Author Archives: Denise
birthday plants
My birthday took up just about every single day last week, and more days on the weekend, which is how I rationalized a trip on Saturday to find that hitherto unknown-to-me, unmet, spectacular plant that would forever after be marked … Continue reading
Posted in plant crushes, plant nurseries, pots and containers, succulents
Tagged Annie's Annuals & Perennials, Australian Native Plants Nursery, bromeliads, echeverias, Leucospermum cordifolium 'Yellow Bird, pincushion proteas, Roger's Gardens, South African plants, succulent containers, Ursinia anthemoides 'Solar Flare'
16 Comments
Geranium maderense ‘Alba’
I wasn’t sure I’d get blooms this year. Oh, there were plenty of self-sown seedlings from the one plant I brought home after it flowered, but with biennials, those plants that bloom in their second year, I always lose track … Continue reading
Posted in Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits
Tagged biennials, Geranium maderense 'Alba', island of Madeira
4 Comments
studies in orange
(Agave “Mr. Ripple’ gets his portrait included because, as Van Gogh wrote, “there is no orange without blue.”)
cochineal
“Under the seams runs the pain.” ― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red I’ve been going over my notes the past couple months from Dr. Alejandro de Ávila’s remarkable lecture “Blood on a Fountain,” which he gave this past January at … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, artists, creatures, design, garden travel, garden visit, science, succulents
Tagged Amy Stewart, cochineal, Dactylopius coccus, Dr. Alejandro de Avila, dyes, Helen Quinn, Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca, Monte Alban, Montezuma cypress, opuntia, Opuntia ficus-indica, Stenocereus marginatus, Taxodium mucronatum, The Drunken Botanist, The Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, UCBG "Natural Discourse", University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley
6 Comments
studies in pink
Lepismium cruciforme (its tiny white flowers just opening will stay with the theme when they turn into hot pink berries) Another epiphytic cactus, the rat tail cactus, Disocactus flagelliformis And poppies
kokedama for slackers
If you keep up with just a few design blogs, there’s probably no need to explain kokedama, or Japanese mossed bonsai strung up like plant puppets, which I posted about here. Those expert creations involve carefully calibrating a plant’s light … Continue reading
March evening/April morning
Walking off Easter dinner, what caught my eye last evening was a petite bloom on the melianthus, the first I’ve seen on this cultivar ‘Purple Haze.’ I’m really starting to believe now it is the holy grail, a dwarf melianthus, … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, garden travel, plant nurseries, pots and containers, succulents
Tagged Agave gypsophila, Argemone munita, Buck & Yvonne Hemenway annual garden tour/plant sale, Dustin Gimbel Second Nature Garden Design, Gasteria 'Little Warty', Linaria 'Licilia Peach', Papaver setigerum, Pilocereus azureus
6 Comments
tuesday clippings 3/26/13
Nothing too thematic, just some odds and ends. To prove I left the plant sale tables briefly and did a lap in the show room at the recent Orange County CSSA show, here’s a Dyckia ‘Brittle Star’ hybrid that won … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, clippings, Occasional Daily Photo, plant crushes, Plant Portraits
Tagged Agave americana var. striata, Dyckia 'Brittle Star', Geranium maderense 'Alba', Isoplexis isabelliana, Melianthus 'Purple Haze', pittosporum, poppies, Prostranthera ovalifolia 'Variegata, tillandsias
8 Comments
it’s show time
Last week I planted out in the garden the remaining plants I brought home from last summer’s travels. All winter I eyed these purchases nervously, as though they were exhibits in a trial of my weak character. I knew they … Continue reading
Posted in garden travel, plant nurseries, Plant Portraits, pots and containers, succulents
Tagged bromeliads, Cassinia X ozothamnus, Echeveria multicaulis, Euphorbia ammak, Far Reaches Farm, Hechtia epigyna, Neoregelia 'Devroe', Neoregelia 'Punctatissima Rubra' x 'Tigrina, Orange County Cactus and Succulent Society, pitcairnia, plant sales, plant shows
3 Comments
what Dustin Gimbel does with gazanias
The humble gazania, that kaleidoscopic daisy from South Africa overused in years past as the go-to municipal ground cover, is undergoing a minor local revival. I included a few for this summer in my full-sun back garden, the LA Times … Continue reading