Sometimes known as Black Calla, but actually...

...Arum palaestinum, the Palestine Lily.

Like many others, I was lucky enough to find this plant popping up on its own. It was already emerging when I bought my place in Monrovia. I moved in during January, and noticed apparent Calla foliage under the fig tree. Ho-hum, I thought, expecting the standard white lily.

Then the thing bloomed. Wow. Luckily I was working at a nursery at the time, and a co-worker helped me ID the plant.

Since then I have found out that it is rare and coveted; currently 8 people on DavesGarden.com are seeking bulbs, and the volunteers at the Los Angeles Arboretum lit up when I promised them plantlets. (Gloria, I have not forgotten!) Apparently it was popular during the Victorian era. I can't see why it would have lost popularity.

But if you knew what I've been through with this plant...how many times it looked as though I were trying to eradicate it when I only wished to preserve it. How did such misfortune befall my garden? Oh, I had help!

I mentioned offhand to my roommate, in 2004, that I really ought to dig up and pot some of them so the dogs wouldn't destroy them. Came home from work and found out that roomie had drilled a hole in one of my vintage cache pots (beyond "Grrrrr!"), dug up ALL the Arums he could find, and stuffed all of them into the one pot. I nearly flipped my lid, but did what I could to re-pot and salvage.

In 2005, I made a temporary cross-town move and took several plants with me; upon my return, I took the plants back to Monrovia. By summer they had dried out and died back and basically looked like pots of dry soil...which is why Francisco, my sometime-helper, threw them all out. Indeed, he did. (In 2007, he threw out my Dracunculus vulgaris, which had also died back to nothing in its pot.)

The following year I was thrilled to see a healthy flush of growth from the original site of my Arums; we hadn't destroyed the motherlode. Then Francisco's brother Lino came to do an annual clean-up. I forgot to tell him to leave the lilies alone, and he sure didn't. The area was bare when I got home from work. That was 2007.

This year I was relieved to see sprouts emerge from the ground and turn into plants, and also to find some new plants elsewhere on the property. Of my struggling group of plants, only one blossom was formed this year, but she was a beaut, as you can see.

And this year, you will be happy to know, I didn't touch the little buggers. And no one who wanted to live out the week did so, either.

Fingers crossed.

It's wise to grow sage

I have two kinds of sage growing on my property right now. They are both good looking, aromatic plants that perform well in hot, hot Monrovia. One's for cooking, one's for looking (and smelling).

Salvia officianalis is cooking sage. It leaves are normally a silvery grey green, with a texture like that of a baby lizard's skin. A little rough, but not crusty. There are variegated types that include cream and pink shades; these are pretty in the garden, and taste just as good as the normal variety in food. I'm not much of a cook, although I have gained considerable skill as an eater in my lifetime. But I do remember I dish I used to make with garden sage. It was a simple cheese ravioli, wading in fresh sage leaves that had been sauteed in butter. I'd had it at a restaurant and found it simple to make at home. 

Note: If you really love cooking, or want to learn how to cook, please visit my friend Caroline's site, "Cooking Up a Storm." (http://cookbad.blogspot.com). She and her partner (they are "CookBad" and "AteThat" to their fans) try out a new recipe every day, and report the results with photos and musings. Stick with them for things you're going to put in your mouth; I'm just here to tell you how my garden grows. But I share my produce with Caroline, so look for some of my avocados in starring roles in some of her upcoming daily updates.

Back to Salvia...

The other sage I grow is Salvia clevelandii. This is a very waterwise choice for the So Cal garden. Its leaves are similar to those of the cooking sage's, but smaller and more narrow in their proportions. It blooms annually, with sweet little purple blossoms. It's not known to maintain especially good form, and sometimes will benefit from being cut back in the fall to branch out and leaf out again in spring. This keeps it from sort of falling apart, which it does once it gets too big, due to brittle stems.

S. clevelandii is one of those plants that can stop you in your tracks and have you asking, "What is that wonderful smell?" Especially in the morning, it simply exudes a fresh almost minty scent that can be sensed a yard or two away from the plant itself.

These are two low maintenance, unthirsty, and good looking plants. They both fit well in a perennial border, though clevelandii won't tolerate wet soil for long, and the cooking sage makes a nice container plant. There are also many purely ornamental varieties in the genus, and if I plant them, I will write about them. When I start a new garden I always toss in some kind of sage; for visual interest, culinary accents, and fragrance, sage will not disappoint.

What's not to like?

New Zealand Flax. I will say one bad thing about this plant, but it isn't the plant's fault: Some varieties are far too big for their locations in a garden.

Now to the good stuff:

New Zealand Flax is a terribly well-behaved plant well-suited to water-wise gardens in southern California. You see it everywhere--just a spiky blast of colored foliage that might be light green, dark green, pink, red, crimson, almost white, or yellow. These many colors are often mixed and matched as longitudinal stripes on the strappy foliage.

The plant is exceptionally easy to propagate; just pull a pup off the side of a mature plant, making sure the pup has some roots. Stick it in the ground and nurse it along with water for a few weeks, and it's bound to make it.

NZ Flax can be under two feet tall, or up to what, eight feet or more? Be wary of varieties named Guardsman or Godzilla. (As far as I know there is no Godzilla flax, but there should be.)

Some flaxes are stiff, pointy, and upright, while others are curvy and weepy. None of them has the eyeball-piercing potential of a yucca or an agave, though, so the spiky fierceness is more for show.

They bloom in a most interesting manner. An upright spike emerges and branches out into an interesting articulated sort of candelabra of buds. Each of these will open to an unimpressive flower, but the overall shape makes up for the lack of showy floral interest.

What if you have a flax that looked cute in the pot, but is now taking up more sapce than a VW Beetle? Only one thing to do: part it out. Dig it up (easy task), divide it into smaller chunks with roots, and put an ad on craigslist. It'll be gone in a weekend. Heck, root the chunks in pots and sell them on craigslist!

When I worked as a garden designer, some clients rejected this plant for being too spiky, or looking like a cactus. Hmmm. It might not have a place in every garden, but it has a several in mine, where it adds color and form and never, ever, causes me a moment's worry.

Tell me, then, what there is to dislike about New Zealand Flax!

Starting the plant inventory

This is for people who love plants. I like them better than most anything, and frankly I don't care if they are in nursery pots or botanical gardens. I like to watch them grow. I love saving ones that are almost dead. Propagation fascinates me. I eat plants every day, I love them so much!

The first plant I will describe is a tree. Pittosporum undulatum, commonly known as Victoria Box.

The tree easily self sows, is not terribly long lived nor especially attractive. It drops annoying sticky seed pods on the ground.

It has a fragrance that is hypnotic in early spring, sometimes late winter. When I worked in a nursery, people would come in in early spring asking if we knew what the wonderful smell they were smelling was! They'd want to buy one, but we didn't sell them. The plant is a commonplace, old-fashioned, and somewhat messy green nothing...so why try to sell them?

The best place to buy this plant is San Gabriel Nursery. You can discuss with their workers whether the fragrance of Pittosporum undulatum is better than Sweet Olive, but trust your own nose! Sweet Olive might be more refined (okay, it is in fact better), but it does not project across your whole garden that way the Pitt does.

Note to Ms. Eastman: This tree is growing along the fence on the south side of your driveway, on the neighbor's side. It has dark green leaves with wavy edges, and small creamy white flowers. They might be blooming already.

Happy impending spring!