Laurustinus for full sun to semi-shade
In Los Angeles, February is known as the month when winter merges into spring. The Super Bowl, in early February, coincides with a major botanical event: the onset of flowering — known scient...
Category Archives: Winter Gardening
Rain is Good for Your Soil
Rainy weather is a welcome sight to anyone who lives in a Mediterranean climate such as our own, where gardening is a year-round pursuit. But a good downpour is not only an opportunity to rest from t...
Winter Garden Favorites
In Los Angeles, plants that bloom in winter, although recurring, remain somehow surprising annual delights. In the midst of winter’s pale, they arrive as unexpectedly as an undeserved new year&...
South Africa Brings Winter Color
Despite the overcast skies of January, winter landscapes in the Valley need not be drab and gray. Through judicious plant selection for your garden, you will witness a variety of flowers adorning you...
Fourth of July in January
To see Fourth of July colors in January, we need only take a hike in the hills and canyons around us. The red berries of toyon together with the white and blue flowers of ceanothus comprise the patri...
Winter-Blooming Grevilleas
The bright flowers of a few select perennials and annuals are called upon this time of year as an antidote to slate gray skies and assorted winter doldrums. “Border” is a word with specia...
Best Time for Pruning
In Los Angeles, January and February are the months for pruning most trees, shrubs, vines and roses. If you are not really the gardening type (and even if you are), you might wonder why pruning shoul...
Euryops Illuminates Winter Gardens
As time passes, I have come to regard the euryops daisy as an ornamental plant that no Southern California garden should be without – and not only because the euryops is one of my wife&#...
Tree Bark Stands out in Winter Gardens
Silhouettes of leafless trees impart an ethereal quality to the winter landscape. Leafless trees go well with wet and chilly days. They make you want to curl up and hibernate or, alternatively...
Classic Winter Bloomers
Note: The following was written shortly after a major earthquake in January, 1994. Whenever I walk my dog, I see a microcosm of Los Angeles at the end of the block. In the ruins of an ...
