It’s Friday. We’ve been up to our eyeballs in weird all week. How about a walk through the San Francisco Botanical Garden?
At the southern entrance was a searing melange of annuals that was repeated beyond the gates throughout the entrance plaza. Beautifully grown as far as gradation of heights, etc. The bodacious planting had me imagining the staff brain-storming this splashy summer display to knock the socks off visitors, and then the methodical work of ordering seeds and planting out hundreds of annuals. The saturated color impulse was so aggressively retro it felt brand-new. A horticultural middle finger to San Francisco’s typically overcast summer skies.
A standout among the petunias and ageratum was a tall, silver-leaved orange daisy, maybe an arctotis of some kind. Wasn’t there once an annual called Venidium ‘Zulu Prince’ or has it now changed names?
After looking around at seed catalogues, I’m fairly certain this is Venidium ‘Orange Prince.’ Looks like a scorcher, right? From my reading, it actually prefers a cool summer like San Francisco (or my Oregon coast garden, maybe next year).
And that marigold was a nice choice too, a simple tall-stemmed single, color of burning embers, maybe ‘Cinnabar.’ The kind that Christopher Lloyd made acceptable again, along with tall-stemmed ageratum. No dwarf varieties, no Victorian bedding-style blobs allowed.
And don’t panic, the entrance plaza is filled with all the cool plants that thrive here year-round, like cussonia, beschorneria and agave.
The first day we arrived was a hot muggy mess. What had become of my San Francisco, with its unsurpassed weather for long cool city rambles? The next day the city mercifully returned to its baseline overcast conditions.
Now we’re wandering into the garden, through the Mediterranean, South African and Australian sections.
The cactus and succulent garden is not large but the gravitas leant by its age and maturity make up for size.
A couple standouts not frequently seen were the hardy gloxinia Incarvillea arguta and francoa. The latter I grow in the front garden and mine was in bloom in July as well. From Chile. Great stiff evergreen crinkly leaves, loves a cool summer. Makes an incredible container plant too.
Have a great weekend.