GardenBook

  My first post written about my April visit to the Taft Garden focused primarily on the Aloes which were abundant and happily for me, blooming . But Aloes , though they felt to me like the signature plant of that garden, were certainly not all there was to see. There was plenty of breadth to the plant inventory.    There  was no shortage of Agaves  Rock walls and the natural arrangement of rocks themselves within the loosely defined planted areas, along with the bright green of our winter grasses looked very fine with the backdrop of the surrounding landscape.It was as though the plants just belonged there.  This has to be  the largest planting of Xanthorrhoea I've ever encountered in one garden -it was essentially a grove.  A Grevillea I presume , but my research failed to confirm it's specific ID. I'm going with G. 'Frosty Pink' as my best guess.   There were Acacias , all beyond my Acacia nami...

 On my journey up Highway 101 from Santa Barbara I took advantage of an opportune  break in the rain to swing by San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. It was on my upended agenda in any case, though it was to be a stop on a day of nursery crawling.The weather forecast pretty much dictated that said nursery crawl was not to be. Since it looked like the rain would hold off for at least an hour, and I knew this garden was relatively small (this would be my first visit) I exited the highway and instructed Hal, my trusty GPS , to take us there.  The garden is located in El Chorro Regional Park, in the hills of the central coast region of California. There is a robust plan for a 150 acre garden that displays the plant communities from Mediterranean climates world wide.     Certainly this plan seems daunting, but I saw many signs in the garden as it exists today that seemed to point to significant progress.  Just inside the entry was  a be...

 Last weekend I took a brief road trip to Santa Cruz , a beach city on the north tip of Monterey Bay . The primary reason for the trip was a production at a regional theater company , and because the run was short it was December or nothing; a relative was in the cast so nothing wasn't an option. And I knew this month would be an excellent time to visit the University of  California  Santa Cruz Arboretum -they have a robust collection of both Australian and South African winter blooming plants. The unstable weather that was predicted held off and I had a great stroll and photo shoot for a few hours on Saturday morning. I took so many photos there will be two posts, and in this one I will feature the Banksias. My climate is  marginal for these plants, though many will tolerate some frost and the dislike of summer rain and humidity is not an issue here. I plan to try one in a container next year just for fun.  Remarkably-for me-I actually noted some names by pho...