Spotted this one outside Raoul, a home and textiles shop in Santa Barbara. I love the idea of a bright paint color instead of the usual black, white, or dark green. I think a bright paint color calls for something happy and carefree like lavender, and definitely an upright grower so you can show off the container. The other great idea here: instead of waiting forever for a topiary to shape up, underplant a citrus with lavender or rosemary.
This is a beautiful, simple, serene way to style a front porch or back patio. The soft blues of the containers echo the paint color on the windows and doors. The arrangement of the containers is almost, but not quite, symmetrical. The containers are each slightly different, and there are two palm varieties. Furniture and accessories are natural tones: wood, wicker, and jute.
I love the wicker pendant lights (this is a covered patio). These bentwood pendants from West Elm would look great too.
This was so beautiful it literally stopped me in my tracks. Everything was neutral and quiet from the hardscaping to the house color to the hardware. The part of the garden that I could see was all foliage. Then there was this gorgeous, inviting turquoise blue gate right smack in the middle of it all. What a charming way to give the home privacy and more usable outdoor space.
I was walking through my neighborhood just after dark, and here was Senecio cineraria ‘Dusty Miller’ just GLOWING in the dark. Every other plant was a dark shadow, and then here was this luminous white.
I don’t think I could do a full on moon garden because I like orange flowers way too much, but I may need some of these in pots on the deck to enjoy on a warm evening.
Here are some of the plants that are giving me winter color in my garden.
But first: my garden is a mess. We had zero, literally zero, rain the first thee months of our rainy season. Then, for about the past week, it’s been a camellia-smashing, leaves-and-branches-everywhere downpour.
In the spirit of a cup half-full, above is a Chinese Fringe Flower (Loropetalum chinense ‘razzleberri’). In my yard these get part shade, twice weekly water during the dry season, and that’s about it. I’ve had them about ten years, and they haven’t needed a thing. You don’t even need to prune them. Unless you plant them in a too small space which I no longer do (new year’s gardening resolutions).
Below, aloe arborescens and aloe striata are starting to bloom which means hummingbirds! The aloe arborescens is in the back bed, where my dog loves to roll and dig. I plunked a very small plant in one of the holes she dug. It’s grown like crazy in the heavy clay soil and is completely dog-proof.
The aloe striata came in a 2″ succulent pot and has grown to almost 1.5 feet across. The one below is a division from the original plant. This is not an easy aloe to divide, and the leaves are quite fragile.
Saw this great combination today at a grocery store plaza of all places. New Zealand Flax (phormium) with Oriental Poppies (papaver). I love how the salmon poppies pick up the pink edges of the New Zealand Flax leaves. Both colors really pop against the flax and the orange poppies practically glow. New Zealand Flax is pretty indestructible and I love this idea of it in a container, surrounded by changing waves of annuals weaving up through its spiky form.
Annie’s Annuals has about every color of poppy you could want. They are annuals, but they will very happily reseed for you.
The gardener in your life doesn’t just want shears, trowels, and clogs. Gardeners love things to use in the garden, things to bring the outdoors in, and things with natural forms. To that end, Wisteria is always the first place I look when I am shopping for gifts for gardeners.
Small green parrot I love him.
Fair trade ceramic mugs (set of 4) There is nothing better than a mug of hot tea before or after cool weather gardening.
Ceramic garden stool Beautiful indoors or out.
Concrete faux bois pot No plant could look bad in this pot.
Starflower mirror The ornate flower and leaf forms are so pretty.
Rotund vase A collection of different shapes and colors, all perfect, singly or in groups.
Ceramic asian candlesticks Any gardener would love their organic forms and bamboo motif.
Orange and light blue are one of my favorite color combinations. This is my 4 year old Fuyu persimmon tree wearing its fall colors, in front of a cape plumbago (Plumbago auriculata).
The persimmon had several weeks of brilliant fall color which overlapped with the plumbago’s very long bloom time. The plumbago fills up a back corner of the yard where it doesn’t need pruning, or water, and it’s still in full bloom. Because it’s almost always in full bloom.
The persimmon has been in the ground about 4 years and is finally starting to take off. It even gave me a few persimmons this year. It seems not to mind the heavy clay soil or me neglecting it. Persimmons are truly the easiest fruit trees to grow.
More on plumbagos, easy fruit trees, and fall color
There’s nothing prettier, or easier, than a single bloom in a small vase. These were spotted at Vanilla Moon Bakery on a cupcake outing with my daughter. A small, squat white vase with a single spider mum placed on each dark wood table. This shows off the beauty of the flower more than a full arrangement and is more budget friendly if you buy your cut flowers. Which I would in this case: I love spider mums but I don’t think they’re a plant for a lazy gardener.
Filoli is kind of known for those formal English style gardens, but there are plenty of ideas for us lazy gardeners, too. Everything in this border is low maintenance and drought tolerant. No deadheading, pruning, or cutting things back. And the foliage mix here is so good that even after most things are done blooming, the garden is still totally stunning.
Repetition of purple-black shrubs as a transition between the trees and the low growing perennials at the front of the border.
Black and silver. Berggarten Sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Berggarten’) and purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria). In a smaller space you could use Loropetalum chinense ‘Purple Diamond’
Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. This was growing all over the place. It just flows in around everything and gives you a low dense mass of green with the most intense blue flowers.
More useful stuff:
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