The MGS Forum
Miscellaneous => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: David Dickinson on August 29, 2020, 03:28:22 AM
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I came across this today. https://gardenoracle.com/plantlist.html#agw Each plant entry has a lot of information about cultivation and photographs too to give a good starting point for finding new, suitable plants for the garden. Might be useful.
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Thank you David for your hard work.. I went on the site and check some of the plants that we have. Of course their weather conditions are not the same as ours but the information is still useful. I dream of having a large Salvia clevelandiaii like the one on the site. Ours are surviving but not thriving. Maybe another year and they will settle down to our soil and weather conditions.
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Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a S clevelandii that size and in such good health in the garden. I had the smallest of plants a few years back and stupidly over-watered it. The perfume from the leaves was heaven. And despite its small size filled the garden. Now I have a S 'Allen Chickering' and it is in the ground and has had no water for 3 months. It still has leaves but I found S 'Allen Chickering' only gives off that wonderful perfume if the leaves are rubbed. I think I am going to get a couple of the real S clevlandii this autumn and liberate them "guerrilla-gardening" style in secret places near my home. Places where I can go undisturbed and treat myself to that wonderful smell. There are a few abandoned fields behind my house.
I have heard that in hot climates another Californian, ceanothus, is better off without water in summer. I have had no success in tubs and I presume that is because I had to water them. There seems to be no problem with summer rainfall in the UK but temperatures in summer there are more comparable with spring here. I read that fremontodendron, another Californian native is not to be watered in summer either. All these plants, it seems, are highly susceptible to fungal attacks if watered in hot weather.
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David, I know my wife has looked at the link you sent but I've only had time for a quick scan. What I saw looks interesting and I must find time to have a closer scrutiny.
Some years ago we grew a few Ceanothus from seed. They didn't survive, probably due to the fact that we watered them in hindsight, but as they grew well in UK with their wet summers I hadn't taken that into account.
As for the Fremontodendron, we haven't tried one here but I remember there being a large one growing against a wall at Capel Manor in Enfield, North London, and that coped well with English summer rain. Again, probably for the same reason you mention regarding the ceanothus.