Wide Shots - April 2018

For a week now, we've been greeted by fog and low clouds each morning.  Most days, it hasn't even cleared by late afternoon.  However, the conditions did make it a bit easier to take photos for this quarter's wide shots post.  Just don't expect to see many sunny skies or clear views of the ocean or the Los Angeles Harbor.

I'll start as I usually do with the back garden and work my way in a roughly clockwise route around the house.

Back view looking out in the direction of Angel's Gate, the entrance to the Los Angles Harbor.  The "ever-purple" Ageratum corymbosum (right) has just begun its annual bloom cycle and the "dwarf" Echium webii (left of the fountain) is producing bloom stalks.

View from the south end of the back garden looking north toward the patio and the still leafless mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin)

View from the patio looking toward the garden area on the north side of the house.  The Mexican tulip poppies (Hunnemannia fumarifolia, right foreground) are luminescent.

View looking south.  The plugs of creeping thyme (Thymus serphyllum 'Elfin') I planted around the flagstones in late November after we re-leveled the path have been slow to fill out.  Some plants in the border are now "caged" to protect them from the bunnies that recently made their presence known in the garden.

The path in the last photo takes us to the garden area on the south side of the house.

Succulents take up most of the area to the left of the path.  The bed on the right, currently lit up by the red flowers of Lotus berthelotii 'Amazon Sunset',  borders a small patio off the south side of the house.  The lath (shade) house in the distance sits at a lower level of the garden, reached by a path that swings down a moderate slope to the left of the arbor.

View from behind the succulent bed looking toward the backyard border.  The mass of green below the peppermint willow (Agonis flexuosa) on the right is Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt'.  You can see even more of the 'Amazon Sunset' Lotus on the left, punctuated by a few yellow blooms of Leucospermum 'Goldie'.

This is another view of the south-side garden looking east.  I still haven't cut back the clumps of Pennisetum 'Fireworks' visible on the right above the cement block retaining wall.  However, I cut back the Clematis paniculata that grew up the arbor in February.

If we continue on this level moving clockwise, we can see the front garden.

This photo was taken on the south end of the front garden looking north toward our garage.  There are 2 more clumps of Acacia 'Cousin Itt' in the foreground.

If instead of walking north we shift southwest, we look down into the lower-level area bordering the street on the west side.

The lath (shade) house my husband built for me sits in the corner of our lot on the southwest side.  I installed a path and plants behind the structure since January's wide shots post.

I also replaced the stone stepping stones that formerly bisected the area in front of the lath house with bark mulch

The street-facing succulent bed lies just beyond the lath house.

The rain in March helped the succulents flesh out but the ice plant ground cover isn't blooming yet.  The Xylosma congestum shrubs we planted in Spring 2016 are finally gaining size but it's going to be years before they close the gap in the hedge.  Meanwhile, another of the Auranticarpa rhombifolium shrubs which make up the right end of the hedge appears to be on the decline.

Moving back behind the street-side succulent bed, a narrow path runs behind the intact section of the Xylosma hedge toward the driveway at the front of the house.

The Aeonium arboreum that covers much of the west-facing front slope in this area is looking better after March's rainstorms

This photo shows the view of the west slope looking back to the south east.  Critters of some kind (I suspect skunks) have been digging up the area in the left foreground at least weekly but most of the bulbs I planted there still managed to bloom.  The Echium candicans 'Star of Madeira' in the background is beginning to develop bloom spikes.

Standing in the driveway provides a view of the front of the house.

I managed to get a photo of the house's face with a blue sky background late yesterday afternoon.  My only concern with the front garden is that the Leptospermum 'Copper Glow' shrubs on either side of the path to the front door have gotten very tall.  I'm thinking of taking a couple feet off the top of each one.

If we turn in the opposite direction, we see the garden area occupying the space between the garage and the street on the northwest side behind another section of Xylosma hedge.

This photo was taken at the same time as the last one, under a partially sunny sky.  We removed our last section of lawn from this area in January 2016 and I replanted it over several months later that year.   I'm still not entirely happy with it.  I may pull the sea lavender (Limonium perezii) in the foreground and replace it with more Moroccan daisies (Pyrethropsis hosmarianse), which look good in and out of bloom.  I like the purple Osteospermum and Polygala in the mid-section of the area but some of the other plants could stand to be swapped out.

This succulent bed sits on the northwest end of the area shown in the prior photo.  I renovated it last September and I'm pleased that it continues to fill in nicely.

Back in the driveway, I took a photo of the main area of the front garden looking back toward the south.  This is the only area for which I have a fairly decent "before" photo showing the change in the front garden's appearance since we took possession of the property.

The photo on the left was taken yesterday.  The photo on the right was taken by my brother in December 2011, one year after we moved in.

Turning back to the north, we move into the cutting garden on the other side of the garage.

With the exception of the sweet peas, which I think the bunnies nibbled to nubs, most of the seeds and plugs I planted this fall have finally begun to bloom.  However, as it's already time to get my dahlias started, I've got a space problem.  My husband and I picked up 2 half-barrels (foreground) to hold some of the dahlias.

Two half-barrels didn't provide anything near the space I needed for my dinner-plate dahlias so I planted other tubers in large plastic pots, which you can see in this view of the cutting garden.  This should give the plants a good start while I wait for space to free up in the raised planters.

We've almost completed the tour!  The next stop is a garden area on the northeast side of the house.

The Allium I planted here are coming up and the Osteospermum I added in February seem happy but most of the red and blue flax (Linum) seeds I sowed failed to sprout.  I relied too much on rain that didn't come to help them germinate

The path shown in the prior photo leads down to the back slope.  The fig tree (left foreground) produced its first leaves this week.  The peach tree in the background (to the right of the lemon tree) has yet to produce any flowers or leaves.  All the artichokes are doing well, though.

The Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Silver Magic' here mark the property line between us and our neighbors to the south.  Last year at this time, calla lilies and California poppies were in full bloom in this area.  This year, the calla lilies are small and just now sporting their first blooms and I found only one poppy plant, not yet in bloom.  On the positive side, Ceanothus arboreus 'Cliff Schmidt' is doing well, although it's still smaller than the Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri) behind it even though I cut that back in January.  I look forward to the day the Ceanothus reaches tree height.

This is the view from the bottom of the slope looking back up the cement stairway.  The slope has very little color at this point.  Centranthus ruber (foreground, lower right) is just producing it's first blooms, as is Carpenteria californica.  The upper portion of the slope is still hideous but I've made a tentative start in cutting back the dead sections of ivy and honeysuckle.  That bare patch above the cement stairs is approximately 5 feet long and 4 feet wide.  It isn't easy work and I'm not sure how high up I can go without either crawling up there or risking a serious fall.  It's steep!  In any case, I stopped when the rains came in March, not wishing to destabilize the slope.  As dry weather has returned, I'll get back to it soon.  As I go, my plan is to reinforce the slope with stone or more cement blocks.

That's it for this quarter's wide shots.  As spring isn't yet at its height in some areas of the garden (probably due to the fact that we didn't get much of any rain until March), I may offer a few more wide shots in May but I'll otherwise be back with a full tour in July.

Enjoy your weekend!


All material © 2012-2018 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party