Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary are very impor­tant months for your gar­den. This is when you do a detailed clean-up through­out the entire gar­den. Don’t do it in early spring because you will be cut­ting of all the new growth and with it, new buds/flowers. It is essen­tial that you do a yearly clean-up, this will not only keep your plant life healthy and look­ing great all year round, it will also min­i­mize mildew, rust, black spot, and any other “pest” from tak­ing hold and destroy­ing your plants. It will also elim­i­nate the need to spray!

So, to learn more on how to main­tain your gar­den and keep every­thing healthy, email your reg­is­tra­tion to stellabinns@gmail.com

It is a lit­tle over 5 years now since I first laid eyes on Lulu. Lit­tle did I know at the time how this encounter would play out, but let me start at the begin­ning and tell you how this all came about.

My day started like most other days, head­ing out early to visit some of the local grow­ers and pur­chas­ing plants and trees that I needed for both Bar­ris­ters nurs­ery and my land­scape clients. It was almost lunchtime and I found myself once again in San Gabriel head­ing back to South Pasadena. As I turned off a small side street onto San Gabriel Blvd I noticed a young man, about a block away, bend­ing over this lit­tle dog, which, even at that dis­tance, appeared to be under­nour­ished and in dis­tress. I knew some­thing was wrong. Slow­ing to a stop I rolled down the win­dow, but before I could inquire about the sit­u­a­tion, the young man blurted out, ” Please, help me!” He, as I learned later, was one of the many vis­it­ing Japan­ese stu­dents work­ing at a local nurs­ery that come to Cal­i­for­nia to learn about native plants. His knowl­edge of Eng­lish was lim­ited, and how to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion, not being famil­iar with his sur­round­ings or know­ing where to take a stray ani­mal in need, was no doubt upset­ting to him. Appar­ently, I was the first per­son to stop, so I’m sure he thought I was going to be the solu­tion to the prob­lem – well, he was right. The only thought twirling around in my head, was, oh, no, I don’t want another dog!

Loos­ing Molly was so painful that I decided I would never put myself through that again

She was in bad shape. Her coat was so dirty and mat­ted you couldn’t even see her face. Real­iz­ing the young man could help no fur­ther, I threw a towel over her and took her to the local Humane Soci­ety, which was only one block away. My first thought was, some­body is prob­a­bly look­ing for her and they would most likely inquire at their local H.S. first. So, that is where I took her. (Of course, at the time I didn’t know she was a she, that all came later.) Deep down I knew I was not ready for another dog, but the moment I entered the office of the Humane Soci­ety, I started to regret my deci­sion – although it was the right thing to do, I felt I was let­ting her down.

My aver­sion to hav­ing (another) dog was based purely on the heart break­ing expe­ri­ence I had had in loos­ing both my dal­ma­tions a year ear­lier. I was very for­tu­nate to have had them as long as I did, Boris was 12 and Molly almost 11 when they died – old age just caught up with them. As much as I loved Boris, Molly was the heart breaker of the two. To all you dog (pet) lovers out there, you under­stand exactly what I mean when I talk about hav­ing that one, spe­cial dog in your life that is totally in tune with you. Loos­ing Molly was so painful that I decided I would never put myself through that again. Well, that was about to all change!

At the time, I don’t know if it has changed since, the H. S. required a 6 day hold on the dog, and if no owner showed up, I would be able to adopt her. Need­less to say, I went to see her every one of those six days (and, to my amaze­ment, she seemed to rec­og­nize me on my first visit.) As luck would have it, nobody came to claim her, so I took Lulu home – that is, a visit to the vets first to make sure she was healthy and then to the groomers, then home.

Every­body loves Lulu! I’m told con­stantly, how lucky I am to have found her, although I think she really found me! And, there are some days that I think Molly actu­ally came back!

At some point in your life you may want, or need, to put in a hedge in your gar­den. Hedge plants can serve you in many dif­fer­ent ways. So, before you run out to your local nurs­ery and spend a small for­tune on some­thing that looks “pretty”, it’s impor­tant to ask your­self what it is you want to accom­plish with these new plant­i­ngs. Do you want to cover an unsightly fence? Block out neigh­bors?  Or is it just that you want to cre­ate some inter­est along the perime­ter of your prop­erty? Because we have so many good choices avail­able to us in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, you need to know, before mak­ing the wrong choice, that all hedges are not cre­ated equal.

I would like to sug­gest some hedge plants that I use fre­quently in my land­scape projects and con­sider them to be amongst the best there is for hedge plant­ing. Pro­vide them with water, sun­light and the occa­sional feed­ing and they will per­form very well for you.

Privet – Car­olina cherry (not on dri­ve­ways because of berries) – pho­tinia – dodon­aea – (hop bush, hopseed bush.) – sweet olive. (All ever­green, require lit­tle work, give height and density.)

(The above men­tioned) are ever­green hedge plants that require lit­tle work other than the occa­sional trim­ming. I started off by say­ing make sure you know what it is you want this hedge to do for you. Well, I sug­gested these three first because, if your want­ing to cover an ugly wall or old fence, or even cre­ate a hedge that sep­a­rates you from your next door neigh­bor, these plant choices are ideal for you. If your new hedge has to per­form a func­tion, namely cover or hide an unsightly spot in the gar­den, you have to be prac­ti­cal and choose what works and not what “looks pretty”. In addi­tion to these, you have many more to choose from that will ful­fill the same task, but may posses other fea­tures that require a lit­tle more attention.

Some peo­ple are drawn to hedge plants with “lit­tle flow­ers” – keep in mind, whichever “flow­er­ing” hedge you decide on, the gar­dener, just in the course of main­tain­ing the hedge, will shear the flow­ers off sev­eral times a year, and you will be left with (a few) flow­ers peek­ing through at the very top of the plant.
If you’re sold on the idea of a flow­er­ing hedge, there are plenty of choices out there. Some other com­mon (tall grow­ing) plants that will work well as hedge plants;

Ole­an­der – pyra­can­tha – bot­tle­brush -  hibis­cus – camel­lia – holly – broom – pittosporum……………..

For those who would like to plant a short hedge, we’ll talk about that next time!

Some­times it only takes a (small) tree or a clus­ter of three or four peren­nial shrubs to trans­form a dull area in your gar­den. Home­own­ers often think they have to pull out all the exist­ing plant­i­ngs to “cre­ate” some­thing inter­est­ing as there is too much green and not enough color. If this is your dilemma, try incor­po­rat­ing a red leafed tree (or shrubs) to cre­ate a con­trast against all that green you are weary of look­ing at. Some of the tree sug­ges­tions are:

CERCIS canaden­sis (East­ern Red­bud) “For­est Pansy” – val­ued for both flower and foliage (red/purple). Clus­ters of rosy pink flow­ers appear in spring – very showy. A dou­ble bonus if it’s fall color. Fil­tered light. Ele­gant, grows to about 25.’ Very easy to prune.

JAPANESE MAPLE palma­tum – red leaf. There is no such thing as a “bad” Japan­ese maple, the selec­tion is end­less. Slow grower to about 25’. Requires fil­tered light and offers inter­est all year round. Stun­ning fall color. Requires very lit­tle main­te­nance. Light trim­ming to shape.

COTINUS cog­gi­gria – (Smoke Tree) – another one that likes fil­tered light. Grows to 20’. Strik­ing red foliage (decid­u­ous) with “puffs” of white flow­ers that look like smoke when in full bloom. Very easy to main­tain. Light prun­ing to shape.

PRUNUS – Pur­ple plum – gets big­ger and fuller than the oth­ers men­tioned. Makes an impres­sive show in spring with its’ gor­geous dis­play of pink flow­ers and con­tin­ues to impress through­out the year with its’ (red/purple) foliage. This tree will “light up” any cor­ner in your gar­den. Full sun. Mod­er­ate to fast grower. 25’ – 30’.Shrubs with red leaves are just as strik­ing (espe­cially against green) and will give you the “pop” you need to cre­ate interest.

BERBERIS thun­bergii (Japan­ese Bar­berry) “Crim­son Pygmy”– grows 2’ to 3’, some vari­eties grow much taller. Beau­ti­ful red leaves, turn­ing bronze/gold in the fall. Decid­u­ous. Sun to light shade.

PHORMIUM tenax (New Zealand Flax) – bold, sword-like leaves with very strik­ing col­ors. Vari­eties vary in size, some can get as tall as 6’ – which you want if you are hop­ing to make an area really stand out in your gar­den. Require lit­tle water. “Dusky Chief” to 6”, Pink Stripe” to 5’. Sun to light shade.

Other red leafed foliage shrubs/small trees can be found in the cherry, dodonea, leu­ca­den­dron and euphor­bia families.