casa coniglio

When I lived in Northern California, Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii was everywhere. I remember first noticing it planted in a little pocket in the expanse of concrete that was the sidewalk, next to the concrete stairs that led to my aunt's concrete house. This pocket of earth could not have been much more than 2'x3' in size. The robust mound of feathery grey-green foliage was untouched by insects and the bloomed out stems could have used some pruning out. Mostly I remember the vibrant green floral bracts, which caught my eye even as a child, and I remember thinking that even though the bracts were more the color of leaves than flowers, that it was still striking.

Here in Albuquerque, it is Euphorbia myrsinites that is seen around the city, a smaller, ground hugging plant with sinuous silver stems and tightly held leaves. The flowers are similar, in that they are also an acid green, though they only last a month or so before fading to orange and dropping. The foliage can hold its own for its sculptural appearance, however. It is also a robust plant, in that it self-seeds freely.

Occasionally you can see Euphorbia rigida around town. This is a taller plant than E. myrsinites, growing to a foot or two tall, with longer pointed leaves that are more green but similar vibrant green, short lived (compared to E. characias) bracts. This plant is also called gopher plant, although there are other euphorbias that have this name.

According to the catalogs, Euphorbia characias should be hardy here. Beth Chatto is very fond of this plant in her book The Gravel Garden, and since this is in England, I didn't think hardiness should be a problem. I wondered why I never saw any E. characias around town. I asked around at nurseries, but most did not know the plant. So I brought a tiny seedling back with me after a trip to California. It has done marvelously, although it does have a peculiar and strong odor, most pronounced when the plant is struck by the sun. Which is often. It's not unpleasant, just peculiar. The plant has now weathered unfazed two winters, including the weekend where we received 18 inches of snow. It is quite tolerant of dry conditions. It does self seed.

There are many cultivars of E. characias. For a sampling, check out Digging Dog (www.diggingdog.com) or Forest Farm (www.forestfarm.com). I'm particularly curious to try Tasmanian Tiger, a variegated form with white edges to the leaves and white bracts. Here's Euphorbia characias 'Redwing' - although some say that it is a hybrid with E. amygdaloides, others say it is simply E. characias. The yellow-green is striking against the red tinged leaves, although the winter red is fading fast. The buds are small now, but over the next month or two, the head will expand to become a big firework. Stay tuned.

February 17, 2008


April 1, 2008


On a recent trip back to California, I visited my aunt. That E. characias is long gone, the pocket containing just a few self sown calendulas. But in my memory, it is still there, and my plant now blooming reminds me of that.

Bulbs are a good thing for my blue garden. Although there are few shrubs or trees that have blue flowers (Rosemary, Caryopteris, vitex - which is almost blue), and there a good number of perennials that are close enough to blue (many Salvia, many penstemon, Perovskia, various iris, veronica - see last year's posts on Penstemon linarioides and Veronica tauricula), there are also a good number of bulbs that bloom in blue. Bulbs are such a joy that I forgive them their (mostly) brief season of bloom.

Blue is a very subjective color. Remember that song "Lavender Blue"? That's a song that always annoyed me. If lavender is truly blue, then why is there a color called lavender? Maybe we should sing a song like "Oranges Yellow". Lavenders primarily do not produce blue flowers, although there are many that are blue-violet. What I consider blue is what most people call violet-blue. True blue is a paler color, with less red/pink in it. True blue is very rare in the plant world, what most people consider blue tends toward purple or mauve. This becomes particularly evident when trying to photograph "blue" flowers. What looked like blue to the eye ends up looking like purple, pink or mauve to the camera. This is said to be because the flowers reflect far red and infrared, which our eyes can not see, but the camera records as red (on film at least).

In 1999 Christopher Lloyd wrote in Horticulture magazine, "Everybody loves blue. Blue skies, blue eyes (at least in Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries), candor, innocence, all such connotations. Blue flowers are in such demand, are such certain sellers that the nurserypeople have to stretch the meaning of the word to its snapping point. More than half the flowers described in seed lists and plant catalogs as blue are some shade of mauve or purple. Truly blue flowers are few." Think of what is advertised as a blue rose and you get the point.

In my "blue" garden, I consider blue not only true blue, but I allow, and even favor, those flowers that are violet-blue instead of true blue. Most people think of delphiniums, himalayan blue poppies (meconopsis), and corydalis when considering blue flowers, but these will not grow in the vagaries of Albuquerque's climate. But there are bulbs that will.

Two bulbs are blooming in my yard now, that make me say, "Wow, that's blue".

The first is muscari. I don't remember what muscari I planted back in October, when in a fury of plant madness I bought two varieties of muscari. In this mad effort I'm sure one of them was a variety of M. armeniacum, but that's about as good as saying I bought something labeled "Grape Hyacinth", which is the common name. All I know now, is that one is blooming in the typical way, and the other is just starting to come out and has larger and fewer leaves (several bulbs with only one leaf), and with a larger bloom. Perhaps it is M. latifolium.



When I was a child, I didn't like grape hyacinths. They had nowhere the fragrance of true hyacinths, and although they had a richer blue color the flowers were small. The ones in my yard were planted at the forgotten back of the rose bed, and came up every year a bit sparsely, not at all like the dense waves of blue you see in the magazines. They survived from year to year, but that's as much as I cared to know about them. But now that I don't live on the mild coast of California, things that can thrive in Albuquerque's sometimes challenging climate are valuable. When I saw a friend's yard with a massing of muscari, I knew I had to find a place for at least a few.

The second is Ipheion, also known as Blue Star Flower. I don't like this name, even though it is apt, for it always reminds me of Isotoma (Blue Star creeper) instead, or Amsonia (Blue Star). I planted this in my garden as a child as well, and it was very easy. I didn't like the garlic smell of the crushed leaves (hey, as a child, you can't leave well enough alone), and even though the flowers were delightful, I didn't want an "onion" in my 3'x5' plot that I was allowed. When it multiplied the next year, I rooted every one of them out. But times changed and I grew older. A friend's shrub border in Albuquerque has a clump of Ipheion in it, and even though it is uncared for, without irrigation except what drips off the roof, and growing under the shade of a Philadelphus microphylla, blooms reliably every year. Every spring, I look for it to bloom. A couple of years ago I decided it was time to plant some of my own. I didn't want some of the anemic pale blue varieties that I had seen around town. In the small area that I have, I wanted something that really said "blue". I considered some named varieties. I considered 'Wisely Blue' which is said to be variable in its shade of blue, but "prolific". I also considered 'Jessie' which is said to be the darkest blue. I settled instead on 'Rolf Fiedler' which had a more cheerful shade of blue (at least in the catalogs).



The growth habit in my yard is different than that of my friend's. In the shade of the shrubs, the growth is weak and flowers sparse. Those planted in the sun bloom a week earlier, and have multiplied much more rapidly, but the leaf tips burn. Of those planted under a redbud tree, only one survived, and hasn't multiplied or bloomed.

It's funny that every time I look at the blooms now, I think of my childhood perspectives. How awful that I thought of the Muscari and the Ipheion as weedy, and rooted them out! I now see them as a delight.

Here's Will's rosemary, grown in the valley against a south-facing brick wall in a sheltered alcove. There's a cutting of this plant in my yard, which has no flowers whatsoever. Maybe it's just too cold. The Gorizia, Frimley Blue and the Blue Spires have a few flowers, but nothing like this.

Same plant, compare to 11 days ago.

More gravel pitfalls

In an earlier post, I was bemoaning my choice of gravel for a groundcover.

To recap, here are the benefits:
Penstemon and other wildflowers reseed readily in fine gravel (e.g. the 1/4-1/2” size that’s in my yard)
It can moderate temperatures below ground.
Gravel reduces water loss through evaporation.
It has a nice finished appearance.

The downside:
It’s hard to clear away from a planting hole.
Large gravel/stone (e.g. 4-6” or larger) is laborious to change
It collects blown sand and dust
It’s hard to tell if plants are getting watered or if the water is just running away under the gravel.

There’s more however. Although gravel gives a clean finished appearance, gravel as a mulch is like having a white carpet. Anything on it stands out. This can be a good thing, as sculptural plants such as agave and yucca can show off their forms in the right setting. In the wrong setting (and you see this all over town), even with these plants the landscape looks more like a moonscape. It isn’t a natural look. Where in nature would you find the ground evenly layered with a gravel mulch? Having a “white carpet” for a mulch can be a particularly bad thing in that any debris stands out. Fallen twigs, prunings, cottonwood leaves, fallen leaves/flowers, all are displayed prominently on a gravel background. Even one twig is noticeable, but when my neighbor shears their chamisa, the bits litter the gravel in an unsightly area. In the area where I have 4-6” river stones, this requires me to pick out each stem, one by one. You can’t rake river stone, and twigs don’t blow out. Gravel mulch requires constant maintenance (unless it is a barren moonscape). Even in the gravel that is rake-able, I end up with a mound of half twigs and half gravel. And these end up in a landfill. Soon I would need more gravel to fill in, which takes the stone from another part of the country, disrupts that ecology, and requires fossil fuels to transport the very heavy load.

Salvia pachyphylla debris in 3/4" gravel. Want to try to separate them?


Chamisa debris in river rock. Can't rake or blow it out. You can pick out twigs and vacuum bits, I suppose.


Which brings up another issue. What happens to all the twigs/leaves/organics that get raked up? Do they go into a landfill? I suppose you can call that “carbon banking”, but not only is it going to a landfill, it is depriving the soil of organic material to rejuvenate it. When organics fall onto the gravel, they stay dry (which is what the gravel is put down to do, isn’t it?) and thus they do not decompose. They don’t get incorporated into the soil. This is great design if your full intention is to deplete the soil. Will this mean that an inorganic fertilizer will soon be necessary? This will stimulate new growth, but micronutrients are lost, then that growth goes to a landfill.

So what if you want to improve the soil? How do you get soil amendments into the soil? You can either dig the gravel into the soil along with the amendments (does that mean you will need another load of gravel to mulch?), or you can first scrape off the gravel mulch, then dig the amendments into the soil and then replace the gravel. I’m sure you can imagine the work involved to do that.

Small gravel also gets stuck in shoes. At the 1/4-1/2” size that I have, it is the perfect size to wedge into the treads of shoes (especially Vibram soles, hiking boots and Doc Martens). Even if you aren’t walking on the planted areas, there is always some bits on the paving. The problem with gravel getting stuck in the treads is not only the hassle of having to pick out the pieces, but the damage that the gravel does to interior flooring. Don’t even think about that comfy cork flooring which is soft. Wood flooring and synthetics will get damaged by the weight of a person grinding a sharp crushed rock fragment into it.

A gravel-mulched garden with few plants is miserably hot in the summer. ‘Nuff said on this.

If you (or people working on your house) spill (either accidentally or intentionally) cement or concrete into the gravel or stones, you now have a mulch of solid concrete. If stones are splattered by concrete (e.g. stucco), it doesn't come off, and is unsightly. If someone rinses a bucket of concrete and pours it onto river stone, you get a grey non-removable coating on the stones. Spatters or rinse water on organic mulches eventually disappear as the mulch decomposes and the splats or haze just goes to sand.

Last, but probably not final, I’ll mention gravel patterns. I probably don’t need to describe these patterns of different size/color gravel in the landscape. I have made the mistake of having the fine gravel next to the river rock. I was walking in a landscape in the west side which had this as well. It was installed perhaps three years ago, and you can see it in ABQ Uptown as well. There are also gravel patterns in the medians of the north side of Eubank which were installed only a few years ago. These landscapes demonstrate something very significant. Unless you ignore the landscape once it is installed, or unless you want to hand-sort the bits of gravel one piece at a time, it is a maintenance nightmare. In the Eubank medians, the pattern is made of similar sized gravel of different colors. There is a significant of pedestrian traffic crossing the median. This traffic disturbed the crispness of the pattern within the first year. Then, removing weeds and raking disturbed it yet more. Soon the groundcover will be a mix of grey and brown instead of the river-like patterns initially installed. When a fine gravel cover is placed next to stone cover (e.g. the river rock), the fine gravel disperses into the rock and can’t be raked out. The only way to get it out is to remove the larger rock first, then rake out the fine gravel. What happened in the landscape on the west side, was that the edges of the rock areas had a liberal amount of fine gravel between them, then a depressed area next to it where the the landscapers tried to rake out the gravel but left a sprinkling of gravel in a bare dirt ditch (remember when I said it’s hard to remove the gravel mulch from the earth underneath unless you pick out the bits by hand? Well they just kept raking until they gave up). Beyond this depression was the fine gravel, but the gravel edge was a mound of gravel with earth mixed in - due again, to raking.

Gravel mixing into river rock.


So instead of gravel, I propose three things. First, consider a native-plant landscape which is tailored to the immediate locality, that doesn’t need a mulch. Fallen debris will naturally be incorporated into the soil. Second, if you would like a mulch, use an organic mulch, being certain to use a mulch that is sustainably produced (not the cypress mulch, for example, which uses slow growing swamp cypress). Use a mulch that is either shredded garden debris, or a byproduct such as pecan shells. Third, consider plants to cover the ground. Using plants that are locally native, or require very little additional supplemental water (which causes soil salination as well as dealing with water use issues). Using plants to cover the ground stops erosion, decreases water loss at ground level, lowers temperatures (as opposed to gravel) and perhaps best of all, hides debris (not only allowing the organics to incorporate into the soil, but reduces maintenance).

Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete'

This tiny narcissus is supposed to bloom with two flowers per stem, but here we are mostly getting one per stem. Oh well. It is awfully cute, and performs reliably every spring. After the early Iris reticulata and snow crocuses, this is the next up. The rosemary is starting to bloom, but not dramatically yet. I may need to protect them from winter cold to get more flowers.

Last year, I notice that Death-Harvest occurred at just the same time, in March, almost on the same day (this post is a little late). This year, I have fewer plants that didn't survive the winter, so the death-harvest is smaller. Whether this means that I'm being less experimental with marginal plants, or that I'm getting better at choosing which borderline plants that will survive the winter, is uncertain. Maybe some of each.

Although not completely dead, the Ceanothus coeruleus shown above is pretty severely damaged. Sadly, it may have to come out. I'm trying Ceanothus x delilianus 'Gloire de Versaille' this year.
Cistus purpureus is said to be hardy here, but mine were crispy when I checked them in February.
Agave parryi var. truncata is supposed to be hardy to zone 6 (I'm in 7), but this plant turned into stinky mush after the first freeze.
Prostrate rosemaries 'Severn Seas' and 'Irene' both turned crispy, although 'Irene' held out longer. Still, it's crispy, while 'Gorizia', 'Blue Spires', 'Salem', 'Frimley's Blue' all had a bit of tip damage, but otherwise are fine.
Opuntia 'Santa Rita' survived last years 18" of snow, but croaked in this year's cold.
The kale planted in a pot did not do well at all (I'm not sure that counts, but what the heck).

Hope your Death-Harvest was minimal.

My excitement of the day was seeing the Eremurus breaking through the gravel. I had long lusted for these thrilling perennials after first seeing them as cut flowers. The huge long foxtails in pastel colors of orange, white, yellow and pink almost had me shelling out seven bucks a stem for them. I was envious of those who could grow the clumps I saw in the photos, with dozens of stems reaching six feet tall. When I read about them, they seemed so temperamental. “Plant them on a mound of gravel or they will rot”. “Don’t disturb the roots or they won’t bloom.” “The soil must be bare and exposed to the summer sun.” “They dislike winter moisture.” How do you avoid winter moisture? But when I learned that they grew in cold-desert regions, I knew that they must do well here in Albuquerque. According to the book Perfect Plants by the BBC (which is, by the way, a great book to inspire plant lust), they come from the mountainsides of the Middle East, Central Asia and the foothills of the Himalayas, where winter temperatures drop to -40F and “searing summer heat.” Perfect (read with a Simpson's-esque sneer and rubbing of hands).

Looking around in the spring, I was nearly rear-ended when, driving down Carlisle Boulevard I spotted large clumps of them blooming heartily in the planted medians. I had to have some. But there weren’t any to be had, as they are best planted in the fall.

Eremurus blooming on Carlisle


About 2002 I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show. Even though this is a spring show, they had Eremurus for sale. I was thrilled. I bought three. None grew that first year, and the following year rewarded me with a single four-inch leaf. Whoopee. Three leaves appeared the next year, then four, then six. Two years ago I bought five roots, which arrived looking pretty pathetic. I planted them anyway, not expecting much, but three flower stems (in that first year, smaller and shorter than they should become) appeared the following summer.

When Eremurus appear, they make no bones about it. The roots sit unseen from June through March, under bare ground, baking in the blazing heat. In March, they don’t slowly peek out from the soil. One day they aren’t there, and the next, there is a burst of green coming out of the soil. LIterally. Those in the top photo are 2 days from bare ground. I’m hoping for fireworks this year. I’ll keep you posted.

Last year's bloom:

After waiting the long months of winter, the first flower of the season is always a delight. The first flowers for me this year have been the Iris reticulata, and it was indeed a delight to see them. A few years ago, I planted three varieties into my Blue Garden: 'Harmony' (dark blue with a yellow splash), 'Pixie' (very dark blue and small, as you might have guessed) and 'Natascha' (very pale blue, or as some describe, white with blue veining).

'Natascha' turned out to be a very washed-out color, more of a dirty white. Perhaps in another climate the delicate colors would show better, but under the New Mexico sun, when I saw it in the corner of my eye, I kept thinking that someone threw a dirty sock in my yard, only to turn and look to see 'Natascha'. It turned out also to be a weak plant, but this lack of strength turned out to be a good thing. It saved me from having to dispose of it when it dwindled out after a couple of years.

'Harmony' is likely to be what you see in the photo, and has turned out to be the most vigorous as well as the best color for my garden. Because I irrigate very little, plants have to be tough. 'Harmony' hasn't spread or multiplied very much, but it has survived. The photo is the last of the flowers.

'Pixie' was planted near some lavender, and has amazingly survived after being swamped by the lavender. The lavender was taken out and replanted last year, and the remaining clump of 'Pixie' bloomed better than ever.

So why don't I coddle the Iris reticulata more? Although they are a delight the first thing in the spring, the flowers only last a few days. That's right. In my yard, they rarely last even a week. Then the scraggly foliage elongates to a foot or more long, and lasts for a more than a month. Because the flowers are small and close to the ground, they can't be planted farther back among plants, and the foliage becomes an eyesore. Perhaps they would be better planted in an herbaceous border, where planted a little ways back, they would be seen first thing in the spring when most plants are underground, but the foliage obscured as plants grow in. Perhaps I could also plant them more densely, so that the foliage becomes a statement of its own, with some low-growing plant among them to contrast, and to provide interest when the iris foliage is gone. Something like Origanum dictamnus, or Origanum 'Kent Beauty', or Sedum 'Vera Jameson' or Nepeta 'Walker's Low'. Something to consider in the fall.

Addendum: the same plant 3/12/08

From working in the garden the other day, I’ve come to the conclusion that gravel does not make a good mulch for much of my garden. Let me first say that it IS good for the penstemon and other native plants which self-seed readily in the gravel. It does reflect some light and heat from the soil, and moderate temperatures below ground. It does help retain some moisture in the soil. It does have a nice finished appearance. For those reasons, I will still use it in the less worked areas of the garden.

But for those areas of the garden where things change every year, it isn’t such a good mulch. It is hard to clear away from the soil - when raking the mulch away from an area to plant, there is always some gravel left, and unless I spend a lot of very tedious time picking out every bit of gravel, that gravel gets incorporated into the soil. Over time, since I tend to move plants a lot (re-designing, re-planting, and trialling plants), all the gravel will be dug into the soil. I don’t really want to garden in a gravel pit, but perhaps I’m too concerned about the small amount of gravel it really is. It’s much easier to rake away an organic mulch, and any organic material that’s dug into the soil will decompose and be beneficial.

The gravel also collects blown sand and dust, and in this climate, with the wind storms, the gravel soon fills in. Unless I want to spend a few weeks every few years sifting the gravel, I’ll soon lose the gravel mulched appearance.

Is using gravel as mulch a sustainable practice? I think not. From what I’ve read, it isn’t.

When watering by hand, it’s hard to tell if the water is soaking in to where the roots are, since the water can just run under the gravel on the surface of the dry soil and spread out, or it can come out somewhere downhill.

So in some areas of the garden, where I move plants around a lot, I wish I hadn’t put in a gravel mulch. A pecan shell mulch would have been better. Live and learn.