Category: California

Garden of Fragrance

“Stumbling on new smells is one of the delights of traveling.” – Diane Ackerman

In a small conservatory built of red brick with huge copper framed windows and an interior graced with a pair of white doves in an ornate wire cage, pots of fragrant white lilies perfumed the air.  A woman walked in followed reluctantly by a tween age girl.  “Ewww!” the child cried out, “what’s that smell?”  Her mother, perhaps by now frustrated at her daughter’s lack of enthusiasm for this day in the garden, replied, “It’s fresh air.”  The daughter’s reply, “Well, I don’t like it!”...   Continue Reading

Counting Plants


Not everything that can be counted counts, Not everything that counts can be counted. – Albert Einstein

Winding uphill through the streets of Berkeley, we arrive at the University of CA Botanical Garden in Strawberry Canyon.  There we are faced with a decision of paying the parking meter for the number of hours we need to explore the garden.  The garden holds over 12,000 plants including many rare and endangered plant specimens.  Director Paul Licht does the math for visitors.  “If you allow only 2 hours, a 120 min. visit would require that you see 100 different kinds of plants per minute to experience our entire collection.”  Obviously we will need a full day, even then we won’t truly see all of the plants.  Those we do see will be only a glimpse of life of the plants.  A plant today may be dormant, budding, blooming or declining....   Continue Reading

Lilacs in Southern California

The lilacs are blooming in Descanso Gardens in La Canada-Flintridge CA.  Lilacs need a cool season to generate their blooms in the spring. The cultivars in southern California have been adapted to this climate.  The beauty of these delicate blooms  is  compounded by their varieties of color in lilac lavender, deep purple, pink, and white.  The scent of lilacs generates so many responses from visitors.  One woman inhaling deeply, declared, “this is my childhood, I grew up with these all around my house.”  Another remembers a Grandmother’s house and smiles wistfully at the memory....   Continue Reading

Garden Gates

Enter Into The New

As the new year stretches out before us fresh and full of possibilities many of us pause to mark the transition with resolutions, lucky foods and personal traditions.  These actions help frame our expectation of what the new year will bring.  We approach the new year nearly holding our breath in anticipation of what will come....   Continue Reading

Filoli, Woodside, CA

Here & There

Returning from my travels this Fall I was unaware that I was suffering from a bad case of “California Garden Delusion” fever.  It set in as I was driving from the Pacific coast home to Mesa.  All along the route I was preoccupied with my own garden imagining where I could redesign the space and insert a profusion of flowers, vegetables and berries. Upon returning home, in I wandered through my garden marking the doomed plants for removal.  Then feverishly with pick axe, shovel and compost the transformation began.  A week later and with every muscle in my body crying out in pain I was finished preparing the bed but the temperatures were still reaching 100 degrees.  My “Garden Delusion” fever broke and I began to rethink the types of plants I would be growing in my newly prepared space....   Continue Reading

Conservatory of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, CA

What a pot holds. . ..

In my garden there is a large plastic yellow flower pot which I purchased decades ago at the FW Woolworth store.  Its survived several moves from house to new house and years of intense heat.  Throughout the years its been blown over, pushed around and sometimes ignored. I am amazed it is still intact. (“Benjamin, just one word: plastics.” The Graduate) Even as my garden style evolved a yellow pot w/ a scalloped  edge was easily worked into an  arrangement of other container plantings.  Today it holds a group of succulents and it holds a part of my story....   Continue Reading

Mendocino Botanical, Ft. Bragg, CA

Garden above the Ocean

Walking in a garden in a different climate with sandy soil expands my view of what a garden can be.  Perhaps there is no greater contrast from my garden in the desert to gardens on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. High on a rocky cliff near Ft. Bragg, California the Mendocino Botanical Garden mixes the coastal climate elements of salt air, sandy soil, foggy sky and sun to create magical results.   The dew soaks my shoes and moisture climbs up the hems of my jeans as I wander down a path in the early morning.  Tiny droplets of water ring the leaves and sparkle as patches of sun break through the sky cover of gray. This doesn’t happen in my desert garden....   Continue Reading

Lattice Windows

Outside my lattice window,

Is the spring light warm yet

For a plum blossom flower? Wang Wei (701-761)

In the early morning looking through  my window I glimpse a bit of my garden; the flowers, some grass, a tree.    Each day I look through the same window and think this is  the garden! Yet like a living painting, the light shifts, seasons change and so does the view. The garden grows, declines and remerges  in new growth.  The window frames my view.   Outside looking in is the same garden but a different view. I  stand in the grass, under my tree looking toward the window.  The window is significantly smaller, the flowers fill the view, the grass and tree are no longer in the picture.  My position  changes my viewpoint....   Continue Reading

The Best Season

Expectations

Friends  planning a visit to a new garden struggled to pick the best time to go, wanting the garden to be at its’ peak perfection. Predicting the weather, wondering if it would rain, if the climate would be just right for the flowers to bloom they struggled to match their schedules to the hoped for perfect visit.  Poet William Brown wrote “There is no season such delight can bring as summer, autumn,  winter, spring.”  When is the best season to visit a public garden? When will the garden reach its’ perfection?  Whenever you get yourself to a garden, I believe you can find something good....   Continue Reading