Frisco Vista

Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Arctic Summer’ is a kind of mullein native to the mountains of Greece, but it makes quite a spectacle of itself in Bay Area gardens.
Perhaps the most attractive feature of the place is its large, wooly, silvery leaves, which grow in an attractive succulent-like (although the plant tolerates regular water) basal rosette pattern.

But [...]

Well, three weeks, but we were away on vacation for one. Recently we filled in our swimming pool, which has now become a garden. I had some plants in containers waiting to be transplanted, and I’ve planted a bunch of other stuff as seeds. The garden is still a little raw, but I’m reasonably happy [...]

Hearst Castle offers five tours covering different parts of the buildings and grounds. One of these is the garden tour. The gardens are not spectacular, but they are decent examples of the mediterranean style.
At this time in spring, lantana is a prominent feature.

Sometimes the Lantana is pruned in a clumping pattern.

Azaleas are another flowering plant [...]

 
Mr. Vista has finally finished filling in his old swimming pool, which was built in the 1950s. He topped up the job with some local hero veggie mix from American Soil and Stone.
Dirt, as Jon Carroll has observed, is hardly dirt cheap. I think local hero runs around $35 a cubic yard. But it’s a [...]

San Francisco was hardly a forest before the swell in its population in the mid-nineteenth century — it was mostly coastal dunes, scrub, and marshland. The city’s most extraordinary transformation was achieved by John McLaren, who magically conjured up a woodland out of Golden Gate Park’s dunes.
Today the city is home to many types [...]

To celebrate Lunar New Year, the Conservatory of Flowers is presented a display of penjing, the miniature Chinese landscapes that were the precursor to the Japanese tradition of bonzai. The tiny landscapes are said to have begun as a way for China’s dynastic emperors to visualize the landscape of their far-flung empires. The landscapes [...]

Cold and rainy as it’s been, January and February are the best time to prepare Bay Area gardens for spring and summer bloom. With its yellow flowers edged in purple, I think “Etain” is one of the prettiest violas, and it does really well in our area. Highly recommended. You can get it from Annie’s [...]

This weekend (Jan. 26-27), a gardening symposium will be held at the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. The main focus is sustainable gardening. There a good lineup of speakers, but, regrettably, the symposium is rather expensive at $134 for day one and $125 for day two (slightly less [...]

Here’s another in my series of photos of water lilies. This is from the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. With this one you get a bonus: a water snake on one of the pads.
Lily 1 (Getty Villa)
Lily 2 (San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers) (Illustrator artwork)
More to come …

Here’s a good plant for Bay Area gardens. Most people probably know the common stock that is grown as an annual in many parts of the country. This version, perhaps close to the wild species found in the eastern Mediterranean, is a perennial in most of the Bay Area. It has a woody stem and [...]

Annie’s Annuals in Richmond (at 740 Market Avenue) is holding their spring party this weekend, April 14-15. They will have free “supermarket sweep” raffles every hour — winners get 15 minutes of free shopping. There’s also a “gardening olympics” (”no athletic ability necessary”). Plus Calypso music, complimentary snacks and drinks, and gardening talks, as well [...]

It’s freezing — literally. Over here in the East Bay we’re looking at a week of lows around or under the freezing mark. I’ve been watering my plants and covering them with plastic at night when I can. But I don’t have enough plastic (or time) for all of them. My fuschias and brugmansias are [...]