Category Archives: garden visit

Come Any Time

Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino (Pasadena), California. MB Maher and I visited on Saturday, May 28, 2011. As I wrote here, one of the reasons we visited on Saturday was to catch some puyas in bloom. But there’s always … Continue reading →

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A Memorable Day at the HBG

Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino (Pasadena), California. With the Palo Verde in bloom among golden barrel cactus, I felt like I’d stumbled onto the gardens of the Lost City of Coronado. Orange and gold. Forests of orange dyckias in … Continue reading →

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Agave franzosinii

This photo was taken by MB Maher during a visit he made to artists Sue Dadd and James Griffith’s amazing Folly Bowl last summer. Some agave, huh? I’m now fairly sure that this uber-undulating creature is Agave franzosinii, which develops … Continue reading →

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Dim View of the High Line

Yesterday 5/15/11 The New York Times published in their Opinion section “Bringing The High Line Back To Earth” by Witold Rybczynski, professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Rybczynski feels compelled to warn us that the brilliant success … Continue reading →

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Ambivalent About Holidays

It occurred to me belatedly after Sunday’s post that it wouldn’t have killed me to slip a “Happy Mother’s Day” message at the end of the post. “Ambivalent” is a $2 word for how I feel about holidays. (And pretty … Continue reading →

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Venice Garden & Home Tour 2011

Buy tickets and a map at the Las Doradas Children’s Center, apply the lime-green wrist band, and we’re off on the VGHT 2011 (Last year’s post here.) Under overcast skies, thirty houses, covering several miles. Bikes would be the preferred … Continue reading →

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The Kashmir Cypress

A pre-dinner garden tour at Dustin’s. “What is it?” I asked. “You asked me that last time,” he answered patiently. “It’s psoralea.” “Oh, the Kool-Aid something or other?” (Strange, how memory works.) “Right,” he explained, “from Annie’s.” His psoralea is … Continue reading →

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Lemon Arbor

Arbors of roses, wisteria, grapes, long trusses of laburnum…timeless horticultural cliches under which one glides lost in the quandary of which Jane Austen heroine one resembles most. (Fanny Price of Mansfield Park.) Never had I walked under an arbor of … Continue reading →

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Free-Range Succulents

At Lotusland (USDA zone 10), it was thrilling to see succulents set free from ceramic pots to creep and spill over rocks. Increasingly, even in frost-free gardens, succulents have become the darlings of container designs, but where they can overwinter … Continue reading →

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Occasional Daily Photos/Lotusland

The clamshell beach at Lotusland Backed by a low retaining wall dripping with dudleyas and other succulents (Thank you, Kathy!)

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