My Favorite Flower*

*At least, at the moment.

People ask me what my favorite flower is all the time, and my answer tends to change depending on the season or month. November is for saffron crocus, for example, while December is for narcissus, January for manzanita, and February for ceanothus. It gets harder to just pick one in the months of March through October. When California poppies are blooming, they’re all I want to look at. When sunflowers are tall and broad and proudly enormous, I’m smitten. It’s like this with every flower; it’s hard to choose just one.

But right now - oh, right now - my favorite has to be the dahlia.

Particularly the dark-foliaged dahlias. There’s been an explosion of new dark-leaved varieties in the past few years, and I just think they are so striking. There’s the Happy Single series, and the Mystic series, as well as some old-fashioned varieties that have dark foliage. Frankly, I want to plant every single one.

But only the single-flowered ones, please. The single flowered varieties are best for pollinators. All those double blooms, and cactus blooms, and pom-pom dahlias - those have all sacrificed, in the hybridization process, nectar and pollen for extra petals. I don’t want extra petals; I want the insects to be able to use the flowers. Frankly I don’t want any flowers in my garden that can’t be used as food for something.

Dahlias are tubers, and here in coastal (ish) California, we can leave them in the ground all winter; in colder climes, the tubers need to be dug up each winter and stored in a cool dry place, and replanted in spring. They hail from Mexico and Central America originally, and that tells you something about the growing conditions they prefer: Dahlias like full sun, and a good amount of water. I find I sometimes have to give them supplemental water when it’s over 100 degrees. In that respect, they are not a terribly good choice for arid California, so lately I’ve been growing them more in pots, where I can baby them a little.

These flowers give me so much pleasure, I can’t imagine summer without them.

Orchard Update

I thought you’d like to see what the orchard is looking like these days. We planted these bare-root trees on February 20th, and this area was looking quite bleak, with just (what looked like) sticks in the ground. Thanks to all the rain this winter, and the good rich soil we have provided, the trees are positively bursting with leaves and vitality. I don’t expect to get any fruit this year at all, but that’s ok - we actually want the roots to establish well this first year, and then next year, hopefully we’ll start seeing some harvests.

Tom and I both consider this project a great success. We can already see how, as these trees grow, they will provide a nice shade cover on this side of the garden, which is very hot in the summer. It’s going to be a lovely place to sit and enjoy. I am not doing any pruning at all until winter, and even then it will probably be fairly light. I will do a larger pruning next summer to control for size.

Welcome to the Jungle

What kind of person are you? Do you tend towards ‘type A,’ fully in control at all times, planning and organizing and keeping everything running correctly? Or are you rather laissez-faire, letting it all slide, ok with chaos, cool as a cucumber while the world spins around you? Maybe you’re somewhere in between, like I imagine most of us are.

Now, what kind of gardener are you? Do you like a perfect lawn, clipped hedges, formal plantings? Or are you more a meadow sort of person, with tall grasses and native annuals waving in the breeze? Do you like plantings where each plant is individual and spaced far from others, or do you prefer everything crowded together higgledy-piggledy?

Eryngium or Sea Holly, much loved by pollinators of all kinds

I think you already know what kind of gardener I am. I often say I’m a ‘messy’ gardener, and that’s true, but it’s not because I’m lazy (well, most of the time anyway), it’s because there are real scientific benefits to planting this way. It’s a conscious choice on my part; I do it to increase the resilience of my personal home ecosystem. And I do this even more deliberately because I live in an urban area; we are three-quarters of a mile from a major freeway that is often bumper-to-bumper traffic, and one and a half miles from a crowded suburban city center. Our neighborhood has homes on nice-sized lots, about 7000 square feet or so, but most of the homes here have been expanded from the 1940’s cottages they were planned to be and every family seems to have a car for each driver. Our street is jam-packed with cars, power lines, and concrete. I assume most of us live in the same kind of neighborhood.

Not everyone nearby appreciates my style of gardening, because it can look unplanned and chaotic. I often watch the reactions of passers-by, and they seem to be in two camps: One group looks confused, and tends to pass quickly, while the other group often stops short, looks around, then really looks, then finds something hidden or discreet, a secret bloom or bee, and ends up standing there transfixed for several minutes. Then they move about a foot along and repeat the whole process. Those are my people.

So why am I deliberately choosing to plant this way? What are the scientifically proven benefits of a messy garden?

First, and perhaps most obvious, is that layers of diverse plants, both vegetative and flowering, provide habitat for wildlife. I’m sure you’ve read about the decline in insects in our modern age; this is quite serious, because insects are near the bottom of the trophic pyramid. They provide food, directly or indirectly, for almost every species above them in that pyramid. If insects crash, everything crashes - insects are integral to every terrestrial food web (Goulson, 2019). But insects are not the only things declining; terrestrial vertebrate populations have decreased by one third, half of all amphibians are imperiled, and bird numbers across North America have fallen by almost 3 billion since 1970 (Wagner, et al., 2021). We can make a difference by increasing habitat for insects in our gardens, by planting a great variety of flowering plants and green leafy things, by planting in layers from the tallest oak to the tiniest groundcover, by crowding the space so that there is protection and safety.

As these flowers senesce and become seed, they provide food for the birds. As the leaves fall and collect on the ground, they become food for the soil organisms, who turn it into nutrients for our plants. Leaf litter is also biologically rich, providing pockets for the smallest creatures in which to hide and live. And this deep mulch layer conserves water, keeping it in the ground where we need it most, especially in California.

This multi-layered planting also shades the ground beneath, creating microclimates of humidity and coolness, which in turn allow the plants to thrive, particularly in dry climates where humidity is hard to come by. And if you have enough tall layers, this provides shade for the humans who also like to be in the garden. If a garden is planned well, deciduous trees can provide shade in hot months and allow sun to come through in the cold months. This can help us with our home energy bills, too, allowing us to use less AC in the summer and less heat in the winter.

And all of the concrete around us - the roads, the driveways, the sidewalks - absorb heat during the day and create an urban heat island, and compound rising temperatures due to climate change. A densely planted green space can help reduce the effect of urban heat islands, especially if everyone in the neighborhood participates in this kind of gardening. No one wants to go outside and walk, or play, in an exposed location, subject to the glaring heat of the sun. Let’s shade the sidewalks for our neighbors.

Another exciting benefit of dense planting is that plants can filter 27% of pollution drifting in from nearby roads and freeways (Arenschield, 2019). Here at Poppy Corners, our prevailing wind comes from the west and the Bay, over the Berkeley hills and sweeping up the valley to us in Walnut Creek, passing over two major freeways. All of that pollution blows towards us and gets stuck in the valley under Mount Diablo, where our home is. Knowing that our dense planting can help mitigate that drift is very satisfying.

Studies also show that when vegetation intensity is increased from mild to moderate, city noise can be reduced by up to 50% (Ow & Ghosh, 2017).

And finally, consider how you want your garden to feel when you’re out in it, lounging and relaxing. What feels good? Nothing delights me more than lying in the hammock under the tall Chinese pistache trees, watching the finely-cut leaves dance in the wind, creating dappled sunlight on my face, allowing me to feel warm and protected at the same time. I hear the fountain gurgling, I hear the birds bathing and chattering, I hear the bees in the nearby blooms. I feel like I’m in a private, secluded space, even though the street is only 12 yards away and our next-door neighbor’s back door a mere 6 feet away. It’s like my own secret jungle.

So I encourage you to think about how densely your garden is planted. I know we’ve heard a whole bunch of hooey, our whole lives, about how plants compete and they shouldn’t be grown closely together. But that’s just not the case. Plants like to share resources, connected by vast underground fungal threads. They like being messy and chaotic. They like being left to their own devices. Allow yourself to disconnect from the idea of a tidy garden, and allow the jungle to thrive.

Catching Up

I’ve been laid up. I had knee replacement surgery on May 19th, and was ordered to keep my foot 18” above my heart as much as possible. Other than Tom taking me out for ‘airings’ (that’s me, well-wrapped up and happy watching the shorebirds at Pt. Pinole while Tom had a long walk), completing my daily range-of-motion exercises, and doing some rudimentary gardening, I’ve been following doctor’s orders. I’m starting to feel better, and am hoping that I will be cleared for some walking at my next PT appointment.

I don’t know if it was entirely allowed (don’t tell my PT), but I did harvest the garlic and shallots at the beginning of the month. Tom hung the garlic in the garage (our usual method), and spread the shallots on the front porch bench to dry. It’s imperative, if you want alliums to last a long time, to get them as dry as possible (“cured”) before hanging them inside the house. I expect they’ll be ready for braiding by the end of this month.

This past winter, we dug up the hops that we used to grow every year in large containers on our back patio, and donated them to my school garden, where they are happily growing up the side of a shipping container. To replace those, I ordered four new clematis vines from Brushwood Nursery, which Tom planted while I was in Georgia. They’ve begun blooming, and every day I spend a few minutes just admiring them. One is yet to open (‘Emilia Plater’), but the other three are so lovely.

‘Arabella’

‘Blue Angel’

‘Black Prince’

We have a family of Cooper’s Hawks in the neighborhood, which are keeping me entertained while I’m resting on the back patio. I’ve also delighted in watching the lizards hunting honeybees below the hive, and swallowtail butterflies foraging in the pollinator gardens. It’s been quite nice to have some time to just sit still and watch, even though my knee aches while I sit there.

All the orchard trees have survived and are thriving. Recently, the persimmon bloomed. We’ve had some windy days and some of the blossoms have blown off. I collected them and arranged them on a table, because they are so beautifully wing-shaped (photo above). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a persimmon blooming before.

Rin drove me to the garden center (Rin is walking and driving again!) so I could get some bedding plants to refresh some containers. I keep trying different things in the pallet planter, which is in a very hot and dry spot. Nothing ever lasts long. I’ve decided to try portulaca (moss rose) this summer and I hope it survives. I’ve made some pretty groupings of pots in different parts of the yard, and I must say they look really nice. These are the sorts of things I haven’t had time for, since I’ve been teaching. It feels good to spend time in the garden and spread some love. The blueberries and raspberries are coming in, and soon we’ll have tomatoes and peppers and beans and cucumbers!

California Kingsnake

Today, Tom and I were out in the garden looking at some flowers and cutting herbs for drying, when all of a sudden Tom hollered “Holy Cow! A big snake!”

It was a California Kingsnake (pictured above in its full glory; below is the smidgen of it I actually saw), a fabulous creature to have in the garden. It’s non-venomous and eats rodents (YES), lizards, and even rattlesnakes!

Ok, so we never saw its face

Our snake is between 1-2 feet (these snakes never get super large: according to CA Herps, they are most commonly 2.5-3.5 feet) and seems happy in a protected spot underneath a hedge of flowering woody perennials. Hopefully it’ll find a mate and lay some eggs around here. Kingsnake babies! Squee!

As you know, I’ve been trying to attract snakes to the garden for years. It’s quite possible that we have them and never see them. The only other snake we’ve ever seen here is pictured below - a sharp-tailed snake, about the size of my palm, which eats snails and slugs. Also fabulous, but maybe not quite as arresting as a California kingsnake!