Mediterranean Archives - Oceanside Garden

Water: My Precious

Growing up in England, water was not metered, but it was treated as a precious resource. We used it sparingly and often used grey water for the garden because it was thought to be a waste to use drinking water for that purpose. When I moved to the California, which was already having some difficulties with water shortages, nobody really seemed to respect it. Sprinklers running everywhere, swimming pools, large gold courses…

Cost and value, especially when applied to water are not the same thing. I have often seen it said that the next major war will be about water. Even on a more local level, every summer there seem to be a growing number of disputes about water rights, pitting farming communities against urban populations.

Drought in Oceanside

Here is Oceanside, Oregon, we receive approximately 100″ of rain a year. In the first couple of years of gardening, I felt that I didn’t have to worry about water. I very quickly learned how wrong that was. I now consider that I live in a fairly extreme drought biome and that the first thing I have to consider with any new planting is the amount of water they require and when.

The drought comes from two primary factors. The first is that almost all of that rain comes between October and May with very little in the other months. This year has been one of extremes and we went from June through to the middle of October with only a few small rain events. The second is that when you have soil that is so free draining, in my case almost pure sand, very little water is retained by the soil. The first reaction may be to add organic matter, but that is not sustainable long term. I could never add enough to really make a difference. Instead, I started to think about plants differently and to evaluate if their water needs were worth it or not.

Another problem with sand is that when it becomes dry, it become hydrophobic. This means that water will run off rather than into it. That calls for some different watering requirements and methods.

Irrigation considerations

Some types of irrigation, like overhead sprinklers waste a large amount of the water through drift and evaporation. Plus, water applied at a surface level can actually damage plants over time. It encourages surface roots and then if exposed to any kind of drought will die because they do not have a good root system that would enable them to find water at much greater depths of the soil.

Drip irrigation works better but is still something I consider to be a luxury for my plants. There is only one area of the garden where I do this. That makes it possible for me to grow a few plants with lush green, large foliage which I would otherwise have to do without. The goal is that for the vast majority of plants, they will receive regular hand watering during their first year but after that they are on their own. The possible exception is a deep watering if they are really showing real signs of distress. Plants that make a habit of this are unlikely to tolerated for too long. This is why I increasingly use Mediterranean plants, including those from Australia and South Africa. While many of them are difficult to find here, the hunt is worth it.

Planning for the future

Allowing water to go to waste in any manner is not sustainable. That includes water which is taken off the property and into storm drains. It is much better to find a way to keep that water on premises. Storage allows water to be applied later. Or just to let it drain into the soil in-situ where it may be held underground and potentially where some roots can get to it. Water is part of the ecosystem and some studies have shown that it can also help to control soil temperature.

While I do have a couple of rain barrels, it is nowhere close to enough. Next year I will likely be putting in a new staircase down the other side of the property. One thought is to place tanks all the way down under the stairs. This would make use of the dead space, and capturing more of the water from the roof of the house. It will certainly make construction more difficult, but will allow more of the water put on the garden not to come from a tap. If anyone has any other thoughts on ways to save water, I would love to hear them.

Calendar

Gardener’s Log – June 2022

It has been a busy month in the garden, and I am certainly happy with the progress that has been made this year, despite the weather. It is funny because every day when I look at how much progress I make and I am disappointed. But when I look back over a month or two, I am amazed at how much I accomplished. To think that the work area out front, the Winter garden and the Mediterranean garden are all completely new this year (cleared from native undergrowth) and lots of progress in the Fairy garden, plus the Fuchsia wall. Some of the Fuchsia have just started to bloom, but I will wait until next month to feature what I have done there.

Garden Progress

Workspace

The front working area is now finished. All benches have been constructed, the coldframes are finished and the paths laid. While I know there will be tweaks over time, I am very happy with the way everything has turned out and it is far easier to work on the plants now, rather than having to bend over all the time. There has definitely been less damage done by deer, as they trample over the plants hey don’t like to get to the ones they do.

Mediterranean Garden

The pedestal for the sun dial in the Mediterranean garden has been built. We took a trip to the rock shop and I chose a large crushed rock which has very sandy colors as the mulch for this area. We just bought one back so that I could see how it looks and I am happy with it. The stones are about 1″ to 1 1/2″ and contain no fines, so hopefully it will act as a good mulch. I also think the colors pick up the ‘rust’ in the basalt used for the walls and to retain the slope, and yet still provide a contrast. Many more bags are required, next time we are in town.

Other areas

We also picked up some cut slabs of grey rock. This was also for a defined need and an experiment. The defined need was for the bridge in the Fairy garden. It has meant that I needed to get the bridge sides in and the waterfall liner put in before much of the waterfall has been constructed. That may be something I regret later.

I also tried replacing the slate slab on the top of the pedestal with a cut slab and it certainly did not look right. The rough slate is back, but that cut slab will not go to waste. These are the prime candidate for the paving material through the contemporary garden. With the front finished, demolition of that area will probably happen later this year. While I have plans, I also have some trepidation about how to deal with the terrain in that area.

What’s in Bloom

With so much in bloom this month, it is tough to know which ones to highlight, so I tend to favor plants that are new to me. This is the first year we had the native Iris douglasiana bloom and it certainly put on a good show for quite a few weeks.

Cistus have loved the weather this year and they are now full of blossoms. This is a new one to us and is a solid pink/magenta – Cistus x pulverulentus ‘Sunset’. It has more silvery, fuzzy leaves and the colors together make a very nice contrast.

Cistus x pulverulentus 'Sunset' — Cistus x pulverulentus ‘Sunset’

An existing plant that is doing very nicely this year is Fabiana imbricata. The long, swooping branches are filled with tiny blue trumpet flowers. It is an absolute picture.

Fabiana, imbricata 'Violacea' — Fabiana, imbricata ‘Violacea’

But the most favored bloom has to be the Banksia ericifolia ‘Compact Form. This is the first Banksia to bloom in the garden, and one of the few that survived the cold this winter. Half of the floral cylinder has been blasted by the cold, but the bottom half has fully opened. Glorious!

Weather Summary

At last, a weather month that behaved almost as it should. It was a little wetter and colder than last year, but not by a significant amount. This year, the high was 90, the low 45 and the average 56.6. Last year it was 101.8, 46 and 58. This year’s rainfall was 6.88″ compared to 1.93″. I will take that any year. The garden is certainly getting to the dry stage where water runs off the sand rather than penetrated into it.

Calendar

Gardener’s Log – April 2022

While Mark Twain is inaccurately attributed with a statement about the bad weather in San Francisco supposedly saying: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” I can now categorically state that the worst winter we ever had in Oceanside, Oregon, was April 2022. The month has been atrocious in just about every manner. It has been cold and wet, including snow and hail. Hardly a day when it became possible to make much progress in the yard.

While conditions are not tracked here, Portland may have its wettest month for any April. They were in the top ten when barely half-way through the month. Snow has snarled the city and brought hundreds of trees down. The weight of the snow captured by slowly opening buds and blossoms caused havoc. The city is saying will take weeks to clean up.

Garden Progress

Still, a small amount of progress has been made. More land for the Mediterranean garden has been cleared. I had hoped that it would be getting more sun than it actually seems to be getting. The large Douglas Firs next door are blocking most of the sun and it is certainly not getting “full sun”. Perhaps it will have to become a Mediterranean semi-shade garden.

You can get a feel for the steepness of the ground when you see the bare soil here. The height difference here is almost 6 feet across the span of 10 feet. To make matters worse, at the far end, the lower point is even lower while the upper point has risen slightly, making it almost a 1:1 grade

Visits

While not a lot of progress was made outside, we did utilize a dry but grey day to take a visit to Dancing Oaks nursery in Monmouth. This is a nursery that has many unique and hard to find plants. The proprietors make international trips and bring new plants back with them. These are plant rarely found in the U.S. nursery trade. Towards the end of last year, they made a trip to England and brought back a number of plants. They are now trialing and maybe will make available in a few years.

What made this visit even more special was the small number of other people who are yet to venture out to the nursery. With only a few other visitors, we managed to make wonderful use of one of the owners (Thanks Fred). Fred not only helped us find plants on our list, but also imparted his wisdom about plants that would do well under our extreme growing conditions. We came back with many new plants and good feeling about plants that we had shunned because we were concerned about the potential for them escaping into our habitat.

Manzanita and Dicentra at Hunter Arboretum

That visit also resulted in a wander around the Hunter Botanical garden in Dallas, Oregon. There is a write up about that here. A true delight hidden alongside the city park.

On the last day of the month, a plant pop-up in Wheeler and a visit to the Wonder Garden in Manzanita raised the spirits. I shall have to write about the Wonder Garden in the near future. It has much the same climate as we do and a lot of plants in common. Given that they are a volunteer run garden (as is the Hunter Arboretum) I did drop them off a plant that may do well for them – Grevillea juniperina ‘Pink Lady’ This is the plant that got me started collecting Grevillea.

What’s in Bloom

The cold weather has slowed things down this year. But there is a bright side. It means that while some plants have been delayed, others have remained in bloom longer than they would in a more typical year. One Grevillea has been blooming its heart out for most of the month is Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’. It has been loaded with its bright red to magenta flowers that are set off so well against the silvery foliage.

Grevillea lavandulacea 'Penola' — Grevillea lavandulacea ‘Penola’

There is so much to love about Prunus serrulata ‘Kanzen’, the flowering cherry tree. It sits across from the tea house. The coppery color of the new foliage that crowns the double pink blossoms is stunning. This year, not only have the blossoms lasted much longer, but it is the first year that the deer did not tear the tree apart trying to eat them.

Another outstanding plant this month has been Rhododendron x yakushimanum ‘Gold Prinz’. Rhodies do not do well for us. We planted a bunch of them when I first started to create the garden here. But they were one of the plants that told us we were going to have to think differently because they suffer during our dry summer. But this year Gold Prinz has put on quite the show. The buds really do start off an intense red and the final form of the blossom is a pale yellow.

Rhododendron yakushimanum 'Gold Prinz' — Rhododendron yakushimanum ‘Gold Prinz’

Weather Summary

As I said at the beginning, it was a long, cold, wet month. Let’s start with the temperature. While individual days can be really nice in April, not this year. Last year, we had four days over 70 and one over 80. This year, that total would be none. In fact, the average temperature across the whole month was 3.5°F colder. Last year, the average was 49.8 and this year a measly 46.3.

But that is nothing compared to the rainfall comparisons. Last year, we had 1.35″ of rain. This year it was 10.81″. Our last rain event of this year gave us over 2″ of rain. That is more than the whole months total from last year! I hope that makes some of the plants happy, but then again I know that one day after rain, the soil is starting to dry out.

The anemometer remains broken, so please ignore wind speed.

General

Growing Season

The USDA plant hardiness zones provide a very important piece of information to gardeners – how cold can the weather get without killing my plant. But this only touches on the tip of the iceberg. For many plants, even the USDA zone information needs to be modified by how wet it is at the time of the cold. For example, many plants will survive cold so long as they are relatively dry. Give them cold and wet and they will die.

Some plants will also provide an upper range in which plants can be grown. It is not uncommon to see a plant specified as zones 5 to 9. This is not really very useful at all. It is trying to convey that some plants cannot take excessive heat, or humidity or both. But hardiness zones and heat are not correlated for much of the country.

Mediterranean Climate

The biggest exception is the entirety of the West Coast (California through to British Columbia) where the Pacific Ocean has a huge influence on both the highs and the lows. The ocean provides an enormous stability. In winter we don’t get very cold, and in summer we don’t get very hot. Go inland just a few miles and things can be very different.

The previous paragraph contains an innocuous statement ‘in summer we don’t get very hot.’ That is one of the biggest impediments to what I can successfully grow here at Oceanside Garden. Many plants will remain dormant until the soil or the air have warmed up enough to spur them into growth. There is one plant I was trying to grow – Bauhinia purpurea, the purple orchid tree. It is a delight and would have been perfect except for one small problem.

Last year, the Bauhinia didn’t even break bud until August. It sent out one new shoot that grew to be three inches long and had seven leaves on it. When talking about a tree and with that kind of growth rate it is going to take a very long time to reach a decent stature. Plus, it is unlikely that it would ever set flower buds or that they would ever get to open before cold weather came in.

Unfortunately, that tree will be going on the compost heap in spring and a replacement found.

Death by Heat

To deal with this issue, a number of alternatives have been suggested. One comes from the American Horticultural Society that defines heat zones. They divide the country up into 12 zones based on the number of days temperatures rise above 86F (30C). For us that is almost never and thus we are zone 1. Zone 12 is for areas where this happens more than 210 days a year. Again, this is not useful because it defines when things will die and being in Zone 1, that means that nothing will ever die from heat here.

We have similar problems with tomatoes, which grow so slowly here that they often do not ripen. We need something that tells us about the temperature below which the plant will not fully function. For example, I have seen orchids often being described as sulking below 50F. Thankfully, I have a little space available in the greenhouse over summer and so there is room for a plant or two. I have even successfully grown plants over winter and had ripened fruit in March.

First and Last

Another useful piece of information is the average first and last frost dates. This can help knowing the length of the growing season – at least for plants that are willing to grow at temperatures barely above freezing. But these are averages. If you live by those, you may not take advantage of all of the growing season. Most people tend to stretch a little and cross their fingers.

Sunset attempted to fix all of these issues, at least for the West Coast. They divided the region into zones that consider the total climate: length of growing season, timing and amount of rainfall, winter lows, summer highs, wind, and humidity. This works for well-known plants that have been trialed in a lot of places, but growing members of the Protea family is still restricted to a few of us adventurous types. Let’s face it, nobody really knows much about how well they can grow in this country.

Lack of Data

The lack of heat is a concern for a number of the plants. There is little information on the Internet about the amount of heat they need to set flower buds. A few locations suggest they need temperatures higher than we get. So far, they appear to be wrong. A number of plants have bloomed, but I think the right question may be – do they bloom as well as they might in a warmer climate? I am OK with that. Part of the reason for wanting to try some of these plants is because we are in a warming climate and many native trees and shrubs are beginning to suffer.

This summer, the forests looked quite sad with a brown tinge over their normally bright green coats. It takes time for new trees to settle and become established. Just like many of the English gardeners – they planted for the future, not for today. Many of what are considered the great garden landscapes took 100 years to reach a modicum of maturity. We would not have had them if the gardeners of the time had not thought about planting for future generations and not for instant gratification.

Can I say I am planting a garden for the next hundred years? Perhaps not, but I do have a longer term view than most people.