Well, my garden seems like it's surviving the dry air, but it may not matter. I'm getting the itch. I think I want to renovate my front garden.
My garden club used to give me so much hell for having the tiniest, most immature gardens. Why? I'd plan an elaborately themed garden, plant it, then get itchy after a year and rip it out. Not because it wasn't successful, or I didn't like it ... there are just so many awesome plants in the world that can be combined in so many beautiful ways! I saw that I had a problem, but I happily planted, enjoyed for a while, then re-planted, adding the old plants to a section of my backyard known as 'The Graveyard'. The graveyard was basically a nursery... all my old plants would go into black nursery cans and wait to be traded, donated, or recycled. I drove my husband crazy, but I learned so much! I still consider my gardens my laboratories, but I let them grow - I haven't ripped anything out (anything major, at least) in about four years. Designing gardens for other people helps - I can use their gardens to play with unusual combinations.
But I'm so jealous of some of these gardens I've done for other people! I want them for myself! So I am going to do what I've pledged not to, and tear out a significant portion of my front yard. I'm going to add more color and texture. Some of my beloved succulents will have to go, but of course, many will stay put. I think it's time. If I have an itch, I have to scratch, right? I can't just sit there and go mad, right?!

The Santa Anas. The Devil's Wind. For those of you not familiar with Southern California, the Santa Ana Winds are the hot desert currents that howl down from the Sierras through the Mojave and arrive in Los Angeles right as the summer heat is winding down - just in time to fight off the beginnings of crisp autumn breezes and turn the southern half of California into a fiery convection oven. The winds turn everything brown and crunchy, perfect kindling, so come Santa Ana winds, it's fire fire everywhere! For the past week the sun has been filtered through smoke and ash, making it look like 6:30pm all day long. It's eerie; disconcerting. And stinky. People say that more murders happen during Santa Anas than any other time. The winds make people crazy. My shriveled garden makes me crazy! I don't want to increase the amount of water I'm using, but the drying winds are so much worse than any drought, as far as my plants are concerned. Give them no water, and they laugh - hit them with hot, blowing air for days on end and they reduce the amount of surface exposed to the elements by hunkering down and curling up. Not a pretty look. My hard-ass succulents? Well, most are keeping up appearances, but some are starting to curl up into closed fists. Heavy sigh. Sometimes this kind of weather lasts through Halloween, with tiny, one or two day reprieves here and there. But that's life in LA. The old saying is we only have 3 seasons, Flood, Fire, and Drought. What a place to be a gardener!

Debbie from MD poses a query:
What does root rot look like? I have basil plants that are browning on the bottom stems but it looks like they are forming a think bark covering and I did not know if that was what root rot looked like. The plants themselves seem to be extremely sturdy and very full. Aside from the main stems, they look great.

Well, Debbie, considering that the plants are sturdy and full, I think you have healthy basil. The lower stems of basil naturally become woody over time - never tough wood like a shrub, but soft, yet covered in thin bark, like you've observed. This is perfectly normal. Root rot is another thing altogether, an organism that lives in the soil and attacks the feeder roots of plants when the temperatures are high and too much water is present. A brown lesion can grow on the lower part of the stem, but it doesn't look like wood.

You'll usually first see root rot on the leaves, which become yellow and droopy. then they'll start turning brown - not dry crunchy brown, but yellowy brown and spotty. Then you'll notice the crown of the plant (where the main stem and the dirt meet) getting slimy, then mushy, then the whole yellow, spotty, slimy mess will fall over. Since yours look great, I say no worries.
My favorite book on herbs is Lesley Bremness' "The Complete Book of Herbs-A Practical Guide to Growing and Using Herbs". It'll give you tons of info on every single herb you can think of, how to care for them, and their culinary, medicinal, and household uses. Enjoy!

(Leucadendron 'Safari Sunset' in full glory)
Queenie the Short writes:
I recently bought some very young plants for my shady back patio. They are all quite small right now, but I'm unclear as to how big of containers to plant them in. I have winter daphne, evergreen clematis, and two species of hellebore among other things. I live in zone 7.
Thanks for your time.

First of all, Queenie - are you 'Queenie the Short' as in 'Pliny the Elder', or are you Queen of all that is Short? Regardless, consider me your royal horticulturist...
Yours is an issue I wrestled with, and I lost quite a few times. Whenever I'd buy a small plant that was going to get large, I'd think - why not save a step and plant this bitty plant in a big ole pot? Well, every time I did that, the baby plant would up and die. Experienced gardeners know all about this, and they have a system called 'potting up' to prevent tiny plants from rattling around in too large pots and eventually dying. You should never plant anything in a pot that is bigger than the rootball (the area of roots and dirt that holds together when the plant is out of it's container) times three... that way your plantlets have room to flex their roots and grow, but aren't adrift in a huge sea of potting soil. See, if the pot is too big, the soil will drain too fast and dry out too quickly. So use the 3x the rootball rule, and change the pots to 3x bigger ones every 6 months or so as the little plants grow. Yes, it would be easier if one could just pop them into a big container and let that be that - but that is not the gardening way. Our path is one of hard work, but the rewards are great. Thank you for your question, your Majesty, and keep reading!

In the sleepy little oceanside town of Carpinteria, California, close to the beach and protected by a row of giant petrified pine trees there is a wonderland for plant lovers, Seaside Gardens. My friend Michael told me it was amazing, and so one slow day at the office we snuck out and made our way up the coast, listening to The Smiths and k.d. lang (we were in that kind of mood).

I love the drive up the 101 - it's just so ... California, you know? We pulled into the parking lot and things looked pretty normal - like a good retail nursery - and then we passed under a vine covered arch and into my new gardening Mecca. Wow! The thing about Seaside Gardens is that most of the space is taken up by absolutely out-of-this-world display gardens, and less than 1/4 is devoted to retail space. So you can wander endlessly around the winding paths through the Japanese Garden, the Mediterranean Garden, the Australian Garden, the South African Garden, the Tropical Garden ... AND MORE! I saw Australian plants bigger than I'd ever seen them! I am now totally devoted to Australian and South African plant species. You'll see, I'm already planning to re-arrange things in my yard/ laboratory.

This little nursery did what I've always thought would be the perfect nursery ... install amazing display gardens that excite and inspire people, tuck a little cafe in a corner, set up your retail plants in neat, accessible rows so people don't have to search forever, and set up a pavilion for demonstrations, classes, and talks. A good nursery can create a garden revolution in it's area - I've seen it happen. Seaside Gardens has certainly created a revolution in me! I haven't been this thrilled about new plants since I don't know when!

Since I've been a little cranky due to the malevolent Mr. V (my garden man - I've given him an alias), I decided to soothe my mind by watching "Howard's End" for the millionth time. Watching this film is like slipping into a hot bath - all is right with the world. And it isn't that I'm such a fan of Helena Bonham-Carter... I love the gardens in that movie. One scene has some people having tea or something at an outdoor table surrounded by an explosion of blooming euphorbias - breathtaking! Watch it and see why you should plant Euphorbia wulfenii. Another garden movie I love - 'My House in Umbria" with Maggie Smith. The olive trees, the vines, the garden they renovate ... pure beauty. I know there are other movies that have amazing gardens in them - here's a few that I can think of off the top of my head:

The Wicker Man - Christopher Lee's character has a garden that has always left me awestruck
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - if that edible landscape with a chocolate river isn't a garden, then what is?
Laurel Canyon - Frances McDormand's house has a perfect unkempt but beautiful Hollywood Hills type garden in it
The Wizard of Oz - The Woodsman's forest with the trees that throw the apples - an orchard with chutzpah!!
Heavenly Creatures - New Zealand is a gardening Mecca; the camera couldn't avoid amazing plants!

That's all I can think of right now - any others anyone can come up with? I'm going to start a dvd collection of them!

I am so depressed! You see, I have a man who comes over to tidy up my garden once a week - I can't really call him a gardener because I don't let him do anything that gardeners do. He wants to cut, to trim, to hedge, to shear - but all I'll let him do is weed and blow the leaves away. From the sidewalk only! He thinks I'm crazy for wanting to let the leaves stay in my planting beds, no matter how often I explain that leaves decompose, they become natural food for the plants, they improve the soil ... he doesn't believe me. And if I don't watch him like a hawk, he'll blow the leaves out of my planter beds, and all of my hard won loamy soil right along with them. I actually pay him extra not to cut anything. Why don't I fire him? He is my last chance helper. All the other 'garden men' in the neighborhood want nothing to do with me - I've fired them all once or twice before. I'm not a bad gardener to work for - I do the hard stuff myself ... I explain everything - but it's like they can't help themselves ... at some point, they will go crazy and cut. Well, it happened again. The man just up and cut the only flowers that were blooming in my garden at this time of year - my cobalt agapanthus. I am so mad - all I can do is ask why and repeat for the thousandth time that I like to cut my own plants. I think he and the other men who've worked in my garden must get together for beer and laugh at me. They dare my garden man to cut something so that I'll freak out. Oh well. Another flower bloomed today. And if he touches it, I swear... I'll... I'll...