Wisteria!

You know spring has arrived when the wisteria bloom, and over the past week they have exploded in flowers! I think they are especially nice with Victorians, but they are beautiful pretty much everywhere.

Here they cover the wall next to a house set back from the street:


And here they trail up the stairwell and over the door:


Somehow Victorians lend themselves well to having wisteria trail over the door...


Enjoy!

Vertical gardens

Avid gardeners don't seem to be deterred by much - bugs, too much sun, too much shade, not enough water - you name it, a true gardener will conquer it. In the city, gardeners have even figured out how to create a vertical garden where there is not enough horizontal space to accommodate one. And aside from being a cool project, a vertical garden is also a great way to disguise ugly wall space.

Today I stopped by the Shotwell Boutique in Union Square and was impressed by the extremely cool vertical garden in their entrance. It was installed by Flora Grubb, and she details the project on her blog.

You enter the store through the garden:

Which is just a bunch of lined pockets that are attached to the wall, filled with dirt and planted with various plants. The Shotwell garden has a mixture of houseplants, air plants, ferns, and ivy. The plants look great - really healthy and well established:

Vertical gardens can also be installed on the exterior of buildings, as is the case at Candystore, a boutique in the Mission:

This garden is a bit less dense and uses more succulents. Candystore is on the shady side of the block which may explain why it's not as densely grown in:

How to create your own vertical garden:

If you want to install your own, Sunset Magazine has a great tutorial showing how to make your own vertical garden using the wooly pockets that Flora Grubb used for Shotwell. Their example looks like this (photo courtesy of Thomas J. Story, Sunset Magazine):

Purchasing the materials:

The wooly pockets can be purchased online at both Flora Grubb and Velocity Art & Design. Flora Grubb sells the "wally one" and the "wally three" in the $40-$125 range. Velocity Art & Design sells a big variety in the same price range. Flora Grubb also holds vertical garden how-to workshops fairly regularly - dates can be found on their events page.

Even more information:

Tons of information about vertical gardens can also be found at Woolypocket.com.

I have a lot of work left to do on my horizontal garden, but once that's done I am going to explore the vertical options...

Winery Gardens - Darioush

One of the bonuses of living in San Francisco is that you are only 1-2 hours away from good wine tasting. The climate that is so conducive to growing good grapes is also very good for growing vegetables and flowers, and most of the wineries have really pretty gardens.

Last year we went up for a weekend and stopped at Darioush, which is known for its super expensive Cabernets and its very over-the-top, Las Vegas-like tasting room styled after Persepolis, which was the capital of ancient Persia. I wasn't a huge fan of the faux-Persian theme, but the gardens are magnificent.

They have beautiful matching ponds/fountains out front with waterlilies, which were in full bloom when we visited:

They also plant a lot of native plants, which do very well with so much sun and require less water. They had this beautiful white flower, which I can never remember the name of but see in a lot of native plants gardens:

And some Jerusalem Sage:


Another cool touch that I liked a lot were their urns full of succulents. These are also pretty low maintenance plants and they seemed to be doing well with all the sun (it can get pretty dry and hot up there in the summer):


I liked the mix of higher maintenance, higher water need plants (water lilies, lawn) with the more hardy drought resistant plants (succulents, jerusalem sage). And while Darioush does not offer outside tasting, they do have nice picnic tables in their beautiful garden or you can sit on the steps near the grass and drink your $80 Cabernet.

Angelwing Jasmine - Jasminum laurifolium nitidum

I love gardens that have such a fragrant scent that it sticks with you as you walk by. Our garden came with a very mature Daphne plant that produces the nicest perfume and it's right by our front door so you smell it as you walk up the stairs. I like it so much that I planted four more of them - one kind that blooms in the spring and one kind that blooms in summer/fall, thinking that I could have Daphne fragrance almost year round. In my attempt to add more fragrance, last week I planted a jasminum laurifolium nitidum otherwise known as angelwing or shining jasmine.


This type of jasmine likes sun and is distinctive because it has white flowers with purple buds. It also seems to grow like a weed in my neighborhood, which I'm hoping is a good indicator of hardiness. I like plants that thrive on their own and are low maintenance.

Here it is growing on my neighbor's gate - it provides a really nice scent year-round:

Here it is growing up a trellis in the neighborhood:

And growing up a staircase in the neighborhood - this jasmine seems to go particularly well with Victorians:

And here is the little jasmine that I planted last weekend - it doesn't look like it's doing that well, but I'm hoping it will pull through. I tied it to the trellis with the hope that it will eventually grow around it, improving that forgotten corner of the garden and creating a nice scent at our front door (it's located right next to the door).


Stay tuned! If it survives I'll post some pictures of it when it matures...

Indoor Gardening

Living in a city doesn't have to mean that your garden is limited to boring house plants or the occasional orchid. There are lots of creative ways to indulge your green thumb without a plot of land.

Here are some of my favorites:

Pigeon Toe Ceramics Faceted Hanging Tray

I think you have to request these specially from Pigeon Toe through Etsy, but they would be great with succulents (as pictured) or even with droopy vines.

Boskke Sky Planters

These are sort of weird and wonderful, and I'm not really sure how they work but they're definitely unconventional and are great conversation pieces.

Roost Terrariums

I think these are pretty cool and the shapes are very interesting. Terrariums are generally very a la mode right now for hip gardeners. If you prefer one that hangs on the wall, they can be found online at Flora Grubb and she also has some that hang from the ceiling.

If you like the idea of the terrarium, but can't commit to taking care of the plants, try some tiny tiny air plant terrariums courtesy of Tortoise Loves Donkey on Etsy:

Happy indoor gardening!

Herb Garden

This weekend I refreshed my back porch herb garden. My rosemary and sage survived the winter, but almost everything else perished in the cold or drowned in the rain. Last year I used green earth boxes as planters, but they didn't drain well and aren't very pretty, so this year I am using terracotta pots - I like the eclectic look of the different sizes.

I've planted 3 kinds of mint since I used so much of it last year. It is great in fruit salad and summer drinks. They had a good selection so I decided to try a few kinds: pineapple mint, peppermint, and Moroccan mint. Mint is very hardy and grows like a weed so it will probably overgrow these pots, but at least it's separated from the other herbs.


I planted 2 kinds of thyme since it is so good in brunch hash browns and Italian food: green lemon thyme and silver thyme.


I also planted hot and spicy Oregano, and 2 kinds of basil (it's still a bit early in the season to get good basil plants): Red Rubin basil and Genovese basil.


I've found that the name tags that come with the plants when you buy them at the garden center are great for figuring out the sun and planting conditions and the plant's latin name, but not so nice to look at. Last year I got some ceramic herb stakes off of Etsy from Pigeon Toe Ceramics. They sell them in groups of four and you can choose from Lavender, Cilantro, Parsley, Catnip, Rosemary, Sage, Oregano, Thyme, Dill and Basil. Too bad they don't have Mint!

My favorite garden centers in the SF Bay Area are: Flowercraft Garden Center in San Francisco, Summerwinds Nursery in Palo Alto, East Bay Nursery in Berkeley, and Lowes/Home Depot (good prices here).

Good resources for gardening are the Sunset Western Garden Book (which is pretty specific to the western states), although you can also look up information about plants on their Garden Website. Martha Stewart seems to have a pretty good gardening site which is more geographically generic.

I'm going to give the garden a week or two to get established before harvesting anything, but I'm already looking forward to making pineapple mint mojitos!