help

NOTE: I will probably have to update this entry to make it coherent or something. Believe it or not, I took this picture with a flash in the middle of the night to attenuate the squalor. This is my front yard. It has suffered for many years while I directed my attentions to the back yard, and then to my children. But the time has come to fix it, and I need your help.

For various reasons, an olive tree is going to be the main feature. I might even be crazy enough to plant a fruiting variety, and make my kids cure olives for me when they get older. Four is good age to start working with lye, right?

Around this olive I wish to plant a kind of mini-garrigue, mostly of subshrubs and annuals. The plantings will be artificially dense in a vain attempt to suppress the weeds, and require no summer water. Thus: mediterranean-climate plants. It would be nice if it looked "good" in a front yard kind of way year-round.

I want a limited color palette of blues, whites and yellows, though lavender will be involved, by decree from on high (my wife) -- I will probably stick with L. x intermedia cvv. I'm also into Eriogonum latifolium and E. umbellatum; Penstemon heterophyllus and maybe palmeri. Sisyrinchiums. Salvia chamaedryoides, open to suggestions for California natives. For annuals, I'm looking at the usual suspects from Larner Seeds.

A spiky Phormium would be so sweet in here! Sorry, no: mediterranean only, dude. I'm considering (Hespero)Yucca whipplei or various Aloes or even Watsonias. Nothing too sharp: I don't want my kids to lose an eye (I've got a Puya out back for that purpose). However, anything to discourage the cats from shitting therein is a plus.

So what should I plant? Something I HAVE TO TRY? Something I listed a boondoggle? Crowdsource my yard!* Before you jump in, consider these limitations:

• approx. 17x15"
• north-facing: FULL sun all summer, total shade all winter
• soil is clay, but with decent drainage
• this is Oakland, CA coastal sage scrub, zone 10A (alleged)/Sunset 17

*ironic. but srsly., please help!

The grass is actually browner

Gardeners always imagine that some other place is better. "One (or ten) zones warmer and I could grow x..." I grew up in zone 6 (in a good year), so I very much understand the impulse, even though I never paid much attention to gardening there.

But even here, there is always a plant that makes you wish you lived somewhere else. Many tropicals make me dream of Hawai'i; more frequently, I hesitate over plants that are a little too marginal here, and think: if only we lived in Santa Barbara, or San Diego... but this last week has reminded us what the drawbacks are.

Of course, we must pay for the "idyllic" climate. We get a bit more rainfall than SD here, and the winds are a little less dramatic, so our burn cycle is every hundred years, not every ten. But make no mistake: what just happened there will happen here; we're overdue. This is not something that can be controlled by human intervention.

This is not photoshopped

South Escondido Boulevard by prgibbs

On a shorter cycle, try to imagine 6 months without rain. In a good year. Last year we got about 12 inches, total, spread over 6 months. Less than average, but not "abnormal." This is not a drought, it's a Mediterranean climate, which also specifies that the rain disappears in summer, when plants need it most. Fly into to SFO -- or any major airport in California -- from May to October, and you will see how brown the grass is on the outher side.

So yes, we can grow many plants here that would not survive in the northeast, either because of our mild winter, or because of our dry summers. We can also grow many of the plants that do well on the east coast if we water the hell out of them all summer. This is just as unnatural (and presumably, equally pleasurable) as growing exotics in a greenhouse, though most people don't realize this yet.

But they will. The latest Pacific Horticulture (they have a shiny new website) brings word of a drought in Adelaide so sever that there is no watering of the yard, period. It won't be long until this happens in San Diego. This news helped me to appreciate the philosophy of one extreme gardener in Colorado who reported heavy losses to an email list recently because he doesn't water his garden:

The only way you can determine what's drought tolerant in your garden is not to water it during drought. I understand that this is a radical statement that makes some people go completely crazy, but I think it's true. In 2002 we had one inch of precipitation in eleven months. I did nothing, and lots of plants died.

I'm not smart enough to garden like this yet, but soon I'll have to.

*

I should mention one decidedly less catastrophic limitation of gardening here that is seldom appreciated by outsiders: chill hours. It does not get cold enough to grow, among other things, lilac, peonies, and many fruit trees. Conversely, at least where I live, thank god, it doesn't really get hot either, which a whole other class of plants find unpleasant... all I can think of right now are tomatoes and gardenia. I know this seems like a small price to pay -- boo hoo, your gardenia is chlorotic! -- but the limitations are exactly analogous to wherever you live. Just, perhaps, less oppressive, until the fire comes.