Night Hunters If you have been considering the advocation of becoming a night hunter, snail and slugs will provide you a hunting ground to practice in. Wearing a mask might further spook your neighbors who will already be questioning you when meeting by the garbage can in the morning when depositing the compost bucket into the green can. In my case, my neighbor Jill questioning. "Was that you Keeyla shining a light into my bedroom window at 11:30 at night"? Could it really have been that late? It could. After all is done, I head out to the garden to gather up snails & slugs into one of those compostable milky white bags you get now at the health food store. I count them. You would think that after getting 60 of the lil' buggers on Tuesday there wouldn't be any more to harvest Thursday night. Not so. Plenty more. Where do they come from. In my garden I look everywhere. I know that they are especially fond of the inside rims of pots and succulent strapped shaped leaves like you find on agapanthus. At this time of year, April, I'm out saving my ranunculus. ( Do you know that I heard on the radio that Octopi is now Octopuses?) That is the kind of random thought that occurs to the brain collecting ranunculus feasting slugs. Believe it or not, I say a little prayer..telling these cute, slimy, slipping along bent stems with their feelers out critters that they are welcome back in another form that helps my flowers. As water, perhaps, is what I'm thinking. It helps my guilt as I plunge yet another one into my compost bag. I used to dig a hole in the daytime in prep for my nightly hunts so when I caught one chewing away at the stem holding up some flower or another, I'd deposit it in the hole to be covered over. Hurrying them up on their way to becoming compost. Still think that is a good practice if you have the foresight to dig a hole. So often I refer to my Mom as a path finder in my life as a gardener, not so when it comes to snails and slugs. Cory's snail bait in the bright yellow and red box was an always to be replenished supply of the garden shed. I don't like using poisons.  Beer pans work for while, copper collars for awhile. And the web is full of suggestions. I prefer to go out and hunt them down. You can feed the snails on corneal and lettuce and serve them up as escargot. I tend to prefer my garlic on french bread to dip into seafood soup with my snails sea faring relatives. My neighbor has one of those 'coal miner' lamps that is on a stretchy band to put around your head. It's on my list of things to get someday. I just use a cheapo flashlight. One client who didn't like to get the slim of snails and slugs on her fingers, told me that she used chop sticks to catch them. One student asked me  what do with a snail she'd found.  I told her to, excuse me, kill it, she picked up a rock and smashed it with such force that it splattered all over her face. Please don't follow her example. And yes, getting rid of the gooey slim does present a problem!  When people tell me what a great job I have, I agree, but then think of the list of job chores comparable to dealing with snails and slugs. While I've offered  clients my snail hunting services, I've yet to be taken up on this. I've grown quite fond of going out into the garden at night. Gives you a whole different perspective and somehow a deeper bonding with your plants. In the evening dew drops suspended on the edges of leaves and stems is what brings out the snails and slugs..I'm rather sympathetic to that as it is quite glittery by flashlight. --  There are some precautions to be made to nocturnally inclined gardeners. Two eager midnight maidens reported to me how they slimly escaped the  'talons' or rather the 'fangs'  of death  on a darkened garden path by stepping on poisonous snakes. One barely came out alive taking over a year to recover the other almost lost a leg and the blackened swollen limb was no picnic to endure. So those inhabiting snake or other dangerous animal territories should take all precaution. The rest of us knowing the lay of the land before venturing out is a good idea. A note: I've added to my catch of night crawlers; grubs, cut worms, earwigs, and walking sticks. Have fun joining the 'Night Crawlers'

Painterly Pavings

In answer to your questions about Painterly Pavings I'm posting some this and that.
To get going you need to have a design.
Lately working with many clients; I like to start with drawings. Sometimes inspired by paintings. Sometimes by leaves. There are a gazillion starting places for designs.
Currently cement is my main materials....with various, lots of stuff, introduced..that is smushed into the wet concrete. Again only one approach.

I have on my agenda to makes some concrete stepping stones...good place to start..take pictures...but with my busy schedule..who knows when that will happen.

In the meantime, here is a drawing for a patio that I laid out in construction chalk today.

See ya soon...

 

Fruiting Pears

Victor at Berkeley Hort. Nursery told me to plant more flowers next to my fruit trees. Duh! "The blossoms need to be pollinated." In February and March when your fruit trees come into bloom often there are not enough flowers close by to attract bees. "Plant lots of flowers so that the blossoms will get pollinated so that you have more fruit." I'm going to take Victor's advice. He went on to say composite flowers are the best. I know that Calendulas will do the job as they bloom well even in winter.

My next note is to plant Fava Beans and Peas. I'm already on my third try after the rats and birds have mowed down two crops. 'Dust yourself off and try again.' This week replanting is on my list. As late as it is.

It's not too late to add to your New Year's Res. list to make sculpture for this year's edible garden. Follow the path of blue pears... Make a place in your edible garden for delicious looking art. Then on a rainy day make paintings...If you are practical you can laminate them for place mats.

Happy Gardening in the New Year,

Painting & Bulbs - Time to rethink and renew

This is no day to plant bulbs. Nope, too hot. What I'm up to with color on a hot day like today is PAINT. One of the easiest, cheapest and most instant gratifications with color. Two benches and a door got new coats to protect them from winter wets. Over at a clients together we took paint and brush following drawings done at the kitchen table...out into the garden to draw then paint images of her dogs on pots.  I will have to 'run' over and take some pics.

Yes, get out your paints. While you are at make plans for where you are going to place and plant your bulbs. One friend wanted to know which ones will come back. First we scouted out her garden naming the color combos for the different areas. No pen in hand she committed the colors to memory. Once color coded; on to bulbs. Sparaxis for a long border topped her list. "Do you like yellow and red together?" she asked. "Yes." "Yes I do like yellow and red together." Sparaxis has red petals with yellow centers. Perfect and they come back. As do the yellow ones.

Here's the list I gave her of bulbs that will return:

Muscari grape hyacinths (blue or white):  the fancier ones have not returned as well.

Freesias, especially the egg yolk yellows which are also fragrant, are great hanging over the edge of a pot.

Ixia:  wonderful for naturalizing; make a meadow with grasses

Ipheion:  starflower or wisely blue - good in rock gardens and at edges

Peruvian Scilla:  a wonderful blue

Homeria will bring the slugs and snails out, but very reliable

Tritonia:  an african bulb that has a lot in common with freesias

Hoop Daffodil and most of the smaller daffodils

Crocus

Scilla

Lilies:  some have a strong return; great for pots

I plant tulips and ranunculus as annual bouquets.

Bulbs are my choice for giving Spring The Wow and the Yes factor. 'Like sunshine coming up from the ground' one passerby said of the trumpeting daffodils.

In addition to painting there is a lot of cutting and pulling going on. Compost heaps heading for the green can. Soil being turned and amended.

On your garden to do list: Reminder to fertilize all acid loving plants with an organic mix to be topped with mulch. Acid loving includes blueberries.

This year I'm even cleaning out several container plantings that have been 'going' for about six years. Time to rethink and renew. Mostly I'm clearing space for the bulbs.

After planting bulbs with the soil turned over wildflower seeds will get thrown about to fill in the gaps both in the flower garden and between the climbing fava beans and peas.

The more you get done now the more you can enjoy spring unfolding in waves of color.

This year I'm returning to earlier loves. Natives both in bulbs and flowering perennials are making a comeback. Pink flower mop heads of buckwheats are bee favorites and hummers seek out the tubular orange flowers of the california fuschias...Zauscheneria or epilobium.

Happy Gardening,

Keeyla Meadows

Keeyla's article in the SF Chronicle!

 

A quick primer all about bulbs

Keeyla Meadows, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, November 5, 2010

    

I open my garden in March for Show and Tell. What I have to "show" are bouquets of blooming-their-heads-off, full-of-sun-shining-light, colorful bulbs. Sadly, in March, what I have to "tell" visitors wanting to know where they can get these spring beauties for their own garden is that I planted these bulbs in November. Well, here it is November, so you are in luck. Now is the time to be fearless with the use of color in your garden by planting bulbs.
While a vast array of flowering and some edible bulbs are available, I always start with my tried-and-true favorites and branch out with a few newbies.
Color is key in how I organize both my planting zones and bulb selection. A bouquet of different types of bulbs including tulips, daffodils, ranunculus, freesias, muscari, lilies and more, are planned for each area of the garden. A favorite matching palette in shades of maroon and yellow is made up on Tango 'Honey Bee' lilies, ranunculus 'Cafe,' and tulip 'Gavota.'
I concentrate my design and plantings around what can be seen from the windows as the weather may be wet during part of the bloom season. Bulbs planted in containers of various sizes work well both in focal spots outside windows and at entries, balconies or on window sills.
After deciding where to plant the bulbs, make lists of what to plant. This is the hard part because there are just so many to choose from.
One approach to bulb selection is practicality. Which bulbs are easy, reliable, will return and even multiply? Do you want natives or edibles? The practical list is long but does not include the reigning beauty: tulips. In California, Tulipmania is a short thrill. Still, just for their sheer amount of saturated color, these beauties will find a way onto your list.
To top off your bulb display, seed the spaces over and between your planting with spring wildflowers. Poppies are my favorites; the seeds are economical and will bloom through the season, providing forage for pollinators: bees, birds and butterflies.
Whether you concentrate on color, edibles, natives or a combination, come spring, you'll have your own garden bouquet for Show and Tell.

Inside: Landscape designer Keeyla Meadows' guide to spring bulbs and wildflowers that attract pollinators and people. L4

A word on organics

This year, while searching the Internet for red tulips, I came across EcoTulips ( www.ecotulips.com). Jeroen Koeman, who calls himself "The Tulip Man," is a pioneer in organic tulip farming. His growing fields in Holland are pesticide-free and benefit by a process of crop rotation-sharing pastures with the cows of an organic dairy. He says that his red 'Ille de France' doesn't need added fertilizer, just a handful of compost dug into the soil. I'm still using organic bulb food. Koeman's EcoTulips are pre-chilled, leaving your fridge free for turkey stuffing instead of tulip stuffing (one friend cooked his wife's tulips for their Thanksgiving meal!).
- Keeyla Meadows

Bulbs for spring show and tell

Here are some of my tried-and-true spring favorites. Note: The rule of thumb when planting bulbs is to make the depth of the hole twice the width of their diameter. I've experimented and found chilling tulips four to six weeks in the fridge is necessary. I plant all my bulbs between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

Color

Tulips are the reigning beauty of spring bulbs. Here are my favorite varieties by hue:
-- Salmon: 'Menton,' 'Big Eartha,' 'Apricot Beauty'
-- Yellow: 'Big Smile,' 'Jaap Groot'
-- Purple: 'Passionale,' 'Violet Beauty,' 'Blueberry Ripple,' 'Purple Prince'
-- Magenta: 'Gypsy Love'
-- Nearly black: 'Queen of the Night,' 'Negrita'
-- Green: 'Spring Green,' 'Greenland' (green and pink )
-- White: 'Maureen'
-- Orange: 'Orange Emperor,' 'Orange Queen'
-- Orange tones: 'Princess Irene,' 'Gudoshnik'
-- Red: 'Ille de France'
Daffodils are easy and a must for those with deer and gophers, as those critters don't like them. Plant them in drifts by trenching out long furrows. With grassy foliage, 'Golden Bells' (Bulbocodium) is a container favorite.

Edibles

Crocus sativus is a savory for edibles enthusiasts. It sports those golden saffron threads so essential for Moroccan tagines. Crocus could share a pot with onion sets, garlic and grape hyacinth, topped by a seeding of borage. Share the forage with the flybys: Bees love borage. Drop blue borage flowers along with the blue "beads" of grape hyacinth spires on salads, or float in soup.

Natives

Skip from forays into color and flavor to jaunts on the wild side of gardening. Nevin Smith, founding horticulturalist of Suncrest nurseries and author of "Native Treasures," has some suggestions for planting out native bulbs. When asked about which to start with, he replied: "Many of the brodiaeas are good with the dichelostemmas being probably the easiest." You can see why they are simply called 'Blue Dicks.' But don't let the lingo stop you in your tracks: There are stunners on this path. He continued: "Brodiaea elegans, coronaria and californica are all good beginners' bulbs." To my question on how to get Mariposa lilies and Brodiaeas to return, Nevin instructs: "Plant them in well-drained soil, with little summer water and a top dressing of crushed coarse gravel." Use native seeds ( www.larnerseeds.com) for bulb cover, and you are on your way to planting a meadow. Next to my list of native bulbs, I make a note to take spring walks to see these splendors in the wild.
- K.M.

Keeyla Meadows the owner of design/buiild/landscape company Keeyla Meadows Gardens & Art andauthor of books including "Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener's Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel" (Timber Press, 2009). E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/05/HOB51G3GKO.DTL

This article appeared on page L - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2010 Hearst Communications Inc. 

Don't miss Keeyla's talk in LA!

This September, Keeyla is giving a talk about Sustaining Spirit with Color and Whimsy!   Don't miss it!

Event:      2010 Pacific Horticulture Symposium 

Where:      Ayers Hall, L.A. County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia/Pasadena, CA

When:      Friday, September 24th at  10.15am 

Sustaining Spirit with Color & Whimsy

Friday September 24th at 10:15 am
Ayers Hall, L.A. County Arboretum & Botanic Garden

How much more whimsical can you get than turning gardens into gigantic works of art you can walk into and be a part of? From adventures in a blue pear fountain, a strawberry paving, or even painted shovels, Keeyla Meadows will inspire you to transform your gardens by being wildly colorful, artistically playful, and energetically resourceful. She shares her expertise with a "try this, try that" attitude that engages the imagination - whether you are making decisions about design or selecting specific materials for your garden. Keeyla likes to focus on garden spaces as works of art to eat in, meditate, or to be colorfully sublime. There's one answer for all these gardens: "Raise it up!" For this she has developed planters and wavy cement containers to shape and create wildly imaginative garden spaces. Along with her simple principles for creating and using color in space, she will share these techniques and demonstrate with some fabulous images!

Speaker

Keeyla Meadows

Artist & author, Fearless Color Gardens

For more than 20 years, award-winning designer and artist Keeyla Meadows has been creating original, surprising and inspiring gardens. She runs a full-scale landscaping company and operates an art gallery in the San Francisco Bay area.  The New Leaf and Sculpturesite galleries represent her artwork.  Her garden has been featured on national television and in Sunset, Metropolitan Home and Fine Gardening.  She won the Best in Show 'Golden Gate Award' at the 2001 San Francisco Flower & Garden Show.  Her latest book, Fearless Color Gardens, was released by Timber Press in November, 2009. She is also the author of Making Gardens Works of Art: Creating Your Personal Paradise (Sasquatch, 2002).  She holds a BA from the California Institute of the Arts, a MA in sculpture from the Univ. of California at Berkeley, and has completed post-graduate studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Keeyla has made extraordinary contributions to the gardening world, as she teaches how to turn a gardener into an artist, and a garden into a work of art.

www.keeylameadows.net

Please see their website for more details on how to attend and register for the event.

Hope to see you soon,

Keeyla

Park Day School Garden Tour - A Success!

We started with the idea of "Figs & Flowers"...now the picture is complete!

It's another good day sunshine. While the Parkday School Garden Tour of 12 wonderful gardens still lingers and winds through your imagination, take a moment today to stop and smell the flowers.

Megan and I both had a great day in her garden. We enjoyed seeing you there, answering questions about names of plants. Polka was a favorite rose, chartreuse philadelphus a favorite show stopper, ixia a new bulb for many and cerinthe, the bluey shrimpy flower was one that a lot a people will head out to their local nurseries (If you are local, head out to Annie's Annuals or Berkeley Horticultural Nursery)to purchase and find a place in their own gardens.  Please see Megan's note below about her thoughts on the Park Day Garden Tour.

Cerinthe

I want to remind you garden lovers that my home garden will be open this Sunday from one to four. Not at this moment to be compared to these show ready gardens, but still worth a visit.

Thank you to you book buyers. Mrs Dalloway's is a great place to pick up Fearless Color Gardens; as now is a good time to be planting your garden.

Paint-a-Pot:  Keeyla's pots are for sale!

Please join Keeyla as she holds a pot-painting workshop at Filoli Garden show on May 8 at 1.30pm.

This morning also found me waking to an alarming note as the buzz I heard inside the Secret Shadows of the Tour on Saturday and Sunday were about not enough tickets to sustain the tour in the future. This saddened me since I've been a part of the tour for a long time: I've always loved looking forward to seeing new gardens each spring, having a space for local designers and homeowners to share their work, be a part of a gardening community, and also feel connected to a school and community where I have felt that gardens and gardening are part of the heart, soul and expression of a whole community. 

Gardens are important and an important part of the education of children. Earth day this past weekend celebrated her 40th anniversary, and it made me think how great that here is a school and community so connected to the earth through her gardens. Gardens teach kids about nature, food source, the relationship between plants and insects, and between plants and animals; they are a source of art and expression, a source of crafts, a source for the study of science and the list goes on. So yes, I felt some alarm as I had these whispers of the end of the show confirmed.

Those of you who feel moved to action by contacting the school I hope you do.

In the meantime, I'm sure that there is much to take from the tour to inspire you in your own garden celebration and efforts.

Happy Gardening,

Keeyla Meadows

Note from Megan:

Wow! That was fun. What a treat to see the garden light up the faces with huge smiles of everyone that came to see it. That was a key goal for sharing our garden. Some people came back twice and many lingered for quite a awhile asking questions about plants, the process of making a garden and just expressing pure joy. Ian’s rock work was much admired as were all the flowers and color combinations and of course Keeyla’s pots!! Lucy hung out with me Sunday morning chatting to people and answering questions about the garden. She was astounded at the number of people that filled our small garden. I hope people got inspired at what you can do in a small urban garden space and get busy creating their own magical gardens!