Ah, great. Finally dug up some more info. Since this one wasn't in my Sunset or Perrys' book, I asked the nursery to check their reference info. And since I lacked having my glasses on my nose at the time, he read most of it. First he said it was from Australia (those plants generally work), but he quickly corrected it to South Africa (ok, those grow well here, too.) He should have said South America. Simple mistake--big difference. I can pot for the acid soil, but the cool, humid summers are not going to happen. Unfortunately, the shrub is going to be very unhappy in my garden. Some days I could really use a smart phone.

I've been down this mountains of Chile and Peru path before with Cantua. I should just assume that anything beautiful, with drooping flowers, wants a rain forest! Occasionally I have managed to micro-climate a difficult plant, but the odds lean towards, at most, a few years before the dwindle. However, there are infrequent ones that beat the odds and surprise me, and those are fun to experience!

At the very least, I should get bonus points from parker25mv for trying to diversify the neighborhood.... :D

I grew Agapetes serpens for years in ground..similar climate likes. It did fine until I potted it - showed off the great caudex...and then it died when I didn't water it enough during our first or second winter of drought.

I think keep Crino well watered and in part shade..should do fine. Maybe very well.

Oh yes, I've killed that. Likes cool summers. Likes Seattle.

Sorry Crino, no well water available in this city and the ranch is too far a drive away (3 hours round trip with light traffic). I'll stick it out in the rain when, and if, that stuff drops out of the sky though.

Thanks hoovb. At least I won't be the only killer. :)

I have a young one that was given to me, was not looking too good as it had been in a pot too long. It was given to me by a friend in Pistol River, Oregon who grows a lot of unusual stuff. Her Uncle, who is an all time excellent gardener at 90 years old now, has a mature one growing successfully on his property. Many things grow well here that one may not expect...he's still busy seeding his property with Aussies also, to naturalize. Mine is in the ground now here in Crescent City...will see how it does....

Crescent City is a nice area! Although I am not very familiar with gardening in your area, Crino would probably be happier up there than hot, dry SoCal. That is interesting about your friend's uncle growing Australian plants. I would be curious as to how they fare over time.

His Aussies do very well.....I've recently brought home some melaleuca seedlings from him that are just shooting up, growing fast. I'm actually very surprised at what grows well here. We're pretty much banana belt. I'd spent 30 some years in sub-tropical Fallbrook and expected to come up here and do the PNW stuff, you know?...and am now growing a lot of my favorites from down South that surprised me...cistus, echiums, salvias (not the larger tender varieties, but greggiis, etc. My friend in Pistol River had a nursery that she just closed just over a year ago and she brought in a lot of the more unusual things for this area. We are nursery-poor here, but she gave me a truckloads of plants, many that I was unfamiliar with. There is a new nursery in Brookings (Oregon, 30 miles north) and we're hoping to get them to bring in a lot of the plants that will grow well here but are unavailable. The Garden Club in Brookings has a lot of very knowledgeable gardeners who want the more exotic items also. Her uncle is also an expert on heathers...quite a guy. We should all do as well at 90 years old. I've brought home prostantheras from the friend also, doing well here and a few other noid Aussies. A few other things I'd not grown before that I brought home from her nursery...luma apiculata and halleria lucida. I had not encountered them down south so don't know if that's an issue, but they're growing well and quickly here.

One of the main reasons i wanted to finally move up here was for the rain.....

This last Winter was wetter and colder than our first Winter here and some things that surprised me by doing fine through the first Winter succumbed to either cold (25 degrees) or wet. I have been digging out a lot of sod and used that to build a large sod 'mound' for some of the things that want better drainage...right now echium wildpretii is doing fine there....other will be added...echium gentianoides, etc....

I hope you continue to share your experiences in the CA forums! My interest in gardening in other areas is probably higher due to the work I used to do as a behind the scenes researcher for my husband, who oversaw with landscape design and maintenance for resorts throughout the country. Sometimes I would be putting together plant lists and designs for places I'd only experienced by seeing a few photographs. lol

Echiums are fun! I started with E. wildpretii, too. But because I am not especially fond of pink, I switched to more E. simplex (white). And during the recent Ciino shopping trip, I picked up a E. pininana'Bluer Steeple' grown by Annie's Annuals. The local nursery offers some of Annie's plants, and since there is no shipping when buying them there, I often just wait for what I want to appear instead of having it shipped. E. gentianoides was listed too, but they may have been sold out. The dark blues are more difficult to work into my tiny garden's color scheme, so I haven't jumped on that one yet.

Well, it's all a new learning curve for me here...I thought we would move up here and have an acre of grass and big trees and I would just ride my mower....LOL. Instead, we got a house in town that we had rented while we thought we would look around....and I realized that I like the neighborhood, we're 3 blocks from the water, our parking is in back and I have a well...and a house to remodel, as usual though we're mostly just doing necessary repairs and cleaning this one up....had absolutely no plantings except for a large cotoneaster which has stayed because I knew it would be aa mess to take out and it was the only thing of size here. There had been two huge cryptomerias at one time, someone took them out....sigh....

So things pop up here and I'd find myself constantly asking, "What IS that?" No Bermuda grass...yay! No rabbits...again yay. I now know what Ranunculus repens is,...yuck. We do have gophers but not many it seems and I'm already used to planting in wire. We have deer, not a problem for me as I plant deer resistant and had only a small section to 'fence' off with monofilament lines, which do seem to be working (per the Seed Savers Exchange).

Echium fastuosum / candicans grows here and yet I've found only one in town (and I've snagged seeds from it). I was used to having large hedges of Pride of Madeira in SoCal. I brought one e. simplex up with me, it did not make it through this last Winter in a tub. The e. wildpretiis will flower this year, more seed. I've seen no wildpretiis growing locally. The e. pininanas do well here and yet there are only 3 that I've found growing here. There is a very nice one 1/2 block from me and I will include pics I took this a.m. I would go look for seedlings, but do not really want to get to know the people there. I was given two rooted cuttings of Pride of Madeira from a friend in Pistol River, but they are the true blue in color and I prefer the purple tones. I have a large echium that spent the Winter in a tub beneath a table and when I pulled it out a month ago, I found that it had grown a lot and was even flowering...I thought at first it might be e. pininana, but now the bloom color looks more like "Mr. Happy" that I also had in SoCal. I gave away hundreds of pots and plants and only brought one small box trailer of my absolute faves with me.

It had been a long time since I'd visited GW, let me see if I can remember ho

w to post a pic.....

The number of flower spikes on that one is impressive! Due to the space limitations, I only have one, it is a light and darker green variegated 'Key Lime'. And even at that, I had to plant it semi-under a Senna. I prefer the more compact cultivars, but have found only the pricier large-container ones for sale lately.

All of the E. simplex seedlings are first years, so I think this will be an off year for them blooming, otherwise I could send you some seed. If I mention one is blooming, and you would like some seed, let me know and I'd be happy to share.

Oh, I would LOVE seed when you have some. I'm doing a whole lot of seed sowing right now...especially grasses. I love the grasses and got a lot of grass seed from Nan Ondra this year at Hayefield. Do you visit her site?

My main problem here is that I had lots of room before and could indulge growing all that I wanted, but I could no longer take care of it either. Here I have a tiny yard and forget 'scaping.....hahaha...no, I'm a collector, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this goes, squeezing everything in. Here, it's all about production.

I've not seen the Key Lime. I did have the variegated Star of Madeira in SoCal and will need to see about replacing that also. My friend who had the nursery in Pistol River is talking to the new nursery owners in Brookings to encourage her to bring in more things not commonly available around here....I've been whispering in her ear about all the various cistus and echiums, other things on my want list.....she will have to be ordering from farther south, down around Santa Rosa to bring in this stuff.

There is not a lot of gardening or planting done here......it's maybe because the area has such great natural beauty...or, perhaps more likely, there's a lot of low income here and gardening can be a luxury for many. The shabbiest of houses can be made beautiful with plantings, but too often the people can't rise above despair...which also is too bad, because the love of plants and gardening can help people do that. I plan to grow a lot to share with the neighborhood to encourage more gardening. I am inspired by my 80-some year old neighbor who broke his hip a few years back and is still out there by 7 every morning, taking care of his large vegetable garden.

We also love old houses and can't pass by hardly any of them without wanting to be able to remodel and plant them all.....

There are plenty of flaws here, but we love it.....

If you're talking about a dwarf Echium...I just saw them for sale with a Annie's Annual's tag on them. Inexpensive.

Annie's are always expensive...LOL....the GOOD nursery in McKinleyville, 85 miles south of here, North of Eureka / Arcata gets Annie's stuff.

I was given seeds of a 'dwarf echium' which turned out to be Viper's Bugloss and I liked it, said to reseed a lot...it made it through our first Winter but did not make it through our last.....I will sow more seeds and plant i on higher ground, more protected

The variegated echium Star of Madeira on my old property. It is such a stunning plant....I've just never met an echium I did not like (or want)

The Star of Madeira in bloom

It is dark now, so no photography, but the one I bought labeled 'Key Lime' is a sport with foliage that looks like 'Death Star' . I didn't want the plant to be as eye-drawing as your variegated plant, in the chosen location, but it isn't quite as coarse-looking as the regular species.

We also love old houses and can't pass by hardly any of them without wanting to be able to remodel and plant them all..... I don't believe there is a cure for that, at least I haven't discovered one. ;)

I plan to grow a lot to share with the neighborhood to encourage more gardening. Good for you! I hope you can enjoy seeing "your" plants growing in gardens throughout the neighborhood someday.

Yes, it's difficult for the variegated plants to 'blend'....I have a couple of items that are in pots and not in the ground just because they just can't blend in, especially in a small space, when they're screaming, "Look at ME!" A variegated prostanthera ovalifolia in flower especially and a couple of variegated cornus. The Star of Madeira had room to do that, stand alone to the side and beneath Eucalyptus trees, close to a swath of Pride of Madeira to associate, but across a wide dirt pathway. I will look up the Key Lime.

I'm amazed that the small Brookings Botanical Garden has no cistus, no echiums and they grow so well here. We will see about changing that.....Brookings is even more banana belt than Crescent City, especially due to the "Chetco Affect" when the warmer air from inland flows down the Chetco River to the sea, much like SoCal's Santa Anas. There have been a couple of days when we have been in Brookings and it would be 80-85, which we've come to consider Really Hot, and we could not wait to get home 30 miles south to Crescent City and cooler temps. This past Winter there were a lot of days where Pistol River would be sunny and quite warm and quite cool here, making me long to be there instead. This past Winter revealed the coldest spot in our yard. Plants that sailed through the previous Winter were knocked out this past Winter. In that spot, two digiplexis, one coleonema, two small dodoneas and two echium vulgares bit the dust...two coleonemas left standing. There is a Vine Maple planted there that will one day provide more shelter, and of course when the other shrubs get larger. Dodoneas planted two years ago from 5 gallons had no problem.

We are backed up to wooded land, with two small creeks running along the front, across the road, and the back, across that road, so we get deer, the occasional bear (I've been told)...and yet a mile away it looks like any Socal tract development and they have no deer...their roses are safe....LOL...and hydrangeas, deer like hydrangeas....and then 3 miles across town there are problems with elk invading and eating everything and the occasional mountain lion. There are those currently in favor of 'thinning the elk' and those who would like to see them left alone....since they are not eating everything inmy yard, I would like to see them left alone, but I do understand and I'm told that elk meat is wonderful. To me it's still magical to see them on a regular basis....

stanofh, I checked Annie's and see what you mean with the "dwarf echium"...it is actually in form of e. fastuosum and not the e.plantagineum I was thinking. This plant, the e. plantagineum, I grew from seed and really do like it...and the fact that it reseeds. I wanted it to fill in a corner area in front, but they were wiped out this Winter. I will sow more and place them in a different spot. I have a sod mountain...LOL...where all of the sod goes that I keep digging out and that's where plants go that need excellent drainage and they're also a little more protected there. Not really a landscape 'feature", but a spot to keep a few going to obtain seed from them to try again elsewhere. I'm continually learning how plants react to this environment. I had a few young Coconut Scented Geraniums that I'd planted out, not expecting them to survive, but they THRIVED over Winter, exposed, growing lushly....I was a bit worried about my potted Lemon Verbena, also exposed to the whims of nature, but it's leafing out.....I'd wanted Lemon Verbena and one day in the small nursery of a Fred Meyers store in Brookings, I saw 3 and knew two friends wanted it also, so grabbed them all and considered it a find...LOL...the story here is the time to buy it is when you see it. If I managed to find the Lemon Verbena, then maybe in my wildest dreams I will find Aloysia virgata?

Okay, can't resist showing you the elk again...just two pics. They are SO much better than coyotes.....

'...the story here is the time to buy it is when you see it.'

Wait a minute! Isn't that is how I ended up sentencing a Crino to "Death Valley"? lol Yep. I was afraid I would look it up when I got home and want one, but the few available at the nursery would be gone when I returned. Done that too many times. Although I feel bad about my mistakes, I try to look at it as financially supporting the efforts of the nursery to offer uncommon plants, so they will continue to provide such offerings.

Great photos of elk. I've never pictured them on a beach before.

I do not mind losing plants now.....when you have more than you can plant, well, a loss just means room for something else to go in that spot....and you have 'scratched that itch'. I had seen the digiplexis online and knew that I had to have it, got lucky and found a big table outside a grocery store...loaded with huge, beautiful 2 gallon digiplexis...bought two and was later sorry that I did not buy more because it's not very likely that I will see more offered around here. They were stunning for two years and then this last Winter wiped them out. I've had them, don't feel the need to have them again, but have other things that will be happy in that particular spot....

Another Aussie that does well up here....Telopea oreades. This one is growing at the small Botanical Garden in Brookings, Oregon. The first pic was taken last week, the other linked entry pic was taken a year ago. I do have seeds of this one should anyone want to try it...though it does like moisture and acid soil......

http://allthingsplants.com/plants/view/117967/Gippsland-Waratah-Telopea-oreades/

I've been down this mountains of Chile and Peru path before with Cantua. I should just assume that anything beautiful, with drooping flowers, wants a rain forest.

Uh oh.

I've had my eye on the cantua offered by Annie's Annuals. Brugmansia has beautiful, drooping flowers and does well here -- within the one-mile coastal zone.

Should I scratch cantua off my maybe-someday list?

nancy look at the comments on San Marcos for Cantua--"dislikes hot inland conditions". within a mile of the ocean, might work.

San Marcos on Cantua

I lived in Venice 43 years ago...GOOD climate! I would think that cantua would grow there.

I found echium lovers. I first saw the Tower of Jewels in Mendocino. I've never seen them growing in Southern Calfornia. I bought some seeds and later found one at a nursery. They are all babies and all different. Since it seems some of you have experience I will post photos of the three types I have when I get home from work.

Oh yes! Got echium lovers here...they grow all over SoCal, especially along the beach areas. The best thing is, once you have them growing, they will reseed a lot and you'll not be having to buy them again...and have plants to share with friends.

Nancy, since a lot of the Venice properties have small lots and sometimes a bit of concrete, maybe it would be good to plant the cantua where it does not get reflected heat. Also, I love Annie's stuff, but hers will come in a 4"pot and if you can get one in a gallon size, it may do better. I've not looked online, but if for any reason you ever head down toward San Diego / La Jolla / Vista, Kartuz Greenhouses in Vista carries Cantua buxifolia in gallon sizes, and for the same price as Annie's 4" pot which will also cost you shipping. I would think for sure that there are some nurseries up in your area that would carry it....

This is part of a large swath of echium fastuosums I had growing on our SoCal property...they reseeded by the hundreds.

Nancy, also...since hoovb mentioned San Marcos Growers, there may be nurseries around you that regularly carry items from San Marcos Growers and they may order it for you when they have an order going in to San Marcos. I'm a big fan of getting a one gallon size as opposed to 4" on certain types of plants.

Digiplexis is a cross between a biennial and a short lived plant (about 3-4 years), so a couple of seasons can be pushing it in some cases.

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My cantua was being grown inland; it still gave several years of nice flowering before quiting. And I didn't exactly fuss over that one. I would consider it to probably be much easier than the Crino, and probably would like your area very much, Nancy. Definitely worth it--they are quite lovely plants!

I did not expect the digiplexis to last a long time, but think it might have lasted longer if it could have withstood the hard frosts. I'm not going to have anything here that needs coddling anyway. Once the property is not so open, has nooks and crannies, then more tender items can be added, but no more for now. I did take a brug and a Bolivian Fuchsia that were given to me...young, small, but made it through in a more protected spot next to a large hedge...but turned down the offer of more brugs....wow, I didn't think I could do it, but did say No.....LOL.....

It has been very interesting to have a small yard with hardly anything on it and not to decide what you would do with it, but to be given a large number of plants, shrubs, etc that you've not used before and decide what to do with them...I was given two filberts and I'd been wanting to grow filberts, so that was good, also given a sorbus, hawthorn, Pink Pussy Willow...did buy a Vine Maple and a Paperbark Maple...thought I could finally plant hydrangeas to my heart's content, but nope...the deer are fond of them...and yet, when offered to me, I took them.....they will be in the protected area...

Now you guys have me thinking that maybe I need cantua......

Sorry. I did pretty not mean all echiums are absent in So Cal. I meant the Tower of Jewels- Echium Wildpretii. I was stunned when I first saw them ( in full flower mode) in Mendocino. I was like, "What is THAT!?" I see lots of the Pride of Madeira around. I have two. One that only has a very few, white flowers. The other is bursting with blue flowers right now. Love the Echium family.

I forgot to take the pics of the three varieties of "tower of jewels" that I have growing. I'll try tomorrow.

My thanks to all the cantua enablers!

You're welcome. ;-) Don't forget to post photos!

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I had to look up the Bolivian fuchsia. Wow, that is a pretty one, wcgypsy!

Cantua should do great in Venice. It grows fine in full sun in Berkeley. The climate,like the vibe, is close!