Professional Documents
Culture Documents
cue the
by Marty Wingate photos by Shelley Metcalf
20 fall 2013 | gardeningclub.com
Vivid hues infuse a San Diego garden and home, providing year-round delight.
Christine Morales has a thing for color. Thats typical for many gardeners, but for this San Diego resident, every decision made to transform her landscape from bland to grand was informed by that passion. Even her 1925 Spanish-style home, which is located near the historic district of Balboa Park, is painted in vibrant hues. Like most transformations, this one took time. When Christine and her fianc, Hector Huerta, moved in eight years ago, the garden and the house needed help. Christine tackled the front yard first, adding tropicals, succulents, orchids, veggies and any other plants she could find to provide pops of vivid color. The goal was to have a happy, lively, colorful, eye-catching yard with something flowering all year round, she says. As the garden matured, she and Hector decided that the color of their house should be as energetic as their garden. But finding just the right color wasnt easy. We knew we wanted something bright, Christine says. Every week or so wed buy little cans of paint and try them out on the back of the house. There were little squares of color everywhere. The yellow-orange and periwinkle-blue hues they finally settled on play off the garden perfectly and complement the houses red tile roof, too. Their driveway and front steps are painted a rich, dark orange. The color also plays off the brick walkway they built five years ago, using both new and recycled bricks.
self-propagating orchids
Their flowers are as lively and richly hued as the house. When they moved in, Christine found a lone epidendrum orchid in the garden. Over the years, epidendrums have become her signature plants, partly because of their bright colors, but also because theyve been so easy to propagate. I just stick them in the ground, she says of her propagating method.
Yellow-orange epidendrum orchid blossoms, pink Jupiters beard flowers, purple heliotrope sprays and blue fescue grasses echo the bright house colors in Christine Morales lively San Diego garden.
gardeningclub.com 21
garden at
location
a glance
San Diego, CA
USDA Hardiness Zone
10b 8
years in house
10 to 11 inches
hours spent in the garden per week
Hand
original soil
Well-drained loam
sun/shade conditions
Richly hu ed bouga invillea b homes w lossoms p himsical lay off the periwinkl e and yello w-orange hues.
Today, bright magenta and golden yellow varieties pop beautifully against the house and hardscaping. Called reed-stemmed orchids for their slender stems topped with flower clusters, epidendrums produce offsets called keikis, a Hawaiian word meaning baby. These offsets appear atop the flower stems. They grow their own roots up there and sometimes even flower. Christine removes the offsets, plants them in pots or in the ground and shares them with neighbors. Reed-stemmed orchids grow best in sunny or lightly shaded locations with shaded roots and well-drained soil. Those requirements describe Christines front garden perfectly: It slopes toward the sidewalk, which helps with drainage. Light shade is cast by two Tipuana tipu trees; native to South America, they sport sprays of yellow, sweet-pea shaped flowers in June. Though the trees, also known as rosewood, would quickly outgrow the garden if left unchecked, Christine prunes them back every year in early spring.
visitors welcome
Christine is always happy to talk with passersby who stop to admire the garden, ask a question or request an orchid start. I like meeting people, she says. A week doesnt go by without someone ringing my doorbell to comment on the yardand usually to hint about wanting a keiki from one of my orchid plants, which I always give. Often times, this leads to me meeting new neighbors and them offering to give me plants. Its a great way to make new gardening-minded friends. Seattle-based writer Marty Wingate is the author of four gardening books, including her forthcoming one, The Garden Plot: A Potting Shed Mystery (Alibi, 2014).
Visit on
gardeningclub.com/magazine and click web extras for more photos and information