It has been terribly busy in the last few months since we are moving to a bigger home. We have put up our old home for sale and it is almost certain that it will be sold in the next month or so. When we first bought it in 1999, the backyard was 1000 square feet of bare dirt. My wife and I spent most of our leisure time for more than a year to get it into shape. About eight tons of bad soils were hauled out before new soil, new pavers, and new plants all came in. It seemed like every week there was a pile of something on the driveway, and it was very exciting to see all the changes and progresses. That experience was a major factor for me to make the decision of becoming a landscape designer. It was so much more rewarding than working hard on an engineering project for several months only to see it getting cancelled for some other reasons.
Here are some photos of our garden in the beautiful and wet spring of 2010:
1. One of the frontyard beds completed in 2008 after removing a boring Bradford Pear tree and a small patch of lawn. The big shrub with blue spikes of flowers is Echium candicans ‘Star of Madeira’ and the giant-leafed plant in the back is Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Steroidal Giant’. Both are extremely fast growers.
(more…)
Every February I get a nice preview of most of the new things that will show up at our local nurseries by attending the NORCAL trade show in San Mateo Event Center. This one-day program is intended for all the wholesale vendors and suppliers to show their products to retail outlets. Naturally the most important visitors are the buyers from retail nurseries and some of them will place orders on the spot. As a landscape designer, I am also a potential customer and I get to see a lot of cool new garden products such as fountains, containers, tools, etc. However, the plant nut in me is always attracted to those star plants making their debut, and this year we have several noteworthy newcomers.
(more…)
Right before the beginning of this week-long barrage of storms, I went on a tour to see a Persian fruit tree nursery (Pars Produce in Alamo, CA) and a hilltop garden in Lafayette. Even though the nursery was messy and had exorbitant prices, they do stock some unique fruit cultivars from Iran. I ended up getting a Saveh Pomegranate and a tart Cherry of Esfahan.
Our next garden, however, is a total gem that covers nine acres of a south-facing slope studded with native oaks. The homeowners are young and energetic, and one of them owns an exotic plant nursery. Naturally his garden has become a trial ground of some of his favorite plants. Here are some snapshots of that wonderland.
Garden Gate with flanking Chamaedorea radicalis
(more…)
Winter can be dreadful even for USDA Zone 9 gardeners, especially when we saw temperature reading like this in my garden on December 7 (30F, or about -1C). The cold night before means that for the rest of winter we have to look at some damaged leaves, which are said to be better left on for their residual protection against more frost. However, in my case I can not help pruning several subtropicals since too many of them suffered moderate to heavy damage, including Alocasia Caliodora, Hedychium Dr. Moy, Ensete ventricosum Maurelii, Michelia alba, and Brugmansia Miner’s Claim. In the top right photo, a Heliconia scheidiana ‘Fire and Ice’ is doing a little better than a Babaco plant beneath it, which means the former might be one or two degrees hardier. (more…)
Sorry if there is any confusion, but my topic today is a new garden of ancient plants at the San Francisco Botanical Garden near its north entrance . I happened upon this garden after I took my brother to the California Academy of Sciences last month. Even after a tour that is too brief, I can strongly recommend this little gem to all gardeners for not just its nice collection of exotic plants, but also for its very well designed layout and beautifully constructed hardscape. Here are some of my photos:
Dinosaur foot prints set the mood!
(more…)
The title is a bit misleading, but I am talking about China Doll Tree, or Radermachera sinica, which is a common house plant. A friend told me about a mature tree in downtown Mountain View on Bush street near Dana. I went for a quick look a few months ago. This particular specimen is already a medium sized tree that is much higher than the two-story building next to it.
(more…)
The tropical rain forests host more than 60% of world’s plant species and it seems to be especially blessed with plants sporting colorful foliage. One poster child is the Rex Begonias that blend a complete spectrum of colors into amazing patterns. Here are some I grow with the majority of them coming from Home Depot as humble 3″ house plants.
(more…)
Palms have been my favorite plant group lately. When I grew up in Beijing, which is at most USDA zone 6, I had almost no experience with palms except a particular kind of common and versatile fans made from palm leaves (most likely Livistona chinensis).
(more…)
My son had a play-date last Sunday afternoon (5/24) and my wife said that we have not visited a garden together for quite some time. I guess I must have been really good in my previous life to be this blessed, so we decided to go visit Filoli.
For those of you who do not know, Filoli is a 650-acre country estate built in 1917 in the city of Woodside. The main house is 36,000 square feet and the garden covers 16 acres. It is open to the public with an extremely capable crew of gardeners. This is probably the finest example of formal style garden in the Bay Area.
The name Filoli is a shorthand of the first owner’s credo: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.” I mentioned this as an example during my talk about Classical Chinese Gardens in Suzhou where most gardens have meaningful and unique names. It is a poetic way of declaring the intention and it just sounds more interesting than Huntington Garden, for example.
Here is a signature view of the pond and Yew columns in the distance:
(more…)
A local APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) officer asked me to put a garden on their joint garden tour with Foothill College. Since the theme this year is small gardens, I just volunteered my own garden. Last Wednesday (5/27) was the day and about 50 people came for the tour.
First benefit for me is the extra motivation to finish up a few neglected projects such as this garbage can enclosure that my wife thought I over-engineered. I am a little disappointed that no one commented on the white-on-blue Tree of Gondor pattern that I spent many hours to paint on the side wall. I guess either The Lord of the Rings trilogy is not very popular with my mostly female visitors, or I am the odd one who is too obsessed with these details. I really like a lot of the set designs in those movies.
(more…)
