There are sev­eral spec­tac­u­lar bush roses read­ily avail­able to us in our local nurs­eries, some are well know to the avid gar­dener, while oth­ers, to my amaze­ment, still remain unfa­mil­iar. Need­less to say, they are no sub­sti­tute for stem roses if you want cut flow­ers in the house (stem roses hold the flower longer once cut, give you much more length on a longer stem and are unlim­ited in vari­ety and color.) Bush roses on the other hand are very heavy bloomers, gen­er­ally don’t get any taller than 2’ to 3’ and require “shear­ing” rather than prun­ing in Jan­u­ary. In addi­tion to all these good traits, they gen­er­ally are pest and dis­ease free. Rust and black spot, the major trou­ble­mak­ers to roses, seem to play a lesser role with bush roses. They work won­der­fully as a showy hedge or can be incor­po­rated in plant­ing areas to com­pli­ment your exist­ing land­scape. The most impres­sive ones, and the lesser known are:

Tomora – 3’ high
Com­pact rose, with gor­geous apricot-pink-yellow flower. Shaped like deep cups in the style of the roman­tic roses of past cen­turies. Leaves have a red tinge to them which makes a stun­ning con­trast to the flower. Scented.

Gruss aus Bay­ern (Greet­ings from Bavaria)
Deep red, medium sized flow­ers. Heavy bloomer. Blooms prac­ti­cally all year round. Eas­ily grows to 3’, maybe a lit­tle taller.

Sim­plic­i­ties
White and red sim­plic­i­ties are very attrac­tive and take quite a bit of shade com­pared to other bush roses. When kept at about 2’ they are gen­er­ally quite good bloomers, not any­where as impres­sive as the (other two) above men­tioned, and fill out nicely. Left to grow any taller they tend to look rather “skin­ney”. They also come in pink and yel­low. The pink is def­i­nitely the least attrac­tive of the bunch. The yel­low is awfully good look­ing. The leaf is such a dark green, and shiny, so it com­ple­ments the yel­low won­der­fully.
In my opin­ion, these are excel­lent choices for your gar­den. All roses need full sun, light after­noon shade (later in the day) is good in the hot months. Remem­ber, good drainage is essen­tial, as with all plants, and don’t for­get to feed them through­out the grow­ing sea­son. If you mulch the soil around the base of the rose, you will help con­serve the mois­ture and keep down the weeds at the same time.

No two hill­sides are the same!
Many cus­tomers come into the nurs­ery inquir­ing about plants that would be suit­able for a hill­side. Although this is a direct ques­tion, it is not always pos­si­ble to give a direct answer if we know noth­ing about “your” hill­side. How steep is it? Is it a hill­side you can actu­ally “mean­der” through? Does it have easy access for main­te­nance? Are you look­ing out onto the hill­side from your kitchen win­dow or your main room and there­fore wish to have some­thing really eye-catching? Is it very sunny? Does it have any irri­ga­tion? Are there steps going up to the top where you can have a “look-out” bench? Etc., etc., etc….. You can under­stand how your ques­tion is not pos­si­ble to answer with­out acquir­ing a great deal of infor­ma­tion before we can make any sug­ges­tions.
Also, we don’t know what your gar­den looks like! Is it Japanese-inspired, con­tem­po­rary, or full of Cal­i­for­nia natives and grasses? Does it mat­ter if it has a “style” or would a good ground cover do? So, if you do intend to plant your hill­side or slope this year, here are some sug­ges­tions to con­sider.
AGAVES can be an excel­lent choice if that’s a look you like and will work in your exist­ing land­scape. There is a wide selec­tion of very attrac­tive vari­eties avail­able to us in Cal­i­for­nia, so shop around. Many of them spread 3’ – 5’, which cov­ers a lot of hill­side! As well as being (rel­a­tively) low main­te­nance, they require lit­tle water. So the more they spread, the fewer plants you need to buy.
GRASSES too, are excel­lent options. There are so many stun­ning grasses in Cal­i­for­nia — the selec­tion is end­less. Since they come in every color, tex­ture and height, it doesn’t take very much work to “cre­ate” a lot of inter­est with very lit­tle effort. Most grasses are “clump­ing” in their growth habit and do not spread very wide — unlike suc­cu­lents and agaves. You can, how­ever, do a com­bi­na­tion of suc­cu­lents and grasses, which can look really spec­tac­u­lar.
GROUNDCOVERS — It is impor­tant to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between ground­cov­ers that have a super­fi­cial root sys­tem, com­pared to those that are intended to “knit” the soil together. Those with a more super­fi­cial root sys­tem are good purely for “fill­ing in” between plant­i­ngs for effect, on flat ground. For a hill­side, you need a more sub­stan­tial root sys­tem that will help hold the hill­side (soil) in place. Some com­mon ground cov­ers, such as ivy, or vinca major, work very well in cer­tain loca­tions. How­ever, using peren­ni­als that work like ground cov­ers is gen­er­ally the best way to deal effec­tively, long-term, with a hill­side – and cre­ate more inter­est, too.

Charles the Gardner-It’s time to acknowl­edge a job well done.

Charles is the “old-time” gar­dener every­one would like to have tend­ing their gar­den. He is a trea­sure of the past, know­ing when to plant which bulbs where, the impor­tance of cut­ting off the dead pods on the crape myr­tle before the next bloom, and what’s ail­ing any plant just by look­ing at it.

Today the term “gar­dener” is often mis­un­der­stood and under­val­ued and I hes­i­tate some­what in describ­ing him as a gar­dener, because he is SO MUCH MORE!

Unfor­tu­nately, Charles and I don’t see each other more than 3 or 4 times a year, but I’m always informed of his com­ings and goings by the grow­ers we both pur­chase our plants from. On the occa­sions we do bump into each other, how­ever, only min­utes into our greet­ing our con­ver­sa­tion auto­mat­i­cally turns to the first bloom­ing plants in view and he will always men­tion the next tree or shrub he is look­ing for­ward to see­ing in bloom in the next upcom­ing sea­son. The last time I saw Charles was in mid March. He had just loaded his truck with an impres­sive num­ber of del­phini­ums and ranun­cu­lus for a client and was, in his words, “look­ing for­ward to plant­ing these beau­ties” that very after­noon. The plant­ing area was already pre­pared, he informed me. “The del­phini­ums”, he said, “ would be planted amongst the infor­mal spirea, yarrow and ice­berg roses”.” And the ranun­cu­lus, well,” he said, with such cer­tainty in his voice that I wouldn’t have dared to ques­tion his deci­sion, “they always look their best planted en mass in a cir­cu­lar bed of can­dytuft.” His hands all the while paint­ing out the loca­tion of each plant vari­ety – Charles talks about his plants with the same affec­tion some peo­ple talk about their grand­chil­dren!

After 30 years of gar­den­ing expe­ri­ence this Irish­man from Done­gal is in the envi­able posi­tion of choos­ing his own clients – although he has never said this directly to me – I know it to be true. He reserves 3 days of his week to main­tain sev­eral very big homes in an exclu­sive part of town and the other 3 days for land­scap­ing and plant­ing for his other clients and refer­rals. Charles says he never tires of his work because every­day, there is some­thing new to appre­ci­ate and, in his line of work, no two days are ever alike. “See­ing the new buds appear on a favorite shrub or tree,” he says, “and know­ing when you come back again in a few days time it will be in full bloom, that is a feel­ing that never gets old.”

He read­ily admits that over the years some of his plant­i­ngs have given him a lit­tle more grief than oth­ers in get­ting estab­lished, “but you need patience,” he said in his strong Irish brogue. “Patience is the one thing nature teaches you when work­ing with plant life – and say­ing a few Hail Mary’s, of course, doesn’t hurt either!”

Charles expe­ri­enced long ago the spir­i­tual bond that con­nects man and nature and this is what I meant when I said Charles is not “just” a gar­dener. He brings so much more to his work, and reaps the many rewards, too! As I left him that after­noon, I reminded myself to take heed of his good-natured advice. Her­man Hesse, the Ger­man author and poet said, “Patience is the hard­est thing in life to learn, but the most impor­tant.” I wanted to feel the same joy and won­der that Charles dis­played on see­ing the first del­phini­ums appear in the cool of Feb­ru­ary and our col­or­ful neigh­bor­ing ranun­cu­lus which remind us of the approach­ing spring in March.

I can’t wait to see the mag­no­lias in bloom!

We are all con­cerned about our water­ing habits this time of year, and so we should be (and real­iz­ing that sum­mer is just around the cor­ner with even higher water demands can cause us to worry before it even arrives), but as with all things in life, wor­ry­ing is not the solu­tion – action is!
Accord­ing to the Water Dis­trict of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia 70% of our house­hold water usage is for out­door land­scap­ing and pools. That sta­tis­tic is stag­ger­ing! With very lit­tle effort on our part we can make an astound­ing impact on our water usage, with­out feel­ing deprived or that we have to sac­ri­fice our beloved plants.
Most home­own­ers, unbe­knownst to them, usu­ally over­wa­ter! So, this is our start­ing point. Before the days over go and look at your sprin­kler sys­tem and deter­mine how much water is being used and when. Before we actu­ally start a land­scape project we check the water­ing sched­ule of the client (mainly to see if they have a pat­tern of over­wa­ter­ing) and help them to water cor­rectly, sav­ing them water and MONEY! If you feel inse­cure about under­stand­ing how the sys­tem is set up, ask your gar­dener. Many gar­den­ers are famil­iar with the sprin­kler boxes and can help you under­stand how many min­utes and how many days you have your sys­tem on. If he is unable to help, talk to your neigh­bor, you can help each other to save water and money while hav­ing a nice neigh­borly chat!
When you water is very impor­tant. You should water early in the morn­ing when it is cooler and this allows the plants to “sit” in the mois­ture (which allows the water to really reach the roots of the plants) before the heat kicks in. Water­ing at 11:00 in the morn­ing is not advis­able, it’s far too late – once sum­mer comes around the soil is already warm so the water has less of an impact on your plants and usu­ally evap­o­rates before it even hits the tar­get! You don’t need to be water­ing every­day. Obvi­ously, if your gar­den has a great deal of sun to con­tend with, you will require more water than a shade (or fil­tered light) gar­den, but water­ing every­day is not nec­es­sary. Always mulch – it is a great way to retain mois­ture in the soil and keep weeds down at the same time.
These are such minor changes, but very, very effec­tive if we all “dig-in.”