-picked delights.
Remember to include a stake.
Have an
old, enamel tea kettle, or a dipper? Plant them with basil, or lemon
balm, charming, useful, and tasty! Even an old chicken feeder can enjoy
a second life as a planter, with perky pansies planted all in a row to
bring happy smiles. Find old wooden or metal chairs at garage sales and
paint them with vivid colors, pick cheerful fabrics for outdoor
cushions. Place them near dazzling, bright colored flowers. There are no
hard rules to creating a garden space for your spring and summer living;
make it your own with knickknacks to add colorful spots of your
personality. Put broken china pieces or tiles in between your pansies,
or enhancing your iris beds. Favorite china or glass will live on in the
garden, making it unique.
Garden
lights need not cost money if you use favorite ceramic or china cups
that are cracked. Place candles inside and see how they light up the
evenings. Have collections taking up space and collecting dust? Find a
special place in the garden to show them off. Collect a lovely bouquet
from your gardens and display them in a favorite urn, or tall pot. Keep
just a little water inside, place them near a chair, by the front door,
or on the lawn next to the mailbox for a lovely scene.
 Your garden is your retreat, your
relaxation place created for your style, your function. It can be fancy
or simple; a series of rooms that unfold, providing deep pleasure for
all who enter. Make the seating comfortable, the views stunning, the
paths whimsical, the mix colorful, and you will not go wrong. This is a
place you will want to be all year long. Your garden.
Photo: Blooming now, Spring Daphne,
photo by Eva Dunn
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Lively winter landscapes
February 2009
Most people think of winter as
a garden's downtime; it is work-wise, but the best gardens look
beautiful year-round, even in snow. What makes it beautiful? Structure,
texture, color and some hardy species that work hard all year. Choose
plants with berries, bark, foliage, twisted or colorful branches, and
flowers that stand up to winter in a lovely way. With a little thought,
planning, and careful selections, you can create a fantastic winter
wonderland right in your backyard.
Shrubs like Azalea, Oakleaf
Hydrangea, Japanese skimmia, Japanese Andromeda; trees like Hawthorn,
False Cypress, Witch Hazel or Paperbark Maple are striking; choose
ground-covers like Fountain Grass, Heather, Black-eyed Susan, Lungwort,
Juniper, or Stone-crop. Rhododendrons and Azaleas are perfect for winter
gardens for although they stop blooming, their leaves don't drop and are
a pleasing, evergreen sight. Patio peach tree sheds its foliage to
reveal knotty black trunks, and the peeling bark of the River Birch
gives it a shaggy appearance. Purple winterberry is lovely, its almost
porcelain-looking berries gracing its branches, and the white berries of
the Snowball shrub are a delight, fall through winter.
Because gardens in spring and
summer have foliage to fill them out, the winter garden will benefit
from evergreens for background and structure appeal. A Blue Spruce would
be lovely, as would a golden Japanese red pine. Weeping Willows, the
arching Katsura tree, and the contorted Beech with its corkscrew limbs
are interesting in the garden when all else sleeps.
 It
is still a good time to get those spring and summer bulbs in the ground.
Welcoming sunny days and blue skies still are on our horizon, although
we did have some rain a few days ago, and are expecting more in the
coming weeks. If you did not get around to pruning your roses, or
finishing the garden cleanup, you still have time.
Photo: Four season interest with Pyracantha, photo by Eva Dunn
It's a perfect time to create
new garden pathways. Dig out shallow depressions in your desired paths
through your garden. Snuggle in stones or bricks, fill in around them
with sand. Tamp the sand firmly with a sturdy 4x4, a stout log, or a
metal tamper. Sweep away the excess, dampen down the area with a hose,
and your path is done. If placing flat stones in a grass path, be sure
the ground is flat, and use flagstone, or bluestone. I planted creeping
Thyme in-between the stone pathways in my garden. They fill in nicely
and give off a pleasing fragrance when stepped upon.
Brighten your winter landscapes
with portable bowls of color filled with pansies, petunias, and
cyclamen. Select trailing plants that fall over the edges, either
flowering, or green ivy. Small clumps of Asters will bloom through icy
weather and stand taller than the other plants, creating a balanced
look. Gardens are like a beautiful canvas, a work in progress. You can
add and change things to reflect your personal taste. You may want a
country garden filled with color and beautiful scents. You may want a
garden for serenity and privacy, including a tall fence. You might have
dogs, needing tough garden plants that are not easily crushed.
 Children
may require a garden with low maintenance needs, a play area that is
safe, and a family recreation spot, like a porch, patio, or fire pit
area. Wisteria, roses, daisies, Jasmine, shrubs are only a few of the
hundreds of selections to customize your garden. Enjoy planning your
unique garden!
Photo: Snowball is a stunning early spring blooming shrub, its
blossoms going from small, green globes to fully opened, fluffy white
ones.
Photo by Eva Dunn
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Time for Bareroot
Winter January 2009, has
been tame these past few weeks, with fog in the mornings fading to blue
skies and sunshine. Narcissus are blooming and they smell heavenly! What
a wonderful surprise to see in an icy cold garden landscape each
morning.
 Thank goodness we
all mulched our plants, otherwise the resulting heaving of the ground
could pop those plants right out of the ground! It's time to plant
Bareroot and most nurseries are busy with sales; the choices are
amazing. So many beautiful colors, varieties and scents; there is
something for everyone.
Tim surprised me with a Rugosa
rose for New Year's, its stems studded with thorns, a promise of
disease-free, lovely scented blooms in summer. The next week as a
Saturday gift, he brought home a winter Daphne, the most incredibly
scented evergreen shrub. They bloom in early spring when the daffodils
bloom. I love these plants! Both were purchased at the Ridge Road Garden
Nursery in Pine Grove; they have great plant selections. In Burson, the
Rising Sun Nursery has a bounty of bareroot also; they also have classes
coming up to help you do a great pruning job on roses and fruit trees.
Rosarians in the McKinley Park Rose Garden in Sacramento have already
begun pruning. They have hundreds to do; Tim only has about twelve; that
should make him happy. Pruning promotes a beautiful show of flowers all
summer long.
Remember to spray for Peach Leaf Curl before it rains; plant bareroot
fruit trees, berries, grapes and asparagus now. Lots to do before the
wet, cold months storm in. Now is the time to buy 'bling' for the
garden, great containers that invite, for succulents, trailing plants,
for collections of colorful interest plants that are portable.
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