Spring is springing in the Pacific Northwest. One of the earliest signs of spring is the flowering of the native hazelnut trees, Corylus cornuta. It’s long golden catkins dangle from slender branches and catch the sunlight, lighting up the forest where it grows.

Tiny female flowers are housed separately from the long, supple catkin filled with male flowers. The female flowers will mature into tasty nuts. We once watched a pair of magnificent Stellar’s jays methodically harvest every single nut from the tree outside our dining room window. They buried them in the forest floor, much like squirrels do, to preserve them for food in winter.

Indian plum

Another early sign of spring is the leafing out of the Indian plum, Oemleria cerasiformis. This prettly little shrub is just now leafing out in the Pacific Northwest in mid February. In less than a month it will be in full bloom with dangling clusters of small white flowers.

Both the hazel and the Indian plum let us know that spring is just around the corner.

On a tour of secret gardens in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kathryn and I peek behind adobe walls for tantalizing glimpses of hidden treasures. Organized by the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens, the tour provides access to several small urban gardens not normally visible to passersby.

A beautifully sophisticated yet rustic fence made of reddish twigs defines the boundary between the garden and the natural environment beyond. This very low maintenance garden, features a beautiful mix of native and exotic plant materials all well adapted to local climate conditions and low rainfall. This is a xeriscape garden. Many people think that a xeriscape consists of a cactus and a couple of rocks surrounded by gravel. Obviously, a xeriscape can be much more than that.

In the beautifully designed private garden of the Richardson home an aesthetically appealing yet functional patio provides a transition between home and garden. This garden places all higher maintenance plantings needing supplemental water within the privacy of the backyard. Kathryn and I designed this garden several years ago.

A Montmorency pie cherry tree and a dwarf peach tree provide fresh fruit in season. The fruit trees are adjacent to the patio in the photo above.

The Richardson home also features a small section of the backyard garden devoted to vegetables such as tomatoes and chili peppers. Blue Penstemon strictus, and yellow Aquilegia chrysantha (yellow columbine) are native wildflowers mixed in with the vegetables.

In the front yard of the Richardson home we see a water conserving xeriscape of native wildflowers, shrubs, and succulents in dramatic contrast to the lush greenness of the private backyard. This portion of the garden faces south and is exposed to the intense heat of full desert sun. The function of the dry streambed is to direct and control excess rainwater from summer thunderstorms.

One aspect of gardening in the high desert of New Mexico is that most of the rainfall occurs during the “monsoon season” in the summertime. Snow in winter also provides some water, but most of the water arrives in torrential summer thunderstorms. All the precipitation (snow, hail, rain) that runs off the roof of the house is captured by downspouts and fed into cisterns which store the water in this garden. An extensive drip-trickle system distributes the water to organically grown vegetables.

Another water management technique is the sunken garden shown here. The rainwater and snowmelt which runs off of impervious surfaces such as the roof of the house is directed into these pit gardens which are sunken well below grade. A Russian olive tree rooted in the bottom of the pit shades the garden and provides a moist, shady microclimate for the plants surrounding it.

This adobe wall and dramatic blue gate provide access to a small urban garden featuring permeable paving using flagstones and creeping thyme. Permeable paving allows precipitation to percolate into groundwater without being shunted off into municipal stormwater drainage systems.

Santa Barbara, California – a gardener’s paradise. While it may have heavy, clay soil, and little water, it has perfect temperatures for growing plants from all the “Mediterranean” climates of the world. The flora of South Africa, the west coasts of North and South America, Australia, and, of course, the Med itself make appearances here.

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden displays the amazing diversity of flora native to California. The collection reaches into every corner of the state. Grasses, cacti, succulents, wildflowers, trees, and shrubs make a home here. The staff welcomes us warmly when we arrive to teach a morning workshop. We set up in the library to deliver a PowerPoint presentation followed by a hands-on diagnostic session. Some students have brought sick plants from home (contained in plastic bags to help prevent accidental introduction of pests or diseases into the botanic garden collection), and together we use the flow charts in our book to diagnose a wide variety of plant problems.

At the Book Loft in Solvang we enjoy an afternoon in the sun, signing books and diagnosing plant problems for the bookstore’s customers and passersby who are visiting the Danish village in the foothill. At Chaucer’s, a busy bookstore in Santa Barbara, we meet some avid, well-informed gardeners. Their enthusiasm for What’s Wrong with My Plant? is truly encouraging.

We explore shady trails through a forest of tree ferns in Lotusland, a botanical treasure featuring plants from all over the world. Madame Ganna Walska created this private garden on the estate she owned from 1941 until her death in 1984.

Lotusland features an amazing array of plants adapted to very dry environments. A large collection of succulent species of Aloe is featured in the photo above. Some people mistakenly call these plants cactuses. But they’re not cacti at all. Formerly included in the lily family, the Liliaceae, the aloes are now sometimes placed in a family of their own, the Aloaceae, or Asphodelaceae. Many of these plants have thick succulent leaves with a tremendous capacity for water storage.

Cacti have fleshy, water storing stems, and do not have leaves. Many have pretty flowers in bright colors. Cacti are placed in their own family, the Cactaceae, and are only found in the Americas. Most species are true desert plants and highly specialized for extremely arid conditions. Some are epiphytes, however, that grow on rainforest trees in the same manner as orchids and bromeliads.

Plants from desert regions of Africa and Asia that resemble cacti are in the family Euphorbiaceae. Although these plants superficially resemble cacti, their flowers have a completely different structure than those of the cacti.

If you have a favorite spot we should not miss, please let us know. We invite you to share your stories of the greenworld, and welcome you to join us at one of our stops on the road. See our events page for all the details.