Question from Cat:

Answer from Pat:
Thank you so much for this enquiry. About seven years ago my insurance company informed me that they would need to greatly increase my homeowners insurance if I continued to open my garden to tours and visits from the public. That put an end to visits to my garden from members of the public. Now my garden is back to being what it was always meant to be in the first place: A happy outdoor space for my own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of family and friends. The time felt exactly right. There are many great gardens out there, far better ones than mine now is. It is time for younger folks to take over.

Since making that decision, I’ve been simplifying my garden and making it easier care and more drought-resistant. I got rid of all my tubs and containers or most of them, pulled out all overly-thirsty plants, covered the spaces with mulch, replaced some with natives, added new potted arrangements of succulents, and installed a huge succulent bank next to the drive. It hardly ever gets watered. I’m now saving about one hundred dollars on every water bill. I’m also trying to resist temptations that arise sometimes to add more plants. The main additions today are fun things for my great-grandchildren, like potted “fairy gardens” and a projected “dinosaur garden”. We already have a “pirate garden” and may make a hobbit house or two. Wandering paths and flights of steps I made of sacks of concrete, hardened under the hose, already create fun places for my beloved great-grandson Archer to run around on. But I have to tell you I simply adore all four of them: Archer, Anushka, Fable, and Jade.

Here are some photos of my garden taken last Easter by my granddaughter Rebecca Woolf.
http://www.girlsgonechild.net/2010/04/garden.html

She has posted some other ones also: Click on this link to a photo of the very simple “fairy garden” I made with the help of my friend Denise.
http://www.girlsgonechild.net/2009/11/treasured.html

Regarding Great Dixter, Christopher Lloyd and I were friends. He visited my garden years ago. I visited him with my granddaughter Rachel Woolf when she was 13 years old and I took her on a trip to Spain, Scotland, and England. Christo gave me the room in which he was born. Rachel had been in another room but after going to bed, crept in to join me, even though Christo had said very decisively “My house is NOT haunted!” (We didn’t say it was, but you know he was a character.) So while we were there we both slept in the bed in which Christo had been born. That whole long weekend was a great experience and we drank a lot of very good champagne. This photo was taken by a lovely visitor to the garden during one of our afternoon walks around the garden. (Please say hi to Fergus.)

Related posts:

1. Thomas Welsh
2. Multi-media Garden Mural: How to Create
3. Romancing the Garden: A philosophy of gardening Pt 4

Answer from Pat:
My great grandfather was not Thomas Welsh. However, for thirty years my writing name (as the author of books and writer/host of local and national TV programs and videos on gardening, and additionally this blog) has been Pat Welsh. The name Welsh is my married name which I got from my husband, Louis M. Welsh, later Judge Louis M. Welsh, whom I married in 1951.

My maiden name was Patricia Ruth Fisher-Smith, and I was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England. My husband’s name was Louis Maximilian Welsh, but he was the step-son of John Lloyd Wright, also an architect like his famous father Frank Lloyd Wright. So I am the step-granddaughter-in-law of Frank Lloyd Wright. Perhaps this connection caused the confusion? Was your home designed by an architect called Thomas Welsh or was it designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?

My first memoir, “All My Edens: A Gardener’s Memoir” included mention of the Wrights, since I lived next door to my in-laws, John Lloyd Wright and his wife Frances Lloyd Wright for 28 years and John Lloyd Wright designed our home. I recently completed a second memoir (my seventh book) and it tells more about the Wrights than the first one did, but it will not be published for a few years since now is not the right time for it. Meanwhile, I have begun writing a novel, which I hope with become a 3-book saga. I have a great story to tell and am very excited about writing this next book.

Related posts:

1. Wright Houses in Long Beach
2. All My Edens
3. Steps From Concrete Bags

From Pat:
Very cute and thanks for sending but I hope next year brings you a better crop with less annoyance. If this kind of weather becomes chronic I suggest next year surrounding each tomato cage with clear plastic and leaving the top open. Just bang the cages with a hammer at noon daily to pollinate the flowers due to the fact they won’t have any wind. Tomatoes love growing in greenhouses as long as their flowers get vibrated enough to deposit the pollen from the anthers onto the sticky stigma. I grew my tomatoes in a raised bed this year protected from wind by a thick hedge and in a place where they got full sun and much reflected heat from a surrounding path of blue-gray beach pebbles. ‘Carbon’ was the most productive variety for me this year with very attractive fruit but not wildly tasty.

Related posts:

1. Stop blossoms from dropping off tomatoes
2. Fertilizing Passion Fruit
3. Why Did I Get So Few Melons? (Pollination of Melon Plants, by Hand or By Bees)

Message from Daniel:

Answer from Pat:
Thanks Dan. I will try to mention guano whenever I can. Just as I have mentioned humic acid over and over, I will tell folks about fossilized guano,but you need to have a good definition of it also.

Related posts:

1. Vegetable Garden Teas

Covers all the basic plants and plant groups grown in Southern California, including lawns, citrus, avocados, deciduous fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, roses, annual flowers, wildflowers, perennials, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, and ground covers, native plants and all the specialty plants like bamboo, ferns, palms, cymbidiums, succulents, cacti, and geraniums. Perennials are discussed in every chapter, including when and how to fertilize and cut back. New plants have been added, and many new sections including botanical geraniums, ornamental grasses, control of nutgrass, giant white fly and other problems.

Buy online today!

Related posts:

1. Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month
2. Southwest Smart Garden Regional Guide
3. Plants for Beachfront and Seaside Gardens in Southern California

A. We used the rusty objects as they were and then covered them with a coat of polymer that was supposed to preserve the entire mural. Unfortunately it was not as good as we had been told. It peeled off in hunks within a few years and became unsightly. Betsy Schulz my art partner on the mural told me she has found a better polymer coating. I suggest you research at hardware and building supply stores in your area and also ask Customer Service at art companies for ideas. Here is what I recommend: thoroughly clean the objects, and let them dry completely until bone dry. Do not use anything that is already flaking. Dip or soak the good pieces briefly in a polymer liquid to coat them thoroughly and let them dry raised on a grating, or on the points of a wire brush, or on wide-headed nails that have been nailed upright on a board. This way the polymer coat will cover completely and preserve all parts of them. (If you lay them down on paper they will stick to the paper.)

I suggest that galvanized or brass or bronze objects, such as faucet handles, stainless steel gears, and other similar items, would look great in a kitchen and steam would not deteriorate them. We used some of these and they are still in excellent shape. We tried to give some shiny items, such as the newer horse shoes and one or two heavy gears, a patina by soaking them in a salt bath first, which worked pretty well, but in a kitchen stainless steel would look all right even if it was shiny. It will eventually dull without any treatment.

Recently the Del Mar Public Works washed our mural and results were good. (This mural is located in front of the Del Mar Public Library on Old 101, called Camino del Mar, in Del Mar, California.) Betsy had been wanting to have it cleaned for a long time. She repaired a few hunks that fell off. I plan to do some repair of little bits but have not yet done it because of my age and my body is not strong any more. The mural is now looking much better. The landscape above it has recently been replaced by a new and very attractive drought-resistant garden,  planted by the Del Mar Garden Club of which I am a member. (I did not take part in the planting of it, but donated some of the succulent plants used.) The mural is not ten years old yet but is now looking great again. Children find it fascinating and I often see them touching and stroking the objects in it.  Once I saw a little girl kiss one of the terra cotta pelicans in the mural. It touched my hear to see this. I remember being a small child and seeing similar things that meant a great deal to me.

Before making the mural I talked to one of my sons-in-law who was an engineer and he said after a while rust stabilizes but this is apparently not so. Some rusty objects stabilize and last many years, others flake off. Perhaps it depends on the quality of the object and of the metal used. For this reason Betsy no longer uses rusty objects in her art projects. She has done many wonderful and amazing projects that are highly artistic.

The style I chose for the mural was based on a wall I’d seen many years earlier in Laguna Beach that had a whole crankcase in it. This wall lasted many years, maybe 50 years, but is not there any more. A similar one survives to this day and seems in good shape, rusty objects included. I had just finished a similar wall in my own garden when I decided to make this one at the library and then Betsy became my partner. She was already a muralist and had experience. I was simply an artist with what I thought was a great idea and I was swept away with enthusiasm. I’d been to Barcelona twice within a couple of years and had seen all Gaudi’s work and I think it got in my psyche. I was mostly inspired by the style of the Laguna Beach murals I’d seen and loved for many years. I wanted to use a very simple color scheme: brick, “blue” beach rocks, terra cotta tiles which we made ourselves, green tiles of a special shade that to my eye “sang” with the terra cotta, and “found” objects, including beach glass and rusty objects.

I think it will be okay to do this in your kitchen since it will be protected. I am sending this to Betsy to see if she has ideas. All the rusty objects in my garden wall are doing fine.

A final note: always use the very best quality thinset to attach the objects to the wall. Indoors, Betsy has created original ceramic murals on a wooden backing so it can be taken off a wall and moved. But it has to be made in sections and each one is incredibly heavy. She made one of 3-D tile in a restaurant and when the restaurant changed hands was able to remove mural and mount it in another location. Although my book “the Magic Mural” sounds like, and in a sense is a children’s book, it’s actually a book written for adults who have not lost their “inner child”. A careful reading shows exactly how we made our multi-media mural.

Related posts:

1. Multi-media Garden Mural: How to Create
2. Thanks for your inspiration
3. The Magic Mural

Buy online today!

Related posts:

1. Southern California Gardening: Month by Month Guide, 2000
2. Romancing the Garden: A philosophy of gardening Pt 3
3. Where to Find Photos of Pat’s Garden

Buy online today!

Just like Pat’s other month-by-month books, this one covers correct planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing, and pest and disease control for every plant group we grow, including vegetables, herbs, deciduous fruit trees, citrus, avocados, roses, geraniums, ornamental grasses, bamboo, lawns, pond plants, annuals, perennials, bulbs, wildflowers, native plants, palms, ferns, tropicals, succulents, desert plants; ornamental trees, shrubs, and climbers, and more. The month-by-month format let’s you know how and when to perform all these tasks in accordance with Southern California’s unique garden schedule, which differs from garden timing in all other parts of the country. New sections on desert gardening, fire-resistant gardening, and succulents, plus advice on water conservation throughout make this book especially timely. Golf courses and public parks will always need lawns, so this widely used handbook includes organic lawn care every month, but it also describes new drought-resistant grass varieties and suggests many attractive, practical, and water-wise alternatives to grass.

Like Pat’s other books, “Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month” works hand-in-hand with “Sunset Western Garden Book”, the universally accepted plant encyclopedia for our area. There are many other good books on the market, but put these two side-by-side on your bookshelf and refer to them often. They are really all you need.

Buy online today!

Related posts:

1. Southern California Gardening: Month by Month Guide, 2000
2. New Organic Rose-Pro Method
3. Best planting month

Answer from Pat:
I wish my book was available in Spanish but alas it is not! (Suggest a Spanish edition to Chronicle Books.) However, some of the gardeners we have here in Southern California don’t read, even Spanish.

Related posts:

1. How to Read Your Book
2. Vegetable Gardening
3. New Organic Rose-Pro Method

Pots, statuary, choose tasteful statuary and garden ornaments to add art and whimsy

• Bird houses
• Murals, mosaics
• Statues and design elements can hearken back to ancient times,
• other times and places.

But since a garden is all for fun, could be kitch Felder rushing shows us how:

• Some gardens have a sense of humor
• Shells, bottles, walls of color.
• Gnomes?
• Well-chosen signs

Practical aspects:

1. Work with nature, not against it
2. Be an organic gardener.

Before mankind invented pesticides everyone was organic and there were great gardens improve the soil with organic amendments release and attract beneficials. This kind of garden feels different than a dead garden where not even a beetle can survive!

How to do all this: make a list or create a design
o Let the space speak to you let the ground talk
o Don’t need to make a drawing
o Your garden can evolve
o Walk around, dream a little, get ideas and write them down don’t rush, there is time.
o Refer to magazines and books for inspiration
o Visit great gardens
o Nothing wrong with copying
o Keep a file of ideas and photos
o Choose materials with care,
o Best not to have too many materials.

And finally, once you have created this great garden,
Then live in it.
Go down there or out there,
Books to read,
Paintings to paint,
Letters to write, your friends
Family to be with.
Lunch under the arbor
Dinner and breakfast in the patio.
entertain in the garden,
Not always a barbque but out door.

First gardening is all about creation.
That is the joy of it
Making a painting
One works the dream is in one’s head
The joy is in making that dream come true.
There was a time—could not sit in my own garden
Always something nagging at me to be done
Could only work in it.

But eventually the beautiful romantic garden you create is for your joy, for the joy of your friends and family.

Also at one time there is a certain tension: the garden never looks quite good enough to satisfy!

That era wears off.

Finally the garden is no longer about constant work. Certainly not about looking like a magazine cover every day of the week. Not about perfection,

It’s about creating and then living in a retreat, a peaceful oasis in the midst of our increasingly urban hustle and bustle.

It’s about happiness and joy.

Related posts:

1. Romancing the Garden: A philosophy of gardening Pt 2
2. Romancing the Garden: A philosophy of gardening Pt 3
3. Romancing the Garden: A philosophy of gardening Pt 1