Category Archives: Plant Portraits
November garden dispatches
We all have our favorite months in the garden. Our sentiments aside, the November garden continues sending out dispatches, oblivious to any seasonal bias. dispatches from plectranthus tillandsias and cryptbergias urgent communications from Echeveria gigantea Candy-corn-colored Morse code from Mina … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, garden visit, Plant Portraits, pots and containers, succulents
Tagged aeoniums, Agave 'Blue Flame', Agave 'Mr. Ripple', Agave desmettiana 'Joe Hoak', Agave geminiflora, Agave lophantha 'Quadricolor', Corokia virgata 'Sunsplash', Echeveria gigantea, Mina lobata
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the colors of Bilbergia nutans
The first bloom of the common Queen’s Tears bromeliad, Bilbergia nutans, is just so very startling when it arrives, especially if you’ve only seen it in photos before. Like drop-your-coffee-cup startling. As though David Hockney was in the garden overnight … Continue reading
Posted in design, plant nurseries, Plant Portraits
Tagged Bilbergia nutans, bromeliads, Euphorbia mauritanica, Euphorbia rigida, Gomphrena 'Fireworks', Huntington Botanical Gardens, Lavandula multifida, Lavandula pinnata var. buchii, Pelargonium crispum 'Variegatum', Tanacetum vulgare 'Isla Gold', Western Hills Nursery and Garden
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prowling the plant nurseries in fall
A startling sight at a local nursery this week was Dalea frutescens in roaring, five-alarm bloom, a Texas native that endures extreme heat and drought, then explodes with flowers in fall. Imagine this Black Dalea with muhly grass, Muhlenbergia capillaris, … Continue reading
Posted in design, Plant Portraits
Tagged Dalea frutescens, fall gardens, guerilla gardening, Muhlenbergia capillaris
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chasing muhly grass
As far as seasons go, to me summer is rich, pungent, dense, where autumn is quicksilver, vaporous, light on its feet, with a tartness that is the perfect apertif to summer’s gluttony of sensation. The eaves are now dripping morning … Continue reading
Posted in climate, Occasional Daily Weather Report, Plant Portraits, succulents
Tagged Muhlenbergia capillaris, wildflowers
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shrub
What occupies my thoughts on the garden for next year this hot Sunday is nothing more earth shakingly consequential than planning the beginning of a smallish spine of shrubs to snake through bays of herbaceous stuff. Ozothamnus ‘Sussex Silver’ moved … Continue reading
Posted in design, Plant Portraits
Tagged Australian plants, Ozothamnus hookeri 'Sussex Silver', shrubs
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Clianthus formosus
I stopped in at the Sherman Gardens recently to check in on the succulent garden, which I visited a couple years ago and wrote about here. Although that garden looks the same as the day I visited, there was a … Continue reading
Posted in garden visit, Plant Portraits
Tagged >Australian National Botanic Gardens, Australian plants, British navigator William Dampier, Chiltern Seeds, Clianthus formosus, Fabaceae family, Kew, Sherman Library & Gardens, Sturt's Desert Pea, Swainsona formosa, The Royal Botanic Gardens
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the Climbing Onion, Bowiea volubilis
It must be pretty obvious by now that I’m refusing to look at the big, end-of-summer picture. So I’m offering another micro plant portrait, the South African Climbing Onion. Logee’s calls Bowiea volubilis “an old favorite.” If so, this old … Continue reading
the hardy tapioca
A garden can be a stay-at-home option to ecotourism, where the plants pack their seedy suitcases and travel to us. (If growing any exotic, non-native plant sets your teeth on edge, those categories may be blurring faster than we’d like: … Continue reading
Yucca ‘Blue Boy’
I’ve brought a couple home under the name Yucca aloifolia ‘Purpurea,’ but I’ve recently been seeing it tagged as Yucca desmetiana ‘Blue Boy,’ as it was here at Cornerstone Sonoma, in the Transcendence garden designed by Delmar McComb and Peter … Continue reading
the controversial castor bean plant
Ricinus communis, the castor bean/oil plant, is the freshest sight in this late-summer garden. Unlike the rest of us, the swampy heat of late August only improves its looks. The tree-like mother plant, a ‘New Zealand Purple,’ lived through our … Continue reading