The weekly favourite: Chamaerops humilis!

Some plants in life simply must be enjoyed! Chamaerops humilis or mediterranean fan palms are one of my all time favourite plants. I say that often when thinking about the weekly favourite. I can't help it, I love what I love. But with chamaerops I feel an extra sense of gusto behind my statements. I think that no matter where life takes me, a chamaerops will have to follow. It's certainly not a bullet proof palm for the PNW, but I would suggest essential. I would offer the advice of planting them in the hottest spot in the yard. Give them a raised bed, superior drainage, full sun, and you will have yourself a garden rock star! 

Here's a mediterranean fan palm planted over 5 years ago in my yard.

There can be a great amount of variability from one chamaerops to the next. This particular palm has put on more vertical growth than others. Some chamaerops tend to sucker much more freely resulting in a bushier shrub like palm for a number of years.

I just love the bright green colouring to the fronds. Again there can be a lot of variability ranging from blue to deep emerald green.

And it's certainly a fierce palm! These spikes are not to be messed with. (trust me)

And on a sunny day, you can't help but feel warmed by the presence of such a bold palm. It has a way of transporting me to somewhere like Southern California... the warm glow of sunshine on the cheeks, palm fronds fluttering in the breeze. Are you getting my picture?

In the winter I do provide this palm with some protection. In the late autumn I usually take a sunny afternoon to string some old fashioned christmas lights around the trunk and near the central growing spears. I do this in case of an extreme cold event, I can simply turn the lights on and provide some burlap if things turn really cold. Chamaerops can handle colder temperatures than we typically receive in the PNW but the combination of our wet winter weather and cold tends to affect the cold tolerance.

Here are some of the details:

Cold Hardiness: USDA zones 8-11

Light needs: Part to full sun

Size: 10-15ft tall and wide

Growth rate: slow

(http://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/plants/1918/mediterranean-fan-palm.php)

predominance of green

While many are talking about the beautiful fall colors, one thing predominates my yard, green. I realized this the other morning while walking through the garden. All the yards around us are showing off the reds, oranges, and yellows of the fall season. To some this predominance of green would be somewhat blasphemous during the autumn, but I love it!

And while the hostas and the bananas will die back - eventually - for now I enjoy how they glow in the autumn sunlight.

Loquats are as happy as can be right now. This one has really taken off since being planted in the ground during springtime.

And while albizia are one of the last trees to leaf out, they also hold onto their splendour longer than most other trees. I love them!!

In the coming months I will be so thankful for all the broadleaved evergreens back here. Wait, I'm already pretty darn thankful!! I love these two palms!

more green...

What do your autumn colors say about you?!

Succulent wreaths for the Poplar Market

I've been M.I.A. this last week as I've been doing much prep work for my booth at the Poplar Market this fall. I am really excited to be involved as proceeds from the cost of a booth go to support kids arts programs at North Poplar Elementary. How cool! Parallel 49 has since grown to Parallel 49 Green Design and the creative process is in full swing. One thing that will be featured at my booth are hardy succulent wreaths. I've been making trips all over the valley purchasing air plants, bromeliads, succulents, moss, supplies, etc, and todays venture was to start the wreaths.

Here's a sample photo of what I've been working on...

These large wreath was just planted up and will need several weeks for everything to root and settle into place.

Here's a close up of one of the smaller wreaths.

For now I will be filling all the excess space in the yard with these succulent creations.

My weekly favourite.

This weeks weekly fav. is new to me and completely experimental. Theoretically it is hardy and therefore I thought, why not try! I had toyed with the idea of growing calliandra eriophylla for quite some time. I love how it is just like mimosa silk trees only small! And after the olive tree emergency re-planting I had space to reconsider. I wish I could show some zoomed out shots with the olive but truthfully it's a frightful scene with drooping foliage - lets just say Leccino is not himself at the moment.

I love the fern-like tender foliage of calliandra. This one is right up close to the walk so I will get to admire it often.

The tag says semi-ever green and I'm hoping that means mainly evergreen but for some reason I'm feeling doubtful. And from what I've read this is an early bloomer filled with pink puff balls! Most seem to suggest this bush flowers sporadically throughout summer periods of rain.

So we'll see how it does. I'm really excited about it and hoping its going into the repertoire of desert subtropicals for the PNW. What plants are you experimenting with for the first time?! Do share!

Here are the stats according to Monrovia:
Cold hardiness zones: 7-11
Light needs: full sun
Water needs: once established, needs only occasional watering
Average size: slow growing 1-3 ft. tall by 3-4ft wide
Growth: slow
Flower attribute: long bloom season
Landscape use: rock garden

New Plants! The fun continues

Seeing as it is still officially summer, I thought I needed to do some celebratory plant shopping. Why not? This is, after all, my season. It was about a year ago that I made proclamations about the year of summer. And it really was. More than anything I have learned how summer is a way of being. That is, flip flop wearing, zonal denial, shorts and t-shirts, care free music and getting your hands in the dirt as much as possible! And so with that, I continue the predictions of more summer. I think this time it's the decade of summer.

Either way, I thought I would share some of my summer loving plant purchases! And to me, nothing says summer more than the red hot flowers of hesperaloe parviflora 'brakelights.' This plant has been calling to me for quite some time. And I realized, why resist?

You might remember the variegated euonymus ground cover that used to sit here. Gone! This is a much better change. And can you spot the smaller agave to the back left of the hesperaloe? Thats my new agave parryi 'JC Raulston!'

I must have been in a particularly prickly mood because that same day so too came home this new dyckia 'grape jelly.' This fierce little guy was on the 40% off table at a favourite nursery and so I couldn't resist.

Yikes, its getting dangerous to pull weeds in this section of the yard!

And in the same fierce spirit, albeit slightly friendlier to humans, sarracenia 'dixie lace' found it's way home with me too. I feel like I maybe should have prefaced everything with the fact that it was a hot sunny day. The weather has mysterious powers in making me purchase new plants.

But check out these beautiful pitchers!! With all that color and detail I couldn't resist.

Have you been giving into any new plant lust temptations?! Do share!

What the?

A tragedy occurred in the garden. And truth be told, I don't really know what happened. But yesterday when making soup, I went to pick a couple of bay leaves from the garden and found my leccino olive tree ripped out of the ground, lying on the patio, with bare roots exposed. I don't know what to think. Would someone be so cruel as to rip a tree out of a private garden and leave it to die on the ground? While I'm happy it wasn't an item of theft, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd prefer it, provided they took care of the tree? Or was it a large animal that just so happened to yank out the tree (?) and drag it a little bit thereby rendering it a sad victim of unfortunate circumstance? I also toyed with the idea of a fluke wind storm that only affected the olive. But being planted well over 1. 5 years ago in the ground and supported by stakes, that didn't make much sense either. Hmm?

Here's the olive as of last week... happy as can be.

I couldn't quite bring myself to photograph the olive pre emergency survival measures. I grabbed a bucket, and tried to burry those roots in moist soil as quickly as possible! But then the wheels in my head started turning! I needed to re-plant the olive asap. I considered purchasing a nice new pot, but with an 8ft tall olive tree, I wouldn't be able to bring it in if need be in the winter (and a pot would leave the young roots even more exposed). So the thoughts went to sheltered spots in the yard. I never thought I would plant a tree of any variety here... but in it went.

As you can see I had to build up the area with some rocks to keep the soil and water from washing away. I also had to severely cut back my yucca patch which previous to the olive moving down filled the entire corner with massive yucca. I sure hope the tree survives. The foliage is drooping ever so slightly at the tips (yikes!) and today is threatening to be a hot one. What do you all suggest to make this   fit in more? The area to the left and right underneath is actually larger than it looks here and I feel needs some kind of planting to make the corner look like a feature. Thoughts?!

Here's another angle. It's certainly less than ideal but I'm hoping it can balance the two trachycarpus. But I definitely need to go to work on an overhaul now. The yuccas will fill in with a vengeance, that I'm not so much worried about, but it suddenly feels all wrong. 

foliage follow up - succulent fountain/work fun

Today's foliage follow-up comes from the fun I had at work over the weekend. We had this idea of planting a three tiered fountain with succulents. But instead we pieced together a pillar (base), bowl planter (tier one), bird bath (tier two) and urn planter (tier three) into this succulent "fountain!" It always feels so fun to have some creative time! And what's better is that we get to call it work!

This photo was taken just after cleaning up the mess ... and I certainly made a mess planting this up. Don't you just love getting your hands dirty!? (and in this case my face, arms, legs ... you get the idea)

Closer up this thing has so many fun colors and textures. I love how the blues and greens play off of each other in succulent plantings.

 And from another angle!

I can't wait for those donkey tail sedum to settle into place and start spilling over more. And I'm a huge fan of the blue elf aloe on top! Happy foliage follow-up everyone!!! Get creative! For more foliage fun head on over to Pam's blog digging!!