Bit of glare on this picture, my apologies. Anyways during Wednesday’s whacking misadventure, I discovered the the lemon verbena was very much outgrowing it’s nice grey pot.
Luckily I have something bigger- though not as nice.
Of course some housekeeping needs to take place before the verbena gets a new home.
Now this is normal, and she’s perfectly healthy. Lemon Verbena are essentially small trees, and like a lot of trees, they’re deciduous. Her leaves will come back.
The roots were enormous. Clearly she’d been needing out of the pot for a while.
I might not get to buy a perfect replacement for the pot though- that orange dot means a clearance pot- I got this one a few years ago at a sale.
It’s still a perfectly lovely pot though, and I’ll have to think of something to put in it.
But for now, newly pruned and potted, the lemon verbena looks great. I’ll put in a little fish emulsion in a few days and hopefully in a month or so the new growth will start. It’s a lovely smelling tree- You can make tea out of it- I just enjoy it’s scent.
The Neanderthal Gardens 
The black vinyl should not be exposed to too much sunlight when the weather gets warm over summer (if it does that in San Francisco). I like to put smaller potted plants on the south side of such exposed vinyl cans. When I lived in town, I could nestle them into deep ivy for a while. Otherwise, the black vinyl gets warm enough to annoy roots that get too close to it.