Best Plants for San Diego: Native Beauties, Matilija Poppies & Cleveland Sage

I love to see Matilija poppies growing in the wild.  What a beautiful sight.  These gorgeous, perennial plants are considered shrubs, growing to eight-ten feet tall, and they are some of the best plants for San Diego.  They spread by rhizomes and their large paper-mache looking white flowers have a huge yellow center.   Matilija…
Read the full article…

Best plants for San Diego: How does your vegetable garden grow?

Best plants for San Diego: How does your vegetable garden grow?

I love the spring vegetable garden. It starts out with so much hope. So much planning. So much anticipation. And then something happens along the way, all my other responsibilities! But this year I’m going to stay on top of it! The tomatoes have all been started from seed this year. They are late getting…
Read the full article…

Xeriscape in San Diego Balboa Park

Yesterday I had the opportunity to represent APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) at EarthDay in Balboa Park.  What a great day of interacting with the public and educating them about the benefits of using a professional landscape designer.  Along with fellow San Diego district member Deb Oleary, we joined San Diego to celebrate EarthDay to…
Read the full article…

Xeriscape ideas for San Diego: Ground covers that can take the heat

When designing a landscape for San Diego and trying to implement xeriscape ideas, I love to incorporate roses.  Roses come in a huge variety of sizes, growth habits, textures, and colors, and I especially find carpet roses, (ground cover roses) to be one of the most useful and toughest plants in the landscape. Carpet roses…
Read the full article…

Blooming in January

Dendromecon harfordii and Flower Carpet™ Rose! With so little in bloom this time of year, it’s refreshing to see something with color!  This Island bush poppy was put in about 2 years ago as a 1 gallon plant and has grown to be about 3-4′ tall by now.  This group planting is out by road…
Read the full article…

Mingling annuals into garden design – Alpine, CA

The color purple is just glowing in the vegetable garden now when many other things are waning.  We have been enjoying them for weeks and using them for casual flower arrangements. These plants were started in the spring by seed and have been flowering since late summer.  They have attracted butterflies and many bees.  In…
Read the full article…