How to Grow a Spectacular and Easy Garden
Question from Nina:
I checked your website just this morning before I sent my e-mail to you. Under EVENTS it was listed as I indicated in my previous email, i.e. April 10th. Checking the site again, just now, after receiving your response, the corrected date is now listed: April 20th, etc.
I would also like to add that my daughter, husband, and I visited your garden about 20 years ago when she was working at Weidner’s. I received your book “Pat Welsh’s Southern California Gardening A Month-to-Month Guide” compete with autograph. Also at that time you gave me a geranium slip which, unfortunately, did not survive more than a couple of years. However, a slip of another plant, which I do not recall the name of, has proliferated, spreading at will without a fuss. A wonderful reminder/remembrance of our lovely visit with you.
Answer from Pat:
Thank you for checking again and glad the date problem is now corrected. Sorry about the confusion.
How nice to know that you visited my garden years ago. It is now no longer open to the public but at this moment, thanks to the weather, is perhaps more spectacular than ever before with wisteria, clivia, Geranium maderense, Echium candidum, Lady Banks rose, camellia, winter blooming jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum), babiana, freesia, sparaxis, and camellias all in full bloom. This was convenient since yesterday, Easter Sunday, I had a breakfast and egg hunt in my garden for 25 family members including my two daughters and spouses, two of my five grandchildren. 6 of my 8 great-grandchildren and my three nephews and their families. I have enlarged the lower (winter) patio to hold us all for this annual reunion and re-designed the garden to make it just as spectacular as ever but a lot more easy care. For example, I switched my potted plant collections to succulents, painted all my old wooden and wicker outdoor furniture in bright Mediterranean hues, turned the vegetable garden into a meadow and covered the island bed with Korean grass (Zoysia tenuifolia), and changed the central paths from mulch which needed annual renewing to permanent pebbles, much better and cleaner for large numbers of babies to sit on. I now have one raised bed for vegetables and instead of the 3-bin composting system I once had, I now compost in a double-drum composter neatly hidden from view behind a trellis.
All through the years people have walked into my garden in spring and gasped at the spectacular show. I’ve often heard them remark, “But of course she’s so lucky living here where she has the perfect spot for growing things.” I smile when I hear people say that since the fact is no, I don’t have the perfect spot—it faces north and has a cold wind— and nor do I have perfect soil. It’s something akin to beach sand and it sheds water. Anyone can grow a spectacular garden if they will cover arbors and pergolas with colorful vines, grow thick hedges for privacy and choose the easiest and most colorful plants best adapted to their soil and climate. Instead, most people grow a bit of this and a bit of that which never looks good and all too many gardeners try to grow things that thrived somewhere else they remember instead of in the climate where they live.
My philosophy is if something is spectacular and easy, grow that. And if something is good, plant a lot of it. The result looks easy and as if Mother Nature did it