4/6/09

Garden Monday

Just another gratuitous spring-time garden blog post...

Garden path

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I was in the garden at just the right moment when the sun moved out of planarity with the Stylomecon heterophylla flower's flat face. The dappled light caught my eye from several feet away.

Stylomecon heterophylla

The little orange aster back there is Annie's Annuals' Ursinia anthemoides. I've grown it before and I'm hoping it will grow in all around the artichoke. I might have to get another one--just in case!

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Gilia tricolor, one of my favorite wildflowers. Fragrant, too. These just opened a couple days ago. Why grow any annuals besides wildflowers? I always wonder that.

Gilia tricolor

Purple needle grass (Nassella pulchra), a native perennial bunchgrass. I use a lot of this and coast melic (Melica californica) as unifying elements in the garden. G said he thinks the grasses look like weeds. I get his point, but I think he needs to take a broader view. Also, I hope with time the grasses will self sow and fill in, and become, well, more unifying.

Nassella pulchra

Last year or the year before, I ordered some stuff from High Country Gardens, including this Asphodeline lutea. It's been a wavy tumult of leaves until now. Soon, a flower.

Asphodeline lutea

This is me trying to take a picture of purple columbine, but getting my spider-webby Berberis nevinii instead. I grew the berberis from seed, and keep it in a pot. I hope it lives for a long time in that pot, because I don't imagine ever planting it out. Despite the prickles and pokes, it's a great specimen and I'm very fond of it.

Berberis nevinii

And now for that purple columbine, whose origin I've lost.

Columbine

This is the first time any Aquilegia has bloomed in my garden. Usually, leaf miners disfigure it so badly I can't stand to look at it anymore and cut it to the ground. Fortunately, digging up the root is hard work or I would have done it by now. This plant has been waiting three years to make that flower.

8 comments:

CiNdEe's GaRdEn said...

I love the orange aster! I love asters anyhow but orange is a great color to have!!!! The purple aquilegia is very pretty too! I don't know where my aquilegias have gone. Something ate them I guess.)-: How is your calycanthus? Mine has buds(-:

chuck b. said...

Good question. I must look at it in the morning.

Unknown said...

Your garden is gorgeous!!

Catherine@AGardenerinProgress said...

It looks really good! It's so lush, almost tropical looking in the first pictures.

Christopher C. NC said...

Your garden is really beginning to gain some height and some meat on its shrubberies.

Jan said...

What a gorgeous garden!

Brent said...

I've planted more Nasella pulchra in my southern California garden because of the way the arching growth habit dances on the evening breeze. Definitely not a weed in my garden.

lisa said...

Heh, I just planted some berberis nevinii seeds, and now I remember where I got the idea to buy them! Thanks! :)