DryStoneGarden

Arctostaphylos Louis Edmunds

I’ve haven’t posted about the garden since we got back, but it has been doing well. Pretty damp, despite the sun this weekend. Almost every plant is happy about all the moisture, though not too many have started to bloom. Most are still in foliage mode; a number of them have a few stray flowers and others are budding up, but not too many are in full bloom. One of our manzanitas, Arctostaphylos ‘Louis Edmunds,’ is pretty much the one plant at peak bloom. It’s a good one, though, maybe my favorite manzanita.

Columbine New Growth

Not a flower, but the new growth on the columbines has an almost floral look. The various shades of green in the garden look very lush after my month down in the desert.

Iris reticulata Clairette with Beach Strawberry foliage

The first of the bulbs are going.

Our First Daffodil of the Year

Hellebore Buds

The first of the hellebore buds opened this weekend.

Hellebore Opened

Crocosmia

I don’t usually go for a tinted window as the backdrop, but the crocosmia does sort of belong with my truck in the background. I brought it back from the yard of a client who had tons of them and wanted something different. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it either, so I did one of those ‘unloading the truck after a long day’ type of installations, just dumping it in the ground in the nearest bare patch of soil I could find. Three years later it’s still in the same spot.

Crocosmia hanging out with the Ford Ranger

Aloe

The most dramatic plant right now is not actually ours. Our neighbor’s aloe, right on the property line, has been blooming since before we left for Baja. The rest of her yard is juniper and ivy, but I’m jealous of the aloe. This time of year, I always tell myself I should plant more aloes.

A list of our other blooming plants (all of them actually in our yard) is below the fold. My thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting bloom day. Click over to her site to see what other garden bloggers have blooming this month. (more…)

New Zealand Wind Grass and Salmon Beauty Yarrow

There’s a quotation I can’t quite remember, something about a bear riding a bicycle, that the impressive thing is not how well he rides, but rather that he rides at all. That’s my motto for appreciating the garden today. Nothing looks especially prime, but there are a surprising number of things in bloom, more than I thought before I started prowling with a camera and started compiling a list.

Woolly Blue Curls, Trichostema lanatum, this week

Woolly Blue Curls, Trichostema lanatum, last week

The recent storm knocked the last of the curls off the woolly blue curls. It’s my favorite of the plants blooming in the garden this month. I should probably give more respect to the rosemary plants, which pretty closely resemble the woolly blue curls, but it’s harder to get excited over them, even though the creeping rosemary is in full bloom and is probably the best habitat plant in the garden right now. I probably judge it by the company it keeps.

Rosemary and the Trashcan

Salvia spathacea, Hummingbird Sage

I’ve noticed that most California garden bloggers seem to have at least one species of salvia blooming for this month’s bloom day. We have Salvia spathacea, hummingbird sage, bearing a single bloom stalk which fell over during the last storm. So far I’ve never had more than one bloom at a time from these guys, but I’m not complaining about anything that blooms in December; our other salvias — S. chamedryoides, S. mellifera, S. mellifera ‘Green Carpet,’ and ‘Hot Lips’ — don’t have flowers right now.

Woodland Strawberry, Fragaria vesca

Mexican Evening Primrose

The list of everything in bloom is below. Today being in December, I’m not fussy about the quality or quantity. If the plant has a flower, it makes it onto the list. (more…)

Ornamental Laundry

We don’t have a ton of stuff blooming in our garden for November. Our laundry is actually the biggest show of color today, with one of Anita’s shirts nicely matching the bloom color of the Spicebush and the Fuchsia. The spicebush is mostly done blooming, but the fuchsia has climbed into it and from a distance the fuchsia flowers make it look like the spicebush has more than its three or four remnant blooms.

Fuchsia and Spicebush

Sidalcea malviflora

I didn’t noticed that the Sidalcea malviflora plants have woken up, but one is starting to bloom already.

Arctostaphylos John Dourley

Manzanita ‘John Dourley’ has opened a few flowers.

Bearded Iris

Some of our Bearded Irises decided to do a fall bloom. This is the darkest one of the batch, my favorite.

Blessed Calendula

And Blessed Calendulas. We always have some orange calendulas blooming (and needing to be deadheaded). Alyssum, a rosemary, the last basil plant, two Salvia chamaedryoides, and the cannas in the graywater planter are the other plants blooming in our yard. Check out Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day at MayDreamsGardens to see lots more plants in bloom.

Verbena bonariensis and Maximilian Sunflower

I haven’t posted anything about our own garden in a couple of months, not since before I went out to the eastside, and yet it was great to see the garden after a month away. Really nice to come back to it. Though the garden’s looking a bit tired this month, to be honest. A few of the natives like the blue flax, the poppies, the foothill penstemons, and the woolly blue curls have a few token blooms, but they are basically hunkered down, waiting for the rains. This past weekend’s rain was a welcome surprise. Photos of plants, some native and some not, that are in bloom are below. (more…)

Leopard lily, Lilium pardalinum ssp. pardalinum

Our Leopard Lily Lilium pardalinum ssp. pardalinum (also listed as Panther Lily and sometimes Tiger Lily, why not Ocelot Lily or Jaguar Lily?) popped yesterday, just in time for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (click thru for links to tons of gardenblogs showing what they have blooming). This is its second year for us, and it multiplied in the pot, but it’s looking like it might only do this one flower so we need to cherish it. It might be the coolest flower we grow.

We’re still learning about the native lilies. They seem relatively easy, but the hardest part is getting them. They’re only available from the commercial growers for a couple of weeks each year while they are in bloom. The Leopard lily showed up on the availability lists this year for about a week, but it sold out before we were ready to do an order, to be replaced by the “Corralitos Hybrids,” which will also sell out almost immediately. I have about two dozen lilies that I’m growing myself, but they are sloooow, two years to make a plantable 4″.

Leopard Lily and Corralitos Hybrid Lily

I didn’t know the Corralitos Hybrids but they are a cross between Lilium pitkinense and Lilium kelloggii, both of which are native to Northern California. (Pitkinense is sometimes listed as a subspecies of pardalinum. Pacific Bulb Society has photos of all of these lilies.) We snagged a half dozen, but they’re getting installed tomorrow and only spent four days in our yard. I took a photo of the two lilies side by side, the leopard lily is on the left, the Corralitos Hybrid on the right. We normally prefer to install plants when they aren’t blooming, but it’ll be pretty nice to show up at the job site with some of these. In retrospect, we should have ordered more and kept a few for ourselves. Ah, well.

Nigella, Heuchera, Larkspur, Calendula, Allium

A floral arrangement from last weekend shows several of the other plants blooming in our yard right now: Love in a mist (Nigella), Calendula, Heuchera “Torch, Larkspur, and the last of our Allium unifolium for the year. Check at May Dreams Gardens for lots of other plants in bloom and thank you Carol for hosting.

ryan 6/15

arizona flagstone path and border

This is the flagstone path and border you see when you come in through our gate. We try to keep it full of blooms year-round, and this month, May, is probably the easiest month to do that. In another month the fog season will start, the heat of the Central Valley will suck moisture from the ocean through the Golden Gate and over our garden like a swamp cooler, but for now all the plants are soaking up the sun.

Monardella macrantha

Our Monardella macrantha just started up, flashing the victory sign.

California poppy and Calendula

The poppy is Mahogany Red, pretty variable in how much red the flowers show. I like the ones where I’m not quite sure if it’s a cultivar.

Penstemon heterophyllus and Triteleia Starlight

I think the penstemon is “Blue Bedder,” but it might be “Blue Springs.”

purple breadseed poppy

A breadseed poppy that was too tall to fit into the frame.

Salvia chamaedryoides and Phormium ad nauseum

The salvia actually has some blooms on it but it works better as a foliage combo with the phormium. Most of the other plants in that bed have token blooms, but nothing dramatic; maybe they’re waiting for the poppies and calendulas to quiet down. Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Click thru for links to lots of other gardens in bloom.

Some more bloomers from our outer garden are below. (more…)