Picking a specimen for the planter box

Having built a beautiful new patio with a masonry planter box surrounded by flagstone, we wanted to find a dramatic plant to put in it. A small tree, something with interesting branching structure and beautiful bark, with lovely foliage and blooms. Our architect originally suggested a manzanita, which I thought was brilliant. It has amazing smooth red bark, gnarly branching, lovely pale green leaves, red berries and beautiful white flowers. And I have always loved manzanita. Every time I see one hiking in the mountains, I stop and admire them. Over the past few weeks, I pored over websites learning about all the different species and varieties (there are dozens), and getting familiar with the southern California nurseries specializing in native plants, to see who might have inventory in larger specimen manzanitas. I started, of course, with Las Pilitas, the mother of all native plant nurseries in the southern half of the state. They have a beautiful website with detailed info and lots of photos of all the varieties. I also looked at Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano, who have a lovely and informative plant catalog with a nice summary of sun/water requirements of each variety. But I found the best availability of 15-gallon manzanitas at Matilija Nursery, a nice native plant nursery hidden away off Stockton Road in Moorpark. So this morning, we drove out to Moorpark to take a look at their Howard McMinn, glauca, and Dr. Hurd varieties. Alas, we discovered that even 15-gallon manzanitas are only about 2 feet tall. They would make a distinctive and dramatic focal point, but we would have to wait 5 or 10 years for them to grow up to the size we wanted.

Disappointed, we decided to head back to La Crescenta Nursery, a nice very large nursery near our home, to see what alternatives we might explore, for more immediate gratification. One of the things we wanted to look at was Arbutus (madrone). We had seen some plants at The Grove that we thought were manzanita, but they turned out to be Arbutus, which also has red bark and gnarly branching. They had some, but only much taller single-trunked trees or smaller shrub sizes, but no multi-trunked specimens. They showed us other alternatives, and we ended up coming home with a 7' multi-trunked Crape myrtle (which we managed barely to pack into our Subaru). It wasn't at all what I originally had in mind, but it works beautifully. The Crape myrtle has beautiful bark (smooth mottled gray with peels), interesting branching, and lovely foliage and pink flowers. We planted the tree and it suits perfectly.