Garden rooms

When we first saw our house, the backyard seemed huge and never-ending. And absolutely captivating. I loved it instantly! I still do. The magic seems to be that there are 'rooms' and separate spaces in the garden that lend it so much depth and charm....and in each one you have the chance to lend it a singular feel and enjoy the result (or try again!).

The Hammock Corner - located under the huge magnolia tree and flanked by Camelia Lane and the tulip magnolia. Always shaded and cool here. Makes for excellent napping.


Bird Bath Central - just in front of Itchy - the guest cottage. Surrounded by a white dogwood, pink jasmine and a white oakleaf hydrangea. More than birds, squirrels frequent the bath.


Snowdrop Alley - from Hammock Corner leading up to Itchy; running just behind the tulip magnolia and aforementioned BBC! This year the dogwood is glorious and so white...the ornamental guava has small white flowers and this other hedge whose name I never recall has white feathery spires..and to boot, the white azaelea is blooming too....too bad that the hydrangea doesn't flower for a few more months. This is the first year this walkway looks so enchanting.

Roja malare rajakumari (aka my own Jackson & Perkins line up)

The roses are exploding all over Palo Alto! The moderate, dry weather here makes growing roses so easy. I remember my mother and her trusty gardener, Iyyasamy, slaving away in the hot, Madurai sun trying to coax the rose plants brought down from Kodaikanal to grow and thrive. Madurai has pretty clay-y, red soil and it's really hard to dig it and loosen it up. Once she got a cart load of chicken manure delivered and mixed into the soil. How it stank up the place and how the dogs loved it! Anyway, the small leafed rose plants finally coughed up the flowers and we were all escstatic! But they never did do that well - they were plagued by black spot and leaf-cutter bugs and soon died. The next summer, back in Kodai, we'd get another set of cuttings!

So I'm particularly proud of my line up of roses this year.....I chose all of them for fragrance and fullness - I don't care for the angular perfectness of the tea roses, preferring the floribundas or grandifloras....don't like red or orange roses particularly - a couple of these found me - they were cast away in a trash pile and I had to rescue them.

Has a delicate fragrance and starts off deep pink and then the petals yellow outwards leaving the edges pink. A very pretty rose that is about 3" across. I think this was called " Pink Lady" - not the most original name I'd say....


One of my two climbing roses - Sunset Boulevard - has a spicy smell - I thought it would be more yellow and less peachy....I wish this would climb a bit more and cover that ugly garden shed....


The other climber - Strawberries and Cream. The photo is out of focus...this rose was a mild disappointment - despite the evocative name, the rose manages to only look speckled and the smell is not memorable. But if this climber covers the shed, I'm sure it will look glorious along with Sunset!

"Texan Beauty" - this is a bush rose and smells like cloves -as weird as it sounds. The rose is beautiful but has a fatal flaw - it seems to get too heavy for the stem and droops as it opens fully. Dew makes the matter worse...but the bush is covered with flowers. Pretty.

"Queen Esmeralda" - isn't she perfect? When the bloom opens, the color fades to a pale, pale rose. Smells heavenly - very "rose-like" if you know what I mean. Great long stemmed roses that stay for a long time after being cut. Despite my efforts, this plant is plagued by black-spot each summer but soldiers on, producing tons of flowers! This rose was in the garden when we bought the house...I'm glad it survived my gardening!

Another inherited rose - don't know the name - but it's a great one. Large pink flowers - about 5" across on long stems. I give a lot of these to my neighbors because they stay for a long time in vases without dropping their petals. Smell divine!


A "Cecile Brunner" rose...I lied about having only 2 climbers - this one too...the rose is most like the "table roses" of Kodaikanal and have the same smell. The plant bursts with blooms and this one is trying to climb on the bougenvillea ....I love this dimunitive rose with a large presence!

The orange, rescue rose...I found it on top of someone's garden trash. The roses are pretty and prolific but the plant has the most vicious, spiteful thorns ever. And this rose drops its petals as soon as you cut the flower and put it in a vase! Pretty good defense I'd say.

I think there are 4 or 5 more roses that are about to bloom ...Queen Anne of Denmark (a white delicious smelling flower), the most red one in the garden (a rescue) and a couple more...I did not realize I had so many.My mother-in-law once gave me a t-shirt that said - "Never enough roses". True.

A bloomin' orchid!

I finally succeeded in having a Cymbidium orchid plant survive a whole year and even have blooms! My friend and neighbor Rema gave me this plant as a house warming present. It came in the usual weird wood chip-like medium. After a few weeks of looking after it, I just stuck it in a pot of soil and placed it on the patio - could not be bothered to buy more "orchid medium". It seemed to thrive and occasionally I'd feed it orchid food. The plant seemed healthy enough but I had no expectations about flowers. But this spring, it was a delightful surprise to see 3-4 long spires of yellow-maroon blooms....The blooms are long lasting - though,like all orchid blooms, each a bit weird looking! Gotta say though that orchids don't inspire the same poetry that say....um...jasmine does :)

The grass is green and the rose (will soon be) red....

Spring this year has been a perfect mix of cool weather, showers (though there could be more) and sunshine. Since the bulbs start to bloom pretty early (late Feb/early March) here in Northern California, a few days of 75+ degree weather spells the end to these beautiful flowers. They "blow" and look droopy and daggy! I realize I'm not going to get much sympathy with this view point considering, this year that a good part of the mid-West was blanketed by blizzards. But...I digress. We did have that burst of warmth and my black and white long stemmed tulips wilted after just 3 perfect days...it was beautiful while it lasted and a small price to pay since the rest of the garden started to fill in nicely.
Here is a shot of them - the black (deep purple actually) ones are gone but the white and pink tulips are still there...


The tulip tree (a tulip magnolia really) fared much better. Cooler temperatures and some showers allowed the tree to be festooned with the blooms for a whole week while the azaleas under the tree just started to open. This picture was taken just when the first blooms took on color. I'll find a later picture... Right now the garden looks very lush. The lawn fluffy and green ( a temporary phase I'm sure, given my past experience!)
And here it is a week later....

Last summer, I'd acquired a South African Jasmine vine. It was advertised as being very frost sensitive but seems to have survived. The fragrance is quite mild - to me it looks and smells like a "Mullai poo" (or is it "Pichi poo? I always get those 2 confused..Always reminds me of that old song " Saamandhi, malli, mullai, roja poo. Malar. Manam". ).
While claiming this success, I must confess to killing (yet another) "Gundu Malli" plant. I had this guy in a pot, did not leave it out in the open during winter etc etc. Five star care. (Remember me when I am ) Dead. Dead. Dead.

It's suddenly 2009 and I have a new garden!

Despite my resolve to post regularly on things garden, I totally blew it and time marched on. But my garden did change and after a huge remodel, it's growing in. I can definitely see that experience of many past failures in various planting experiments and improved knowledge of sun and water in my yard is showing. I have wasted less money and plants this time around and most of the plants I saved in pots during the remodel have all found pretty good permanent locations. This summer should see some good growth. Right now in winter, it's all looking a mite daggy!

The new addition to the front yard is a fountain cherry that's probably going to be about 16' high at the most. It's still a sapling but has such a graceful form and is beautiful in spring covered with flowers. The old red maple has found a better and shadier location and looks much happier. I'm still struggling to grow delphiniums successfully. Ticks me off that the various gas station planters have better success with it than I do. Maybe the constant exhaust fumes are what's needed! The hollyhocks still have pockmarked leaves but the blooms are spectacular.....I'm still working on the "fillers" so that the look will seem chaotic but actually have a lot of planning involved. I think that's the real secret of an English/cottage garden look.

The lawn continues to be the bane of my efforts. Endless twiddling with the automatic sprinklers hasn'f fixed the dry patches and Truman's favorite peeing spots don't help either.

This past summer vegetables were a moderate success -3/7 came through - beets, tomatoes and green beans. Need to plant some juicy fat tomatoes next time. I managed to kill off the green peppers, corn and strawberries and the cucumbers too. The aging pear tree may have to go and htat will give the vegetable bed more sun. Let's see if this summer is a better one.