Potted Shrub Roses for Instant Color

When designing a monochromatic space, there are many considerations to keep in mind to ensure that the room looks as elevated and sophisticated as possible, and we asked designers to share their top tips.

Kathy Sandel has shared her gardens with us before (More of Kathy’s Calabasas Garden, Kathy’s Garden Transformation in Sacramento), but today she’s sharing the garden she created for her daughter in Sacramento, California.

While many of us think of trees as super-tall giants or stand-alone specimen plants, we also know that most trees naturally grow in forests and that forests aren’t all made up only of tall trees. There are trees that mature at different levels, and certain trees prefer growing in the dappled light of their taller neighbors. We call these understory trees, and there are many that work well in our home gardens, adding interesting forms and structures, colorful blooms, or intriguing foliage. They also can provide food and shelter for wildlife. The following trees and shrubs all take full sun to partial shade. So if you’ve got some dappled shade under a tall canopy of trees, consider one of these excellent options.

In his classic book Mormon Country, author Wallace Stegner noted that nineteenth century Mormons planted rows of Lombardy poplar trees wherever they established settlements in the territory that is now Utah. The trees served as windbreaks and boundary markers, but they were also the flags that marked the advance of Mormon civilization in a hostile territory. In my hometown and lots of other towns all over the United States elm trees served a similar function, marking the spread of middle class residential neighborhoods during the end of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth centuries. In the 1960’s almost all of those tall elegant trees fell prey to Dutch Elm Disease, making each municipality a little poorer.

I have given up indoor seed starting completely on several occasions. The first time it happened I was a novice gardener. I had ordered seeds of just about every plant that I saw in the garden catalogs without thinking about such practical things as gallons of potting soil, hours of daily watering, and square feet of windowsill space. It also did not occur to me to determine whether or not I had room in my garden for even a fraction of my seedlings. My chaotic efforts eventually produced some wonderful plants, but the process was so exhausting that I said: “Never again.”

How to Grow and Care for Crown of Thorns Euphorbia milii

Today I went out my back door and noticed that one of my rosebushes was, unexpectedly, sporting a fresh new flower bud.  It was within a day or so of opening up–small, greenish and obviously defiant of the season.  The bud was an oddity on a rosebush that is itself an oddity.  When I bought the small white-flowered shrub last summer it had one blossom that was half white and half red, and looked as if it had been half-dipped in red paint.  Though my February bud was not a “half and half” flower, I took its appearance as a harbinger of spring, plucked it, and delivered it to a friend who shares my belief in such things.

Valentine’s Day has just passed, and if you were lucky, someone you love gave you roses to celebrate the occasion. All the romance and fragrance in the air bring to mind one of history’s great love stories-that of Napoleon and Josephine. Naturally the whole tale is full of roses.

TRY NATIVE SHRUBS IN YOUR LANDSCAPE

This is not to say that I have no other roses in my garden. Life would not be complete without a few good reds, a generous handful of peach-tinted varieties and a sprinkling of whites. This year we may acquire one or two striped roses, and I have a feeling that they may prove addictive. However, for the moment, the yellow roses hold sway in my heart.

Hardy perennial and annual plants of varying heights which bloom in June and July chiefly; the original species or wild types from which the modern beautiful varieties are descended are natives of California, Siberia, Syria, India and other countries. Delphinium Ajacis, originally from eastern Europe is one of the plants from which the annual Larkspurs have been raised. Delphinium belongs to the Buttercup family, Ranunculaceae. The name is an old Greek one.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN