My New Favorite Thing

Ever since we moved in two years ago, I've been envying my neighbor's beautiful Japanese maple tree.  I intended to get one of my own, but when I went to the nursery last summer to pick it up the sales clerk talked me out of it.  It's true that L.A. is a very hot, dry place to grow a maple tree - but after all, my neighbor has one just two doors down that's doing fine.

My little tree with the neighbor's full-size maple in the background.

Anyway, after two years of waiting, I finally decided to just go ahead and buy a Japanese maple (it helped that they were 50% off at Lowe's, with a money-back guarantee).  For $50, I figured it was worth a try.

I wanted the tree to be tucked up right by the house, so I chose a dwarf variety of acer palmatum dissectum 'Inaba Shidare' that will only grow to be 6-7 feet tall (and it grows so slowly it will take decades to get even that big).  It's supposed to be one of the most heat- and drought-tolerant Japanese maples, though none of them are exactly desert plants.  But it's in the shadiest part of the front yard, and as the London Plane tree grows bigger and bigger, it will get shadier still.*

Dwarf maple with dog for scale.

And even if it doesn't thrive as well as my neighbor's maple has, at least for now it looks great.  The warm, rich color looks perfect with the gold and green tones of the Nandina and Mexican Feather Grass and the reddish blush from the Japanese Barberry (which is finally growing in after being dormant all winter).

Nandina in green, gold, and red.

* Someday the London Plane may also make the front yard too shady for my Nandina and Mexican Feather Grass, but I'll worry about that some other day.