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Patagonian Petunia to DIE for--and more tales from the Steppes!
Petunia patagonicaPlant Delights nursery once had a catalog cover with a picture of a petunia with a bar across it saying "Friends don't let friends plant annuals"...click on the phrase and you can see...
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Primavera exquisita! Here's to springtime!
Delphinium nudicaule'Laurin'One of the first plants to strut its stuff on the brand new crevice garden (see more below on that!): I saw the wild form a few months ago north of San Francisco and dreamed...
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A perfect day crowned with laurels
Kalmia latifoliaI've been lucky enough to visit the Eastern United States many times over the decades, and have often caught the tail end or beginning of Mountain Laurel season. This year, last...
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Wild about wild iris!
Iris gigantocaerulea People always ask "what is your favorite flower?": I'm sure you get that too...when you've grown thousands upon thousands of plants in your lifetime, where to begin? I think I can...
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A gardener's garden
Don't get me wrong: anyone walking past the Demarie garden will be impressed. But horticultural muggles won't have a clue what a tour de force Ernie (and Grace's) creation is. But only experienced...
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A perfect crevice garden
Phlox nanaI cannot say how surprised I was on a quick visit to see the Santa Fe phlox thriving so gloriously: blooming at the end of July! This was just one of the numerous surprises I found...
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The woods are lovely, dark and ferny...
Adiantum pedatumPerhaps a maidenhair fern will strike your fancy? I am always amazed on social media when I post a fern or conifer there are significantly fewer views and "likes" (and do we not live...
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Day's eye
Usually we grow more conventional zinnias--but the only ones I have this year are new cultivars whose names I promptly lost. I love the red and orange bitones on this one...And of course Tithonias are...
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Ferns forever!
Asplenium trichomanesI have recounted elsewhere how finding this fern in the spring of 1974 in Ithaca was an epiphany for me: I have since found it on several continents--and every time I relish the...
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Patagonia, a few months late!
Calceolaria crenatifoliaAs I am about to venture forth into the Southern Hemisphere again, I can't help but take a longing look back to Patagonia, where I was lucky to spend a few weeks in late...
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Patagonia day three: the steppe!
Viola maculataNot all the violets in Patagonia are succulent: we encountered herbaceous species several times (always yellow)Astragalus cruckshanksii We found several genera which also occur in North...
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South Africa part one
Erica viscariaWe launched from Cape Town on August 24--crossing over DuToitskloof pass and fantastic stands of proteas I've already posted on Social Media. I did NOT post this exquisite heather--one of...
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Where to begin? Namaqualand dream trip...
It's not even Namaqualand yet: this is the Bokkeveld on the way there--a tad south and west of Calvinia: but there were flowers everywhere--and let's not even talk about bulbs. The fellow in the front...
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Life's a birch and a quandary.
Betula utilis (dwarf?)Â It's in the wrong spot...and though it stayed sorta dwarfish its first decade or so, it's getting bigger and bigger. I can only imagine what its roots are doing to the...
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"Remembrance like Rembrandt is dark but festive"
                                                 Delphinium tatsienense This wins the cuteness contest in the garden this week. If it only were to stay this small! I have a half dozen...
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Rosulate symmetry on Cathedral Hill
Viola sacculus x petraea? We are rapidly approaching a year since I was lucky enough to go to Patagonia on a trip organized by Rod Haenni (in the stead of the NARGS trip Marcela Ferreyra had crafted...
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A moment in paradise
 This picture taken on Molas Pass, just north of Durango on September 29 this year: the aspen were peaking at the highest elevations (where they have surely shed their leaves by now), but...
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The busman's holiday: a mountain retreat in Colorado
"Wildflower Ranch" in Routt County, Colorado,Most professional gardeners will maintain a pretty nice garden at home. It takes a super gardener like my colleague Mike Kintgen to not only maintain a...
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Will the REAL ice plant please stand up?
Mesembryanthemum barklyiFirst of all you have to grok* the SCALE of this puppy: it's almost a yard across from leaf tip to leaf tip. As a lover of little plants I ignored these for a while, but...
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