Take care of your garden
Of the many ways to choose plants, rarities are a particularly interesting approach.
The concept of rare plants is a slippery idea because the gardener’s familiarity with plants grows over time with individual experiences, and gardeners, garden centers and magazines explore the plant world.
Although we are aware of the rarity of the rarity of plants, we have a continuum that begins with the best known: memories of our parents’ garden, passages, varieties that we have been growing for years.
On the next level, most of the plants are in the typical garden center or mail order nursery. Many of these offerings are easy to propagate varieties as breeders benefit from moving fast growing, high volume specimens.
A close up of Wedding Bush (Ricinocarpus tuberculatus), a native of Australia. (Contributed – Tom Karwin)
In a recent survey of ground cover homes at a local garden center, I found that some of them are borderline invasive. No thanks!
On another level, there are many plants that may already be growing in your neighbors’ gardens but are unfamiliar to you. This is neither surprising nor embarrassing, because a gardener cannot be expected to be familiar with the multitude of plants available. For an overview of the impressive selection of garden plants, search wikipedia.com for “List of Garden Plants” or “List of Plants in the Bible”.
Then we have the ever-increasing number of new varieties introduced by breeders who select and name natural variations of plants, natural hybrids, or patiently produced hybrids. These varieties can be viewed as “created rarities” that are primarily of interest to collectors of varieties of a particular popular genus. Keeping up with new introductions of roses, irises, daylilies, or any other popular genus can be enjoyable, but ultimately frustrating.
Created rarities are easy to find because the breeders advertise their new acquisitions as usual.
Along the continuum from common to rare we come to natural rarities that are not common in gardens or generally available from common sources, but are garden worthy and attractive to many gardeners.
Adding such plants to your garden can lead to various rewards. For the inward-looking gardener, adding unusual plants could pose challenges in cultivation, biodiversity, and aesthetic pleasures. For the outward-looking gardener, they bring in boast while hosting garden visitors or connecting with gardening friends via social media.
One or both payouts are welcome!
Finding natural rarities requires careful research. First, search the websites of the retail nurseries. Here some examples:
Annie’s Annual & Perennials – visit anniesannuals.com and click on Categories / Rarities.
UCSC Aboretum & Botanic Garden – visit shopucscarboretum.com/collections/additional-plants.
Plant Delights Nursery – visit plantdelights.com and search for “rare”.
Logee’s Plants for Home & Garden – visit logges.com and click on “rare”.
Nursery for Rare Succulents – visit raresucculents.com and click on plants extraordinaire.
Search your favorite nursery websites for unfamiliar plants to invite into your garden.
An exceptional source of unusual succulents is the International Succulent Introductions (ISI) program that the Huntington Botanical Gardens have been running since 1989 with the aim of propagating new or rare succulents and distributing them annually. Just recently, the ISI announced its offers for 2021, which are only available until September 20, 2021. For more information, see media.huntington.org/ISI/catalogintro.html.
I picked a few plants from the 2021 ISI offers and started waiting a few weeks for confirmation and delivery (ISI isn’t really fast). A future column will feature my unboxing experience.
Expand your gardening knowledge
Garden-related webinars can push the boundaries of our gardening knowledge. More recently, as the pandemic subsides, webinars can also benefit businesses beyond our social bubbles.
A recent webinar on Japanese Gardens in California provided information on the history of the Hakone Estate and Gardens in nearby Saratoga, California. Here is a short info:
“Hakone is one of the most important sites of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is 100 years old. It is one of the ancient Japanese estates, retreats, and gardens in the Western Hemisphere. Hakone has also been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2013. 18 hectares of wonderful beauty are nestled in the green hills of Saratoga with a view of Silicon Valley. “
For more information about this extraordinary garden, including hours and directions, visit hakone.com and consider an excursion.
The UC Master Gardeners of Counties Monterey and Santa Cruz will host a free webinar entitled “Grow a Hummingbird Garden” on Wednesday from 5:00 am to 6:30 am. The moderator will be Hummingbird Expert and UC Master Gardener Scott Adams, former Vice President of the Board of Directors of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum. This is an opportunity to get advice on how to attract these extraordinary visitors to enhance your garden. For more information, visit mbmg.ucanr.edu/ and click on Events Calendar.
The Cactus and Succulent Society of America will host a webinar on Copiapoa, Chile’s small, spherical cactus, on Saturday at 10 a.m. This is a popular species that is threatened by poaching, climate change, and the advance of civilization. The Australian naturalist Stefan Burger will present this free event. For information and registration, visit cactusandsucculentsociety.org/.
Enrich your garden days
Your most famous plants could serve as “old friends” in the garden and allow easy maintenance, but newbies could bring bold additions to your botanical setting and inspire new landscape combinations.
The choice of plants should reflect the continuous evolution of the garden.
Tom Karwin is past President of Friends of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, and Monterey Bay Iris Society, and a Lifetime UC Master Gardener (Certified 1999-2009). Today he is a board member and garden coach of the Santa Cruz Hostel Society. To view photos from his garden daily, https://www.facebook.com/ongardeningcom-566511763375123/. To search an archive of previous On Gardening columns, visit http://ongardening.com.
