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 here, with its ever-changing selections of kaleidoscopic, polished glass mulch and salvage of infinite variety.
Big Daddy’s new store in San Francisco, a visit to the Los Angeles store discussed here.
Flora Grubb Gardens, discusssed here.
The last time I visited was around Valentine’s Day 2012, and the store was a mesmerizing tableau vivant of happy, busy people making themselves and their loved ones things like this. Glass, tillandsias, moss, lichens. (Magic.)
UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, discussed here. Aloe castanea in bloom in February 2012.
Cornerstone Sonoma. Over the Golden Gate Bridge and north into Sonoma County you’ll find this outdoor collection of shops, salvage, statuary, with gardens designed by Topher Delaney, Roger Raiche, Suzanne Biaggi.
Annie’s Annuals & Perennials. So many of the plants I grow are from Annie Hayes, written about here, for example. For this recent, brief visit to the Bay Area, I had time for only one side trip. It had to be to Annie’s nursery.
Homoglad hybrids (Gladiolus tristis X Homoglossum watsonium)
Annie’s geum selection…sigh. Some of the species are surviving, if not exactly flourishing, in my Los Angeles garden.
Geums are not dry garden candidates.
Senecio glastifolius, written about here.
Some of my favorite plants from Annie’s are the Mediterranean subshrubs like sideritis, whose ghostly white, subtle beauty is hard to capture in a photograph but is devastatingly gorgeous in a garden.
Euphorbia characias and Eupatorium sordidum.
Also, The Dry Garden in Berkeley, discussed here.
The San Francisco Botanical Garden.
Restoration Hardware’s flagship store is a huge space upon which the RH fantasy is writ large. Nice little formal outdoor courtyard too.
Consider also a 25-mile side trip to the legendary Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, discussed here.
And in this horticultural mecca, that’s just for starters.
Excellent list! I wish we would have had time to stop at The Dry Garden, then again it’s good to keep something for the “next time I visit” list. I’m curious how your Yucca aloifolia ‘Purpurea’ is doing? I can’t remember if you’ve posted about it since your initial post where it was decidedly green.
I’m loving my Geum magellanicum from Annie’s bought earlier this year.
i’m taking all these great recommendations with me next time we head north. you were busy girl!! did you like the show?
Loree, funny you should mention that little yucca. Out of sight, out of mind — he was buried under spring growth. I dug him out a few days ago and he seems ok, moved to full sun where the purple should start happening.
Kaveh, that’s the one I have too. Some of these large-flwrd, flashy hybrids…ooh la la!
LD, Loree is going to have posts soon too so keep your pen handy. Tip of the iceberg…