The S.F. Botanical garden was having a plant sale and I was eager to fill a few empty holes in my garden.
I was fortunate to find the exact two salvia plants that I was looking for, Salvia confertiflora and salvia madrensis. I also scooped up an unusual looking aeonium and a fushia paniculata.
After the sale I wandered through the botanical garden.
I was interested in seeing the site of a new garden area that the arboretum is soliciting design contributions for.
Below is a photo of the site:
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
It is rather small in size compared to the rest of the surrounding garden areas.
It borders the Australian , Chilean and New Zealand garden area.
As I left this small circle of land I came across a beautiful large orange Passiflora.
It was growing in and across the canopy of an adjacent tree, almost devouring it.
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
I always like to visit this particular area of the garden. It was designed by Bernard Trainor and sculpted by LIMO artisans.
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
Leaving the Australian area I walked through the Cloud Forest, The Succulent Gardens
and the Callfornia Native garden areas.
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
Eventually I looped around to the Helen Crocker Horticultural Library, one of my favorite places in the city.
They were having a great botanical illustration show in their gallery. I highly recommend viewing it if you are fortunate enough to be in the city.
Just outside the library is a lovely hand crafted stone courtyard design and installed by stone mason Edwin Hamilton.
I love Edwin’s work and have been fortunate to work with him on a project for one of my clients.
For this courtyard he used old stone remnants from a demolished building.
I do not recall the exact history , but this stone has a 6 degrees of separation history from William Randolf Hearst. Either he imported this stone from Europe for one of his buildings or has this stone carved for one of his buildings.
Guess I need to visit the library to read up on its history.
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
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| From s.f. botanical garden |
After visiting the arboretum I swung over to visit Flora Grubbs Nursery.
I fell in love with several wonderful plants and bright orange glazed containers but they weren’t in my budget . Sigh.
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5 comments:
Gorgeous! That sculpted area (LIMO) is stunning.
Well, they all are.
And the banana flower///lovely shot!
Oh thank you for this! We are making the drive down to LA via SF in the fall and now I've added the SF Botanical Garden to the list of must see things. God we are going to need more time!!!! (and a bigger car, but don't tell my husband that part)
Linda, I agree, all wonderfully gorgeous areas.
Danger, If there is just one garden in the Bay area to visit I would opt for the S.F. Botanical garden.
If you visit their site try to find the link that has the map so you can plan out your route.
Give yourself at least 2 hours or longer to take it all in.
I spend at least 2 hours when visiting and I know this garden like the back of my hand.
Hi Michelle,
The passion vine you photographed is P. parritae, extinct in the wild, high elevation cloudforests of Columbia, and one that can only survive in cooler coastal California gardens that don't freeze or get above about 95F in summer. It is very touchy about where it will do well, but is extremely vigorous where it does grow. Looks like you had a great time at Strybing, and it is always a treat to have some time to see the gardens, isn't it? I liked your photo of the yellow Aloe striatula in full bloom, a very nice looking specimen, and one of my favorite summer blooming Aloes for low budget jobs, as I can just lop off cuttings from another garden and stick them in the ground, and they will still bloom even without roots! The only thing I don't like about A. striatula is that the snails like to eat the foliage, which they don't seem to do with any of the other Aloes I grow...
Too bad the pots at Flora's weren't in the budget. Hope work picks up for you this summer/fall, and you keep getting some fun projects to work on! That said, I am finding that even some of the low budget projects I have worked on this past year and a half have stilled turned out very nice, they just take longer to fill in when everything is planted out so small to start with...
Here's some writing about the monastery stones. http://www.outsidelands.org/monastery-stones.php
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