Extreme Gardening

Written by Lynn Pitts

Well, it’s almost over...

The year 2009, that is...I’m having a hard time letting go—I’m already feeling a little nostalgic as I look back on the year. However, Mrs. P is not one to go whole-hog on the current trendy yearnings to return to mid-century styles. Oh sure, it began innocently enough with retro-clothes (pedal pushers and sweater sets) and home furnishings (lava lamps). In small doses, it’s probably harmless. In fact, I recently purchased a red leather sofa from IKEA in the 1960s Knoll style and while it’s a bit low to the floor for my aging joints, it’s a fun piece of furniture. When this wistfulness for the old days progresses to gardening, it’s time for a reality check.

Most Bakersfield gardeners don’t remember how heavily promoted certain groups of landscape plants were in the ‘50s through the ‘70s. Mrs. P does and most were (and remain) simply awful. It seemed as if each house had the same assortment of pyracantha, bottlebrush, ice plant, coyote bush (yuck city), and that old standby, Europs daisy. Throw in ungainly junipers and you’ve got the picture. It’s my opinion that we should look forward and aim for a 21st century appearance in our gardens.

Mrs. P defies anyone today who can say they enjoy pruning pyracantha, unless they have an unnatural obsession with needle-like thorns. Its common name is Firethorn, did you know? This is an understatement. Pyracantha’s ripe berries contribute to public drunkenness by birds (as the berries ferment into booze in their tiny stomachs). In addition, pyracantha is susceptible to fire blight, scale insects, woolly aphids, and red spider mites. Gross.

Next, comes bottlebrush. California nurseries must have thought they hit the Mother Lode with this Australian native. Millions of these small trees and shrubs were planted in both home gardens and public spaces. The kindest description of bottlebrush is that it is “generous.” It generously scatters its mess 12 months of the year. Bottlebrush has a special fondness for swimming pools. Even if planted at a distance, its blood-red stamens will find a way to drop in for a dip ‘n stain.

Ice plant is best left planted along freeways and steep hillsides. They add little visually to a Bakersfield garden. For that nano-second of garishly fluorescent bloom, ice plant gives off a Las Vegas Strip look to the landscape. The rest of the year, it looks as if it has lost its way on the route to the Arvin dump.

Many new homeowners in the early 1970s found billowy light green shrubs in their “landscape packages.” Ah, that would be coyote brush. Forming 2-foot tall mats of dense foliage, coyote brush was touted for its toughness.

So is shoe leather, but one wouldn’t want to eat it! No one mentioned the cottony seed clusters that blew around in the wind. No one told you that coyote brush requires hands of steel to prune it. Oh yes, coyote brush requires annual pruning. Not that anyone ever did this chore. Let’s face it; coyote brush is the ugly stepsister in the evergreen shrub family. You can do so much better.

Finally, we come to Europs daisy and juniper. Vastly over-planted in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, it’s only now that many gardeners are realizing their nuisance level. These are not shrubs that mellow with age. They become woody after 10 years and extremely difficult to remove without a backhoe. I’ve seen people use chain saws to shear them into manageable shapes. The resulting bare stumps resemble a scene from Chernobyl.

Is this what we want to see in our 21st century gardens? Senile shrubs? Of course not! With “Two-Oh-One-Oh” on the horizon it’s time for our gardens to get ahead of the curve and get out of that retro look. Visit local nurseries for an eye-popping display of the new plant introductions. When I say new, I mean new. Seventy-five percent of the plants I’ve recently purchased are not even listed in my pre-Y2K garden books. Fortunately, these new plant varieties come with excellent instructions for their care. This is another 21st century innovation; large, laminated, well-written plant tags that list necessary information such as exposure, bloom time, hardiness, size, and watering requirements. Ornamental grasses, sedges, and rushes keep evolving. Found in widely varying textures and colors, they add enormous excitement to any yard. New perennials seem to be introduced every day. Use this lull time of winter to visit your nurseries and plant centers; ask questions about what’s coming in that’s different. That’s how I found out about a hip plant, Korean Rock Fern (Polystichum tsus-simense). Not listed in any of my reference books, I’m simply delighted with this lovely-looking fern. The young fronds are a dark purple. I’ve planted it in a fat, round, glazed pot next to the Japanese painted ferns (Athyrium niponicum var. Pictum). I started growing the Japanese painted ferns several years ago in a lightly shaded area with good results. Their fronds are a metallic silver-gray with hints of red and blue.

There’s no excuse in today’s world to be tethered to plants that either don’t work or are labor-intensive. Yank out the pyracantha, bottlebrush, ice plant, coyote brush, juniper, and Europs daisies, should you be so unfortunate to still have them growing in your garden. Replace those dingy yellow-flowered Europs daisies with lime green Euphorbia characias. Substitute a handsome Viburnum sargentii for pyracantha. Plant any one of the numerous varieties of Manzanita instead of bottlebrush. Banish ice plant! Clumping gazanias are a marvelous ground cover and the new hybrids offer a wide range of paint box colors, even stripes. Blue oat grass will look a thousand percent better than coyote brush.

When I listed junipers under has-beens, I was speaking of the Phitzer junipers. They can reach 6-feet tall and 12-feet wide over time. Few of today’s gardens can contain such a sharp-needled shrub. There are other varieties of juniper that will stay small and compact. Read the label! If it says “to 10 feet,” believe it. Personally, there are other reasons I’m not fond of junipers. Wasps enjoy making nests in them and spiders are always weaving giant hair nets over them. If your heart is still set on a low-growing evergreen with needles, why not plant a dwarf Mugo pine, a dwarf ‘Nana’ balsam fir, or a ‘Little Gem’ Norway spruce. None grow over 3-feet tall and all have that pleasing Northwood’s look in miniature.

The French writer, Marcel Proust, wrote in Remembrance of Things Past, something that I think applies to garden styles. “We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.” In other words, think outside the hula hoop.

Article appeared in our 26-5 Issue - December 2009