nora harlow Archives - Page 8 of 12 - Summer-Dry | Celebrate Plants in Summer-Dry Gardens

13 05, 2021

Eucalyptus macrocarpa (mottlecah)

Eucalyptus macrocarpa (mottlecah)

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:27:45-07:00Categories: Blog, shrubs|Tags: great plants, nora harlow, shrubs|

With its large, tightly packed, silvery bluish white, mint-scented leaves and outsized, scarlet, pink, or rarely yellow flowers, this shrubby eucalyptus brings show-stopping drama to almost any summer-dry garden. Its features are decisively eucalypt, but its effect, especially at full height and in full bloom, is Alice-in-Wonderland. Eucalyptus macrocarpa can be pruned to maintain it at almost any size. Here it combines perfectly with Agave americana. One of several Australian shrubs called desert mallee, mottlecah can reach eight to ten feet tall and wide, sometimes erratically upright but more often sprawling. Mallees are shrubby eucalypts native primarily

19 03, 2021

Weeding in Summer-Dry, Winter-Wet Clay

Weeding in Summer-Dry, Winter-Wet Clay

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:27:42-07:00Categories: Blog, weeds|Tags: nora harlow, invasive plants, weeds|

Where winters are wet, summers are dry, and soils consist of any appreciable amount of clay, the difference between too wet and too dry to weed is barely perceptible. In some years there may be only a few days when the soil is dry enough to walk on without compaction, when weeds come out of the ground without resistance, and when the earliest weeds have yet to set seed. If you miss those days, well, I guess there's always next year. Invasive oxalis (Oxalis pes-caprae) and advancing Matilija poppies (Romneya coulteri) mix inextricably with fortnight lily (Dietes grandiflora) in

16 03, 2021

Learning to Love Lomandras

Learning to Love Lomandras

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:26:32-07:00Categories: Blog, Garden Plants, perennials|Tags: nora harlow, perennials|

I long resisted the siren call of lomandras as these evergreen, grasslike plants increasingly appeared in highly regimented commercial landscapes and city medians. They are, after all, decidedly not native to North America's Pacific coast, the flower spikes are often disturbingly spiny-looking and messily ungrasslike, and the most commonly seen lomandras can seem too perfect in both form and color to be real. Lomandra longifolia Watching these plants develop into full form over several years, I searched for incipient tendencies to spread, to flop, or to lose their attractive form or color. Nowhere did they change much over

25 02, 2021

Rosemary

Rosemary

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:26:32-07:00Categories: Blog, Garden Plants, shrubs|Tags: nora harlow, shrubs|

In our continual search for new and unusual plants for our gardens we tend to forget, or to reflexively dismiss, the old, reliable standbys. Rosemary needs no care, has no "down" season, and can last for decades. It is quite content to play a supporting role in any garden scheme and it comes in varied heights and habits. Salvia rosmarinus Prostratus Group cascades over walls There are prostrate or cascading rosemaries as well as upright forms of many sizes. Flower color varies from pale or bright blue to pinkish lavender or even almost white. The fine-textured, intensely fragrant,

16 02, 2021

Wildland Invaders and Garden Thugs

Wildland Invaders and Garden Thugs

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:26:27-07:00Categories: Blog, weeds, Nora Harlow|Tags: nora harlow, invasive plants|

Plants that readily establish themselves in wildlands, on vacant city lots, and along rural roadsides typically are adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions. They are long lived, self-sow readily, and produce many flowers over a long season. Some bear abundant crops of fruit loved by birds and other wildlife. In other words, some of the same sorts of plants we seek out for our gardens are those most likely to take over and spread. Echium candicans, Pride of Madeira, in a California garden Most plants are not invasive in wildlands or even weedy in gardens. Many

27 01, 2021

The Many Faces of Summer-Dry

The Many Faces of Summer-Dry

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:26:26-07:00Categories: Blog, Climate|Tags: nora harlow, climate|

Summer-dry climates are not dry climates. They are climates where rain falls mostly in winter. This is not a common arrangement. In most of the world, rain falls in summer or is fairly well distributed year round. Summer-dry climates are usually found on the west coasts of continents in the mid-latitudes where seasonally shifting atmospheric pressure cells block or open up to the jet stream and its storms. The photo above shows a coastal northern California climate in summer. The photo below shows a similar coastal northern California climate in winter or spring. Summer-dry climates vary considerably from one place

17 05, 2016

Agave parryi

Agave parryi

Nora Harlow2024-06-27T19:26:19-07:00Categories: Blog, succulents, California Native|Tags: nora harlow, shrubs|

Agave parryi Agave parryi is quite variable, some forms or varieties an ethereal blue-gray, others a silvery gray-green, some with leaves that are broad and rather blunt on top, others with narrower and more elongated leaves. But all are elegantly symmetrical, and all bear leaves with distinctive dark brown to maroon to almost black marginal teeth and an equally dark, viciously sharp terminal spine. Agave parryi grows fairly slowly to about two to three feet tall and wide, and most spread by offshoots or “pups.” As the plant grows the leaves open from a tightly packed central core,