Recently, I had the honor to tour a remarkable garden in Scotts Valley. This horticulturalist calls himself a hillbilly gardener, but he is no such thing. Some of his plants come from as far away as Oklahoma, Texas and Hawaii.
This garden is anything but ordinary. What a thrill to see spring growth emerge from the new leaves of his unusual trees, flowering shrubs and perennials.
Our first stop was to admire his large collection of Echium candicans, called Pride of Madeira. These stately shrubs reach 5 to 6 feet tall and 6 to 10 feet wide, so they make quite a show when the huge flower clusters are in full bloom. Being deer resistant and drought tolerant, they are perfect for our mountain environment. The color of the spikes varied from pink to lilac, sapphire blue and purple.
This gardener is resourceful. He picked up many of his seedlings along Highway 17, where they had reseeded after being used as brush to stabilize the slopes after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The bees were really happy visiting the hundreds of blossoms on the beautiful spring day that I was there.
Tucked under wild cherry trees collected in Texas are second-generation iris of dark purple and pure yellow. Originally from his grandmother’s garden in Virginia, these iris are descendants of a light blue variety and a pale yellowish-beige Douglas iris.
This extraordinary gardener also has a huge wild rose from Missouri, covered now with fragrant white flowers; a wild olive from Texas; and a sand plum from Oklahoma. There is a yucca about 4 feet tall that he and his brother started as a cutting when they were teenagers in Port Arthur, Texas. He is also the proud “father” of a couple of bald cypresses, complete with knees: This tree of southern swamps and other low-nutrient areas grows woody projections above the ground or water level to act as a structural support and stabilizer, allowing them to resist very strong winds. Even hurricanes rarely overturn them.
A beautiful Canary Island palm, planted in 1996 from a seedling that he had nurtured in a gallon can, is now more than 9 feet tall. Akebia vines grow up oak trees, passiflora and white wisteria vines twine up redwoods, a yellow banksia rose rambles up into a madrone and Mandevillea laxa is happy growing up an oak, too. A willow-leafed Hakea salicifolia, indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland, graces his entry with its tiny, fragrant white flowers.
Other trees this gardener loves include casuarina (native also to Australia), sugar pine, incense cedar, western red cedar, deodar cedar, staghorn sumac and a maytens tree. His mother in Pennsylvania taught him to plant his first garden at age 4, and he cherishes his eastern white pines (Pinus stroblis) and giant sequoias, three of which he grew from seed.
And I can’t forget his collection of salvias. The red flower spike of Salvia confertiflora bloom year round. The beautiful Salvia mexicana will soon to be covered with rich, blue flowers. He also grows Salvia chiapensis and a salvia-like plant native to Hawaii called lepechinia. This deliciously scented plant will be covered soon with reddish-lavender lipstick-like flowers adored by hummingbirds, like all the salvias.
A new greenhouse where he has a small collection of orchids will soon house new seedlings that are sprouting in a germination station under lights. Among the many Hawaiian seeds he has collected are maile (a flowering plant that is probably the oldest and most popular material used in leis by early Hawaiians), Gossypium tomentosum, coral vines, hibiscus and the koa tree.
There were hundreds more cool plants I learned about and got to admire that day. I’ll be visiting this garden again and again for the next round of wonders. It’s a marvel.
Jan Nelson, a landscape designer and California certified nursery professional at Plant Works in Ben Lomond, will answer questions about gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact her at
ja******@ao*.com
or JanNelsonLandscapeDesign.com.
