How to Make a Beach Terrarium

Photo by Laura, Finding Home

Bring a bit of the seaside into your home this summer with a simple beach terrarium.  Visit At the Pickett Fence for some tips.

Lotusland: Japanese Garden

Japanese garden at Lotusland

I'll be out of town this week so I am sharing some of my old photos of my favorite garden on the west coast: Lotusland in Montecito, California. 

Lotusland: Cactus Garden

I'll be out of town this week so I am sharing some of my old photos of my favorite garden on the west coast: Lotusland in Montecito, California.

Cactus garden at Lotusland

http://www.lotusland.org/

Lotusland: Fern Garden

Fern garden at Lotusland

I'll be out of town this week so I am sharing some of my old photos of my favorite garden on the west coast: Lotusland in Montecito, California. 

Lotusland: Traditional Gardens

Topiary garden at Lotusland

I'll be out of town this week so I am sharing some of my old photos of my favorite garden on the west coast: Lotusland in Montecito, California.

The theatre garden contains an audience of stone grotesques

Painted tiles by the house

Massive tree at the edge of the lawn

Lotusland: Ganna Walska, Patron of the Garden Arts

Madame Ganna Walska

I'll be out of town this week so I am sharing some of my old photos of my favorite garden on the west coast: Lotusland in Montecito, California.

 Madame Ganna Walska was an eccentric polish opera starlet with a penchant for the extraordinary: she was fond of taking morning swims in the nude, investigating the occult and the bizarre and amassing exotic plants.

"She married six times, wrote her autobiography, Always Room at the Top, and continued to study both vocal music and spiritual teachings in search of creative fulfillment and personal enlightenment. After residing in Paris and New York, Madame Walska turned her sights toward California’s sunny climate and free-thinking residents." 

Needless to say she sounds like an awesome old bird and I wish I could have attended one of her famed seance soirees back in the day. She founded the vast estate now-known as "Lotusland" in 1941 and used the grounds, her money and her connections to create a lush fantasy land of gardens.

"She wanted the best, the biggest, and the most unusual plants available and was often willing to pay any price to get them. So determined was she to finish the work she had begun that in the 1970s she auctioned off some of her jewelry in order to finance her final creation—the cycad garden." 

The grounds feature 17 themed gardens containing over 3,000 plants.

How to Make an Orchid Terrarium

Photo by Lauren Linn
Miniature Orchid Display at the 2009 Santa Barbara Orchid Show

I get quite a few questions and comments about creating and maintaining orchids within a terrarium.  I must admit my personal efforts in this arena have been dismal, but I have a collected a couple resources that may share more expert knowledge than I can provide:

OrchidBoard Discussion Forum

What: If you have a finicky orchid in your care you can search the vast and details postings of the OrchidBoard Discussion forum for a post to address your woes.

Who: OrchidBoard is home to some of the most detailed discussions on the care of specific orchid varieties.  However, membership to the forum is easy to obtain so you don't exactly know who is giving you advice.  

How: Note that I mentioned "search the forum."  As an unregistered guest you can search the discussion forums, but they are not 100% user friendly.  Expect to be asked to enter a captcha phrase to reveal your search results.

Bonus: OrchidBoard issues a gorgeous fundraiser wall calendar every year.

Cloud's Orchids Terrarium Tips

What: Cloud's Orchids is primarily an orchid retail site.  However, buried in their website is a comprehensive how-to guide on orchid terrariums which provides an excellent overview on the factors you'll need to consider when keeping an orchid terrarium.

Who: I presume the anonymous author of the article is Claudio, owner of Cloud's Orchids Nursery and a former American Orchid Society competition judge. 

How: Here's a pro tip that makes sense: 

"I would avoid using soil, sand or gravel as a substrate for your tank. It is difficult to do any maintenance once these materials are in place, and they can easily sour the environment. I would sooner use a layer of egg-shell crate to serve as the base to build on. This will provide air below the pots, and keep the plants above any water that accumulates on the bottom. Then if you ever need to do some house-cleaning, it is easily removed and the tank can be scrubbed before setting it up again."

Bonus: Claudio also provides a list of orchid genus recommended for terrarium environments.

"Miniature candidates are masdevallia, pleurothallis, promenaea, dracula, ornithocephalus, aerangis, angraecum, bulbophyllum, barbosella, leptotes, sophronitis, dendrobium, psygmorchis, etcetera, along with anything identified as a "twig epiphyte" in books.
You will also find compact candidates from the genera mentioned above, along with paph species, cochleanthes, phal species, jewel orchids, etcetera. Unless the mature size is clear in a description, it is always best to ask your plant source whether or not the plant is suitable for a small/medium/large terrarium."

Sound off: Have you ever kept an orchid terrarium?

Turtle Pond at Alice Keck Gardens

The Turtle Pond at Alice Keck Park in Santa Barbara!

Lilly pads and turtles!

Mama turtle and baby turtle.

And ol' mossy turtle!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Keck_Park_Memorial_Gardens

Parma Park Hike, Santa Barbara

Parma Park hiking area is nestled within the epicenter of the Tea fire in Fall 2008. The fire began in the Tea Garden above Westmont College. It swept through the surrounding foothills and eventually jumped one of the local freeways.

Nearly one year later and the coastal sage scrub is adapting to life by the Pacific Ocean.

New shoots of leaves sprouted from the charred oak trunks.

Burnt bark split under new growth.

Even some of the locals are coming back to hang out.

Now that the overgrowth and the scrub had been burnt along with many of the native resinous chaparral plants small native flowers can spring up in the sun.

Some of these wildflowers may have not bloomed in years.

The Thriving Office Plant and Why it Unnerves Me

My office plant grows like a weed. I have heard tall tales of these kinds of plants growing tendrils that can wrap around the circumference of a whole room- and let me tell you- I am beginning to believe it. This plant is a total glutton in my east-facing office window and it is always ready for more water. It is now growing a tendril around my little succulent garden as though it means to cut off the sunlight from the poor little cacti as well.

Sometimes I can actually SEE it growing. I hear a sort of springing noise and look up and a new little leaf tendril is trembling like a newly born butterfly having popped out from a vine. I am always somewhat aghast as I think of plants growing as a kind of secret activity- something I can observe as an after effect but never in situ. It seems sacred and this brash office plant does it right in front of me.

In Tom Robbins' "Still Life with Woodpecker" he imagines what Seattle would look like if the invasive blackberry plants had full reign. I have always loved this illustration and whenever I am faced with a very invasive or proliferate plant (See Lauren vs. the Vines) I imagine the same thing. Long after we are gone these vines will cover everything we have done.

I think the only solution is to start trimming the long tendrils and starting them in new pots as cuttings. At the rate the thing grows my office will look like a jungle this time next year.

Terrariums at The Fern and Mossery

Email Lauren at The Fern and Mossery

Miniature Orchid Terrarium at SB Orchid Show

This giant terrarium housed miniature orchids at the SB Orchid Show. I am not sure if the orchids were grown in the case or if they were just arranged for display. The case itself was phenomenal- I particularly liked the lighting features running down the side of the case- they really helped illuminate all levels of the display.

The display was full of wonderful epiphyte miniature orchids- I was inspired to pick one up in the shop. The growers mount the epiphytes to a wooden board with wire and some spaghnum moss and the plants just thrive.


I think these were the most stunning of the bunch- such a pretty cornflower blue.


http://www.sborchidshow.com/

Fern Grotto, Lotusland

The Fern Garden at Lotusland, Montecito.

The grounds were full of clivia, and they inspired me to pay more attention to the clivia growing in my front yard.  They are special looking plants, but so common in SB.

Moss on a rock- my favorite.

A beautiful begonia.  I actually bought one of these varietals at the Lotusland plant shop.

Lotusland, Monetcito

Japanese Garden, Lotusland

Japanese Garden at Lotusland in Montectio, California. We attended on a very damp, foggy day but the plants were only enhanced. I will try to include photos from each garden on the property. Today: the Japanese Garden.

Bird observing authentic pagoda, one of over 30 in the garden.

Pond through the branches.

Maidenhair fern and natural reflecting pool.

More on Madame Ganna Walska of Lotusland, Santa Barbara

The warm spring air in California seems to be bringing out the garden interest in the general public. The Santa Barbara Independent had a wonderful article on the public and private gardens in the area and had a blurb and this photo of Madame Ganna Walska, visionary behind Lotusland.

Lotusland Santa Barbara

Fern Garden at Lotusland, Santa Barbara

Madame Ganna Walska was an eccentric polish opera starlet with a penchant for marrying rich (an apparently repeatedly), taking morning swims in the nude, and a fascination with the occult and the bizarre. Needless to say she sounds like an awesome old bird and I wish I could have attended one of her famed seannce soirees back in the day. She founded the vast estate now-known as "Lotusland" in 1941 and used the grounds, her money and her connections to create a lush fantasy land of gardens.

The grounds feature 17 themed gardens over 37 acres and house some rare and fantastical plants - inclouding the last known pair of "bachelor" primordial trees in existence in the Cycad garden.

My favorite of the gardens is of course the fern garden- a whimsical arrangement of ferns, mosses and mushrooms.

However the namesake garden on the property is the lotus garden- planted in an old swimming pool. I have never been lucky enough to catch the loti(?) in bloom. However I will be doing a tour of the garden in March so maybe this time around....

I promise to take lots of photos!

Lotusland Santa Barbara