Why Blueberries Are My Favorite Landscape Shrub

Harvested 2 pounds today. From two plants.

Nuff said?

The Garden in May

Spring in the Palo Alto garden

It's been an interesting Spring, filled with April showers and mini-heat waves. We should be past the coldest nights here in Palo Alto, though, so I finally felt safe pruning my grapes and hydrangeas. (Although I was a bit late cutting down the grasses, so I won't be expecting great things from them this year.)

Those late rains gave us a nice extension on getting woody perennials, shrubs and trees into the ground; the soil moisture is still good but not so mucky that it's difficult to dig. But don't get complacent! Check now to be sure your irrigation system is functioning optimally — the soil dries out quickly and you don't want it to go hydrophobic while your new plants are establishing.

I failed to keep pace with the weeds this Spring. I'll be hoeing out as much as I can over the next couple of weeks, but I think my negligence has earned me seven years of weedlings. It's incredible how long those seeds can stay dormant in the ground, then pop! as soon as they get a bit of sunlight.

This is a great time to get all sorts of color planted: annuals such as impatiens and marigolds, long-blooming perennials such as Achillea, Coreopsis, Echinacea, Gaillardia, Limonium, Rudbeckia and Scabiosa, and even fall bulbs like Crocus speciosus and Colchicum autumnale. For the former, you simply can't go wrong with seeds from Renee's Garden, or young plants from Annie's Annuals; and for the latter, I have never had anything less than extraordinary results from Brent and Becky's Bulbs (who seem to be offering an early order discount at the moment!). 

It's also the season when the landscape designer's phone begins to ring again, with optimistic voices on the other end hoping for a deck by spring, a pool by summer. And somehow, with the sun shining on our faces again and last year's perennials resurging at our feet, somehow it all seems possible.

Gardening in the New Year

I recently caught up with a friend from Maine, where the ground regularly freezes to 6' deep and footings for walls need to be poured 8' deep to get below the frost line. Makes our winters here in Palo Alto seem positively tropical, and even though the recent frosts are sending lots of things rushing into dormancy, there's still plenty to do in the garden.

Your roses may still look like they're ready to party, but it's really time for them to rest a while. Stop feeding and watering them in advance of pruning them next month.

Ditto your ornamental grasses, which will hold the frost and morning dew beautifully if you leave the seed plumes on just a bit longer. When you see them putting out new growth, that's your cue to cut them back "hard" — about 6" above the ground (till they resemble hedgehogs or sea urchins).

Your fruit trees should have lost most of their leaves by now. Once they're bare, it's time to prune them, remembering to leave plenty of fruiting spurs. If you're growing peaches, nectarines or apricots, spray with a "dormant season" spray while the weather is dry to prevent leaf curl and discourage insects.

Hopefully you got all your daffodil and narcissus bulbs in a couple of months ago; now it's time to pull the THC (tulips, hyacinths and crocuses) out of the fridge and plunk them into the soil as well. Because the Bay Area isn't Maine, these bulbs don't go into deep dormancy, so I like to treat them as annuals and pack them into pots.

Speaking of annuals, nurseries are brimming now with cool-season annuals such as nemesia, ornamental kale, and winter veggies. Now that the Christmas trees are gone, you'll also find a nice selection of camellias in bloom, and bareroot roses will be making an appearance shortly. For all of these I really like Regan Nursery, over in Fremont; Roger Reynolds (in Atherton) and Redwood City Nursery also feature excellent selections.

Finally, it's a prime time to lay down an inch or two of organic compost throughout the garden. I don't bother tilling it in, mostly because I'm lazy but also because I have faith that the coming rains will percolate all the good stuff down without my help.

Getting back to normal after the holidays can leave us a little time-challenged, but try to steal a few quiet, cool, sunny afternoons to spend in your garden before winter rains turn it into a muddy mess. Your landscape will thank you for it!

Learning from the Big Guys, Pt. 7

It's been an incredibly busy year so far, leaving me with lots of thoughts swirling around in my head but precious little time to put them in writing. But my daily travels take me past a few examples of poor landscape planning, and I'm never too busy to learn from the big guys. Today we examine some examples of what happens when the age-old rule "right plant, right place" is broken.

It's a great idea to plant tall trees on the south and west sides of a building. They help shade the structure and reduce heating costs, especially in a sun-drenched climate like Palo Alto. It's also a great idea to use native species such as the coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens. What's not such a great idea is planting a tree that wants to be 100 feet tall beneath eaves that are 40 feet high. Something has to give here, and I'm betting it won't be the building. Anyone want to make odds on how many days before this poorly-planned tree is removed?

 The Palo Alto JCC is a wonderful example of modern urban infill. It's got intimate courtyards and simple but effective stands of plantings that make it a great space for people. Unfortunately, the designers consistently underestimated the demands of the Center's vehicular traffic, specifically the turning radii cars and trucks would need. Perhaps the planners were simply optimistic that the center would attract fuel-efficient small cars rather than large trucks or SUVs; however, even the average minivan (of which the family-oriented Center attracts plenty) is challenged by turns that are too sharp and lanes that are too narrow. As a result, a couple of walls in the parking garage have been damaged by car bumpers, and curbs have had to be cut or removed and reconfigured. Orange safety cones are proliferating, and overall the traffic areas are looking like a patchwork of temporary fixes — except they're not temporary.

Outside, the entry driveway circles around a center median that is not contained by a raised curb. On the one hand, this is useful because it allows the median to receive stormwater from the surrounding pavement, an effective environmental strategy (the Center earned LEED Silver certification). On the other hand, the absence of a curb means that vehicles can — and do — cut the turn and drive through the planter. This means more orange cones, and a chronically muddy mess that always seems to hold standing water. It's too compacted to sustain plants, and they'd probably get driven over anyhow. The lesson here? Turns require far larger radii than we may think: at least 15-20' inside radius for a passenger car, more for service vehicles such as delivery trucks, and a correspondingly large outside radius so the front outside corner of the vehicle's bumper can sweep through the turn without hitting tangential walls or parked cars or people. If you've absolutely got to have a tight turn without a curb, at least don't put plants inside the curve — use paving stones or some other material that can take the abuse.

Speaking of cars and people, it's always useful to remember that people get into and out of vehicles, and enjoy a bit of clear space in which to do so. This isn't exactly a "big guy," but it is a useful reminder that heavily armed plants such as Agaves — as well as spiny Berberis, Pyracantha and roses, and even sharp-foliaged plants such as Mahonia and Picea (spruce) — make great barriers but usually aren't great selections for a space where people or pets will be passing close by. On the other hand, though, I'd wager this tree hasn't suffered a door ding or the indignity of dog pee in years, so maybe this planting strategy is genius after all — "right plant, right place" doesn't always mean what we think. 

Landscape Design Is Worthless

It's time I let you in on my dirty little secret: I am completely worthless. The pretty pictures I make have absolutely no value short of fish-wrap, and anyone who would pay good money for them is a fool.

That is, unless they actually intend to install the landscape I design. Then, the work I do is priceless—the ticket to a welcoming home and a life inspired.

So what's the catalyst that transforms worthless into priceless?

The landscape contractor.

Here in California, landscape contractors are licensed by the State to be proficient in… well, you can read it for yourself. Basically, if you've ever played in a park, strolled through a plaza or enjoyed a public garden, you've touched a landscape contractor's work. It's very different from a gardener's, or a designer's.

The landscape contractor knows how to do all sorts of things I don't: how to build a fence, pour concrete, size an irrigation system, amend the soil. Their experience and expertise can make my best ideas even better. What's more, the landscape contractor is able to manage people to do those things for him or her, most often on time and on budget. Now that's talent. And without it, none of my brilliant ideas will ever see the light of day.

It's obvious I hold landscape contractors in pretty high regard. But it's astonishing how many people think differently: they see landscape contractors as a commodity, a necessary evil to be dealt with as quickly and cheaply as possible. To these people, the landscape contractor adds no value, brings no expertise beyond a few extra hands to do what the homeowner can't or won't. Why, to these people, the landscape contractor needn't even be a contractor: that pesky license just makes them more expensive. To these people, there's no difference between the licensed professional and the guy signaling you in the hardware store parking lot. At least, no difference worth the cost difference.

Let's be honest: there are plenty of licensed contractors whose work isn't as good as it should be. I've had a licensed contractor line "my" dry creek with concrete (thereby creating a very large and expensive bathtub). I've watched their crews install fence post footings below grade and with concave tops, ensuring premature rotting and failure. I've cleared their piles of mulch off of the new plantings. The license isn't a guarantee of quality. But it's a first step toward ensuring that the person entrusted with your landscaping has good intentions, education, and the integrity to right any wrongs.

There are plenty of other reasons to work with a licensed contractor: They're required to carry workers' compensation insurance for their crews, which shields the homeowner from a world of pain should an accident occur on their property. They're required to pay taxes, which support our state's economy as well as important public programs. And they're accountable to the government, giving the property owner some recourse should a dispute turn into something uglier.

Unfortunately, there is a huge labor pool out there hungry for work, any work, and a huge number of employers willing to exploit those workers for an unfair advantage in the marketplace. This has been termed "the underground economy," and it's estimated to cost California billions of dollars. Maybe the average backyard is barely a drop in this bucket… and maybe tens of thousands of yards statewide add up to something more.

I can't control my clientele. It's their choice, whom to hire. But if the results are less than we hoped for, they're not the only ones disappointed. I know what their yard could have been (even if they don't). I know the price they paid just to save a few dollars. Hey, no one likes to spend more than we have to. But going with the lowest bidder, shunning the licensed contractor simply because they cost more than the gardener, that's just plain lazy.

The responsible thing to do, I counsel my clients, is to research as many comparable contractors as needed to find one that has the right credentials and fits your style. A great place to start is with the California Landscape Contractors Association. Talk with two, three, ten if you need to. After all, you'll be in close contact with these folks for many months. Look them up on the CSLB website to confirm that their license and insurance are current (and unless they're truly a one-person show, they must have insurance for their employees). Talk with their most recent references, not just their favorites—you want to get the same crew who did quality work for their last client. And if you just can't get the contractor you want within the budget you have, turn back to your designer: we can help you "value-engineer" your new landscape design without compromising its vision.

It's true, even my best ideas and most articulate plans are worthless without someone to midwife them into reality. So if you're going to the trouble and expense of hiring me, for heaven's sake don't pull up short and cheap out on the installation. Do it once and do it right. Hire a licensed, skilled, wonderful landscape contractor. You'll have the rest of your life to absolutely love the landscape we—all of us—created.

Do-It-Yourself Landscaping

Occasionally I use this space to answer private questions in public. And occasionally I run out of new material. So today I'm addressing the second with a redux of the first, originally asked a couple of years ago but even more relevant in This Economy. Got a landscape design question of your own? Ask away!

Does-It-Himself Greg in San Carlos took a break from remodeling his home to write:

"Here's the problem: I'm a cheap bastard. More specifically, I like a nice yard with blooming vines, healthy hydrangeas and lush, jungle-green ferns. And if there's any way I can plant them and care for them myself, I will. "After our remodel we're going to need to do some substantial landscaping to the front and back. Me being me, I'm thinking I can do it myself. With that in mind, I have dug up and saved hydrangeas and ferns and roses that had been in the line of fire, and I even had the crew dig up and replant a very mature camilia (so far, so good). The crew also cleared out a rotting hot tub and old deck so that we will have much more room in the backyard, where I'd like to put in a small lawn and use plants that thrive under two large Monterey pines. "So my question is, what the hell do I do now? Am I in way over my head? Which aspects of he project should I pay the pros to do, and which could I realistically do myself?"

Greg, your, um, frugality means you need to work extra hard to define two things: (1) your budget, and (2) your priorities. On the first count, you've got to do your homework and figure out exactly how cheap you really are. How much can you spend without losing sleep over it? Remember that remodels have a funny way of costing a bit more than expected; do you want to sock any money away in a special "landscaping" bank account before it's all spent? Don't worry right now how the money will be used—just be honest, pick a finite number, and make it inviolable. (Hint: involve your wife in this exercise.)

On the second count, take stock of what will really bring joy to you and your family. How much lawn will you and your kids really use? Will you need a spot to grill steaks? A shady place to sit and relax while the kids romp? I'm guessing you're the gardener—how much time will you really have each week to keep the yard looking its best? What yard chores will you enjoy, or dread? Is it important to you that your yard look "mature" soon, or can you wait a few years for things to fill in? Make a list of every quality you'll want. Dream out loud. (Hint: involve your wife in this exercise.) Then rank them from highest priority ("absolutely must have") to lowest ("icing on the cake"). This will tell you where your finite number, see above, should be spent.

But let's back up a step or two, Greg. I get that you're, um, economical. My dad was, um, thrifty too: he'd drive across town to fill up at the gas station that was 2 cents cheaper than the others. But what did he actually save? Nothing. Worst of all, he didn't take any real joy in the process or pride in the outcome. So back to you: what's your aversion to hiring a pro to come up with something that's beautiful, within your budget, and facilitates the life you want to live?

Of course you could do it yourself. You could glean tips from garden design books and blogs, copy planting plans from magazines, learn how to design and install irrigation and lighting systems, rent a pickup and a Ditch Witch and a Rototiller, lay your own sod and install your own shrubs. It's not quite rocket science, even the irrigation part, and if you're really a cheapskate, you can do all of this. You'll save a bunch of money. But you'll also be out a bunch of time — time with your wife who adores you, your sons who revere you, your friends who enjoy you, your avocations which enrich you, and probably even your work — which presumably affords you the possibility of not having to spend all your free time on this.

So that's where I would draw the line: What aspects of the project would you truly enjoy? If you aspire to design green spaces, if you love learning about plants and experimenting with what you've learned, then take that on. If you love getting your hands dirty and putting small parts together to create complex yet rational systems, then take on the irrigation/lighting installation. If you love getting your hands really dirty while getting a fair amount of exercise, then take on the soil work and planting. Take on what you'll love… and hire a pro for the rest of it. The money you spend will come back to you in well-designed spaces that enhance your precious time with your family; in well-selected and well-installed plants that thrive under those pines; and in well-designed systems that perform efficiently every day.

I feel like we're just getting started, so tell you what: in a couple of posts, I'll write about how you can keep your costs down when you do choose to hire a pro. Just remember: my advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.

Learning from the Big Guys, End-Of-Year Edition

Some of my best landscape design inspirations come from simply walking around in the world. It's also a fantastic education, and you can't beat the price. Here are a few of the lessons I've learned this year — for worse and for better.

The good: at NapaStyle, Yountville The bad: Carlsbad office park The just plain stupid: San Mateo mall

Handle your water. Water in the landscape can be a wonderful element to either enliven or calm a space. Unfortunately, from poorly designed irrigation that applies more water to the pavement than the lawn, to poorly conceived drainage that creates safety hazards, there's no shortage of examples of ways we all can handle our water better. My "Worst of the Wettest" award goes to the fountain at an outdoor shopping center in San Mateo. The open, parklike setting is so sunny, so warm, so lush, so… so stupid to create a ramp right up to the water's sparkling edge, then post a "No Water Contact Allowed" sign.

I just hope the tequila was worth it This used to be a Black Oak Why bother? Hedgehogs on parade

Make the right cut. When you put plants in a landscape you're entering into a bit of a contract. They'll provide shade and process carbon dioxide, and you'll give them food, water and a bit of tender loving care every now and then. Unfortunately, too many gardeners — homeowners and municipal landscapers alike — forget the "tender loving care" part, and we wind up with pruning abominations like these. My "Cruelest Cut" award goes to whomever decided California Gray Rush should be pruned into little hedgehogs every winter. (Hint: it's not actually a grass. Let it grow.) It's not fair to the plants, and it's not fair to those of us who have to look at them.

Sculpture at building entry in SF At UCSF Mission Bay, paving acts as carpet Look up! No, up! Where's the magnifying glass?

Lead the way. An entire industry has evolved around "wayfinding" — the art of helping people navigate through complex environments, particularly in urban settings. Personally, I really enjoy when this can be achieved implicitly, with landmarks such as sculpture or variations in paving materials rather than explicit signs. Sometimes, though, signs simply are the best medium for communicating what lives where. But they're pretty useless if they're so tall, and the lettering so small, as to be unreadable. My "Losing Sight of the Destination" award goes to the City of Palo Alto, which installed such signs at major intersections along University and California avenues. Good thing no one goes there anymore.

Emerging from the earth… … vs. dropped from the sky.

Rock out. Boulders in the landscape are timeless sentinels, a great way to define spaces and make any area feel more natural. They look their best when they seem to be emerging from the earth — I typically specify they be buried to about 1/3 of their height. And bigger is better, perhaps because it seems impossible that such mass could have been placed by man. I was thrilled to see these ginormous specimens going in at the Hewlett-Packard campus at 1501 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. Too bad some of them didn't go in quite far enough. The groundcover plantings may yet grow up to hide the "taper" at the rocks' bases, so no awards here — yet. But I'm watching.

It's not all bad out there, though. A couple of winners deserve mention:

Acer freemanii 'Autumn Blaze' Leucadendron species Muhlenbergia filipes

Go into the light. Especially in the winter when the sun is low and weak, we have lots of opportunities to create stunning effects with plants that either reflect the light or refract it. Palo Alto has been putting in lots of Freeman maples lately, and their color is some of the most brilliant I've seen. Up in San Francisco, this set of Leucadendron from Flora Grubb Gardens positively glows in the late afternoons, as do the massings of Pennisetum and Muhlenbergia grasses at Solage resort in Calistoga. Awards all around for designing with a "light" touch.

How to get air and water to these roots? Cut a pervious strip into the asphalt Better still, cut in a lot!

Put down roots. It's not new this year, but I think I'll give my best in show award to the repaved parking lot at Town and Country Village, which has held up extremely well for a few years now. The best part? The permeable "slots" cut into the asphalt, set with interlocking pavers whose gravel-filled gaps allow air and water to reach the roots of the heritage Valley Oak trees that give the property so much character. It's an incredibly simple, yet creative, solution that I haven't seen anywhere else. I'll be "root"ing for its success.

When your eyes are open, it's remarkable how much you can learn from the big guys. Please let me know if you have any lessons to share. And thanks for giving me some of your time this year… here's to continuing our education in 2011!

Gardening in (or at least with) the Rain

These light, intermittent rains that have been passing through the Bay Area are just what we need for Fall planting. Especially with our infamous clay soils, just this little bit of moisture loosens things up just enough that the nutrient-rich clay particles don't shatter when we dig into them; yet the soil's not so waterlogged that the clay gets compressed and compacted by our work.

This is an ideal time of year to add organic matter (the best "clay buster there is!), whose nutrients and microbes will leach a little deeper into the subsoil with every rain. It's also the best time to get new plants into the ground (particularly California natives), who will use our long, mild winter to develop a robust root system. If you succeed on both counts, your spring garden will be amazingly healthy — and amazing to behold.

Space Invaders

Yellow swallowtail
enjoying Buddleja
'Nanho Blue'

One of the greatest benefits of having a National Wildlife Federation-certified wildlife habitat is all the critters it invites: hummingbirds, songbirds, lizards, butterflies, honeybees and newts, just to name a few.

And one of the greatest drawbacks of having a NWF-certified wildlife habitate is, yes, all the critters it invites: squirrels, gophers, raccoons, yellowjackets, ants and rabbits, jut to name a few.

Lately it seems my nice little domesticated yard has been invaded by wildlife. The ants are colonizing the fruit tree containers; the squirrels are busy burying acorns which the scrub jays promptly excavate; the towhees are kicking my mulch all over the place looking for — well, I don't really know. My Cistus and Heuchera are keeling over since they have no roots anymore, courtesy of the aforementioned gopher; and the aforementioned cute and fuzzy bunny has begun nibbling the Anigozanthos, which is just not cool.

Towhee. So cute. Such a kick.

But this is just how it goes in nature, the joy and the pain of gardening. It's not limited to animals, either: I was amused by the latest issue of Fine Gardening, which on one page explores Connecticut nurseries' self-imposed ban on invasive Berberis, while another page extols the virtues of Berberis among mixed grasses. That article also celebrates Verbena bonariensis' ample reseeding, as in "you'll always have more." But wait: couldn't that be a wonderful euphemism for "invasive"? Apparently we cannot both have our Nasturtium and eat it too.

I've long believed that gardens are chaotic systems, hurtling toward disorder, their entropy both restrained and hastened by our best attempts to own them. I use Berberis all the time for its fall color, its spines, its berries — it is a fantastic ornamental plant for a wildlife habitat. At least, around Palo Alto. In Connecticut, not so much.

Grrrr.

For those of us who feel closely connected to nature, watching this chaos is mesmerizing. We observe the long-term interplay between plants, soil, climate, humans, and other creatures; and find that how we relate with each of these elements defines our relationship with the total landscape. Did they invade my space? Or I theirs?

Whatever that relationship, though, the more we observe, the more wonder we get to experience; and the more we marvel at the life force that can create such a beautiful mess.

Two Roses for the Price of One

So your rose bush is blooming magnificently. Bright, big flowers… glossy green leaves… gosh, it's doing so well it's actually blooming in two colors this year!

Uh… not actually.

In fact, if your rose bush is blooming in two colors, I'll wager that one of them is a deep maroon, a little smaller than the other, a little lower on the bush. Probably a little something like this:

If so, you don't have one rose flowering in two colors: you have two roses.

See, most roses sold and planted in California are hybrids — genetic crosses between two different varieties. Not at all Frankenflowers, they're bred this way to give us distinct joy: brighter flowers, glossier leaves, repeat flowering, greater resistance to disease. You can't have it all, though, and what makes them beautiful upstairs makes them weak downstairs.

Enter that miracle of modern ancient technology, grafting. By splicing that gorgeous body onto robust roots that can handle frost, rot, nematodes, fungus, drought, etc., humans figured out that we can have it all.

The only problem, and it's really just a minor one, is that those roots are — by definition — more robust than the body. And just like the body, their prime directive is to grow. Which means you get robust growth… just from the rootstock, not the body.

So those smaller, maroon flowers are "suckers" growing from the rootstock, most likely a variety named "Dr. Huey" (named after a prominent early-1900s rosarian) that is used for almost all California-grown hybrid tea roses because it can handle poor soils, shade, cold, and disease (although it has shown some susceptibility to nematodes in Florida).

Unfortunately, although "Dr. Huey" is beautiful in its own right, if left unchecked its vigor will sap the plant's energy from the more desirable body, the one you presumably bought the plant for in the first place. To prevent this fate, prune the suckers back as close to the primary cane as possible. This directs all that vigor back into the body of the bush… so it can bloom magnificently after all.

The Biggest Little Farm in Napa

You've probably heard of The French Laundry, chef Thomas Keller's definitive nouveau American restaurant that launched a little Napa County town called Yountville into the culinary stratosphere. You may even know that The French Laundry grows their own produce, mostly in a two-acre plot across Washington Street that brims with herbs and seasonal vegetables—from broccoli and Brussels sprouts to beans, tomatoes, radishes, leeks, and a seemingly infinite number of lettuces, to name just a few.

But what you probably don't know is that when Chef Keller needs green almonds, or white strawberries, or one of 10 types of figs or countless different culinary flowers, he travels a little farther afield: to Jacobsen Orchards.

Although it's just a few blocks from The French Laundry, you won't find Jacobsen Orchards on any map, nor is it open to the public. As essentially the restaurant's R&D laboratory, the 1.3-acre farm teems with 120 fruit trees, half a dozen varieties of melon, 18 different citrus, 40 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and curiosities most of us will never grow: white carrots, white miniature cucumbers, Japanese eggplant, caperberry, the odd-looking but delicious perennial tuber crosnes ("crones"), and the singular savory-acid-crunchy-juicy Ficoide glaciale.

Our host at Jacobsen Orchards was Ryan Hill, proprietor of the Hill Family Estate winery which has long ties to the land and landowner, Peter Jacobsen (aka PJ). Ryan walks the farm as if he had sown the seeds himself, bestowing samples of Korean mint and scarlet runner bean blossoms as he fluently discusses the breba crop of Brown Turkey figs. He shows off the outdoor kitchen and fireplace, expertly crafted of rammed earth. And he gets our mouths watering with a description of "PJ's Peach Flambé," a dessert that sounds as much art form as recipe (below).

Nothing on the farm is wasted; or rather, every opportunity is maximized. The 'Sylvetta' arugula which has bolted? Its flowers are used in salads. The lovage which invites pollinator insects to the garden? Its pungent celery scent makes a great substitute for bay leaf. Long after those Brown Turkey figs are gone, the tree's leaves may be used to impart a coconut essence to soups and other dishes. Fennel pollen seasons fish, daylily petals are roasted into chips, garlic blossoms and lemon verbena leaves perform their olfactory sleights of hand. We and our host revel in the symbiotic relationship between the produce and the chefs who use it in their daily culinary alchemy.

Naturally, all the green waste is composted, with the yield used as a mulch and reintegrated into the soil as crops are rotated throughout the seasons and years. The scraps also contribute to perhaps the farm's most precious product: snails, in fact the only certified organic culinary snails in the United States. The little critters are sourced to The French Laundry for—what else?—escargots, perhaps prepared into a fricassée with a puree of sweet carrots and roasted shallots. To accompany such a dish, Ryan recommends either the Hill Family's 2007 "Stewart Ranch" Pinot Noir, with enough acidity to complement the snails, or the silky-smooth tannins of their 2006 "Clarke Vineyard" Syrah. Happily for us, their tasting room also sells seed packets of some of Jacobsen Orchards' organic flowers and produce, so we can attempt to replicate a bit of the Jacobsen family's magic.

In the 15 or so years of its existence, I've never had the pleasure of dining at The French Laundry. If you have, most likely you've enjoyed the fruits of PJ's labors. But even if you haven't, chances are that almost any contemporary meal you enjoy has been influenced by Chef Keller. And, in turn, by Jacobsen Orchards.


***************

PJ's Peach Flambé
As narrated by Ryan Hill and Peter Jacobsen

"This is culinary theatre, a circus act that creates a great dessert. This is not a recipe for wimps."

Serves Four

Ingredients:

≤3 large peaches or nectarines, cut into irregular pieces
2 figs (not necessary, but adds flavor)
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup rum
½ cup Grand Marnier (or any orange based liquor)
Pint or quart (depends on how much your guests enjoy ice cream) Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche

1. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the bottom of a 12" frying pan and put it over very high heat. Let it melt until clear and then let the edges start to brown. You are creating caramels. Caution! The pan will be very hot.

2. Once the sugar has melted and you have the browned the edges (brown, not black) then add the butter. Don’t forget, the pan is screamin’ hot, the butter will melt fast. Roll it around the pan until it is completely melted. You can even stir it a bit with a spatula. You are making brown butter caramel. You will love the smell and the drama. But there is more drama to come.

3. Once the butter has fully melted and has almost stopped foaming, quickly put all the fruit into the pan at once and stir so that each piece gets coated with brown butter/sugar caramel. Timing is important here. If you let the butter or sugar burn, that’s not good. Be prepared with all the fruit ready to go. You will notice, when you put the fruit into the pan, the pan is still very, very hot. That’s the plan. You want the sugars of the fruit to mix with the butter caramel and scorch a little bit as the boiling juices cool the pan down. You still have the pan on a very high heat. Temperature and timing are all in this recipe.

4. Allow fruit to sit and "fry" for 1.5 to 2 minutes as the pan cools down to boiling.

5. Quickly pour in the rum (measures get less exact at this point. Two or three glugs [a unit of measure based on the sound of the fluid pouring out of the bottle] is perfect.) Did I mention, quickly? The pan is hot, the rum has alcohol, and there will be fire. Quickly pour in the rum and get the bottle far away from the flame. This is not Molotov cocktail time. That would be too much drama. You can always pre-measure the rum in a cup and have it ready. Cups don’t explode. That is a good thing.

Shake the pan so the rum coats the fruit and starts to boil, then tip the pan slightly so the flames "see" the alcohol boiling off. Pow!, now we’re smokin’, or actually you will be flamin’. (Do the French say flambé-in'?) Let it boil until the flames die down and then boil a bit more, 1.5 minutes, to get the juices hotter and thicker.

6. Add the Grand Marnier, and repeat step 5.

7. Allow the fruit and juice to boil down until the liquid becomes thicker and concentrated. It is thick enough when the bubbles of the liquid start to get very small.

8. Scoop over a bit of cake or beside a nice dollop of Dulce de Leche ice cream. The caramels of the Dulce de Leche ice cream complement the caramels of the peaches perfectly.

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Futzing With The Recipe

Image courtesy GroovyVegetarian.comI've been watching more Food Network lately than usual, which can only mean that autumn is around the corner.

What I like about Food Network is that it makes food — or, more precisely, an elevated dining experience — approachable. I'm no gourmet chef, but I can still up my cooking game thanks to Bobby, Rachel, Giada, Alton et al.

However, such egalitarianism carries a risk: once I feel empowered to cook North African Meatballs, I also feel empowered to change the recipe. Perhaps I leave out the cilantro, or add a bit of nutmeg. Perhaps, when I'm making Ina's French toast, I use nonfat milk rather than half & half. Or maybe I only have medium eggs on hand, not extra-large.

Whatever, right? After all, some of the joy of cooking is experimenting, putting your own stamp on things. Except, too often I take that first bite and think, "Hm. This looked a lot better on TV." I then shelve the recipe and forget about it — never really getting that it's my fault the French toast fell flat. Somewhere along the way, I forgot: I'm no gourmet chef.

Gardening isn't terribly different from cooking. How often do we drool over the plants we see at the nursery or in the magazines, and decide to experiment with them in our own yard? Never mind that our site has deeper shade, or gophers, or a careless gardener. Never mind that winter brings temps in the 20s and that plant isn't hardy below 35°F.

Sometimes the experiment turns out great. Experienced gardeners are like experienced chefs: they know their ingredients. They know their site, the way a chef knows her oven. And they know the rules (even if that means knowing which rules to break).

But for less experienced gardeners, the experiment might not be quite as rewarding. Plants bought impulsively die; favorite trees sulk wedged into too-small spaces; and those combinations that "should" have worked, well, they looked a lot better on TV. Discouraged, we vow to never again spend our weekend in the garden.

I'm not at all suggesting we shouldn't experiment with our gardens. It's not only likely we'll make mistakes, I believe it's vital. But if you're going to take risks, take responsibility too. Know that the plant combination featured in this issue of Fine Gardening isn't well-suited to your clay soil. Know that there's a difference between a Spiraea and a Nandina, and therefore probably a good reason your landscape designer specified one rather than the other. Know that "regular irrigation" isn't synonymous with "drought tolerant."

If you're not interested in such minutiae, your best bet probably is to hire a pro to design for you. Think of it as going out to a really nice restaurant: sure, you'll pay more, but the experience will be wonderful, and you won't dirty a dish.

On the other hand, if you really yearn to be out in the garden, why not hire a landscape designer, fine gardener or garden coach to help you learn? You can be the sous chef, or at least the apprentice. You may still lose a few plants and blow through some money along the way. But when you do come up with your own amazing creation, you'll be able to take all the credit.

Faith, Hope…

The Jesusita Fire raged for days through Santa Barbara, California and continued to burn until the Santa Barbara County Fire Department declared the fire to be officially under control on May 22, 2009. In its wake, the fire burned over 8,700 acres of land and destroyed 80 homes.  — Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

On my recent vacation we passed through Santa Barbara and stopped by the fabulous SBBG, which had taken a big hit from the Jesusita Fire. Just up the road, a pile of twisted metal and black and gray rubble bore witness to the fire's devastation. On May 5, that was someone's home. On May 7, it wasn't.

Over on the other side of Mission Canyon, beautiful homes stood untouched, a testament to the latest heroism of thousands of firefighters. A couple of years ago, a Cal Fire captain in San Mateo told me that crews will focus their efforts on homes they know they can save, rather than spend precious time and resources on potentially losing battles. It was a harsh wake-up call: if your home isn't accessible or easily defensible, it's as good as gone.

Our mood was somber as we surveyed the scene. But then I noticed something odd: These charred sticks that used to be trees, they were sprouting. Growing. Regrowing. They were alive, and nothing as petty as an 8700-acre inferno was going to change that.

I was filled with hope. This is why we garden: to witness the unpredictable, play some part in the impossible. We plant a Salvia and hummingbirds materialize out of thin air. We plant the smallest of seeds and watch tiny leaves emerge after the coldest winters. We plant a tree, knowing we won't get to relax in its shade but that our children's children might. I'm sure I'm not the first to say it, but landscaping is an act of faith, a confidence that things will be all right — even if we can't know when or how.

A few weeks before our trip, the contractor remodeling the home next to ours had invited me to redesign its front yard. We both were delighted with my combinations of Phormium 'Dusky Chief', Euphorbia 'Helena's Blush', Nandina 'Gulf Stream', Festuca ovina glauca, Lavandula 'Provence' and Heuchera x 'Caramel'.

During our time away the weather had been hot, very hot, and as we rolled up to our driveway I wasn't surprised to see a few of my container plants had died. But the real shock was the house next door. My beautiful, drought-tolerant creation was… gone. All gone. Replaced by no less than the gratuitous lawn I despise. Explanation? The homeowner got cold feet, wanted "ordinary." Apparently extraordinary was too good.

I was devastated. I'm still upset. But I think of the people who lived in the house that is no more, and I realize that there are worse things than a garden gone wrong. And I think of those blackened twigs sending up their bright green leaves, and I realize that Nature has a way of righting herself.

All we have to do is keep the faith.

Happy Anniversary, Blog

Today marks the fourth year of this blog, and it's incredible to look back and note how much has changed since that first post. It appeared almost a full year before the venerable Garden Rant, a month before the venerable Pruned. House & Garden was still in publication. There were still gardening shows on HGTV.

"Social media" really wasn't, yet. There was no public Facebook, no Twitter. (Given how much time the latter sucks from my day, this may be the most incredible change of all.) And while Google was going strong, it didn't yet own Blogspot (my original host) and therefore hadn't morphed it into Blogger (my current host). There also was no SketchUp and no Google Earth—two tools which are indispensable to me now.

Since that first post I've also moved to a new house, started (but not yet completed) new landscaping, turned 40, turned 41, won "Landscapers' Challenge," started (but not yet completed) a landscape architecture program, learned AutoCAD, abandoned AutoCAD in favor of VectorWorks, and migrated almost my entire production process from hand-drafted to digital.

I'm not really a gardener, in the usual sense, and I never intended this blog to be about gardening—no shots of my lavender seedlings, the first snowdrop, the last pepper. Instead, I hoped to interest people in the idea of gardening: making, keeping, enjoying and living in gardens. Yet there it is, over on the right, there: undeniable evidence that I've written about "gardening" 57 times, more than any other topic. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; after all, what's a "garden designer" without the garden?

I also never expected to become quite as environmentally outspoken as I have; but somehow "environment" has become my second most popular tag. Then again, it's sort of difficult to have gardens without an environment. In the past four years, our climate has changed noticeably, our state has gone into drought, and our political and corporate leaders have discovered that "sustainability" can be more than just a buzzword. In my work, too, I've become much more conscious of my opportunity and responsibility to not just make places prettier, but to make them better.

One other thing I couldn't have expected when I launched this blog was my readership. Yes, you. Just when I think I've written dreck that no one cares about, there you are with a comment. And even if you don't comment (though I wish you would), my draconian spy software tells me you're still reading, and that you come back for more. That was my greatest hope four years ago… and it's the best anniversary present a blogger could ask for.

Here's to a four-year germination: a good start.

Who's Blooming Today: Cistus purpureus

Today the purple (or orchid) rockrose, Cistus purpureus, began its show. This is one of my favorite shrubs: drought tolerant, evergreen, resinously aromatic foliage, and of course these flowers that go with any color I can imagine. I especially enjoy it with silver companions such as Salvia chamedryoides, Santolina, and Lavandula stoechas.



In fact, my only problem with the Cistus is that it gets big - up to 4' wide if left unchecked. I'll be heading mine back after its first bloom cycle, but we all know it's a futile effort. I've got 3 of these fellows in my Palo Alto garden, all runts adopted from the nursery's clearance shelf at the end of last summer. I must have been very good in a past life for such good garden karma now!