New Plants For Fall Planting/Huh. How 'Bout That?


 A trip to a local nursery brought some new plants to the garden.  Neoregelia 'Donger'.  ('Donger'?!?)  Fills that planter bed up, finally. 
 Did I already blog Croton 'Mammy'? ('Mammy'?!? I didn't choose these plants for their names.)  Not sure where to put it.  It likes warm, but not full sun;  and warm, dry soil in winter.  Hmm...condemned to be a house plant?  That will kill the poor thing. 
 New own-root rose 'Burgundy Iceberg' to replace the monster old Fuchsia that was always sun-fried every summer.  The Fuchsia had roots as thick as my wrists.  Cuttings of the old monster Fuchsia, freshly rooted, live on in shadier spots.  I ended up moving the rose a little to the right, so it would get slightly more sun--misjudged the spot a bit.  This whole area is green foliage plus pink, orange, and white flowers.  I'm doing my best to impose color discipline, finally. 
 2017 seems to be the year of Eremophilas here.  I managed to be completely unaware of Eremophilas until this year;  now the garden hosts four of them, including this new one, E. hygrophana 'Blue Bells'.  I thought at first it was a Leucophyllum frutescens, they look very similar.  Convergent evolution?  Western Australia is the home to one, Northern Mexico and Texas to the other. 
 Pretty flowers, silvery foliage.  Likes dry.  It's getting dry.  That spot has killed a few plants already--hopefully its not too dry. 
 A new Grevillea hybrid I've been wanting to try:  'King's Fire'.  No flowers yet;  another one at the nursery was covered with buds, but I liked the look of this one.  Secund flower (with all the parts grouped on one side or turned to one side, like a toothbrush) and deep red opening to orange-red.  The leaves are more needle-like than 'Superb's.  
 And Leucadendron meridianum  'Mostly Silver'.  It is supposed to be harder to kill than Leucadendron argenteum. 
In the garden, still cutting back and cleaning up for a prettier autumn.  I used to leave everything until January and it made for two months of very ugly.  Our nearly endless growing season allows for continued growth until a brief, not-every-year rest for a week or two in January.

The Salvias 'Amistad' and 'Waverly' were huge.  I cut them both back very hard which left a void.  They got some fertilizer and a generous soaking to bring them back quickly.  
The what-the-heck moment was finding this on a Ligustrum shrub:
At first I thought it was a piece of plastic blown in by the wind.  It's actually a structure made of beeswax.  It was attached to a branch of the Ligustrum and there were drips and smears of wax on the leaves and twigs of the branch.  Were bees swarming here, making a temporary home?  Huh.  How 'bout that?   

Comments

  1. It's always nice to see evidence of bee activity! I hope 'More Silver' does better for you than it did for me - it's one of only 2 Leucadendron I managed to kill. I've been tempted to try 'Burgundy Iceberg' myself given the resilience of the white form so I'll be interested to see how it does for you.

    Best wishes weathering the current heatwave. I heard there's another coming next week, virtually on the heels of this one. Dare we hope that will be the last?!

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    1. I did see you had it in a '14 post, and wondered what happened. Having killed 'Pisa' and 'Little Bit' with insufficient water, I'm hoping for redemption with this one.

      Village had a bunch of fresh stock of 'Iceberg's and 'Burgundy Icebergs' for $11.99. I believe they are own-root. Go for it!

      Supposed to be 10 degrees cooler tomorrow. At this time of year strong dry wind is more of a worry than the heat. This kind of heat wave cools down at night, which is enough to make for a cool early morning, providing a chance to garden. I was out there at 6 this morning doing some dead-heading in the cool silence--best way to start the day!

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  2. So weird to discover a piece of beewax in your Liguster, very unusual but interesting. .. I enjoyed admiring your new plants, actually these plants are here all houseplants for the windowsill.

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    1. Hi Janneke!

      I agree, very weird! I have seen (from a safe distance) a bee swarm in a shrub, and then a few days later seen drips of beeswax in the place where they were, but was surprised to see a well-built comb. They must have been there for several days at least.

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  3. I love that opening shot, such a perfect little dreamscape!

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    1. Thanks! Me, too. It evolved into something good. Only took 17 years!

      The 'Golden Xanadu' Philodendron was there for years by itself, then I had no place for the Aechmea fasciata so I stuck it there when Santa Ana winds threatened, then added the other two Broms, and the grey rocks, the tuft of mondo grass, and the metal dog named, naturally, Rusty.

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  4. I just keep waiting for the temps to moderate so I can finish planting all my late season purchases. Your planter bed in pic one looks just excellent.

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    1. Still hot up north, too? :( We're alternating between heat spells and some decent weather.

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  5. Odd about the bees. The Eremophila flower is very nice. Could the full name of the Croton be 'Mammy, how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Mammy'? If not maybe it should be considered. As for 'Donger', I think no comment is safest.

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    1. Maybe it's someone's last name?!? Not comfortable with some plant names, but I have to remember that it's not the plant's fault!

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  6. I recently saw a bunch of honey bees when I was putting out some fish emulsion. They seemed to be very attracted to it, though I am not sure if it was the water or the stinky fish odor that attracted them. We have an ancient oak behind the house that has a large cavity in the top of its trunk, and honey bees have made hives there off and on for years. I am always thrilled when I see them. The vignettes I see of your garden are very lovely. I adore your new Neoregelia. Sometimes I wonder how plants get their names!

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    1. Interesting about your oak tree hive. That is a special thing to have on your property! Oaks are a magnet for so many different creatures.

      Just down the road for decades there was an old unused irrigation pipe with a hive in it, unfortunately a road worker called the county and they came out and killed the hive. That was very sad. Yet we still have a gazillion bees, so the survivors found a new place somewhere...

      I never post pictures of the ugly bits of the garden, of which there are plenty! Who wants to look at those, anyway!

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  7. Put down one more name on your list of admirers for the 'Rusty' bed. It's amazing the range of plants you can grow, from the tropicals to the temperate plantings, there's enough to keep you fascinated for a lifetime!
    The honeycomb is an odd find for sure. Must have been empty or else something would have chewed it up to get the honey.

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    1. Thanks, bittster! Very kind of you.

      We can grow an amazing array of things here. It is a fabulous place to garden. I never understand why there are not more gardening fans here.

      Yes, zero honey in that comb...maybe it was comb-building practice?

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  8. Wild bees trying to build their own home. They would prefer a hollow tree to a square (convenient for us!) hive.

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    1. My neighbor found one in one of her irrigation valve boxes, which is a metal box set in the ground; it's so dry here, and on a hill, the bees were not worried about getting flooded by rain. A bee-keeper came and took the hive to a new location. We certainly have wild hives around the neighborhood because my Grevilleas, Aloes, etc., buzz with bees all year long; it is possible there are some hollow trees nearby.

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  9. I bought a Grevillea 'King's Fire' last month and it promptly died before I even had a chance to put it in the ground. I hope it was just a fluke. I want to try again because it's such an attractive plant.

    How is your Eremophila glabra 'Grey Horizon' doing? I just bought one and need to figure out how much shade it tolerates.

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    1. I need to get mine into the ground like tomorrow, before it heats up again here. I'm paranoid about it. It's a gorgeous plant--I hope you are able to find another.

      The E. glabra 'Grey Horizon' has grown and is happy in the dry, hot place it got. It is in full sun from sunrise to about 4pm. It will get a couple more hours of shade in winter.

      If you see E. hygrophana 'Blue Bells', I recommend it. Flowers are beautiful, photo doesn't do them justice--they have a wonderful blue cast that is striking with the silver foliage.

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