new year, old start

It’s a new year, and I’m starting it off by returning to the old. I’m back in Albuquerque after four months of living in California, back to my house which (fortunately) didn’t sell and back to my old job. It’s like I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical. I’m home now. I feel great.

The Sandia mountains this weekend:

I’ve been asked by everyone why I have returned to Albuquerque.  It’s been something that’s been especially questioned by my gardening friends, who know my dream of growing a Mediterranean style garden, and who know that I grew up in Northern California, and longed to return. It’s true that just about anything can be grown in that area. The Ruth Bancroft garden is there in Walnut Creek, a garden which proudly exhibits succulents from widely varying climates. The San Francisco Arboretum has plants from cloud forests, to South African Aloes, to Australian Banksia, and desert cacti, euphorbias and agave. For my goals, olive trees can be grown alongside apple tress and lemons, artichokes and arugula. To be short, I was surprised to find that the area didn’t suit me. I would love gardening there, but not living there. And frankly, I couldn’t afford a house that had a garden of the size that I desired, so that although just about anything could be grown there, it would be grown by people other than myself. Still, I have no regrets about my (expensive) moves. I settled a lot of issues: mended fences, made paths, planted trees, irrigated and fertilized, and most importantly, weeded (metaphorically speaking), in that short time. My sister said that I would return to Albuquerque "with my tail between my legs." I beg to differ. I don't feel that way at all. I accomplished what I set out to do, even if the outcome was different than what I expected.

View from Mt. Diablo, Danville, California:

 

    Living there made me notice the differences in gardening. I came to realize that like everything else, the qualities of gardening in any place has pros and cons. These are knives that cut both ways. I don’t think you can strictly say that California gardening=good and Albuquerque gardening=bad. It’s all a matter of perspective, and I choose to take the view that gardening is great just about anywhere.

View from hiking trail by the Tram:

Yes, you can grow just about anything in the Bay Area climate and soils. Great! The plants know this too, and self seed with abandon. I realized this when I noticed that the Canary Island Palm that I so admired, was sprouting just about everywhere, in cracks in the sidewalk, next to telephone poles, underneath shrubs. This massive palm is spiny and difficult to remove. Weeding is a much larger chore.

View of Danville foothills which my niece said looks like sand dunes (smart kid, probably were formed by water):

When there is a huge plant palette, it seems that the design decisions and plant combinations become exponentially worse. There are many more choices, so there are many more bad choices. People still top trees. They plant things that grow huge in small spaces (e.g. that cute ficus tree from the supermarket in a sidewalk space grows into an 80 foot tree with surface roots). They shear things into horrible poodles (I’m remembering a row of sidewalk olive trees that were cut to 3 feet and the side sprouts sheared as a little ruff or hedge a foot or so below the stump). The huge plant palette also means that it can turn into a huge mess. In school, something that one instructor was very insistent upon, was a limited plant palette. It simply makes for a clearer, better design. The Bay Area hasn't listened to this lesson. As a whole, this area is more like a cottage garden. It is not necessarily a bad thing (given that's what my garden essentially is), but it was interesting to me to feel exhausted by the suburban landscape. The native landscape is restful, but the planted landscape of the Bay Area is like being in a cocktail party where everyone is yelling. ALL! THE! TIME! In Albuquerque, the plant palette is limited and the imports that survive here have much of the same adaptations to survival as the native plants, so that they look similar. Thus the landscape has a homogeneous appearance throughout, which I find restful (others would say “boring”).

ABQ mountain mahogany (C. breviflorus?) :

 

Mountain mahogany at the Ruth Bancroft garden (C. betuloides?):

 
    It’s interesting for me to notice that the planted landscape and its immense variety of plants and year-round bloom is completely different from the native landscape. The grasses and oaks that make the most visual impact in the “wild” areas around here don’t have showy flowers. The Mediterranean climate here means summer drought, and the native plants mostly don’t bloom in the summer. Summer colors of olive green and brown are similar to that of Albuquerque, although that comparison is limited since the grasses on California hillsides are Mediterranean imports (annuals brown in the summer) that have crowded out the native grasses (evergreen), not to mention that the brown in Albuquerque is largely earth. The flower color in the Bay Area comes almost entirely from imports (ceanothus is a notable exception). The fall color comes exclusively from exotics: Liquidambar and maples from the east coast, Chinese pistache, Crepe myrtle.

Ruth Bancroft agaves and yucca:

I’m also noticing that although it seems that just about anything will grow in the Bay Area, there is a big gap. That gap is many of the plants that I see in Albuquerque. I thought that was very strange. Although Perovskia grows, it is straggly, and blooms are rather sparse. Desert willow grows here, and grows quite well, but then again Desert willow is at its northern limit in Albuquerque. Small cacti are non-existent here. The only opuntia grown seems to be O. ficus indica. The only agave that I see is the enormous Agave americana, which is miserable in Albuquerque winters. Caryopteris is non-existent, as are ornamental grasses (except the ubiquitous phormium, which I happen to love, or that nasty invasive Cortaderia jubata). I don’t see any Gaillardia. Agastache is completely non-existent. The only yucca that I see here is the subtropical Y. elephantipes. In fact, nearly the entire Plants of the Southwest catalog is not represented here. Tree junipers such as J. scopulorum or ground-cover junipers are entirely absent here except for some terrific Hollywood junipers (Juniperus chinensis ‘Torulosa’), but overgrown shrubby junipers are common.  There are unkempt gardens in any city. Just as in Albuquerque, people in the Bay Area plant things that barely live in the climate, and look like it.

Ruth Bancroft Desert Willow (Chilopis linearis):

As exceptions to the gap, I’m surprised at the frequency with which I see Gaura lindheimeri, even if it is smaller than the ones I see in ABQ. I’m always surprised to see Salvia greggii, which is also scraggly looking, but probably because it is always in a mixed planting with lots of other things shading it. It blooms year-round though. The penstemon here are lush and blooming even now in the middle of winter, although they are the hybrid garden penstemon and not the delicate species. There certainly is no evidence of the Penstemon palmeri, or Penstemon clutei which do so well in Albuquerque.

Ruth Bancroft yucca (faxoniana?) and Pinus monophylla (pinyon pine):

I’m always intrigued by the plants grown in the Bay Area that are also in Albuquerque. My knee jerk reaction is “why?” When there are a gazillion other options? It’s funny to see the pyracantha, evergreen Euonymus japonicus, Cotoneaster lacteus (although the one growing in the canopy of the canary island palm as an epiphyte was remarkable).

 Ruth Bancroft Opuntia (not nearly as tasty looking as those in ABQ):

I find it interesting also, the levels of interest in the landscape here in Albuquerque. From a distance, there is the remarkable contrast between sky and land, the primary colors and the soft clouds against jagged mountains. Closer, there is the contrast between soft mountain mahogany plumes and the sculptural yucca and opuntia. Closer yet, there are the surprising textures, and intricate delicate flowers and details. I suppose those things exist in the California landscape, I just didn't care to appreciate those things there. Also the same plants such as junipers have different summer and winter appearance in Albuquerque, but in California, they look the same, summer and winter.


Elena Gallegos:

Maybe this is a bit of sour grapes, as I remember the luscious looking Strelitzia planted across from the post office where I lived in California, or the trees full of Meyer lemons. Particularly so given the single digit temperatures this weekend, whereas my sister is complaining about the rain. But my point is that despite the gardening benefits of the Northern California climate, other places have their qualities that can’t be matched here.  Those limitations are what makes the character of a place, just as the exuberance of plant species planted in the Bay Area has become its character. The lesson, it seems, is to be appreciate where you are (and although it is a bit boring that it seems to be the same lessons, perhaps it is comforting that there are not a whole lot more...).

I’m also thinking that if anyone is up to the challenge of a difficult gardening climate, that person would be me.