Happy Memorial Day!

It has been a sunny weekend here in San Francisco, and the first gladiolus of the season decided to bloom.


What a gorgeous, deep purple color!

Scientific Beaker Vases

A few months ago I purchased a lot of miscellaneous pharmaceutical beakers from an auction house in South Carolina:

I didn't really have a plan for them at the time, but I thought they were cool and when they arrived, I was not disappointed. The larger beakers are hand blown and the numbers are etched in a cool old Victorian-looking font. I had seen a blog post on Velvet & Linen about using beakers as vases, so I decided to give it a try for my brunch table on Mother's day.

I picked cala lilies and climbing roses from our garden and created a few little arrangements using various sizes of beakers:


I especially liked the little beakers, which were perfect for little climbing rose bouquets and are short enough so that you can still see people sitting across the table from you:


I really like the eclectic, casual look of the different vases, and I think they're cool as centerpieces even without flowers. Here's what's on my table right now (fuschias from my garden):


Vintage and new lab beakers are easy to find, and there are lots of them listed on ebay in all different shapes and sizes. Just make sure you wash them first to get out any remaining chemical residue!

Evolution of my garden

Last year was the starter year for my gardening. Prior to that I had always lived in apartments with no yard, but our current house has a front garden and a back garden. By the time we moved in they were both in daunting condition, so I started with the front garden which has some nice legacy plants and is pretty contained (9x9).

When we bought the house, the front garden looked like this:

The previous owner died in 2003 and since that time the house was owned by her nieces who both live in LA. The neighbors tell me that she had been a really avid gardener who would spend hours in her garden. After she died the garden declined, but there are some nice legacy plants there: a very healthy and established Daphne plant, some aging roses, lots of cala lilies and chasmanthe.

After we bought the house we removed the japanese maple tree as it blocked the front of the house, and the camilia bushes because they were very old. There was a period of renovation, and by the time we moved in the front garden looked like this:

In February of last year, I decided to tackle the garden. I initially visited Home Depot and bought bulbs, cheap stepping stones, and some garden edgers. They aren't the classiest items and they are definitely not real stone, but the price was right and they were easily accessible. I installed everything and planted some flowers that I got at Flowercraft, and this is what my baby garden looked like...

From the top of our front stairs:

From the bottom of our front stairs:

From the other side of the yard:

From outside the front gate:

I planted a lot of little plants that I thought were nice when I was at the garden center, and some of them were not well suited to the summer conditions of our yard. The yard retains water nicely when it is wet, but becomes very dry in the summer. As soon as it started to get warm, most of the plants died (my life is also too hectic for routine watering), which was a bit discouraging so I stopped working in the garden as much.

This year, on the first nice weekend I decided to tackle the disaster that was our front yard. I weeded half the yard, took out some of the dead plants, trimmed back the others and created a little border in front of my daphnes and foxgloves. Then it rained for 2 weeks and on the next nice weekend I weeded the rest of the yard. I filled up an entire compost bin with weeds!

Here is what my mature, weeded garden looks like:

Even my little dog thinks it's a more appealing place to hang out:

Now all we just need to tackle the backyard (yes, that is our backyard down there covered in weeds):

Refreshing my window boxes

My dining room has three windows that let in lots of great light - unfortunately they face the wall of my neighbor's house. I installed two window boxes and last year planted some salvia to help improve the view. Alas, this is what they looked like this morning:


I decided to spruce them up and went to Flowercraft in search of some plants that do well in pots and grow tall enough to be seen in the windows. I left with eight armeria plants, which I potted.
Now my window boxes look like this:


And even though I just planted them, the flowers already peek above the windowsill:


The view is still a little bleak, but the flowers already make it look more cheery. Hopefully they will fill out and get a bit taller - some curtains would help too...

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.