Hi All,Thanks for all the responses! You give me lots of ideas.
The garden in question is a young woods (six years old) of 4 Olives, 3 Melaleucas, 2 Arbutus, 1 Crape Myrtle, and a Channel Island Oak. The understory is composed of background shrubbery of Ribes, Rhamnus, Ceanothus, and a groundcover of Fragaria chiloensis and Iris douglasiana, with some bulbs the rabbits don't eat: small Alliums, Camassia, and Tulipa clusiana. (Also Narcissus tazetta, but its foliage takes so long to die I'm removing it).
The garden gets watered once a week, which is a trifle dry in inland southern California.
I have a few Penstemon 'Midnight' that perform well in sunnier spots, and a couple Ceanothus 'Skylark' still producing sprays of blue, but not much else in bloom now.
Woodland gardens are rare in southern California, probably because woods are rare in southern California: to find a template in nature you have to go into the mountains here.
I guess my desire to create a woods reflects my growing up in the temperate forest.
I'm trying to create a woodland garden, by which I mean a low herbage beneath canopy trees, with scattered wildflowers of shy charm. It's just not a look frequently seen amidst the blazing bougainvilleas and oleanders and palms of a southern garden.
In a moister setting, say under sycamores or liquidambars, I'd create the look with Campanula poscharskyana, Viola hederacea, Ipheion, Zephyranthes and Carex. Olives demand a somewhat drier palette.
Anyway, thanks for all the ideas, I may try the Neomarica, Ceratostigma, or the Sollya to see how they do.
Best, Ben A-W
Simi Valley, southern California
PS I guess no one has had problems with Hardenbergia?
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:13 PM, tanya
<t*@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it dappled shade?
Not cool colors, but I have some hummingbird fuchsias that are doing
well in the dappled shade under 7-ft. perennial kale plants. They do
reach for the spots of sun when in bloom, though. White yarrow is also
slowly spreading there. This is at the edge of a vegetable garden, so
there's good soil and some regular watering nearby, but I've found
some flowering plants will do ok with less sun, though they may not
bloom as abundantly.
In a nonnative garden, I've seen a pittosporum relative, Sollya
heterophylla, in the shade.
http://www.smgrowers.com/products/plants/plantdisplay.asp?plant_id=1512
It's subtle, with small light-blue flowers, but undemanding.
Tanya
northern Calif.
sunset zone 15/17
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 10:12 PM, Ben Armentrout-Wiswall
<
benjamin.r.aw@
gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a woodsy corner of the garden beneath olives, and was wondering if
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