Re: Shrub ideas?

How about: Sollya heterophylla the Australian Bluebell Creeper?

Tim Kalman
Zone 6
Corvallis, Oregon


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doobieous" <doobieous@yahoo.com>
To: <Medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 2:33 AM
Subject: Shrub ideas?


Hello,

I am looking for some ideas as to low growing, spreading, and fairly fast growing shrubs to use as interesting fillers for bare areas in the back garden.

A little bit about the site:

The back garden is big, it is about 70 feet long by 60 feet wide. The native soil is almost pure sand, but it is not entirely poor. We get lots of cold winds off of the ocean, as we are only 2 miles from the sea. Frost is something of a problem (we sit in a sort of frost bowl, due to surrounding hills), but it only really hits tender leaved plants like brugs and bananas hard.

I have planned out an area for lawn, but that still leaves very wide planting beds of nearly 15 feet wide (or more specifically, imagine the area outside of a circle set within a square, and you've got the idea). I've got a few backbone shrubs and some trees like Corymbia ficifolia, Fremontodendron, Ceanothus, Paraserianthes, Echium candicans, Arctostaphylos, Echium, Cordyline australis,Butia capitata, Lemon, Protea cynaroides, Leucospermum patersonii, Prunus ilicifolia, Opuntia, Aloe plicatilis, Cleistocactus strausii, Myrtillocactus geometrizans, Anigozanthos, Romneya, Metrosideros (both the kermadecensis and Metrosideros collina 'Springfire'), and even Ficus elastica and Lotus scoparius (which seems to end up colonizing any disturbed land, which makes it something of a pretty, but weedy-ish native).

Suffice it to say, the garden is quite a mix (it actually doesn't look odd.... well, to me). So, again, what I am looking for are:

- Low growing
- interesting in either leaf, flower, or both.
- good, neat looks
- spreading
- drought tolerant.
- leaf color can be anything from gray to green
- fairly common, meaning no need to hunt high and low for specialist nurseries, but not necessarily something ONLY commonly sold in "typical" home improvement/DIY store nurseries (we've got a couple down in Carmel Valley that sell things like Proteas , Lagunaria, and caudiciforms like Bursera) so I can probably find easily found but more unusual plants.

Also, they can be short lived (as in lasting a few years, rather than one year), until I can think of much longer lived plants.

Most of the water thirsty plants are close to the deck (and even then, I've gotten them to root deeply so I'm not watering every day), and pretty much most of the garden is drought tolerant plants. I plan to add in other interesting plants, but I've got LOTS of space and don't know what to do with it all!

So, any ideas?















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