Garden ramblings

My garden is:

• delightfully forgiving
• a work in progress
• still able to surprise me
  
• this year, the best it's ever been.

I'm going to have to get the local niecelet over here with the digital camera, so I can share some of its wonders.

When I moved into the Berkeley bungalow seven years ago, the front and back yards were overgrown and untended, but had great features. In the front were a yellowing camellia bush, a rhododendron and a huge white azalea bush, all of which reminded me of the shade garden in the Haight I was leaving behind. And there was a whacking great bird of paradise which returned me to my Southern California childhood.

It was the back yard, though, that closed the deal. A magnolia tree with sturdy branches you could sit on. A corner plot of bamboo that seemed contained. Three beds of calla lilies. More white azalea shrubs and a listless white camellia. A little grove of fuchsias in the shadow of a walnut tree. A rose bush that bloomed velvety red roses. And the jackpot -- a rose tree that produced sprays of peachy/pinky blossoms, plus two peony bushes, one red and one white. Never mind the weeds, the crabgrass, the overall dishabille -- I was moving to Berkeley for sunshine and roses and tomatoes, and here was a garden.

The following year, I stumbled across Ashley and Awesome Blossom. She put everything in order by pruning, weeding, shaping, adjusting, designing and introducing new plants. The front yard and back were glorious when she was done. And after another year, this time with me weeding and feeding and watering, the back yard came into its own. The white camellia that I'd fretted over bloomed, then shot out new growth. A plot of huge, fragrant, pink lilies encroached on the bamboo bed. And rose bushes that I thought were sticks, produced a few buds and then a flower or two.

Berkeley is blessed with terrific nurseries -- Magic Gardens, Berkeley Hort., East Bay Nursery -- and I spent many happy hours absorbing their offerings and researching them in my Sunset Garden Book. And then I discovered Annie's Annuals in Richmond and became a flower floozie. There have been hits and misses (more than a few misses!), but by now the garden has expanded beyond Ashley's influence and feels like my own. The columbine that had wilted in years past, is now filling in nicely alongside the poppies and lilies. The cheddar pinks and scabiosa I discovered in Shetland blend with the love-in-a-mist that has spread like wildfire.

The heavy heat from last week seems to have broken, and the garden's long soak now lasts a few days. I poke through the branches of the walnut and magnolia trees, looking for where to prune. There are not so many weeds, but more and more leaves fall and I think about where to put bulbs. The pink and white Japanese anemones have popped, and the dahlias look like they're trying to bud.

You plant a garden, tend it for a few years, and think you know all its secrets. The only mystery I was pondering was where to put the bougainvillea a friend had dropped off in August. As I was poking around the flower bed, a long, creamy, bell-shaped flower with a dusky sweet scent landed beside me. I had no recollection of buying a plant that could produce such a beauty with such an aroma, and was wondering how it could have arrived in my garden. I looked up and at the very top of a tree that is now taller than my house, I could just make out where the flower might have fallen from as well as sprays on a few neighboring branches. And I couldn't believe it. This tree started out as a little china doll plant in a 4" container that lived on the deck of my house in the Haight. I'd bought it on a lark at Cole Hardware, meaning to put it in a proper pot and bring it indoors. It stayed outside and when I moved to Berkeley, I just stuck it in the ground to see what would happen. It wasn't meant to have so much sun, and the dark, ivy green leaves grew lighter and lighter, then turned yellow and fell off. But the plant got a stalk and kept growing. As the years went by, it sprouted a few trunks and they kept climbing up too. No leaves for the first 3 feet or so, but then they'd bunch out on skinny little branches, the leaves retaining their distinctive shape, now sporting a bright shade of green. The trunks never got bigger than a foot in diameter and they framed the flower beds. The rustling of leaves from the upper reaches mirrored the sound of the bamboo shoots across the garden. And there, I thought, was my garden surprise.

Now, an added bonus -- amazing tropical flowers that fall from the sky. Who knew? And what will my next garden surprise be?