Looking back, among my first garden memories are of my grandma's garden. She seemed to almost always have pink coral bells blooming along both sides of the long driveway leading to her house. Of course, back then I had no idea what coral bells were. All I knew them as were those pink flowers on delicate stems that wavered in the wind and seemed to bloom forever.
And that really is a pretty good description of coral bells, also known as Heuchera. These perennials are compact, evergreen clumps that boast slender, wiry stems some 15 to 30 inches high. Atop those stems are open clusters of nodding, bell-shaped flowers in a salmon pink color. They bloom from April through August, and are commonly used as edgings, massed in borders or in front of shrubs.
My grandma's garden really was one that childhood memories are made of. A white picket fence surrounded the front yard. If you touched the fence, a little of the white would rub off on little hands. In the backyard was an enormous lemon tree, at least what seemed enormous in the eyes of a 6-year-old. I found a photograph of that lemon tree a few years back. It was all of 20 feet high! I swear it seemed at least the size of an established redwood back in the 1960s.
But I did climb that monster lemon tree, picking lemons and dropping them down to the waiting hands of my mother and grandma. And more than once, I remember licking my wounds obtained from the unforgiving thorns of that lemon tree.
Next door to my grandma's house stood a vacant lot. In spring and summer that lot would be full of California golden poppies -- bright orange flowers for seemingly as far as a 6-year-old could see! Once I wandered through the vacant lot, picking a wonderful bouquet of those flowers and proudly presented them to my mom.
I remember her explaining to me that California golden poppies were the state flower and that it was illegal to pick them. To this day, I';m not sure if that's true, but I do remember hiding in my grandma's bedroom, hoping that the police weren't
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