smoke trees Archives - Smoke Tree Manor

Why Purple Gates?

When we were building the house we deliberately chose to paint the three gates that lead into the courtyard of the house an intense and dark purple. Some people find it an odd choice as purple doesn’t necessarily seem like a color that is well represented in the desert. However, we did our research and found that purple is indeed a desert color in both bloom and in cactus paddle forms.

We looked around our house and found several examples of purple in the environment that fairly closely match our gate color.

Smoke Tree Seedlings

House and Garden / garden, house, smoke trees

We may also go ahead and put a couple of the seedlings in the ground, pot and all, immediately, forgoing the baby steps, because, in the “real world” California Smoke Trees grow when a seed tumbles down a wash, getting scraped up by the rocks (this “scarification” is very common in horticulture and is commonly done with very tough seeds along with presoaking to soften the seed shell to improve germination. A common seed for which this practice is often used is the sweet pea [Lathyrus odoratus]), then settling into loose soil, usually under a rock or under gravel, and then sprouting to send down a VERY long taproot before any recognizable growth begins on the surface.

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