Gardening for nature, walks with my dogs and the books I’m reading.

Alligatorob said:
Very impressive @MarkD !! I envy you, except maybe for the living in the Bay Area part... I lived in Concord for a few years long ago, so I do know it. Beautiful and interesting place, but too many people for me. At least you have a private hide away.
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My youngest brother and his two kids live in Concord and he has a neighbor with a wonderful garden. But it gets brutally hot in the summer and colder in winter.

True about the numbers of people here, especially if you had to commute. Fortunately for me the school where I taught is only a mile away. The cost of living is very high too so living on a teacher’s pension is dicey. Fortunately I prefer to check books out from the library, walking my dogs is my chief form of entertainment and is free, and the only thing I buy for retail therapy is plants and food - and I’m trying hard not to eat too much especially of the less healthy choices. Also I never buy plants any more without knowing where I can place them so that slows me down .. some.
 
Time for another post. It sure looks like this is destined to become a garden centric thread and less about books and dogs. The dogs at least will show up in many garden photos because they’re always with me and they’re my preferred garden ornaments.

Today I thought I’d take one area of the garden, the one just inside the back gate, and show some photos of its development over time.

This one shows the gate between the side and back garden from the backside back when it was pretty new. You can see the gazebo over the top of the fence. The metal archway between the greenhouse and center bed isn’t in yet. In fact the center bed is little more than an idea at this point. No fountain yet either.

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Some years later this photo show how that corner between the greenhouse and the gate is coming along. The ground is just mowed weeds between new plantings and pots.

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More years later looking through the metal archway in the last photo toward the same area where the fountain finally shows up. Oh and behind the fountain are some navy blue Chinese brick tiles which I’ve used in several places after seeing them in a wonderful garden in the Oakland hills


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The next is an early planting scheme around the fountain (earlier than in the last photo actually). There are snazzier renditions but I like this more somber scheme. In both photos you can see that the flooring in this general area is of gravel. The blue chairs at the other end have arrived too.

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Finally getting into the look of the last couple years when I dug up the day lilies that bordered the gravel along the island bed and put in a raised bed which added a ton of casual seating for larger groups. Also visible is the foliage of Acacia cognata growing in a large bottomless pot between the side gate and the fountain. Finally two of my mobile garden ornaments make appearance, Smokey my currently eldest dog and Heidi Rose who preceded him but has left us now.

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oh what the heck here is the video I shot in this area the day Smokey arrived from a Colorado breeder. That boy arrived in a plastic kennel and took close to two hours to emerge. I wasn’t going to rush him. In the end I think it was his interest in Heidi that drew him out. From October of 2015.


 
I just came across this video on YouTube of a walk in a garden which is obviously in a place where water is less scarce. But what I am most jealous of is that the gardener is able to leave an open gate and invite visits.


Sharing a garden is a real pleasure though also a bit of work and some increased liability. I used to include on every garden event invite a disclaimer that read something like this:

The garden contains opportunities for death by falling, drowning, poison and impaling. Children carefully supervised by parents are welcome.

The best I can manage is to have friends over and to offer a look around to passers by who remark on the front garden as I’m working out there or when I’m coming or going. Before the pandemic I had a yearly drop-in open garden and would extend invites to my garden and horticulture groups as well handwritten ones to folks in the neighborhood whose gardens I’d admired ( which has led to many reciprocal garden visits and new friends).

I did once make it available for a Garden Conservancy Open Day where I did not meet Gerhard Bock, who writes the blog Succulents and More, that day but did later both here and in his garden in Davis after a friend directed me to read this write up from that first visit:
https://www.succulentsandmore.com/2017/04/pseudonatural-freakshow.html?m=1#more

Needless to say it is a joy to see one’s garden through the lens of another’s camera and he photobombs a garden more thoroughly than anyone else I know.
 
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Recently the subject of favorite aeoniums came up which sent me looking through photos. While I have them ready to hand I thought I’d share some here. Aeoniums are a succulent I don't often see in gardens further inland where it gets hotter in the summer. They tend to shrivel up and hunker down until the temperatures come down. Here by the bay hot days rarely happen so you see them more. Most of them come from the Canary Islands and Madeira, coastal conditions.

The first one I grew here was an A. arboretum cultivar called 'Cyclops'. Big rosettes of leaves and huge flowers. My old dog Fletcher here to give you some scale, an Aussie with a bad summer haircut, was fifty pounds and tall for his weight.

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Later I replaced it with this cultivar called ‘Thundercloud’ with the fancier leaf.

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The one I see most often is A. arboreum ‘Zwarkop’ which is reddish when backlit but almost black otherwise.

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dobielvr said:
@MarkD ....I have that same Daphne plant and Arboreum plant. Only mine is still green.
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The black one never goes green for me but most of the others do. But that variegated leaf in the last photo doesn’t belong to a Daphne (I wish). I used to have one not too far from there, a pleasant scented flower even a nearly nose blind person like me cappreciate. I was probably too miserly with the hose.

The variegated leaf in that last photo belongs to ‘Star of Madeira’ a cultivar of Echium candicans, which comes from those same islands. It was just starting out in that photo taken in 2011. It got bigger.

One year later this is how it looks with those Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ before it begins to flower.

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Two years later it had spread out. These spires precede it’s blooming. The new foliage is even more white than it will become later.

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It’s flowers open lavender and stay that way for a couple months.

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That last photo, in addition to the Aeonium and Echium in the upper left corner also includes the pinker flowers of the largest of Geraniums, maderense (also from Madeira) and the yellow flower in the upper right corner belong to a dandelion relative from the Canary Islands, Sonchus. Below you can see it soon overtakes the aeonium (in bloom in this photo). This echium’s foliage just lights up this part of the garden

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@RadishRose, have you heard the joke: you can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think? I believe I’m something of a nature and art whore with an appreciation for those with the know how to propagate, situate and care for plants - but no desire to master the science side of it myself.

@dobielvr here is a smaller Echium (don’t recall the species) which had white flowers and silvery foliage which i grew in 2008. It only got about six feet tall but that made it a better match with the Echevaria ‘Doris Taylor’ which had interesting texture in its leaves too.

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They were nice in good light but surprisingly even more pleasing in low light.

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The form of the Echium was like kinetic sculpture but that Doris Taylor Echevaria was no slouch either.

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And of course they had neighbors to interact with visually too.

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MarkD said:
I just came across this video on YouTube of a walk in a garden which is obviously in a place where water is less scarce. But what I am most jealous of is that the gardener is able to leave an open gate and invite visits.


Sharing a garden is a real pleasure though also a bit of work and some increased liability. I used to include on every garden event invite a disclaimer that read something like this:

The garden contains opportunities for death by falling, drowning, poison and impaling. Children carefully supervised by parents are welcome.

The best I can manage is to have friends over and to offer a look around to passers by who remark on the front garden as I’m working out there or when I’m coming or going. Before the pandemic I had a yearly drop-in open garden and would extend invites to my garden and horticulture groups as well handwritten ones to folks in the neighborhood whose gardens I’d admired ( which has led to many reciprocal garden visits and new friends).

I did once make it available for a Garden Conservancy Open Day where I did not meet Gerhard Bock, who writes the blog Succulents and More, that day but did later both here and in his garden in Davis after a friend directed me to read this write up from that first visit:
https://www.succulentsandmore.com/2017/04/pseudonatural-freakshow.html?m=1#more

Needless to say it is a joy to see one’s garden through the lens of another’s camera and he photobombs a garden more thoroughly than anyone else I know.
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Glorious! Thank you for showing it.
 
I like to visit formal gardens but I do not choose that style for my own garden.

Your gardens appeal to me Mark, you are certainly a talented and knowledgeable gardener. Love the video and all the pictures.

You may enjoy this video especially if you like bluebells. This wood is close to my home. I enjoy walking here in the Spring…listen to the birds…


 
Jamala said:
I like to visit formal gardens but I do not choose that style for my own garden.

Your gardens appeal to me Mark, you are certainly a talented and knowledgeable gardener. Love the video and all the pictures.

You may enjoy this video especially if you like bluebells. This wood is close to my home. I enjoy walking here in the Spring…listen to the birds…


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Thank you for sharing this, Jamala. I do like the look - sort of enhanced natural feel with a sense of spaciousness. We plantaholics can wind up with gardens that feel like warehouses for plants if we're not careful.. I zealously guard my open space and also my remaining areas of more sunny exposure. It can be tough get those back.

I visit a lot of gardens and know some folks with just amazing gardens. There isn't a single measure applicable to all gardens and I also enjoy seeing designs I wouldn't choose for myself. We used to do a big yearly drop-in event for friends and neighbors before the pandemic and my wife's ailing health put an end to that. Now we do a few smaller gatherings.
 
MarkD said:
I’m feeling inspired by #Gary's diary about building his cabin in retirement to share what I’m doing in retirement.

Until the pandemic hit working out at the YMCA was a big part of retirement and made a huge difference in how I felt. Even before that I decided to lose the extra weight I’d put on as the teaching I used to love became more stressful and less fulfilling after No Child Left Behind. I lost more than 20 pounds as part of a New Year’s resolution in my first year of retirement seven years ago. I joined a Healthy Eating class at Kaiser which met ten times, once a week. I did another class in the fall and one last one the following January losing 50 pounds in all. But quitting the Y has resulted in gaining back 15.

Anyhow the best parts of retirement has been more time to develop my garden, walk my dogs and read great books.

Here are a couple of plot plans I once made of my garden before it was as finished as it is now. (No garden is ever truly finished.) I didn’t make a plan at the beginning and then stick with it. The garden and my vision for it evolved together unhurriedly.

I started making the back garden soon after I started teaching, more than thirty years ago. Our back fence abuts a city park to the east. To the south is a community orchard and on the north a year around creek separates our parcel from our neighbor. Our place is a a little cracker box of a warehouse, 40 by 80 feet situated in the southwest corner of our 100 feet wide by 120 feet deep lot. It isn’t large by rural standards but is unusually large by suburban standards and we have far more open ground than neighboring commercial buildings.

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The second one is centered on the back garden and the first drawing, showing the side garden m, has been rotated 90 degrees from its orientation in the other drawing.

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To give you a feel for it now here is a short video I took two years ago walking out the side doors, heading out to the back garden as far as to the pond where a hummingbird working over a red flowering Salvia wagneriana and a mostly orange colored Lobelia aguana seemed like a natural place to end it.

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Beautiful area, love your video,
 
On January 11 of 2010 I had three big rocks delivered and hired four strong young guys to help me get them into position, two just inside the birches and one beside the pond. I was thinking at 57 I’d get to be the gentleman customer and just point to where I wanted them to go. But it soon became clear that unless I added in my max effort it wouldn’t happen, but each of them contributed more oomph I believe the largest weighed 1500 pounds and barely made it between those trees.

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By February first most of the plants for that area were settled in. The rough hewn redwood bench you see in the first video is inside getting coats of sealent on this day.

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All three rocks along with handsome Fletcher can be seen in this photo a couple weeks later.

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By March it starts to feel more and more like the pond and rocks had always been there. The next photo is one of my favorites

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The redwood slab bench did finally get installed as you can see.

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MarkD said:
Thank you for sharing this, Jamala. I do like the look - sort of enhanced natural feel with a sense of spaciousness. We plantaholics can wind up with gardens that feel like warehouses for plants if we're not careful.. I zealously guard my open space and also my remaining areas of more sunny exposure. It can be tough get those back.

I visit a lot of gardens and know some folks with just amazing gardens. There isn't a single measure applicable to all gardens and I also enjoy seeing designs I wouldn't choose for myself. We used to do a big yearly drop-in event for friends and neighbors before the pandemic and my wife's ailing health put an end to that. Now we do a few smaller gatherings.
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Looking forward to more pictures Mark!
 
Sliverfox said:
I take it you missed the floods we are reading about?
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Not exactly.

https://flic.kr/p/2oe4sZG

First one shows our back gate (briefly) from in the park on the other side of the creek. The second shoes the park from near our back gate on a bright morning.

https://flic.kr/p/2oe5fQA

Always happy for the garden to get rain but so many days with no sure dry window for a good walk with the dogs.
 

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