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 ink at the top of my must-see list for decades.
August is a mixed bag in the garden, with parts of the garden exuberantly bulging out of bounds while other areas grow threadbare. Bocconia and tetrapanax share the award for most frequent dropping of big, yellowing leaves, and the melianthus has typically thinned out by August too.
Thank heavens for summer-blooming aloe, ‘Cynthia Giddy.’ (Also blooming is Aloe elgonica. Aloe ‘Kujo’ is without blooms for the first time in months.) Lilac-pink blooms almost out of frame belong to a valerian, Centranthus lecoqii, from the Huntington plant sale a year or so ago.*
I prefer this color to the muddy red of Centranthus ruber, and it seems to reseed less too.
A NOID Kelly Griffin hybrid aloe has been reblooming at the path’s edge all summer, with Verbena bonariensis.
Max Parker’s splendid gift of Passiflora ‘Flying V’ has kindled an interest in these vines that love Southern California. I’m partial to the “bat-wing” leaf types but willing to explore all kinds, particularly nonrampant varieties that aren’t touted in catalogue descriptions as “perfect for quickly covering a chain-link fence.” No thanks. ‘Anastasia’ gets great reviews, and I’m also leaning toward P. holosericea (Max blogs at hook and spur.) ‘Flying V’ has been blooming all summer but is looking particularly fine now in August, more lush and with larger leaves.
Rudbeckia triloba is an August garden’s antidepressant.
Bursting through the passionflower trellis.
And crawling on the ground when it eludes support.
Grevillea ‘Moonlight’ is crowding Aloe ‘Hercules,’ which I’m hoping gains enough height soon to soar out of harm’s way. In the meantime, the grevillea was tied back a bit to give the aloe more elbow room.
That’s Stipa ichru arching its blooms over gaillardia. The tally of yellow daisies in my garden this summer include this Gaillardia “Mesa Peach,’ Berlandiera lyrata, and Anthemis ‘Susannah Mitchell,’ the latter slowing down in August. The chocolate flower, berlandiera, really loves the heat of August.
Succulent-leaved Crithmum maritimum, the Rock Samphire, really starts surging in July. I recently saw this cliff dweller featured in a vertical garden design. It’s that tough of a plant.
Lavender ‘Goodwin Creek Grey’ and Ruby Grass are starting to pick up the pace in August.
Ruby Grass, Melinus nerviglumis, really is the perfect size for a small garden. When I read in The Bold Dry Garden that Ruth Bancroft also liked to use this grass among her succulents, that was all the validation I needed.
Tall and lanky Amicia zygomeris has a typical pea flower, yellow in color, but the purply stipules and lush, healthy foliage are more the attraction.
Also thinning out are the flowering wands of the bog sage, Salvia uliginosa, but still with enough presence to continue bringing in the hummingbirds.
Anigozanthus flavidus turns out to be the perfect partner for supporting the bog sage. The kangaroo paw’s yellow flowers were aging and browning, so I snipped off only the flowers and left the stems to continue supporting the sage. This goes against accepted wisdom to cut the entire bloom truss of kangaroo paws down at the base for best rebloom, but I will attend to that later in fall.
The vine Solanum valerianum ‘Navidad Jalisco’ has been thinning out and dropping leaves, and in this case it’s a relief to clear it back and off the lemon cypresses as blooms fade.
The stock tank cutting garden doles out a few blooms every day, like Dahlia ‘Twyning’s After Eight.’
The gesneriad from the Denver Botanic Garden plant sale, Chirita flavimaculata, has been surprisingly floriferous, planted at the base of the tetrapanax.
Two of the four trusses of Eryngium pandanifolium are still deeply colored, while the first two to bloom have faded to a buff color.
Not pictured but deserving of notice, Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ is a summer mainstay, as are the calamints. For more August reports, head over to the host site for Bloom Day, May Dreams Gardens.
*(Edited to note the subsequent removal of Aloes ‘Cynthia Giddy’ and ‘Kujo’ due to aphid infestations, something I’ve noted seems more problematic with hybrid aloes. ‘Moonglow’ has this tendency as well and may possibly be managed by thinning out leaves and branches periodically and spraying with insecticidal soap. The aphids literally suck the vigor from the plant, killing off entire leaves, reducing flowering, etc.)
image of Iris reticulata from Wikipedia Commons
Collections of Virginia Woolf’s copious letters and diaries have sustained me through some dreary, uninspiring times. By turns bitchy and transcendent, but always dependably filled with trenchant and unflinching observations of her life and times, I return to them periodically as supplemental oxygen when the present seems unbearably thin and life-sapping. Vox reminded me of this precious resource today, the balm of brave, enduring words from the past, this time quoting from Leonard Woolf and his memoir Downhill All The Way, which I have yet to read. After starting out as a novelist, Leonard’s energies turned more to politics and managing their Hogarth Printing Press that published (and actually printed, with woodcuts by her sister Vanessa Bell for the covers) his wife’s ground-breaking modernist fiction. His own legacy includes his internationalist work with the League of Nations that later became the foundation for the United Nations. And he was a very enthusiastic gardener. Here’s the quote from Vox:
“I will end … with a little scene that took place in the last months of peace. They were the most terrible months of my life, for, helplessly and hopelessly, one watched the inevitable approach of war. One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler — the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers. … Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.” Last March, twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those violet flowers still flowered under the apple-tree in the orchard.”
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 I’d want to tell you more about my new crush, Pennisetum ‘Cherry Sparkler,’ and my hopes for it being the one, a mediumish-size grass whose girth doesn’t exceed that of a small car in a single season. But it’s nearly mid-August, and we’ve all been through a lot of summer. A lot of summer and smoke, to crib from Tennessee Williams. And it only makes sense to plan for increasingly hotter and longer summers. (I just read about more horrific wildfires, this time in Montana, in today’s NYT.) But do you ever consider how your plant and design choices will impact the temperature inside your home? Maybe it’s me, but I don’t see this subject broached very often. Over the past 28 years, I can’t help but observe how choices in my own garden have impacted our little bungalow’s livability, especially during the crucible of summer. As of today, we have yet to install air conditioning, and this summer we’ve been reasonably comfortable. We talk about this all the time, and for a brief moment this summer a portable AC was purchased but ultimately returned. If we had triple digits for weeks on end, I might rethink the AC issue, but for now I’m willing to let the power flow to those much more in need of it. And we are only a mile from the Pacific Ocean, so definitely YMMV.
Some of the main cooling and shade features are built, not planted, starting off the back porch of our 1,120 square-foot house. The pergola attached to the house has two levels, with the topmost level extending as a roof over the little concrete porch and shading the kitchen windows forward of the porch. The ladder leads to the berth above the laundry shed, where you can always catch a breeze and great views of birds and other wildlife shenanigans. The striped fabric at the far end is hung for both privacy and shade from morning sun. There’s usually a dog-eared New Yorker stuffed under the cushions. The entire structure brings critical shade to this south side of the house. Shade can be accomplished with trees, of course, but for a small area so close to the house, a pergola affords complete control, without danger of falling branches or root intrusion. We’ve experienced both falling branches and trees and much prefer the relative permanence and stability of the pergola.
I do have to put the big picture briefly on pause to point out how well the potted Cussonia natalensis is doing this year. Old habits die hard.
Pulling back again to show how the planting starts in earnest just feet away from the house and back porch, but that’s just my preference. Maybe you’re more of a Thomas Church devotee (“Gardens Are For People“), and would prefer less plants and more open space for entertaining, and I agree with that to an extent. But lots of plants do result in an incredible cooling effect. So that’s a trade-off everyone has to cipher out for themselves, but I’d just keep in mind the warmer summers to come (and all the cool plants out there waiting to be grown).
Succulents and small evergreen shrubs like Eremophila glabra and lavender surround the pergola, and then the planting gets crazier with summer ephemerals such as Salvia uliginosa way in the back, where their winter absence won’t be as noticeable.
My garden philosophy aims at being the girl with the most cake, with as much year-round inspiration and stimulation as I can squeeze out of a small garden. And I’d be the first to admit that I probably live in a constant state of over-stimulation.
Looking west under the pergola. In a couple weeks we’re hosting an engagement party for my youngest son, so I’m trying out the two metal drums as a temporary barrier to keep kids from getting lost or speared by an agave in the jungle.
Dramatic and flamboyant rosettes like bromeliads and agaves are big on presence and light on water. The high shade provided by the tetrapanax are perfect conditions for bromeliads in summer. In winter many of the bromeliads get moved into full sun.
The lemon cypresses and acacia are providing increasingly more shade at this eastern end, and some things may have to consequently be shifted around, but the positives so outweigh the negatives. That’s Tanglefoot smeared halfway up the acacia’s trunk, btw.
Continuing under the pergola toward the east leads to this brick-on-sand laid patio. The lemon cypresses were planted with privacy in mind, as was the Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea,’ to their right, but the cooling effect from all three has been a huge side benefit. The cypresses are approximately 20 feet tall now and may reach 30 feet. (I’m thinking of setting up the bar for the party on the table in the corner.)
The bricks lead further north into the “East Wing,” which is uncharacteristically empty for the moment and in the midst of getting cleaned and ready for the engagement party tables and benches. The branches in the top right foreground are the Chinese Fringe Tree, which sits roughly in the middle on the east side of the house, and the trees beyond the Dutch-door gate are the parkway jacarandas. The adjacent neighbor’s choice of Queen palms along the eastern boundary has added more high shade and privacy for us without the dreaded “dungeon” effect. Once you start thinking about shade, you realize how many kinds there are: light shade, deep shade, dappled, etc.
Another structure that cools the house is the bath house/bird house off our bedroom. Around March we remove the glass panes and use only screens until around November, and the sliders from the bedroom to the bath house are constantly kept open to cool the bedroom through just the screen door. This side is so narrow that I can’t get a full-on photo. I begged for a bath house, Marty complied and built it single-handedly, and then I let parakeets take over. (Just because I am an unstable person, and Marty has learned to graciously live with that fact.) But neither of us realized at the outset what a cooling effect the structure would have on the main house, basically functioning like a screened-in sleeping porch.
The view out the bedroom, through the bath house to the east fence, through the canopy of the Chinese Fringe Tree, Chionanthus retusus, now forming its inky berries that will end up as navy blue bird shite splashed over plants, bricks, etc., but it’s easily hosed off, and I love hearing the birds (and squirrels) hopping around in the tree. You can see where the parakeets chewed into the wood above the roller blind.
Another structural change, admittedly a very low-effort one, was opening up this little sunroom off the kitchen on the west side. It’s been a revelation in air flow dynamics, and I’m convinced it’s now the lungs of the house. It’s always been used as a bedroom and was just this year finally emptied out and turned into a little reading room. In contrast to the privacy requirements of previous occupants, doors and windows have been flung open, and a screen door has been added to the doorway that leads to the porch off the driveway. Opening its doors and windows is now part of the morning ritual, along with making the coffee, feeding the cat, turning off the porch lights.
This door from the main house into the little sunroom has always been shut, too, again because privacy for its revolving teenage occupants was paramount. (I do wish I’d cleaned up a bit before photos.) Now I love to sit here and feel the cool air pour in off the garden in the evening and mix with cross-currents of ventilation coming from elsewhere in the house. The bungalow builders were masters at maximizing cross-currents, but it’s rare that their original intentions remain relevant as the original footprint is fiddled with by subsequent owners. The trick now for us is to keep the old sash-weight, double-hung windows in working order so the air can flow in from all directions. It’s a lot like taking care of an old wooden boat, and the floors creak just about as much too. (This article in Curbed discusses similar cooling and cross-flow strategies built into the old “shotgun shacks” of the South: “One of the most effective forms of air circulation is a ‘cross draft,’ an interior breeze that forms when two openings in a building -— windows, doors, and the like -— align.”)
“The idea of cooling a house in hot climates is nothing new—ancient Egypt used courtyards to promote air flow through buildings,” says Jonathan Hogg, associate at Ferguson & Shamamian Architects. “Providing air circulation is simply essential to summertime relief.” — Curbed, “How Houses Were Cooled Before Air Conditioning.”
The view of the garden directly outside the reading room windows, the brick walkway about 6 feet across, leading to the office (half of the former garage).
Possibly overplanted just a bit, but this is peak summer after all.
Just wide enough for a couple chairs and a table. The canvas painter’s drop cloth tarps are a low-tech hack for seasonal shade requirements. In summer the morning sun is directed blindingly on the doorway.
For brevity’s sake (ha!), I’ve limited this post to the back garden. The west side of the house is all driveway and workshop areas, partly concrete with some porous brick-on-sand areas, and we use overhead tarps here, too, in summer for shade when working on projects. The long, narrow, north-facing front garden is shaded by the parkway jacarandas. It is privacy-hedged by some shabby box on the north and ‘Little Ollie’s,’ dwarf olives, on the east. The Pearl Acacia has grown into an enormous shrub on the northwest corner of the house from all the cutting back it’s received to keep it from encroaching on the driveway, and I love the privacy and shade it gives the front porch and living room windows.
To sum it up, keeping the house cool is going to be an increasingly important consideration when planning the garden, and you might as well approach it directly, in contrast to our rather indirect, circuitous approach over the past 28 years.
Gardeners are by definition rooted and bound to their gardens. Leaving home can mean missing out, and we don’t want to miss a thing, especially in summer.
Like this Puya mirabilis’ first bloom in my garden.
Why, hello, you beautiful, lime-green trumpets, all flaring scrollwork and dangling clappers.
In fact, aside from Puya laxa’s tiny, navy blue flowers, which would be underwhelming to anyone but a hummingbird, this is the first puya to ever bloom in my garden. In a genus notorious for taking its sweet time to bloom, (as much as a decade for some species), Puya mirabilis is a standout for accomplishing that feat in a year or so after planting. I would hate to miss that.
Aloe elgonica had its first bloom too. I’d hate to miss that as well. (Pardon the jungle — I have been cutting back a bit since this photo was taken last week. Ahem, moving on…)
But like clockwork, August always fires up a relatively contented, stay-at-home temperament with the burning itch to travel, an urge to go, leave, vámonos. Which explains why I feel strongly compelled to immediately book a flight to Madrid to see its spectacular Desert City. Could I find such a sight fairly local here in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs? Of course. But it’s August, so of course I’m daydreaming about Madrid.
“Designed by local firm GarciaGerman Arquitectos, Desert City is a biotechnology nursery that celebrates all things xerophytic (plants that require little water to survive) through educational, cultural, and commercial events in an expansive complex that includes a greenhouse, garden, exhibition space, a restaurant, shop, and offices.” (photo and quoted material from Curbed.)
54,000 feet celebrating cacti and succulents! Madrid’s winters are supposedly colder than the norm for Spain (43F for the low in January), but its mediterranean climate would seemingly support a huge variety of North American cacti, along with other succulents like euphorbias and aloes from other parts of the world.
“Prefabricated elements, along with sustainable solutions like photovoltaic glass, geothermal power, and water recovery systems combine to create a dynamic center that not only exhibits, grows, and breeds cacti, but also offers the public a range of activities.” (photo from inhabitat, quoted material from Curbed.)
There’s also the International Meeting of the Landscape and Garden in Bergamo, Italy, September 22-23, 2017 (simultaneous translation provided). And I’d love to attend the Perennial Plant Conference in Pennsylvania at Swarthmore College this October 20th, to hear plantsperson extraordinaire Derry Watkins speak, jog over to Longwood Gardens, and possibly make it over to Chanticleer too.
Not that there aren’t distractions enough here at home. I found this blushing Tillandsia capitata ‘Roja’ at Rainforest Flora when attending the South Bay Bromeliad Associates Show & Sale last weekend (see Piece of Eden’s post here.)
But it’s August, and my passport is freshly renewed and ready to go. I think I love that feeling of infinite possibilities almost as much as the going. For the short term, though, I’ll be heading to the InterCity Cactus Show & Sale this Saturday at the LA Arboretum.
I’ve been in an insatiable mood for plant shopping lately. I found this variegated form of Salvia ‘Berggarten’ yesterday at Roger’s Gardens and am putting up its portrait immediately because it may be its last. This salvia and my soil share a long-running, infamous incompatibility, but this sage was just so beautiful I had to bring it home, even if it’s only for a brief fling in the garden. It’s been years since I’ve attempted to grow the large-leaved form of Salvia officinalis, and it shames me to admit to being foiled by such a basic herb, but so it is. Maybe this time I’ll win with the variegated. If/when it starts to fail, I can always gather the leaves for the kitchen, so there’s that consolation. Grown by Native Sons. It’d be a safer bet in a raised bed if you have one.
Loree collects all our end-of-month favorites on her blog Danger Garden, so I’ll list a few of mine this month. I know I talk it up a lot, but I’m so glad California/North American native grass Aristida purpurea is making itself at home in the garden. Not so at home as that scary, ineradicable garden squatter, the feathergrass Stipa tenuissima, but instead seeding modestly and nonthreateningly here and there. I have noticed an impulse by some (Marty!) to reach out to pull it from this particular corner where it brushes against our legs. How can a grassy caress be a bad thing? Plus it’s a nice buffer between a sprawling clump of the well-armed Agave lophantha.
It does prefer to reseed along walkways. I especially like its gauzy curtains with succulents.
Chartreuse-flowered Pelargonium gibbosum was discovered at the South Bay Geranium Society show and sale earlier this summer at South Coast Botanic Garden. A plant only for zealots of the color chartreuse and/or odd caudiciform pelargoniums. It goes by the unfortunate common name of Gouty Pelargonium. What’s not to love?
One of the two dark-leaved dahlias in the stock tank, ‘Twyning’s after 8.’ There’s got to be a racy story behind a name like that, but all I can uncover is that Twyning is a sleepy village in Gloucestershire on the River Avon. Yet who knows what kind of wild party town Twyning turns into after 8? The green leaves belong to Copper Canyon Daisy, Tagetes lemmonii.
I’m thrilled to have sideritis self-sow. I’ve grown a few kinds so am not completely sure of its identity, but it’s probably S. oroteneriffae.
Gymnocalycium ragonesei, still alive and blooming after two years under my care. It’s looking a little shrunken, but what a trouper!
I don’t even try heucheras anymore. For dependably splashy leaves all summer, it’s usually plectranthus. This summer it’s Pelargonium ‘Vancouver Centennial.’
Have a great weekend! (Maybe a little more plant shopping for me…)
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 10, but not the astrantia. Bearded iris blooms much earlier than Stipa gigantea does here, at least in my Los Angeles garden. But even if I could get the stipa and iris to coincide, what could replace the astrantia? A smallish reblooming aloe like ‘Rooikappie’ posssibly interplanted with the annual umbellifer Orlaya grandiflora? Whatever…that tank is fabulous, even if lined in green seslerias or lomandra.
That long water tank could run alongside my pergola (but would no doubt take up more than half of the available planting area — a bitter compromise). I can see the raccoons bathing in it by moonlight and the garden impressionistically reflected in it by daylight, birds insouciantly winging in for a quick dip — and the cat with lots more warning bells added to his collar…
I miss Stipa gigantea and need to find a way again to shoehorn it into the garden.
photos via Desire to Inspire.
“The Barn Garden at Serge Hill” is located about 25 miles north of London. This version of his garden was installed in 2007, pretty much lifted intact from his Gold Medal and Best In Show Chelsea Flower Show garden for the Daily Telegraph in 2006. The planting is on the dry-ish side, comprised of “irises, echinaceas, euphorbias, sedums, salvias, eryngiums, achilleas and grasses like Stipa gigantea and Panicum.” from “A Tapestry of Color at Serge Hill.”
July is usually the month my garden needs a tuneup, a jolt of the unfamiliar to keep me inspired all summer long. Checking out July Bloom Day posts back to 2013, this July has a lot of the same characters in the garden, like Eryngium pandanifolium. If anything, there’s been less risk-taking on flowers for summer, which must be a hangover from the drought. I just haven’t been launching into big flowery plans for summer that need tricky irrigation support and have stuck with the old reliables. I thought agapanthus would be a good fit for the mid-summer garden but couldn’t keep sun at their bases and get the moisture right. Maybe another rainy winter will put me back in the mood for experimentation.
Which isn’t to say I’ve completely stopped trying out the unfamiliar, like this Lobelia fistulosa, which looks healthy and on track to bloom next year.
And there’s always a new grass to try, like the Pennisetum ‘Cherry Sparkler’ I brought home to replace ‘Karley Rose.’
And I did persist with Rudbeckia triloba and finally struck gold this summer. Much better performance than in 2014. If you get its feet right up against the drip hose, you’ll be rewarded with its unique show of a firmament of starry flowers floating over an open, branched habit of growth. And I think it also appreciates the partial shade under the cabbage tree (Cussonia gamtoosensis). Whether it’s reliably perennial here is still uncertain, but at least it blooms well enough its first year to grow as a summer annual.
And the “New Zealand Purple’ castor bean obligingly sowed itself alongside Grevillea ‘Moonlight.’ Nicely done!
Aloe ‘Cynthia Giddy’ is now a reliable summer bloomer, and even the recalcitrant bloomer Aloe elgonica is throwing its first truss.
The only pup from my bloomed-out Agave mitis var. albidior (formerly known as Agave celsii var. albicans) is a heat-busting vision of cool amongst frosty calamint.
But typically by July I’m ready for some new inspiration. Checking out nurseries lately, I skipped the annual tables. It’d be crazy to pot up annuals now, and there’s not an inch of bare garden. So to fill an empty container I headed for the shrubs, something I’m doing a lot lately. Earlier in the summer I brought home this Acacia iteaphylla. I love the instant glamour potted shrubs bring. (The central trunk doesn’t belong to the acacia but to a potted shaving brush tree, Pseudobombax ellipticum.)
This nursery trip I found these beautifully grown, 3-gallon Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), a very tough, deciduous shrub for the dry garden. It may very well be an expensive summer annual since I don’t have garden space for it, but what price inspiration?
This big pot has seen a roving cast of characters — a mangave for the longest time and then most recently a Grevillea ‘King’s Fire’ that I decided had better survival chances planted in the garden, even if it had to be done in July. Fall planting, of course, is always preferable. Since Eucalyptus ‘Moon Lagoon’ doesn’t appear to be making a comeback, another 6-footer to shade the back of the house will be most welcome.
The midsummer tuneup obviously needed a potful of blindingly orange inspiration.
Great Gardens: Sunnylands – NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.
I enjoyed this short, 3-minute film on Sunnylands, the winter home of the Annenberg philanthropic tribe and host to many heads of state. It provides lots of slow, sensual tracking of the countless succulents comprising James Burnett’s landscape design at this Palm Springs, California property, ideal viewing for a lazy Sunday afternoon. And if you search “Great Gardens” on Nowness’ site, you’ll spend a lot more than 3 minutes burrowing down into the selection which includes Derek Jarman’s garden, Great Dixter, Las Pozas, Tresco Abbey Garden, etc. Happy Sunday!
Wisps of Dalea greggii with opuntia and ‘Sharkskin’ agave atop the Living Wall.
Sunset and St. Catherine’s Lace, Eriogonum giganteum
Finally, an opportunity to grab some “magic hour” photos of Mia Lehrer’s entrance garden (former parking lot) at the Natural History Museum. Theoretically anyway. Their Summer Nights in the Garden extends hours from 5-9 p.m. on a few select Friday nights in July and August. Except leaving Long Beach last Friday around 5:30 p.m. landed us in a tar pit of nasty commuter traffic, and in exasperation we ultimately elected to jump off the gridlocked freeway, head for the nearest Metro station, park, grab a train, change trains to the Expo line at Pico, all of which had us arriving too late for photos.
But you should really go. And start off with the train. The Expo line drops you right at the gate. And light or no light, it was pure summer magic.
“Awaken your senses at the Summer Nights in the Garden at the new NHM with great music, garden-inspired cocktails, hands-on garden and science projects, food trucks and more.”
The vibrant colors in the habitat-rich “Living Wall” of Pritchard flagstone were muted, but the palo verde trees glowed in the last sliver of light of the day.
And it’s completely free.
When we arrived after 7 p.m., the DJ’d party was in full swing.
The next Summer Night in the Garden will be July 28, and then finally August 11 and 25. Take the Metro to arrive in time for photos of that gorgeous Montana flagstone. And if you don’t have kids, borrow some, because there’s lots for them to do. Or just come and have a drink, grab something from the food trucks or your own picnic basket, chill, listen to the music under the stars. Summer in the city doesn’t get any finer.
