Melissa, sounds like spring is well under way in your garden. I am impressed by all the diversity of plants that you are growing besides roses and feel inspired to get more plant variety into my own garden. There is one thing that I truly envy you: the wild fragrant violets! I remember their fragrance from the time when I still lived in Germany and it was so lovely.

Here in SoCa we got over an inch of rain in the last days, which is absolutely awesome. Just what the plants needed. It is relatively cold right now (highest day temperatures are in the low sixties and at night lowest temperatures are in the high thirties and low fourties, but that is fine.
In our garden we have a lot of spring signs. Our white camellias (Nuccio's Gem) are starting to bloom, which is always so special to me. The roses are leaving out like crazy, some have set buds already (Baronne Prevost) and a few in pots are blooming (Mme. Ernest Calvat, Georgetown Tea, Mme. Melanie Willermoz, Sweet Chariot, Captain Christy, and Pretty Jessica). All perennials are pushing new, fresh, green growth. My nemesia is blooming as is my alstromeria and an agapanthus, which mixed up the time of the year. The cymbidium orchids, which I can grow outside, are flowering, too (I just put up a post on my blog about them. If you want to read it, please click on the link below). I haven't gotten around to plant many bulbs, but I put in gladiolous two years ago and they already pushing through the ground. The dusty miller, which is growing below our cycads has such a beautiful, fresh, silvery-white color in the moment and contrasts so nicely with the dark green cycad fronds. I know, I could have much more spring color in the garden right now, but we are still focusing on planting the bigger plants first, which means mainly roses. Hopefully next year I will be able to put in more companion plants. But I am not complaining. I am so happy that I have a garden and it gives me joy every day in my life.

Christina

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Garden Dreams

Melissa - even though you are so far away, I think you and Christina and I live in similar Mediterranean climates - your stories sound so familiar! We had a LOT of rain here in the North San Francisco Bay area in Nov/Dec, then practically none until a week ago. In the last 6 days we got almost 6 inches of rain! Now they tell us we are back up to our "normal to date" amount of rain for this date.

The garden is sodden, of course, but it has been showing signs of Spring for weeks already. After years of having all of my daffodils lying on the ground because of our not uncommon strong Jan/Feb rain storms, I learned to only buy short sturdy types (and ones that don't need winter freeze to repeat). So, we actually have clumps of daffodils that have bloomed all through the storms, and are still upright - it is such a lovely sight.

I wish more people grew hellebores! I agree with both of you - they are so fresh and lovely at this time of year. I have two very shady areas where they grow - every year I try to plant more. This year for whatever reason I did not take off last year's leaves, or feed them, or weed around them, and to my surprise they didn't care at all, and are all blooming madly (and have been for at least 3 weeks) and look lovely, shining out from their shadows.

All of the fruit trees are blooming now, and the acacia, which are all over the hills and in every vacant lot around here. The acacia start first in Jan, and then are joined by the pink or white fruit blossoms - they look lovely together. In my garden we have lots of volunteer plum trees blooming. Also an ancient flowering crab apple, which has put out leaves and is covered with flower buds - I can't wait for it to bloom. The camellias (four huge old plants) are blooming now. Two of them are in a bed which used to be underneath a 5 story tall 40 foot across eugenie tree we just had taken out last month. They had been unhappy as the tree got bigger and denser over the last few years - after they stop blooming I am going to cut them back, feed them, and see what happens this summer when it gets really hot and sunny - I hope they are able to survive. We left the tree stump 2 feet high, and have plans to put a half wine barrel on top of it (it is at least 5 feet in diameter) and plant trailing flowers in it.

Our local flowering "weeds" are also in full bloom - everyone's garden (especially mine) is full of our common yellow oxalis - it turns vast areas yellow with its pretty flowers, although it has to be pulled up so as not to smother everything! Another Mediterranean plant which has naturalized here is valerian - all three colors of it - the white, darker raspberry pink, and the redder pink. It covers hillsides at the side of the freeways and roads, and at the coast along the cliffs next to the beaches, and comes up uninvited in everyone's garden. I just cut it back to about 4 inches high every Fall/Winter and enjoy it (after a campaign to dig it all up and get rid of it failed miserably one year).

Our old antique iris are all up & blooming - they are mid sized bearded, and the most velvety dark purple color. Every year they bloom from Jan through almost the entire summer. The iris foetida are also blooming right now, although their small greenish flowers are not showy. In the Fall they make up for it by covering themselves with seed pods that burst open like flowers and show their red seeds.

Of course, the old tea and china roses never stop blooming, and I am still (when it is not pouring) able to cut enough to make nice arrangements for the table. Some of them are actually starting their Spring bloom already - Madame Alfred Carriere has burst into bloom 25 feet up an old plum tree. Our banksie lutea, which was cut back about 70 percent last year so we could paint the house, has put out all sorts of new canes, and is covered with buds.

Happy Spring!

Jackie

I wanted to take your answers in order but am having difficulty getting myself to focus. I've been out in the shade garden, leveling paths and grassy areas, weeding and mulching, and thinking, for much of the daylight hours of the last week.

Christina, your garden conditions sound very similar to what we saw when we went down last spring to a small town in Tuscany close to Lucca and Pisa. The town was on the edge of a wide shallow lake, Massaciuccoli (ha! I dare you to try and pronounce it!), and the local soil was like none I've seen elsewhere in Italy: rich, brown, crumbly, friable. Chocolate soil, also in the edible sense. There were camellias in the ground, not in pots, there, but also olive trees; and lots of hefty happy clumps of Cymbidiums growing in cans. A garden paradise like none I've ever seen in this country.
Are you sure you can't grow fragrant violets where you are? I think they might do in your conditions.
Your last sentence exactly expresses how I feel about my garden as well.

Jackie, I just ordered seedling valerian, and hope soon to have it infesting my garden. I need self-seeding, floriferous, agreeable, somewhat invasive plants in my garden, which has far too much bare ground.
I believe your oxalis is O. pes-caprae. I saw it several years ago in Sardegna growing all over the place. It's actually originally from South Africa but is naturalized in the Mediterranean. I dug some up and brought it home with me, but it died, which perhaps is just as well. It may be too cold here for it.
My garden isn't fully Mediterranean, I think, but on the cusp between that and between a "continental", temperate climate. We've had warm dryish winters that favored our olives and Tea and China roses and various somewhat tender plants. However, these were followed by wet chilly winters in which the olives, pittosporums, and bay laurels froze back, and the Teas and Chinas got canker and root rot; but the once-blooming old roses, Gallicas and co., grew and flowered splendidly. Some plants do well under both regimes: lilac is always fine, spring bulbs, forsythia and honeysuckle and semi-evergreen ligustrums, the hardier lavenders, rosemary. And of course placement and soil preparation count for a lot. Still, my experiences of the last decade suggest that in any year one group of plants is going to be thriving and another group is going to be rather a sad sight.
You sound like you're in full spring, while we still have some weeks to go: violets and hellebores notwithstanding, it's still winter here. The weather has cooled down in the last few days and in the morning in shady areas the ground is frozen. There's a forecast for snow tomorrow. Right now, however, the sun is shining, and after I finish this I'm going to go down in the shade garden and finish (I hope) my last rose pruning there.

Happy spring to everybody!

Melissa

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Melissa - thanks for the name of our oxalis! We called it "sourgrass" (and ate it) when I was little, and I only found out the name oxalis when I started to garden. I looked it up and you are correct - it is oxalis pes-caprae. It has at least 10 common names, the reference said, which reinforces how it has spread around to different countries. Sometimes my neighbors don't know any of its names, and call it something like "that dratted yellow stuff" - everyone knows what they mean.

If I had a magic wand I'm not sure I would get rid of it (I had a gardener once who tried - in just one bed. He took everything out of the bed, dug down 24 inches - the pips go down to 18 inches in theory- sifted the soil to get all of the tiny bulbs out, replaced the soil, replanted, etc - within 2 years it was back). It is so pretty in the early Spring, blanketing whole areas. As long as you pull up the foliage within 6-8 weeks, it does not seem to do any damage. Otherwise it can smother plants that are just coming up.

Good luck with your valerian - it should like it there. Once a plant gets big, they make an enormous tuberous root that goes down 1-2 feet.

Do you have any Four O'clocks? Just thought of that if you like things that re-seed. I like the old fashioned striped flowers - I had the solid ones, and then one year suddenly a yellow/red striped one showed up - I didn't plant it. I like plants like that!

Jackie