Pool and Nearby Plants Can Live in Harmony

QUESTION: Have you ever tackled the problem of which plants are less likely to be affected by splashing chlorine water from a swimming pool?

--A.P., Malibu

ANSWER: All plants are affected, but “plant them anyway and don’t worry” is the advice given by Cleo Baldon of Cleo Baldon & Associates in Venice, who has designed some of the most exciting and elegant pools in Southern California.

In her new book, “Reflections on the Pool” (Rizzoli, $45), there are 40 gorgeous pools by several designers, and every one of them has plants growing right up to the water’s edge (usually in raised beds) or even hanging over it. She discusses the problem of chlorine and plantings.

In her own garden, she has asparagus ferns and spider plants dripping into the pool, and “they get splashed a lot,” she says. Where they touch the water the leaves die but the rest of the plant is fine. In short, most plants will grow near a pool; all will be damaged by splashing water, but they’ll keep growing.

Another friend, Linda Estrin, has a veritable botanic garden growing around her pool, with only the standard four-foot walkway separating the plants from the pool. She has children, so the plants do get splashed.

She’s lost a few plants--when the pool service purged the filter into the garden beds and during the Northridge earthquake, when much of the water sloshed out--but the garden is still thriving, exciting and full of plants (many of which are drought-tolerant).

It’s probably more important to choose benign plants, without spines or sharp leaves. The Sunset Western Garden Book lists plants to use near a swimming pool that are not prickly or messy, though Baldon would even take issue with this because she enjoys fallen leaves on a pool’s surface.

Rosebushes Can’t Change Their Color

Q: How is it possible that after three years a yellow rosebush can suddenly have burgundy-colored roses blooming? The nearest rose bush is about 3 feet away, and the new stems are coming from the bush itself, not up from the ground like a sucker.--D.N., Fullerton

A: It’s not possible, said rose hybridizer Tom Carruth at Weeks Roses, a huge wholesaler (he introduced this year’s sensation, the striped ‘Scentimental’). Those are suckers, sprouting from below the graft, from what is called the root stock. Anything that sprouts from below the graft, whether the graft is above or below ground, is a sucker.

Most roses grown in America have been grafted to an old turn-of-the-century variety named ‘Dr. Huey.’ This old variety has medium-sized burgundy-red flowers on strong upright growth that is somewhat climby. It also mildews badly. Simply cut or snap it off, and hope that it has not overtaken your yellow rose so that only the ‘Dr. Huey’ rootstock is still alive.

Carruth said this is one reason more and more roses are being grown “on their own roots,” without a separate rootstock. Most of the old roses already are, and, at Weeks, 600,000, or 20%, of the new roses are now grown on their own roots. In time, even the hybrid teas will be.