June 10, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Year-round gardening

by Daniel Grujic

For people who like flowers, creating a gorgeous spring garden is easy. With the mild Peninsula climate, the spring blooming season extends for months.

But many gardens lose their luster "as it gets hot. It is hard too because we don't have any rain May through September," said Julia Powers, owner of Julia Powers Landscape Services in Palo Alto.

And for real flower lovers, "the problem is, in winter the garden looks terrible," she added.

Powers plans to pass on a few tricks to keep a garden going through the difficult months in a class called "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" on Sunday, June 12, at Gamble Garden Center.

Powers is an ex-Silicon Valley techie who 15 years ago decided to pursue something she found more fulfilling, and she hasn't looked back. "It is very soothing. There is something life-affirming about watching plants and knowing what they're doing," she said.

Though Powers admits she had a somewhat rocky start ("I wasn't a green thumb, I just sort of figured it out"), she has learned through experimentation and encourages fledgling gardeners to expand their thinking.

When asked about what to do to maintain beauty in the garden in the rough winter months, it takes a bit for her to even talk about flowers.

"Use small evergreen shrubs," Powers said. She is a big fan of the waxy dark green leaves of shrubs such as the dwarf bottlebrush. They provide a healthy-looking background to the flowers during the productive season, and maintain their beauty in the winter months.

"The great thing is that they stay handsome all year," she said.

Other options for evergreen shrubs are the dwarf gardenia and escallonia, noting the nice shape of both. "In winter, you'll be glad to have your shrubs. ...You're mostly looking for things that hold their form," Powers said.

Another evergreen plant that stays resilient all year is the evergreen sarcococca. "To have color in the garden, people don't often think of berries," she said. She likes the plant not only because the berries provide an interesting color cluster during the regular spring season, but because they produce attractive little white flowers from later winter until early spring.

Powers said that the "flowers are pretty insignificant, though they have a very nice fragrance." The plant is also of a loose form, and spreads its brilliant green leaves in unpredictable ways -- a characteristic the landscaper has learned to appreciate.

"I like soft and wild gardens. I like to see one thing going into another," she said, demonstrating the same tendency in a clump of California strawberries. When the plants are comfortable enough with the soil and weather, they will grow abundantly with minimal effort.

"I don't want to have to struggle for the results," she said.

Choosing naturally occurring local plants makes it easier to create a productive garden that's easy to care for. A good flower for the end of summer is the camellia sasanqua because "sasanquas bear profusions of flowers in the fall and early winter, depending on cultivar and location." Hydrangeas work well also, but they take more water, she said.

There are also many breeds of roses that are well adjusted to the climate. Some will "keep blooming all year if it's not a cold winter. They wouldn't normally, but in the Peninsula they just keep going," Powers said.

Sometimes, nice surprises come out of really productive, wild gardens. "If you do this kind of garden where things are happy and well-adjusted, where things seed prolifically, something may just sprout up and I'll think 'I like that angle; so you get to stay,'" Powers said. "My client must be comfortable with having things a little wild."

For a resilient garden, Powers also likes grasses, especially "native bunch grass. It's great when you have flowers coming up in that. The best part is that when the flowers die, you have meadows" -- often inviting enough to lie on.

The abundant garden also has a great deal of charm. As one plant merges into another, textures change in the garden, and if the selection and placement were careful, the color palette makes a fluid transition from one end to the other.

"I have found the garden is much more pleasing if there is a defined color palette," Powers said.

Other suggestions to brighten a winter garden include fruit trees (particularly citrus), camellia japonicas and erica heath, which provides a beautiful magenta color.

Sustaining a garden sometimes requires removing opportunistic plants. "You have to approach the garden as an editor," she said. Powers notes that there are folks who see things the way Peter Tompkins (author of "The Secret Life of Plants") does; they tend to believe that plants are sentient and capable of communication, which makes them a little squeamish about uprooting some out-of-place plants in their garden. Powers contends that "by simply having a garden," we have decided to start constantly fiddling and editing, replacing things that are grown here naturally, so we should feel comfortable with the practice."

In the end, the garden is there to please the owner, and Powers said that "you shouldn't be afraid to change it. I encourage people to try new plants. If it doesn't work out, you can always change it."

The process of editing a garden may at times seem tedious, but if the appreciation is there, the strain is imperceptible, and Powers never seems to tire of it. "I could to this all day," she said.

Editorial intern Daniel Grujic can be reached at dgrujic@paweekly.com.

What: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
When: Sunday, June 12, 2 to 4 p.m.
Where: Gamble Garden Carriage House, 1431 Waverley St., Palo Alto
Fee: $25 for non-members, $20 for members
Info: Call (650) 329-1356 or visit www.gamblegarden.org.

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