Sage Outdoor Designs » landscape design

Succulents and perennials mix beautifully in this front garden in San Diego, Ca. By calling attention to the plants with blue foliage, the garden comes together as a clean composition with a few specimen plants, such as the central Agave. The garden integrates Blue Fescue grass, Callandrina (the succulent with the hot pink flowers), weeping Rosemary, dymondia (one of my favorite groundcovers).

Selecting one common characteristic allows you to successfully integrate different types of plants while still maintaining a very designed look. Of course you still need to think about the needs of the individual species. All of the species in the photos are drought tolerant and can stand heat and direct sun.

As a quick side note: remember when using Agaves to keep in mind their mature size. Their spines are strong and very sharp, so consider whether the adult spines will stick out into a sidewalk or walkway. Once an Agave has been cut to get it out of the way, it does not ever recover it’s beautiful form because dammaged stalks do not grow back. This is also true of palms and cycads.

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Blue or blue-green foliage is incredibly soothing to the eye. Adding even a hint of it to a garden can create a zen-like, peaceful, or meditative quality. It is especially beautiful in modern designs, near the ocean, or in designs focused on creating a calming effect. Try pairing it with orange or terra-cotta colored outdoor cushions for a nice contrast, or sea-green colors to point out the similarity. Adding a few green-green foliage shrubs will also make the distinction more noticeable.

Above are a few of our favorite blues: Echevaria elegans (Hen and Chicks), Helichotrichon sempervirens (Blue Oat Grass), Festuca ovina glauca (Blue Fescue), Dianella ‘Baby Bliss’, and Callistemon ‘Little John (Dwarf Bottlebrush).

Interested in a waterwise garden of your own? We’d love to help! Please go to www.sageoutdoordesigns.com and fill in the contact us form.

Gardenias are one of the most spectacularly scented flowers in a summer garden, but they have a well earned reputation for being hard to grow. Many do-it-yourself gardeners have tried them again and again only to have them yellow and die after a few months, or squeak along but never produce flowers.

Grafted gardenias have come a long way towards changing that reputation. Grafted gardenias use the root stock of Gardenia thunbergii, a tree gardenia from South Africa that is more vigorous and much more drought tolerant. It is also more resistant to disease than cutting grown gardenias. Gardenia thunbergii does grow in San Diego but it is very hard to find. If you come across an old garden in Bankers Hill or one of the other old communities in town and you see what looks suspiciously like a gardenia flower on a 10-15′ tall tree, that is G. thunbergii. They tend to have a fairly unattractive shape, though, and long leggy branches.

Monrovia nursery makes my favorite grafted gardenias. A few I like to use are G. ‘Vietchii’ (above) for its reliability, G. ‘Aimee’ (aka First Love) for its large peony-like flowers (below left), and G. ‘Mystery’ (below right) for their profuse flowers.

Gardenias prefer acidic soil, and the soil and water in San Diego are both alkaline. That means that your gardenias, even grafted varieties, will require fairly consistent care. If you have a rainwater collection system, consider using that to water your gardenias. To make sure the soil is acidic, add a cup or two of fish emulsion or another acidifier to the soil when you plant each gardenia shrub. The acidifier will be sold as a gardenia-camellia-azalea fertilizer. Dress the soil with another 1/2 cup to cup every month to keep your gardenia green and flowering. It does like more water than the xeriscape plants, so keep a close eye on it. Browning of the leaves or branches with very sparse leaves are a sign it isn’t getting enough water.

So are they worth all the effort? Absolutely! There is no smell more elegant than a gardenia. I’ve noticed that the smell only travels for a few feet, so I try to plant them directly under bedroom windows or close to an outdoor dining area so you can be sure to catch the sweet scent.

Interested in a waterwise garden of your own? We’d love to help! Please go to www.sageoutdoordesigns.com and fill in the contact us form.

Pelargoniums are ivy-leafed geraniums. It is a misnomer since they aren’t actually related to geraniums at all, but when you hear people talking about geraniums, they almost always mean pelargoniums. Think of red flowers in window boxes in Tuscany, and those will be Pelargoniums. Lately there has been a resurgence of wonderful pelargoniums in nurseries because of the release of a few new color series. They are very drought tolerant and can stand a lot of heat, so they are perfect for a waterwise garden. Try the Blizzard series (such as Blue Blizzard) or the Balcon series.

The above photos of pelargoniums are:
P. Bacon red
P. Red Blizzard
P. Salmon Path
P. Blue Blizzard
P. sidoides (has very attractive grey-green fuzzy foliage)

So if Pelagroniums aren’t “real” geraniums, what are real geraniums? They are often called cranesbills, and one of the most common is a groundcover called Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’. Here is a photo of it:

You can also find very short (2″-3″) geraniums for groundcover between stepstones or for use in rock gardens. They are perennials, so I typically replace G. ‘Johnson’s Blue’ every third year to keep it from getting leggy and messy looking.

Interested in a waterwise garden of your own? We’d love to help! Please go to www.sageoutdoordesigns.com and fill in the contact us form.

Want to get rid of your lawn but not sure what other options there are? Sunset magazine’s article ‘Lose the Lawn’ provides some great inspiration. Here are a few images from the article of lawnless gardens that I loved. I especially like their emphasis on curb appeal and outdoor living.

Interested in a waterwise garden of your own? We’d love to help! Please go to www.sageoutdoordesigns.com and fill in the contact us form.