Category Archives: climate

postcards from Santa Barbara gardens

Ever since the area became accessible by car and rail in the early part of the 20th century, it has been a favored location for estates and marvelous gardens, among them El Fureidis, Val Verde, and Lotusland. — The Lightest … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, climate, garden ornament, garden travel, pots and containers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Sunday clippings 9/3/17

Did the Powerball mania descend on your home too a couple weeks back? Just because I never buy Powerball or lottery tickets, magical thinking really kicks in when news of the big jackpots reaches even my normally oblivious state of … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, climate, clippings, design, garden travel, garden visit, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Re-post: Amsterdam houseboat gardens

In the aftermath of the 500-year storm event in Texas and the horrendous suffering it has inflicted, offering lovely houseboat scenes may seem overly naive, if not downright cruel, but just try not to dwell on the design issues that … Continue reading

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the Virginia Robinson Garden

There’s always a local, hometown garden or two that we never get around to visiting, right? And that holds true even in garden-starved Southern California. The Virginia Robinson Garden in Beverly Hills has been written and rewritten in seemingly vanishing … Continue reading

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cooling down the house with a garden; a modest proposal

I know I mostly talk about plants with a micro focus trained on their singularly gorgeous attributes, like Echium wildpretii above, but with this post I’m going to pull out of that narrow focus a bit and go wider. Normally … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, climate, design, Occasional Daily Weather Report, pots and containers | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

musing on Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden

Today I’m coveting this long water tank “rill” in British landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden flanked with bearded irises, Stipa gigantea, and astrantia, a scene possibly from late spring/very early summer? The first two I can grow here in zone … Continue reading

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a May visit to the Denver Botanic Gardens

“If you want to have an easy life as a weather forecaster, you should get a job in Las Vegas, Phoenix or Los Angeles. Predict that it won’t rain in one of those cities, and you’ll be right about 90 … Continue reading

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Rancho Reubidoux up close

Continuing the documentation of Rancho Reubidoux now that Reuben and Paul are moving on from their widely loved home and garden, as promised, here’s a companion piece to the previous post, a parting look at how Reuben styles the sitting … Continue reading

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the light is left on at Rancho Reubidoux

I’ve been dreading completing this post, but since Reuben and Paul have officially decamped from their house and garden at Rancho Reubidoux as of last week and moved into their new home, it’s time to unpack these last images and … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, artists, climate, design, garden ornament, garden visit, MB Maher, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged | 9 Comments

Bloom Day May 2017 (and assorted garden projects)

Photo taken last night, when I still hoped I could squeak this post in under the Bloom Day deadline, the 15th of every month, and be righteously on time, but it was not to be. Flash of red is from … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, Bloom Day, climate, creatures, cut flowers, design, MB Maher, pots and containers, shop talk, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments