Archive for evergreen plants w color – Page 2

New Shrubs Expand Designer’s Palette

Add to Your Drought Tolerant Landscape Design

Drought tolerant Ceanothus G. 'Hearts Desire' Picture from Xera

California Lilac Ceanothus Griseus ‘Hearts Desire’   Picture from Xera Plants

I’m excited about these new plants for Portland gardens.

Many of us are familiar with California Lilac and its blue flowers.  Beloved by bees, including our endangered native bumble bees, it’s  also a host plant for Swallow Tail butterflies.  However, it has its problems in a home landscape.  Many varieties are short lived because they receive summer irrigation along with your other plantings.  They need infrequent or no summer water to be a long term plant.  Most of all keeping them a manageable size is difficult for many gardeners. Ceanothus Griseus ‘Hearts Desire’ is different.  It can handle some summer irrigation and unlike all the other varieties of ground cover type California Lilac, it grows to only 4 inches tall and grows slowly to 24 inches wide.  It is easy to tip prune so can be confined.  These new habits make it a very useful plant for smaller landscapes.  It can take a lot of dry so we can plant it in the xeriscape dry tolerant gardens that have no irrigation or it can receive some summer irrigation.   I see this  plant as a major improvement over old varieties like ‘Anchor Bay’ or ‘Points Rey’.  Xera Plants is growing ‘Hearts Desire’ but expect other growers to jump on the plant wagon soon.  I’d use ‘Hearts Desire’ under limbed up fir trees, on SW facing banks or in “hellstrips”.  I will be trialing this new variety of California Lilac in my xeriscape garden.

Manzanita is a shrub or large tree known for its colorful bark and picturesque windswept shapes on the northern California coast. Here in Portland it’s too wet or too cold for most Manzanitas.  News flash!  Some of the California Manzanita species have been hybridized (designed by humans) into cold hardy evergreen ground covers and shrubs.  I love the leaves and the bark color and will be using these two specific varieties of Manzanita in my designs more frequently.   My favorite is ‘St. Helena’ which grows to 24 inches, and can take irrigation if it must.

Hummingbird sitting on manzanita plant

Hummingbird sitting on Manzanita plant

For success with Manzanita don’t feed the soil with compost or fertilizer at all, not even when doing initial soil preparation.  Work with the existing soil.  It needs to be watered through its first summer and then little to no irrigation is best.  This year (2015) my clients will be instructed to water it through its first winter as well since we are expecting a very dry winter but most years this would not be necessary.  Note: hummingbirds love Manzanita flowers.  Pacific Horticulture Society has an in depth article about Manzanita/Arctostaphlylos for the NW; by our revered plants man Paul Bonine.

Callistemon viridiflorus 'Xera Compact' Picture from Xera

Callistemon viridiflorus ‘Xera Compact’ Picture from Xera Plants

Callestemon or Bottle Brush is well known to Californians.  They have many varieties with hot red flowers and they  attract hummingbirds like crazy.  Their loose needles have a tropical feel to them and they can look wild or messy depending on your point of view!  While talking with Greg Shepard at Xera Plants, I got good news about the varieties of this plant that we can grow here in Portland.  A few of these make very attractive  tidy evergreen shrubs.  I’m always looking for soft textured evergreen shrubs with winter good looks that don’t get too big.  Hummingbirds are attracted to all of the Bottle Brush plants but deer are not.  Pretty great huh?

Here are 2 varieties I am most interested in for my clients:

1.  Callistemon Pityoides ‘Corvallis’.  Yes found in Corvallis, Oregon the original plant withstood 20 years of cold and everything an Oregon winter can throw at a plant.  It grows 5’ tall and 3’ wide in ten years.  It can take regular water or can be trained into drought tolerance easily.  It flowers twice in a season with soft yellow bottle brush flowers that remind people of baby ducks.  Deer usually leave it alone unless they are desperate.

2.  Callistemon viridiflorus ‘Xera Compact’ grows to 4 ½’ feet tall.  It is  VERY heavy blooming for 6 weeks.  The flowers are chartreuse and yellow brushes 3 inches long, the leaves are deep green in summer and take on hints of red in winter.

For more information on other drought tolerant landscape plants, go to my contact page.

 

 

Summer Heather – Perfect for year round color

Calluna vulgaris - Summer heather is 4" tall with summer flowers in Woodland Park Landscape DesignSummer Heather – Perfect for year round color

Summer flowering heather can be easy care

I use heather at my vacation house because it’s so easy.  I’m there once a month, have no irrigation system and I have hungry deer.  It’s got to be a tough plant to make it!  Lots of people buy heather, plant them and they die quickly.  Without knowledge specific to heathers, success is tenuous, but with a little knowledge this is a very tough drought tolerant winner of a plant in my book.  It has year-round beauty, is great food for bees and it can be the evergreen plant that holds a summer garden together visually through the winter.

Calluna-vulgaris 'Firefly' Photo from Great Plant Picks

Calluna Vulgaris ‘Firefly’ Photo from Great Plant Picks

Planting Tips:

Honey bee on spring heather in Sellwood Moreland garden designHeathers need good drainage but if you have clay soil don’t despair.  Heathers planted on a burmed planting bed or  on a low mound do well.  Heathers are perfect for  sunny slopes.

A designer pal plants her heathers in pure barkdust.  I’ve done this and had excellent results as long as it was on a slope or berm.  Don’t try this crazy bark dust idea in a flat landscape with heavy clay unless you berm up.

Watering well the first year is critical.  If heather plants dry out to the point of  wilting, even just a little bit, they will die.  There is no rescuing it with water and having it “perk up” as many other plants will do.   When the tiny fine foliage wilts or dries the plant stops taking in water with its roots.  Avoid this first year problem and take advantage of the benefits of a fall planting.  You still have to water carefully the first summer after a fall planting but it is not so edgy.

Pruning Tips:

Pruning is important and easy.  The most important year for pruning is the second spring after you have planted the plant.  Prune before new growth starts.  You must trim to just above the previous years wood; trim too much and you will have ugly holes in your plants that may never fill in.  Avoid pruning late in fall or winter.

Calluna -Summer Flowering Heather

Calluna Vulgaris at Heaths and Heathers nursery in Shelton Washington

Trim too little or not at all and  in a few years you will have an ugly plant with bare wood stems in the center of the plant.  When this happens we can’t simply cut it back severely which we can do with many plants to fix the problem.  Trimming every year before new growth starts (February or March for Pacific Northwest) will keep your plants attractive long term.  Who knew low maintenance was so much work right?  Once you know what to do, you have a plant that will work beautifully for decades with a once a year trim.  That is low maintenance.

 

Heather at Harstine

Calluna Vulgaris ‘White Lawn’ w Sedum ‘Xenox’ and Sedum ‘Voo Doo’

 

Summer heather/Calluna Vulgaris is a great plant for hot sun situations.  This summer for the first time ever, I actually had foliage burn.  They got no water for 45 days in record breaking heat, but since these plants have been there for five years there was not permanent damage or loss.  New plants would not tolerate that amount of drought but mature plants took my neglect in stride.  6 months later there was no sign of any damage.  My kind of plant!

 

Heather – The Perfect Low Maintenance Ground Color

Heather is a Must in Your Low Maintenance Landscape Design

Mrs Ronald Gray heather is low maintenance for your landscape.

Specialty form of heather ground cover (photo from Singing Gardens)

Look at your landscape right now…Could it use a little ground color? A plant with full season color which prefers full day sun, stays low – think 4 inches tall (never higher) and best of all……..has the texture of 100 tiny fern sprays? Did I mention it is evergreen and fully drought tolerant after its first summer of careful watering?  It looks great in the dreary spring monsoons with bulbs popping up through the evergreen textural sprays.  It is cheery, plucky and graceful all at once.

Here are the  super low varieties I use most often:

  • White Lawn – bright and green- the only white flowered form
  • Glenmorangie – whiskey colored foliage-gets bright!! in winter
  • Mrs. Ron Green – dark green w pale pink flowers
  • Golden Carpet – amazing texture-brilliant winter foliage color
  • Pat’s Dream- very similar to Golden Carpet

Tips for success:  Heathers require good drainage so clay must be well amended.  I have two different methods that work well.  One is when the entire area has been prepped ala “True Grit” soil prep technique.  The other is a “break all the rules” use of bark dust.  Neither one can be safely explained in a blog.  If you are one of my clients, or client to be, call me and I can walk you through it.  It isn’t that hard but it has to be right.

Easy care?  These low creeping mini heather  fit into the true low maintenance landscape because they are the only heather that does not have to be pruned yearly.  They also fit into a “passionate, lots of work, hot color, knock your socks off”  garden because they can tolerate regular water.  These varieties look great with Heuchera (Coral Bell)  for instance.  Please note they are not for use in rain gardens or at edge of ponds.  I used this plant in a NE modern landscape design for the front yard.

These plants look great with masses of Hens and Chicks, dwarf conifers, those trendy new Echinacea (Cone Flowers) or with grasses.  The heather holds the combination together.   These heathers have flowers that stick out at a 90 degree angle which is an interesting extra hit of texture. Some of the plants listed have bright foliage in the coldest temps of winter which then holds into mid-spring.

A fall planting is the best, you will have fewer plant losses and you can relax a bit which you cannot do with heather planted in the late spring or in summer.  Not relaxing!!!!  My  mother planted 30 plants in summer and didn’t lose a single one, but I nagged a lot.  She was well tired of that by October.  I was forgiven because they performed beautifully for many years and my mother does not hold these things against me.

Heather, Calluna vulgaris 'Mrs Ron Green' in Foster Powell neighborhood of SE PortlandLocal source is Highland Heather in Canby or mail order is Heaths and Heathers in Shelton, Washington.  Highland Heathers sells at the large local plant sales and via quality nurseries.

Please like this article on facebook or forward it your friends. Contact me if you would like to learn more about incorporating low maintenance plants like heather in your landscape design.

 

 

Winter Garden Plants that Sizzle with Color

Hamamelis – Witch hazel ‘Jelena’ Foreground, ‘Arnold’s Promise’ in background-photo Carol Lindsay

Don’t miss seeing the bare stems of witch hazel come alive with bright yellow or red orange flowers. I stopped en route to The Oregon Garden last Saturday to take photos of a field of flowering witch-hazel. I could feel the dozens of hummingbirds working these flowers.

Places to go to catch winter color would be Elk Rock Garden, the garden of the Bishop’s Close in Dunthorpe, the Winter Garden in Hoyt Arboretum, and Portland Chinese Garden.  See winter color in action and stretch your legs.

Acer Conspicuum, Photo by Treephoria

Don’t miss seeing the thick texture of flowering Heather whose foliage has turned hot colors in winter along with red twig dogwood. Some red twigs like Arctic Fire have 3 colors to their twigs. Hellebores such as Mardi Gras Parade Strain Yellow are just starting to flower and others will soon to burst with color.  Some Japanese Maple have red hot twigs in winter but the Red Snake Bark Maple – Acer Conspicuum is even more colorful.  Heathers, Hellebores, Red Twig Dogwood, and Nandina pick up hot winter color in the cold.  It’s probably wrong to hurry in a garden but hurry and don’t miss all the excitement of winter in the garden.