Splish Splash, we're having a blast!

Splashes of color,
a dash of green,
plenty of "spikies,"
and foliage with sheen.
Trailing and lovely,
billowing and white,
large leaf or curly leaf
All a delight!

Yes, we're talking about floral and foliage beauty in patio or deck containers. Anything goes — don't hold back. Don't be afraid to plant with annuals, perennials, grasses, vegetables, herbs or succulents. Your plant choices will seem endless.

Container gardening offers something for everyone. Think of it as a work of art and yourself as the artist. You might want simplicity — a single plant, the same color as the chosen pot. Or you may want to find foliage plants (no flowers, please!) of many different sizes, textures and colors and create an arrangement that reminds one of a modern art painting.

Can you envision this: Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum', a fountain grass, in the center; various coleus in contrasting colors of burgundy and chartreuse surrounding the grass; a couple of begonia 'Escargot' tucked in for color contrast and foliage texture; and finally, black Ipomoea (Potato Vine) and Lysimachia (Creeping Jenny) 'Goldilocks' trailing over the sides!

An impressionist look can also be accomplished by blending flowering annuals and perennials, all close in both color and flower size. Or, try a mixture of complementary colored flowers. Imagine this: In the center of the pot towers Queen Anne's Lace, surrounded by white, pink, and purple nemesia. Draping off the sides of the pot, sweet alyssum in white, pink, and purple. All soft colors, sweet fragrances and delicate blooms!

Try mixing ornamental grasses together. Combine soft green stipa or a rich golden brown carex with short tufts of silvery blue Festuca glauca. What a wonderful color combination. Stipa is a wispy grass and will give you "motion in the garden." Don't be afraid to mix your favorite ornamental grass with complementary perennials or annuals.

Rather go with vegetables and herbs? You will not sacrifice beauty — you will explode with it! Purple sage and 'Bergarrten' culinary sage (Salvia Officinalis), basil (many varieties), chives, lettuce (red leaf would be fun), sweet peppers with tiny bright red orange fruits, and French tarragon (it has a bright yellow flower) all surrounding rosemary. Clipping herbs or lettuce for the evening cookout is just a step onto your patio. This combination might be so beautiful you'll hate to snip off any foliage. But don't worry about that; these herbs and veggies will just keep on growing!

Don't forget our planting advice. We encourage you to select a high quality potting mix such as our Gardner & Bloome Potting Soil and to mix in a controlled release fertilizer like Osmocote.

Just a few further tips as you plant your own piece of living art:

1. Consider grouping containers together, varying the heights of plants and containers
2. Make one container the main focal point
3. Create some coherence to each grouping in color scheme and plant forms
4. If the background is "busy" and colorful, choose like colors and lots of foliage
5. If the background is light, rich flower and foliage colors will look fabulous

Summertime is the time for outdoor living! Now is the best time to decorate your outdoor living spaces with floral and foliage works of art. We look forward to watching you create your masterpieces. Hurry in. We'll meet you in the gardens.

Bold in the front row, these shorties can make a huge statement. Do not underestimate a plant that is short, for a plant so short must surely be quite sweet!

The front line of most borders is composed of the lower growing annuals, perennials, shrubs, and even bulbs. These guys would simply be hidden if you planted them in the middle or the back of gardens that are designed with multiple plant heights involved.

Beautiful borders can be foliage or flowering groundcovers and nothing else. That works fabulously along a meandering walk through a garden. Sun choices include thyme, trailing rosemary, armeria, ground morning glory (convolvulus), beach strawberry (fragaria), gazania, and many, many more. Shade choices include sweet woodruff (Galium), green carpet (Herniaria), mondo grass, pachysandra, or baby's tears.

Or picture this: flowering border plants, low and mounding, such as nepeta (catmint), small (1-2 ft ht.) lavender, coreopsis, and Santa Barbara daisy or fleabane (erigeron) combined with button shaped pittosporum 'Crème de Mint' santolina in gray green or bright green, or curry plant (Helichrysum italicum) spilling over a stone walkway. The purple, yellow and green mounds will lead you to the pathway destination.

And not to be forgotten, succulents can be colorful not only for their flowers, but also for foliage color. The long succulent list includes many varieties of sedum, aptenia, iceplant and more. Low growing ornamental grasses such as Festuca glauca or Japanese blood grass can make a large visual statement.

You can design your borders using a single plant type or a monochromatic (all one color) theme, or instead, create a "border of many colors." The choice is all yours. We have presented a few suggestions, but there are so many more plants, we'd just have to take you on a tour of the garden center to show them all to you.

Border plants, short and low, can make an instant beautiful impression in your gardens whether they are along your pathways or the front line of your garden beds. They will bring simple delight. We'll see you soon in the garden center, selecting your favorites.

Summer Solstice, June 21, marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The word "solstice" is from Latin meaning "sun stands still" (sol=sun, sistit=stands). Since all days are the same length (24 hours), what this means is that on this day we have the longest time between sunrise and sunset and the shortest time between the sunset and sunrise.

The ancient monument Stonehenge in England was built to mark an annual calendar. One of the stones in particular, the heelstone, was aligned to demonstrate this day, the longest day, as the beginning of their new year.

What does this all really mean? It's the first day of SUMMER! The beginning of dog days, warm weather, sunshine, and most important, lots of flower-growing time for all of us. Hooray!

Do your last thinning on deciduous fruit trees after June drop, nature's way of getting rid of an overload of fruit. It may occur any time between early May and July but is most likely to happen in June. One day you visit your apple, peach or apricot tree and find a circle of immature fruit lying on the ground under the branches. You may worry if you are new to fruit trees, but don't panic! It's a natural part of the cycle. These trees often set more than double the amount of fruit they could possibly ripen properly, so they simply drop off part of it.

If you thinned out fruit on your trees earlier, you enabled the remaining fruit to grow larger and thus will have less fruit dropping now. Nevertheless, you may need to remove even more fruit than naturally drops in order to space your crop evenly down the branches. Inspect other deciduous fruit trees that are less subject to June drop (plums, for instance) and thin out their fruits also.

Clean up any fallen fruit under the tree before it has a chance to rot and spread disease. If it's healthy, chop it and add it to your compost pile (cover it with earth to keep away flies and rodents). Also water your deciduous fruit trees deeply in June and July.

Irene is a native of San Jose and enjoys traveling, dancing, gardening, and going with friends to comedy clubs.

As a child, Irene once led Operation Tadpole Rescue, saving as many "orphan" tadpoles from the local creek as her mother's Tupperware collection would hold. Her house soon became home to a budding reptilian ecosystem, and her parents spent many a sleepless night listening to a chorus of croaking and unwittingly sharing their beds with Irene's frogs and turtles.

Once out of high school, Irene went into Montessori School working as a teacher's aide.

Ever impulsive, Irene has been known to suddenly take off on long 12-hour drives to the country. In the winter, she enjoys Frisbee-sliding in the snow.

My staff and I look forward to serving you this year. We'll go out of our way to make your day!

Matt Lepow

What You'll Need:

• 2 tablespoons coconut milk
• 2 teaspoons orange zest
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1-1/2 cups shredded coconut
• 3 medium oranges, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 pound seedless green grapes
• 1 pint strawberries, sliced

Step by Step:

Combine the sour cream, brown sugar, coconut milk and orange zest in a small bowl and mix thoroughly.

Combine the shredded coconut, oranges, grapes and strawberries in a salad bowl.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to mix well.

Cover and chill for 1 hour. Serve cold.

Yield: 8 servings