It probably won’t come as a big surprise to you that I have a lot of friends that are also landscape designers.
We get together to talk plants, garden design challenges, and plant problems while enjoying good food — along with a little wine thrown in for good measure.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit one of these friends and — although I was only there briefly to pick up something — I couldn’t help but ask about several of the beautiful plants in her own garden.
Some of her favorites include those with interesting foliage and texture and that flower over a long season. Maybe some of these plant ideas will work in your own garden.
Being winter and all, I was immediately drawn to the hundreds of soft apricot and creamy yellow flowers covering a three-foot-wide Peruvian lily. This selection of alstroemeria, called Inca Ice, is much shorter and compact that the taller ones that can be somewhat floppy in the garden. Alstroemeria was named by Carl Linnaeus, often called the Father of Taxonomy, for his friend and student Klaus von Alstroemer.
Native to South America, the summer growing types come from eastern Brazil while the winter growing plants are from central Chile.
Peruvian lilies spread slowly outward from rhizomes and grow in full to part sun. They are hardy to 15 to 20 degrees and can tolerate dry conditions, although they look best with irrigation.
The Inca series grows 2 to 3 feet tall and can be covered with flowers from spring to late fall or winter if the weather is mild. The flower stems are long enough for cutting. This variety also comes in light orchid, pale yellow and white with red and green markings. What’s not to love about this plant?
Tucked next to the blooming Inca Ice Peruvian lily, a clump of bright, burgundy-red Festival grass complemented the soft yellow of a leucodendron discolor and a variegated Flamingo Glow beschorneria.
I was not familiar with this variegated agave relative with its soft-tipped chartreuse-striped leaves. I found out this beautiful plant is drought-tolerant, hardy to 15 degrees and will bloom with five-foot pink stalks with reddish pink bracts.
Other plants that boast more foliage color than flowers brought this winter garden to life. Several varieties of helleborus, just starting to show pink, white, and rose color were surrounded by the brilliant chartreuse-yellow foliage of sedum Angelina ground cover. A variegated Japanese lily of the valley shrub grew nearby getting ready to bloom soon.
Beautiful bright pink, cream and green variegated Jester leucodendron bordered the driveway. I’ve seen this plant also called Safari Sunshine in nurseries. With its smaller size of four to five feet this evergreen shrub has showy, rich red bracts that sit atop the branches now in late winter and lasting into spring. Drought-tolerant like Safari Sunset and deer resistant, too, leaucodendron are hardier than other protea.
Every interesting garden has good bones. It has focal points, texture, repetition, and unity among other elements. My friend’s garden is no exception.
A lovely caramel-colored New Zealand wind grass dominated another area, allowing my eye to rest for a while. I wish they would quit renaming this plant that used to be stipa arundinacea but is now anemanthele lessoniana. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the effect is beautiful in the garden. I’ve always called it pheasant tail grass, but I could find no reference as to why this common name is used. Life used to be simple before DNA sequencing.
So, if you’re in the mood to add a couple of interesting plants to your garden, take a tip from what a landscape designer grows in her own garden.
– Jan Nelson, a landscape designer and California certified nursery professional, will answer questions about gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains. E-mail her at [email protected], or visit www.jannelsonlandscapedesign.com to view past columns and pictures.
