Category Archives: Plant Portraits

things to do in the Bay Area after a garden show

or any other preposition that fits your schedule — before the show, between visits to the show. Of course, you don’t have to wait until the next garden show in 2013 for a visit. Building REsources, discussed before here and … Continue reading

Posted in design, garden travel, garden visit, MB Maher, plant nurseries, Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

last day of March 2012

Posted in Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

my favorite garden show

is the one taking place at any given moment in my own backyard. be it ever so humble and jumbled, chaotic, disheveled, contrary, exasperating, etc, etc. That the show blithely carries on while I’m away is always slightly infuriating. More … Continue reading

Posted in Bulbs, Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

back in a few

While we’re away for a couple days for the San Francisco Flower & Garden show, Agave ‘Mr. Ripples’ will have to take over chin-scratching duties. Don’t wear him out, Joseph, okay? Good or bad, inspired or tired, garden shows are … Continue reading

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garden obtainium

With surgical precision I pried this promising seedling up from the dry-laid bricks some months ago. I didn’t recognize its hirsute, corrugated leaf, so it had to be special, a salvia or verbascum possibly. By this time, all the volunteer … Continue reading

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Preview: San Francisco Flower & Garden Show 2012

Only the first day of spring, yet garden show season has already arrived in many parts of the country. MB Maher was in attendance today at the preview to this year’s San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. Just a couple … Continue reading

Posted in design, garden ornament, garden travel, MB Maher, Plant Portraits, The Hortorialist | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

the wispy side of spring

Insubstantial Sisyrinchium bellum, Blue-Eyed Grass, is an elusive subject for the camera due to its habit of shutting its petals around “magic” hour, that pre-sunrise/post-sunset window when a photographer can rarely go astray. Still, it’s an utterly charming denizen of … Continue reading

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Bloom Day March 2012

A dead car battery after work has me skidding and sliding to make the Bloom Day deadline. Some of the new plants I ordered for spring became candidates for March Bloom Day literally right out of the box. Like this … Continue reading

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warming up

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Scilla peruviana

In late 2010 Scilla peruviana won me a pair of wellies (garden boots) when I described to Val Easton of Plant Talk the upcoming spectacle of their galactic indigo blooms coinciding with the chartreuse flowers trusses of the Corsican hellebore. … Continue reading

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