October 2017 Favorites

This week's heatwave has tried my patience and once again made it difficult for me to look at my garden without a jaundiced eye.  Nonetheless, I found plants that stood out and I'm joining Loree of danger garden once again to celebrate this month's favorites.

The first are the 2 tardy bloomers I mentioned in my October Bloom Day post.  Mid-month they were showing only a handful of blooms but, despite this week's miserable heatwave, both are now blanketed with flowers.

Barleria obtusa, aka bush violet, is a low-water shrub native to South Africa.  I picked up 2 in 1-gallon pots in 2014 at my local botanic garden's fall plant sale.  The one in the middle photo sits in a bed next to the fountain in the back garden, where it has plenty of room to stretch out.  The one in the photo on the right is squeezed into a space between 2 other shrubs in the backyard border, where despite pruning it threatens to swamp its neighbors.  It grows about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide.  Its evergreen foliage is attractive all year.  I was told that the parent plant blooms off and on year-round but mine have only bloomed in the fall.  It self-seeds readily but the plants are easy to pull out and transplant if desired. 

I planted this Senna bicapsularis 'Worley's Butter Cream', aka Winter or Christmas Cassia, in December 2011, unfortunately deciding to squeeze into a narrow spot between the fence at the northern boundary of our property and the cement stairway leading down to our back slope.  It'd probably look better grown in a tree-like form as its lower branches are bare of leaves.  The summery flowers arrive each October here.  It's a host plant for the cloudless sulphur butterfly and attracts them in large numbers every year.

This month I can't ignore the large-flowered Grevilleas.  These plants are true garden workhorses.

All 3 of the large-flowered Grevilleas are blooming but I've only shown 'Superb' (left) and 'Peaches & Cream' (right) here.  'Peaches & Cream' and 'Ned Kelly' (not shown) bloom at regular intervals throughout the year but 'Superb' blooms continuously all year, at least in the case of this mature specimen I planted from a 1-gallon container in 2013.

Another workhorse, Lantana camara 'Lucky White', also deserves a shout-out.

Lantana is often dismissed in the same way that Agapanthus is here, where both plants are common, but you can't beat it for handling hot and dry conditions.  The butterflies love it too.

When the heat is on, you can't help but admire the succulents in the garden.  They don't shrivel under the intense sun and near-zero humidity.

The 3 Agave americana var medio-picta 'Alba' shown on the left were given to me 2 years ago as pups by Hoover Boo of Piece of Eden.  I understand that they're the dwarf variety.   (HB, please tell me if my recollection is accurate.  If it's not, I need to move them further apart!)  I've tried planting the area between them with a couple of different groundcovers and, as the last selection, Lessingia 'Silver Carpet', is disappointing, I'll be looking for another soon.

There are other plants that stand up to the heat too.

This is one of the smaller Leucadendrons, L. salignum 'Summer Red'.  This one has been in place for a year now.  It's looked good since the time it was planted.  I have 2 more of these plants elsewhere in the garden, as well as 2 'Winter Red', which are substantially similar except for the time of year they get their "red" on.  They're all neat, compact, drought-tolerant plants.

This is a 2-fer listing as I couldn't show one plant without referencing its companion.  The Phormium is 'Ed Carman', which I picked up at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria in March 2015.  It's fared well in partial shade despite encroachment by Aeonium arboreum on one side and Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt' on another side.  The Aeoniums are finally coming out of their summer dormancy.  These, in partial shade, look pretty good all year but even they flesh out when the nighttime temperatures drop in the fall.  Some of those rosettes are as big as my head.

I've also got a couple of unusual flowering plants to share.

This is Asclepias cancellata, aka wild cotton, a South African milkweed.  It's reported to be perennial in my climate.  I planted it in July 2016 and this is the first time it's flowered.  It's supposed to be a host plant for Monarch butterflies but, thus far, I've only seen a crab spider (hidden in one of the blooms in the photo on the left) and bees visiting it.

This is Lotus jacobaeus.  Frankly, I was worried about whether it would survive the summer when I planted it in this pot in July but it's handled our rolling heatwaves well.  The tiny, almost-black flowers are hard to photograph, especially under Santa Ana wind conditions, but I persevered.

I'll close with plants belonging to a next door neighbor but readily visible from my garden.

The red Bougainvillea on the left peeks over the hedge that lines the back of the backyard border, atop a steep slope.  It literally glows in the early morning sunlight but my photo doesn't capture that.  A mix of pink and orange Bougainvillea spilling over an arbor in the same neighbor's garden (right) can be seen from the stairway down our back slope.  The peach tree on the lower left and the ivy mess on the lower right is part of our property.  We've got a single Bougainvillea on our property but it's small and unobtrusive, which is fortunate as my husband hates these plants.  He calls them "evil," a term I reserve for serial killers and certain politicians.  At least I can enjoy them in our neighbor's garden.

Visit Loree at danger garden to see what favorites she and other gardeners are flaunting this month.


All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party