I have a task for you. In the midst of your holiday flurry, take a minute to smell the season. Xmas smells SO GOOD. Don't pass a Christmas tree without taking a big whiff of that piney fragrance - for me, that alone can banish the winter blues. If you're low on holiday spirit, have a sniff of a peppermint stick - or better yet, eat one! Bake a batch of gingerbread cookies for the aromatheraputic value of it! For us in California, the juicy, citrus-y scent of Satsuma mandarin oranges sings "X-MAS!". Everybody has different olfactory associations that mean the holidays to them; these are a few of mine.
Enjoy the season, my friends!

Regular readers know that in my offline life, I work at Elysian Landscapes, a design and build landscape firm based in Los Angeles. The heart, soul, and Mama Bear of the company is the incomparable Judy Kameon, who I am very proud to call my dear friend as well as partner in crime. We are Thelma and Louise; Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregarde. Judy and I got our feet wet in this business together ... well, we actually did big swan dives into the business together ... and ten years later here we are, still going strong, and with some incredible gardens to our name, to boot!
As a special holiday treat, I wanted you to hear from Judy - so here she is, serving up a platter of hot ideas and good garden sense. Enjoy!

FRESH!
What's fresh for me in garden making is designing gardens with a really strict color palette. When I started out, I often went for a full range of colors, but over the years, I've become more and more narrow in my palette for both flowers and foliage, and the impact of more focused palettes is so dramatic and unusual. We've just designed a garden for a very chic fashion designer without using any green! Just black, silver, grey, ivory and blue. I think it's going to be spectacular. I can't say it's a particularly original idea, in fact, in my infancy as a garden designer, I saw the most extraordinary monochromatic borders in an English garden (I think it was Barrington Court) - one was all shades of red, one in shades of blue, and yet another in shades of yellow. We seem to think English cottage gardens as being old fashioned, but they are surprisingly modern at times.

FROSTY!
I think tropical gardens are a bit on the coolish side right for us in Southern California, and by cool, I don't mean hip. People are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment and the impact of having a garden, so planting for your own climate has been and will always be the right thing to do, on so many levels. The request for drought tolerant plantings has increased substantially in the last year, and I think that's a great thing. I'm even doing what I would once have thought would have been unthinkable - I'm promoting the idea of installing synthetic lawns. I even put my money where my mouth is, I figure if I want my clients to use it, I should set an example, and it's fantastic. I found one that has soy based backing, so it has no petroleum in it's content, and it looks so real that people don't know it's fake unless you tell them. No water, no maintenance, no mud, no guilt - just the best looking lawn you're ever going to see! Even my dog Lola loves it!

WANT IT!
As far as garden accessories go, I have to say the most sought after garden bling these days is an outdoor woodburning pizza oven. I've just designed my first, and I think I solved the problem of how to make it not only presentable but a gorgeous focal element. My secret? Cladding the whole thing in gorgeous Heath tile. I've yet to build it, but I'm hoping it will be the first of many (my own garden included!).

WORK IT!
Reworking my garden is part and parcel of my trade, and I see it as a great opportunity for me to try new ideas out, in hardscape, plantings, lighting and furniture. There has always been a real dialogue between my garden and our client projects, and experimentation is essential to the creative process. Plus I'd just get bored if I just maintained things as they are endlessly!

JUST START!
Dear readers, this sounds so trite, but whatever space you have to work with, go and have fun! I started off by devouring the Sunset Western Garden Guide, which is like the bible in my world, going to nurseries, growers, plant sales, visiting arboretums and finding other plant obsessed friends to hang out with - your Germinatrix is top on that list! It's good to do a little homework, so you don't end up buying a tree that will grow 60 feet tall when the most you have room for is 15 feet (people do this, we see it all the time!). I always like to start off my garden shopping trips with a little palette that I paint to keep me in line, but palette is my thing since I'm a painter. Figure out what your thing is and go from there.

I would have to say if there is one rule to follow it's this - plant appropriately for your climate. That doesn't mean you to only work with natives (out west, if you did that, you garden would look a bunch of weeds). Pick plants from similar climates, like for me, that means I get to use things from Kangaroo Paws and Phormiums from Australia, but it also means no Peonies or Hostas. Learn what your micro climate is, and if you don't know what that means, ask the Germinatrix!

AND NEVER STOP!
My mother sent me an article a while ago - a poll was done on people who garden, and the more hours they gardened a week, the happier the people were. Garden making is a bit of happiness, right in your own backyard! Who wouldn't want that?

When I first started gardening, I was such a priss.

I wanted to grow things, but I didn't want to have to deal with the ... the ick factor. Smelly compost made with cow poop. Slugs - EEEWW - What kind of crazy naked snails ARE they anyway?? But the worms ... the slimy, creeping, slithery earthworms - YYYUUUUUKKKK!!!! They were the worst. Whenever I came across one while digging I'd let out a yelp and leap up and do a grossed-out wiggle dance. This made the planting of my first garden take forever.

I don't use manure in my garden - a light top dressing of mushroom compost on my vegetable beds is as rich as I get, and nobody in their right mind ever gets used to slugs, but I have come to love my earthworms. They are little living factories, churning out perfect soil as they inch through your dirt. So now, when I come across an earthworm, I dance a different kind of jig - one of honor and respect - and then I pluck that worm out of the ground and transfer it to my vegetable beds, where they are sorely needed. I thank them and make kissy-noises all the way there.

This may be first grade science fair stuff, but I still think it's pretty interesting. Wherever you find these worms, you will find healthy soil rich in organic matter. Worms and great soil are bound by cause and effect. When an earthworm tunnels underground, it digests your lowly dirt, along with some decomposing organic matter as a side dish, and turns them into something incredible - Worm Castings! This worm poo is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and has loads of beneficial bacteria. Worm castings are the organic gardener's current cure-all of choice - whatever ails your plants, give 'em a nice top dressing of worm castings, and it'll be fine. I hate to be gullible - but they really do seem to work! I had horrible whitefly on my cannas, and ever since Worm Gold was used to mulch around them ... there is nary a fuzzy fly to be found. And those cannas are still blooming!

Here are some crazy factoids about earthworms:

*They are Hermaphrodites. that's why they multiply so rapidly - a worm mommy can be some other worm mommy's baby daddy!
*They have five hearts. Five!
*The largest earthworm ever found was in South Africa - it measured 22 feet from tip to tail (or from tip to other tip)
*Pesticides and herbicides can kill earthworms, so stay organic! Please!

This post was inspired by Chuck B of Whoreticulture, and seconded by Gardenwiseguy - let's just throw down with our favorite plant combos!

For me, plant combining is the essence of garden design. I know hardscape is crucial, and focusing on the strong, shrubby "bones" of your landscape keeps your work looking tight all year long - I can almost even understand the appeal of large sweeps of monoplantings (wait - no... I'm sorry, I lied. I absolutely CANNOT understand massing a couple of plants and calling it a garden. Call me crazy. Call me a messy "salad gardener" - I don't care)

When I see a pair, a trio, or a grouping of plants that combine to create something more than each individual element, I get a thrill. I tend to be a lover of contrast, so I set different textures, colors, and silhouettes against one another to see if they work - if they act as an enhancement or a foil. Not all combos sing, but when they do ... it makes me want to belt out an aria myself!

Some of my favorite combos are :

Euphorbia 'Helen's Blush' and Agave 'Blue Glow' (pictured above) - the variegation of the euphorbia can be a little strident, but couple it up with the cool tones of Agave 'Blue Glow' and you have garden magic.

Agave mediopicta 'Alba', Rosa 'Iceberg', and Aeonium 'Zwartkop' - the agave is gray with a cream colored stripe down the middle, the rose is white and frilly, and the dark purple aeonium is known as the 'Black Rose'. Mouthwatering!

Canna 'Tropicanna', Coleonema 'Sunset Gold', Salvia 'Indigo Spires', and Agave attenuata- This is ALOT of look - The canna is electric, the coleonema looks like a feathery cloud of bright yellow dotted with tiny pale pink flowers, the salvia has twisty octopussy wands of dark purple flowers held high above fresh minty leaves, and the agave is a big green rubber rose. A combination only for the fearless!

So, gardeners - hit me with some of your all time favorite plant groupings!
And those of you who don't garden yet - you can play, too -just think about what you like in a vase!

So last night Jan and I were walking the two dogs known collectively as 'Eight Legs Of Terror', when I smelled a strange, disgusting, and familiar smell. Being the kind of person who investigates the icky, I looked for the source of the smell - and was rewarded by finding an old, sickening acquaintance of ours.

Yes, friends, the Stinkhorn is back!

(I had to spear the fungal member to get it to pose for a picture)

Sadie was titillated by the hideous stench and wanted to eat it, Dexter (the sensible one) turned his oversized head away from the odor of decay, and Jan tried to forbid me to bring it home. Tried. I attempeted to get the whole thing, but it broke off at the shaft, so I walked the rest of the way home holding a mushroom that looked like I'd ripped the penis off a corpse. Jan and the dogs walked ahead of me, trying to pretend that I wasn't with them. The smell was really bad.

Last year's Stinkhorn, known in scientific circles as Phallus impudicus, was a shock to all of us when it emerged in my backyard. The smell of rotting flesh was hanging in the air, and there it was - an erection coming straight out of the ground. We were all confused, especially Sadie, who wanted to eat last year's example as well. (yes - Sadie is not the dainty type). It seems like it would be horribly poisonous, but it isn't. In fact - the French eat this rank fungus, fresh or pickled! Those crazy French - what won't they eat?

I found this one about a block away from my house - but I think one came up in my yard recently, almost exactly where it emerged last year. I say I think because it was just the bottom part of it - no slimy top. And yes, I believe I know exactly what happened.

Sadie ate it.

EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW!

See a time lapse viddy of the Phallus emerging from it's "egg"!

I want you all to know that I just wrote the most eloquent, sharply observed, poignant, and funny post about leaves changing color and falling off trees. It may very well have been the best thing I've ever written. And just when I was about to save it on Typepad - my computer up and froze on me. My brilliant meditation on seasons passing is gone, swallowed into oblivion.

My inspiration was a combination in my back yard that I didn't plant - a beautiful toyon (otherwise known as California xmas tree) and an ornamental pomegranite were planted by the woman who owned my house from 1927 - 1989. I imagine that she planted these two close together in anticipation of what they would do at this time of year, when the toyon is decked out in red berries and the pomegranite's leaves are fiery yellow and fluttering to the ground. She must have walked outside to get some air while cooking holiday meals and cut a few branches for a vase, congratulating herself for her good taste in shrubbery. Today, I also give her props, because every year I look forward to the moment when these two come into perfect complimentary allignment - the toyon at the peak of its fruiting glory, and the pomegranite; wan, waning, getting ready for a nice long nap.

Thank you, lady!