Maybe meadows aren't for me...

I visited South Coast Botanic Garden's "Phase One" Pollination Garden in late July when it was only just coming into bloom.  I'd planned to go back to see it in full bloom four to six weeks later but SCBG posted notice about the new garden's progress in a newsletter so I popped in again this week.  The garden is indeed in full bloom, with flowers in some areas stretching well above my head.

The photo on the left was taken on July 25th.  The photo of the same area on the right was taken on August 16th.

Although I arrived soon after the garden opened at 8am, it was already quite warm

Flowers that had been a foot high at the time of my earlier visit were chest high or taller

 

I could hear the water circulating in the pond but I could barely see it.

 

The bright pink shade sail covers are still in place. 

And they haven't faded yet

 

The pollinators were plentiful, even if I caught relatively few photos of them.

The bees were busy and easier to photograph than the butterflies

On the left is a monarch butterfly.  On the right is a truly tiny butterfly I think may be an arctic blue (Plebejus glandon).

NOT a pollinator, except perhaps by accident, but he was in the middle of things

 

I appreciated all the vibrant flowers but, linking back to the title of this post, if this is representative of a meadow, it's probably not something I'd want in my own garden.

Jumbled mix of flowers

Cosmos flowers were the most prevalant

Other flowers I was able to identify included, clockwise from the upper left: Amaranthus cruentus, Anethum graveolens (dill), Borago officianalis (borage), Helianthus annuus (sunflower), Mirabilis jalapa (four o'clocks), Tithonia rotundifolia (Mexican sunflower), and another Helianthus

 

I've always liked the idea of a meadow garden.  I envision drifts of flowers and grasses, with the mix changing subtly as the season progresses but always retaining a degree of cohesion.  (I may be obsessively tidy, even when it comes to garden settings.)  I prefer floral colors that coordinate with one another and, while I don't think low profile plants must always be sited in front of taller plants, I like to see a discernible flow of one type to another.  While I liked feeling enveloped by an abundance of blooms, the Phase One Pollination Garden was too visually chaotic for me.  To be fair, SCBG's objective was to create a space to attract pollinators, not the creation of a meadow garden.  I suspect that the staff was also in a hurry to fill the space so it could be reopened to visitors this summer before they embark on the more labor intensive Phase Two process that will require cooler fall temperatures and the promise of rain.  In the interim they simply spread a mass of mixed seed to cover the ground and let plants remain wherever they germinated.

 

Temperatures have been in the upper 80sF (31C) this week so I didn't hang around SCBG long.  I took just a few photos outside my tour of the Pollination Garden.

An Ocotillo (Fouquieria peninsularis) in bloom in the Desert Garden next to a noID agave

A couple of displays in the small greenhouse

A closer look at the tree in the parking lot I incorrectly identified as a noID Acacia in an earlier post.  A closeup photo of the flowers indicates that this is a Palo Verde tree (Parkinsonia).

 

Best wishes for a pleasant weekend.  There's a strong chance that a tropical rainstorm stemming from Hurricane Hilary, currently stirring things up to the south of us in Mexico, will reach Southern California this weekend.  According to local projections, we could get as much as one and a half inches of rain and even more is possible in surrounding areas.  As summer rain of any amount is an anomaly here, that's a lot!

All material © 2012-2023 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

New Pollinator Garden

South Coast Botanic Garden, roughly five miles from my home, opened its new "Pollination Garden" on July 1st and I popped in to check it out earlier this week.  It occupies the space that housed the former children's garden, slated to be replaced by the 3.5 acre Children and Family Garden currently under construction in 2024.  The new garden was created to link the space to the nearby butterfly pavilion.

Opening a new garden in July struck me as a brave thing to do in our climate but SCBG is approaching the project in two phases.  Phase One involved sowing a wide range of seeds to create a meadow-like space to attract and support pollinators.  I waited almost four weeks to visit the new garden to give the seedlings a chance to develop.

View of the new space from the opposite side of the tram road.  I arrived just after SCBG opened at 8am, which on a hot summer's day was the right choice for my visit.

View from the entrance off the tram road

View looking roughly west in the direction of SCBG's entrance, with pre-existing mature trees in the background

One of the large beds just inside the entrance to the space.  The feathery foliage of the Cosmos plants was the first thing I noticed.  They're just starting to bloom.

 

The swaths of bright pink color were provided by shade sails.

Two of these provided places to take a break and rest in the shade

 

 

There's a large pond in the middle of the area.

There was a small pond in the former children's garden.  This one looks larger than the original pond but I think the location is the same.  The water is circulating with greater force, though.  I didn't see the turtle that formerly resided there and couldn't help wondering where he/she went.

 

 

The garden beds are full, although the flower power contained in them is still light.  I expect the bloom count will be much higher in August and September.

 

I collected closeup photos of some of the plants I saw.  A few appeared to be holdovers from peripheries of the former garden.

Top row: Amaranthus caudatus, Arctotis with Zinnias, and Cleome hassleriana
Middle: Cosmos bipinnatus, Datura, and Helianthus annuus
Bottom: Mirabilis jalapa, Rotheca myricoides, and Tanacetum parthenium

My phone identified the mature tree on the left as Asimina triloba (aka American pawpaw).  The trees on the right are new and, off the cuff, I couldn't identify them.

Signs are scattered throughout the area.

I was impressed by the plant identifications on each of the signs, which included the plant's species name as well as the common name

 

Phase Two of the project is scheduled to kick off in November when the annuals currently in place will be replaced by native and adapted plants suitable to our Mediterranean climate.  The native plants will reportedly be sourced by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy with support from the Theodore Payne Foundation.  SCBG's Director of Living Collections, Terry Huang, is channeling the approach used by Olivier and Clara Filippi in France.  They specialize in "drought resilient" plants.  I was introduced to Olivier Filippi many years ago via a video a fellow blogger who lived in Italy linked me too.  I think it was probably the recording of a talk he did in Athens in 2013 (which can be found here).  It made a big impression on me at the time.  If you're interested, he has at least one other video from a presentation at a Beth Chatto Symposium in 2019, which you can find here.  I have Filippi's first book (English translation), which I'm going to take another look at.  He has two other books expanding on what he and his wife have learned about planting and maintaining a climate-appropriate garden under ever more challenging circumstances.  

The book was originally published in French in 2008

 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing what the Phase One garden looks like in another four to six weeks, and I'm even more interested in seeing how the Phase Two garden develops.

Best wishes for a pleasant weekend.

All material © 2012-2023 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party