The secret gardens of San Marcos Ridge

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• It’s back! The Cambria Garden Tour and Gourmet Garden Event

  It’s back! The Cambria Garden Tour and Gourmet Garden Event

  The Cambria Garden Tour is back! Taking a one-year hiatus leaves avid gardeners anxiously anticipating this upcoming event. This year, I assisted the tour’s selection committee in identifying seven gardens that represent Cambria’s finest. Without giving away too many secrets, here are the backyard paradises offered on the 2012 garden tour:

  • Need ideas for tough plants that can thrive in salt and wind? Participants will visit the garden of Mark and Chris Landgreen on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The landscape provides a foreground for the vast water view. Low-growing, drought tolerant plants like ceanothus and rockrose provide color. A carpet of dymondia surrounds the rock pavers. There’s a modified Zen garden and an enclosed area for potting and growing grapes, vegetables, and herbs. The seating area and pizza oven by the front door provide a sheltered area to “sit a spell.” An added treat: local classic cars will be on view on the cul-de-sac out front.

  • Around the corner you’ll visit an

• The Gutzmann garden in Atascadero is an inviting, verdant hillside garden

  The Gutzmann garden in Atascadero is an inviting, verdant hillside garden

  One hundred is the magic number for Ed Gutzmann of Atascadero. Gutzmann built more than 100 theaters in Southern California and throughout the West before he retired to west Atascadero. But retirement wasn’t part of the plan once he got busy landscaping his hillside property. Friends marveled at the result and asked him to “help” them with their yards.

  That “help” turned into a full-on landscaping business resulting in more than 100 projects throughout the area. Gutzmann both designed and did much of the labor on his projects, each one capturing the vision of what the owners wanted to “see” from inside their home.

  Landscaping wasn’t new to him, as his father was a landscape architect in Orange County, and Gutzmann remembers tagging along as a boy to the project sites. He’s always loved creating, and with an engineering and design background, landscaping was a natural. As he says, “I have a P.E. (Practical Experience) degree in landscape.”

• A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  Sunset Western Garden Books and I go way back. I remember leafing through my mother’s old “First Edition” 1954 publication. It covered about everything one needed to know about gardening.

  Of the newer Sunset Western Garden Books in my library, the 2001 seventh edition was my bible during Master Gardener training. I didn’t think the 2007 edition had enough new material, so I passed on that one. But what gardener can resist the newly released ninth edition?

  “Not another garden book,” you say. Here’s my rationale for buying it. This edition is the first to feature plant photos exclusively. Not that I didn’t enjoy the illustrations of the older versions, but a color photo, well, they’re in color. The plant encyclopedia of the new 2012 edition has been updated and includes 1,000 more entries. There is a “Gardening, Start to Finish” section for beginning gardeners.

• May in the garden: Plant, feed, beware of frost

  May in the garden: Plant, feed, beware of frost

  May is a month for planting, fertilizing and controlling pests. But don’t be fooled by a late frost.

  Plant dahlias and gladiolus for summer color. For annuals you can plant dianthus and pansies. As the nights become warmer you can hang baskets of fuchsias and geraniums. For perennials, shop for summer and fall color with asters, coreopsis, and cornflowers.

  Now is the time to check the needs of your lawn. Aerate, feed and over-seed to get rid of bald patches. Around mid-month, feed your lawn with an even coat of highnitrogen fertilizer, watering thoroughly after application.

• The Carver garden in Los Osos: Where whimsy thrives

  The Carver garden in Los Osos: Where whimsy thrives

  Dennis and Terry Carver enjoyed their former Los Osos home, but yearned for more gardening space. So in 1994 they bought a lot — two sandy acres, vacant, except for an illegally sited mobile home that required disposal.

  They remained in their former home nearby while Dennis built a workshop and new house, which they moved into in December 1996. Meanwhile, they cleared the lot they described as “a weed patch” and mulched it deeply with wood chips obtained from municipal tree-removal projects.

  They were amazed to discover seedling trees emerging from the mulch. They removed all except a few well-spaced seedlings, judging by their expected mature size. Many have thrived beyond their expectations. Even so, Terry couldn’t resist adding some sequoia and redwood trees reminiscent of Humboldt County, where she attended college.