by Melody Kendall

I love my garden and spend time puttering around out there most days.  Over the years I have had some great successes and some epic failures. 

When we moved to our house we had large evergreen trees camphor (Cinnamomum camphora) and an in-ground pool–not a good combination in terms of debris in the pool. To me an evergreen tree is “ever messy,” always shedding something, leaves, berries, bark.  Because of the mess I think evergreen trees require constant maintenance year-round.  Our Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) are deciduous and only have the fall leaf drop.  True, they have seeds that get everywhere, but that, at least, has a finite event window.  Plus, I have found that pruning deciduous trees is easier for me because once the trees wind down for the winter and drop all their leaves I can see the branches and determine which ones need attention.  However, when we removed the camphor trees it was a bittersweet experience. The smell of the cut wood reminded us that we had found these trees were a wonderful natural mosquito defense system.  You can find sources that say camphor trees are effective in keeping mosquitoes at bay and that say these trees, amazingly enough, seem to work around the clock to keep those flying menaces at bay.

Volunteer Zinnia

Our garden has been blessed with multiple ‘volunteer' sunflowers and zinnias.  They are amazing plants in the ‘not needing regular water' department. Receiving little or no irrigation I have found that the zinnias still provide happy ‘pops' of color in secret garden locations and that the Sunflowers tower over everything shouting to the birds “here I am.”

One of my all-time favorite plants is the dahlia. I think that the amazing color and diversity that these unassuming tubers produce is phenomenal.  For years I have had a dedicated dahlia garden within view from my kitchen window and sprinkled throughout the entire garden for additional color.  Just viewing their multicolored display makes me happy. When we were redoing the larger portion of our backyard last year my poor dahlias were allowed to languish and decline. This year there was a dismal crop of flowers and the plants themselves were weak, many succumbing to powdery mildew early in the season. 

The volunteer sunflowers might have contributed to their decline.  When they started coming up in the dahlia beds, I just left them in place which was probably not in the best interest of the dahlias.  I think that they crowded out and purloined all the water from the dahlias.  Normally, I don't clear out the dahlia beds until later in the fall but they were looking so bad I decided to clear them out early.  When I did, I noticed that the soil, which had just been watered, was very dry and the sunflowers root systems were very robust.  In the future I will remove all volunteer sunflowers from the dahlia beds. 

In the new landscape there are three areas for vertical gardens.  None of them are performing as we'd imagined.

We took a large ceramic planter from storage and a 5ft. tall cylindrical wire cage left over from tomato growing and combined the two by setting the wire into the soil filled pot and added a drip line to create a free-standing vertical garden. We then sprinkled morning glory seeds of various colors within.  We have volunteer morning glory plants in other areas of the garden that grow in wild abandon up and over fences and shrubs. These specially planted and planned for morning glory seeds? Not much, maybe next year.

One of our new acquisitions was a dedicated garden shed that is in view of the house. We thought that having a floral display climbing the side of the shed to view while doing the dishes would mitigate the drudgery of washing up.  So, in keeping with the theme of reuse and recycle, we built a 2 ft. tall long and thin raised bed from lumber left over from another project and then installed two wrought iron trellises that we moved from another area of the garden. We had seen an amazing abutilon or flowering maple display that climbed up a wall and decided that was what we wanted.  At a local nursery we found a variegated variety with orange flowers that was a perfect fit for this area.  These plants were in 4-inch pots and, after a year, though they have doubled their size, are still not ready to move up onto the trellis.  We are going to wait to see how they do in the next year and maybe fill in with some climbing annuals until they come into their own. 

We had a blank space directly in front of the brick chimney that we thought would make a great vertical garden.  Our vision was to have flowers climbing the bricks in a profusion of color. A friend and I made a trip to a Berkely metal reclamation location that I'd heard about that resulted in my purchase of a large metal gate.  Fortunately we had brought my friend's truck because this new acquisition was not only unwieldy but heavy, to boot. My Husband and I placed a 2x4 galvanized stock trough directly in front of the brick wall and put the gate inside angled to rest on the brick chimney.  We then filled the bottom of the trough with rocks left over from other landscaping projects to stabilize the gate.  Soil was added and a drip line installed and we were ready to go.  Our choice of a climbing plant was the Purple Queen® bougainvillea Bougainvillea ‘Moneth'.  We were advised against planting Bougainvillea in our climate zone multiple times with substantiating information and still we persisted.  Currently the chimney is bare and the bougainvillea has been moved to the ‘time out' section of the garden.  We are researching possible replacement plants at the writing of this article.

I mentioned the ‘time out' section of the garden.  Historically, if we had any plant that didn't seem to thrive and flourish in its current location we have moved it to a location that is tucked behind our potting area.  This area is our plant hospital, if you will.  It gets enough sun, has irrigation and the soil is amended and kept viable on a regular basis.  All the plants here are given a little extra TLC.  We try to discover what went wrong in the previous placement, if they are sick or just underachievers.  Each plant is babied along until it either recovers and then is placed somewhere in the larger landscape or it doesn't and is sent on to the great compost pile in the sky. 

As I said, I love puttering in my garden.  I find that just about every day I find something new and engaging to explore.  Plus, I just got back from my annual physical exam and my blood pressure, heart rate and lungs are in tip top shape.  I attribute this largely to all those wonderful hours just plain having fun in the garden and in the amazing world Mother Nature provides us. So, put on your mudders, gloves and hat and make your own garden adventure. 

Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Mel Kendall

Information links:

UC ANR

Camphor tree

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/camphor.html

Mosquito repellent

https://healthytalbot.org/topics/20-simple-ways-to-get-rid-of-mosquitoes/

Maple

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/maple.html

Dahlia Society of California

https://sanfranciscoparksalliance.org/dahlia-society-of-california/?gclid=CjwKCAjw7fuJBhBdEiwA2lLMYWfRKmaY4G-Pl2pQojFrNC7yDVbxSTtlvBDA-3ssRTKBSpd7Hr--qxoCOgEQAvD_BwE

UCIPM Powdery mildew

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/QT/powderymildewcard.html

Zinnia

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/FLOWERS/zinnia.html

Sunflower

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/FLOWERS/sunflower.html

Bougainvillea

https://www.monrovia.com/purple-queen-bougainvillea.html

UC IPM-Abutilon

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/abutilon.html