Landscaping

Aeonium arboreum “Schwarzkopf Black Rose” Succulent is a Latin word meaning juicy, and is descriptive of many plants and plant families that store water in their leaves, stems and roots. Succulents can survive long periods of drought, even to a year, with this storage capacity. Aeoniums have handsome rosettes of fleshy leaves, one of which bears a spectacular terminal holding …

Dusty miller is a favorite because it looks good with everything. The silvery-white color is a great foil for any type of garden blossom and the fine-textured foliage creates a beautiful contrast against other plants’ green foliage. Dusty miller has also earned its place in the garden because it’s delightfully easy to grow, withstanding heat and drought like a champion.

Hemerocallis fulva, the orange day-lily, tawny daylily, tiger daylily, fulvous daylily or ditch lily (also railroad daylily, roadside daylily, outhouse lily, and wash-house lily), is a species of daylily native to Asia. It is very widely grown as an ornamental plant in temperate climates for its showy flowers and ease of cultivation. It is not a true lily in the …

Sea Lavender. Herbaceous Perennial Flower   Also known as Statice, Statice Plumbago Limonium latifolium Plumbaginaceae Family Synonym: Statice latifolia   Tolerant of droughty soil, this sun-loving perennial delivers dense clouds of blue to pink-purple flowers rising above dark green basal rosettes. Delicate and airy in the garden and as a dried flower. Sunlight:   full sun   Shade from hot …

The fragrant flowers of Blue Potato Bush (Lycianthes rantonnetii, also known as Solanum rantonnetii,  and Paraguay nightshade), provide a focal point to a tropical or cottage garden. Surrounded by other sun-loving tropical and subtropical perennials, annuals and bulbs, the large shrub blooms year-round in frost-free gardens. Native to Argentina and Paraguay, the blue potato bush is hardy in U.S. Department …

Indian hawthorn (Rhaphiolepis sp.) is prized as a small, low-maintenance shrub or ground cover native to southern China and Japan and cultivated across U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 8 through 11. Various cultivars of Indian hawthorn offer attractive foliage, white to pink flowers and a slight range in available plant sizes. This plant is attractive to bees, butterflies …

Bougainvillea . Very popular . You need at least a foot width of soil. I tried growing it in 3 inches but it did not grow well. Sunnyvale’s climate zone (9b) is right on the edge for this tropical plant. You should protect it from freezes. Read more: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/55375/#ixzz3HZrgOo3C

Red Trumpet vine has lots of pretty red flowers. I am warning you that it is an aggressive climber. You can see an example at the intersection of Matilda and Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road. Another example is on the south side of Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road past Fremont just past the Falefal-stop restaurant. I have a plant growing in a 3-inch wide trench and …

Carpet Roses need no spraying, no staking and just a simple snipping to shape annually. (I recommend feeding them once or twice a season with time release fertilizer so they have the nutritional resources to produce huge volumes of blooms over the entire growing season.) The Carpet Rose is an excellent low maintenance plant for the Sunnyvale garden.

Lemon Verbena has a citrusy fragrance and a pretty light green foliage. The leaves can be used in a variety of cooking: including limoncello. I grow it in a foot-square patch under a fruit tree It’s an herb with a strong lemon flavor.. Lemon verbena’s flavor is also rounded out by the lack of acidity that comes with lemons, and …