what is a mediterranean garden - part II

Continued from . . .

Being familiar and comfortable with our local mediterranean climate is one thing, but understanding how it influences how we live and make gardens is another, perhaps something more subtle. Those who come to this region from elsewhere are often surprised at how different things are, but that feeling gradually fades and is not always considered later.
      One of the first surprises is how ‘up-side-down’ the seasons are. When California was being marketed as the best possible place to live back in the mid 1800s, they often featured rose bushes in full bloom in the middle of winter to appeal to those snow-bound during that season in the eastern US. While locally, it is not at all uncommon to find roses in flower in winter, they seldom put on the abundance found in spring. But there is a lot of growing going on during our mild winter months.
      Since we only get rainfall during late fall, winter, early spring, and winter temperatures rarely drop to freezing in many parts of mediterranean climate California, it makes sense that this is the growing season. Spring for us actually does start in what others would call winter. Many plants have been putting on growth since the first rains of fall and there is a veritable impatience to get blooming in January.
      So, in contrast to many garden books and magazines, instead of bracing ourselves and our gardens for the onslaught of cold weather, we end up with a period in which active growth resumes with vigor. Wait a minute! Resumes? From what?
      Those who have lived through more than one mediterranean summer learn to appreciate the coming of cooler, moister weather in the fall. Locally, we experience approximately six months of zero rainfall. While we do not reach the high temperatures of some interior valleys and southern counties, towards the end of this dry season we’re ready to be done with the dust and the dried up vegetation. Many plants have gone into a state of suspended animation in order to get through. Even with supplemental water, plants know what’s going on and seldom perform as they might in summer rainfall regions.
      This is our real dormant season – many plants have actually adapted a summer dormant strategy, dying down to bulbs, corms, roots. Or they might avoid the dry period all together as an annual, completing growth and flowering before the onset of dry skies. Even evergreen plants slow their growth, make smaller leaves, or even lose some of them.
      We can also go summer dormant – with climate adapted plants we needn’t be out in the hot summer sun watering our plants, helping them through the heat and dry which they are not evolved to withstand. We can relax. We can vacation. We can rid ourselves of the expectation that our gardens will be at their crowning peak during the difficult mediterranean summer.
      I once had a client who complained that each summer when her kids were out of school and they traveled back east to visit the grandparents, there was no one who would consistently water her dahlias, florist’s Gladiolus, her marigolds, her spike Delphiniums. Upon her return, she inevitably found these plants doing poorly. Over the course of a year or two, I kept suggesting to her that she abandon these summer growing, summer thirsty flower for those more adapted to our climate patterns. That there were flowers that could be had in abundance in spring and even in winter and fall – all times in which she was home to enjoy her garden. Eventually she started to understand and followed my advice. Now she is very happy with her garden and, guilt free, leaves it to fend for itself during the summer while she is gone.

what is a mediterranean garden - part I

In the most recent issues of The Mediterranean Gardener, editor and current President of The Mediterranean Garden Society (MGS), Caroline Harbouri, states:

I have sometimes been asked what a mediterranean garden is, and have never been able to come up with a better answer than "simply a garden made in, and compatible with, a mediterranean climate".

I agree that there is no quick answer to this question, encompassing as it does the larger question of what is a garden at all. But, since reading this, I’ve found myself musing on the topic. Caroline admits her British bias (one she shares with many members of the MGS) in having revised her "earlier English assumptions about gardens" living in Athens, Greece for almost 40 years.
      This got me to wondering about my own earlier assumptions.
      We had typical suburban yards in my post-WWII neighborhood in Santa Clara, California – lawns, a token shade tree, a few foundation shrubs against the house. Not particularly exciting, or distinctive, each one interchangeable with another. Some lawns were softer, or sturdier, or some of a friend’s parents allowed rough activities where another would not. There was even the wife of a neighbor, who we never saw in person – we only heard her scold us through a screened window if we ever inadvertently happened to step on the corner of their pristine lawn (consequently we would dare each other routinely just to see if she were watching!).
      But my school was in another, older part of town. Here, the houses were all distinctly different, and the plantings around them unlike each other or anything else. I thought of these as gardens – not mere yards. One would have vegetable, fruit trees, and flowers, in a charming disordered jumble. Other was full of semi-tropical wonders, with intoxicating fragrant flowering ginger, strange bird of paradise. Another was full of all manner of ancient found objects, arranged with loving care, half museum, half cabinet of curiosities. A large grand home, built in 1892 by Charles Copeland Morse, of the Ferry Morse Seed Company, was singular again – very Victorian grounds with a huge Southern Magnolia (M. grandiflora) as tall as the elevated 3 storey, turreted mansion.
      I would often walk home from school (having spent my bus fare on a treat) through this collection of unique and unusual properties. Each had a character all its own. Many of the plants remain familiar to me even though I only learned their names many years later when I became interested in botany and horticulture. There were stories embedded in each, the individual personalities of each owner spilling out into the garden. Year ‘round, there was always something interesting and even surprising happening in these gardens.
      Born and raised in California, the climate I came to know only later as mediterranean was all I knew. So, in later years, learning the definition and distinction of the world's five mediterranean climates, I rediscovered some familiar themes – those of childhood experiences. I saw the source of many of these outdoor living spaces – Italy, Spain, Southern France, Greece. I saw the culture of how to live in this benign climate and understood it from my own experience. Many of the preconceived notions that gardeners had about what a garden is were always foreign to me, and now I understood why. The mediterranean climate, and how to live with it, is what I had always known.

Cineraria maritima var. fairbairnianum

While doing some research on a group of gray leafed plants, I came upon this very old plate and text about an unusual (and now lost) cultivar of one of our most common garden plants. The title of this entry is the archaic name of this plant, which might be more familiar if given the genus/species of Senecio cineraria, but if this form had survived to today, it would now be more properly known as Jacobaea maritima 'Fairbairnianum'.

New and Rare Beautiful Leaved Plants, by Shirley Hibberd, 1869, in which the above plate originally appeared, states:

The "silver-frosted plant" of English gardens had but little celebrity in spite of its intrinsic beauty . . . Like many other hardy plants that are treated with contumely [abuse] because they happen to be cheap . . . The variety figured was raised by Mr. G. Fairbairn, head gardener to His Grace the Duke of Northumberland, Sion House. . . Its peculiarity is its clear golden yellow variegation - a most unusual occurrence in a plant of this kind.

I had long read brief references to the prior existence of this plant in various horticultural references, but this was the first time I'd ever seen a drawing of the variegation. It is interesting that the variegation was visible at all - most of the time, these leaves are covered with short, dense hairs, obscuring the color of the leaf itself. Some forms are more green on their surface (still white-tomentose on their undersides, as seems to the case in this rendering), especially on older leaves, so perhaps the variegation was only noticeable as a particular leaf became fully mature (I imagine that the center leaf of this print is more mature than the lower and smaller two on each side). The character of this unusual mutation is certainly very Victorian in character, so it no doubt made a stir during its lifetime. Very likely, when the reaction to Victorian excess cleared away its various stylistic flights of fancy, this unusual cultivar suffered the same fate.

Winter growing bulbs signal the approach of fall

With the cooling weather and some recent rains (after about a 6 month dry spell), our winter growing bulbs are surging to life. Arums, Chasmanthe, Tritonia, Dracunculus, Freesias, Drimia (Urginea), Muscari, Sparaxis, Amaryllis, Gladiolus, Zantedeschia, and others are reminding us of their presence by anxiously sending up new shoots. Sometimes we have clearly forgotten about them and are now clearing beds or moving previously dormant pots into more sunshine.


Mia, our tortoiseshell cat, recently decided that a small ledge created by a planting bed containing some of these dormant bulbs was the best possible place to appreciate the last few rays of the setting sun. You can see that she is not the least bit bothered by the new Freesia shoots rapidly trying to reclaim their place in this corner of the garden!

A pure white Salvia leucantha?

We visited Cabrillo College's Salvia collection the other day and were stunned to see this plant. I had long wondered if this common garden plant (note the standard purple form behind) would ever produce a pure white flower & spike (another common form has white flowers, and purple calyxes). Now here it is. Ernie Wasson, the curator of the collection, said they were not yet a liberty to say where this trial plant had come from, or what it was called, but that as soon as patent issues in the US had been settled, they'd be able to propagate and sell this plant to the public.
This looks like what is being marketed as Salvia leucantha 'White Mischief' in South Africa, Australia, and Israel. In those countries there is another new cultivar of this species, 'Danielle's Dream', apparently from the same source, which has whitish spikes and flowers that are tinted pink. The white is not as clean - actually sort of grayish - which, combined with the pink, most people thought looked kind of 'creepy' (maybe is was too close to Halloween?).

A beautiful private garden

A shot of the garden mentioned in the former post.

Here are more photos of this garden.
And still more again.

moving on . . .

We had the chance to visit a beautiful private garden today and the weather was wonderful. It was fun to spend time with the friends we brought along, and have the opportunity to see this extensive garden again. Deb, my wife, brought to my attention this specimen of ×Graptoveria 'Fred Ives' (a hybrid of Graptopetalum paraguayanse × Echeveria gibbiflora), apparently unhappy with where the gardener planted it, moving off to look for a spot more to it liking.

I couldn't resist.

The Easterbrook Wellhead

The Gardens at Lakeside Park have been around for decades but have been experiencing a renaissance recently. Among this new development is a new garden created around an old landmark. The Easterbrook Wellhead was donated to the city of Oakland in 1914 by a local benefactress. After being moved into the garden enclosure (probably in the 40s?) to protect is against vandalism, this beautiful landmark languished into obscurity, known only to those who worked in or visited the gardens regularly, and even they forgot the story behind the fountain.
Now, this rare treasure is well documented and a fitting centerpiece to a garden planted with climate appropriate plants from the various mediterranean climates of the world.