Sing to the Lord a New Song
This column is dedicated to the memory of the innocents murdered in Newtown, Connecticut. Last Sunday was drizzling and cold. It had been many years since I had visited South Coast Botanic Gar...
Category Archives: Flowers
Conejo Valley Botanic Garden
On a gloomy December day, I found my way to the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden in Thousand Oaks, without expectations or reservations. The garden is large, nearly always open, and admission is always f...
Favorite Long-Blooming Plants
Q. Could you give me a list of your favorite long-blooming plants for the Valley? They should require a minimum of water and a minimum of pruning or other maintenance. -Oscar Montanez, Canoga Park A....
Winter Flower Beds
In Los Angeles, the selection of flowering plants for winter gardens will provide long-lasting color until warmer days arrive in the spring. With adequate pre-planting fertilization, winter-blooming ...
Abutilon flowers: Bauhaus lamp shades
Living in Los Angeles is really a hoot if you’re into horticulture. Here we are, approaching December’s end, and plants are blooming like it’s springtime. Just the other day, out fo...
Pot Marigolds Good for Your Skin
“Herbal Remedy Gardens” (G Books, 1999) is a book that any gardener, whatever novice or expert, would treasure as a holiday gift. While author Dorie Byers addresses the subject of herb ga...
Love In A Mist
Love-in-a-mist. To a horticulturist, this one-word poem describes more than a romantic adventure in San Francisco. Love-in-a-mist is the name of a plant that feels at home in almost any garden and ma...
The Problematic Primrose
Few plants are as pretty or as problematic as the primrose. The primrose (Primula spp.) takes an honored place among those plants that are beyond compare when at their best but, in general, are somew...
European Copper Beech
I had never been to Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks but was glad, last Sunday, that I visited. It doesn’t take much to make a garden columnist happy. A glimpse of a plant previously unsee...
Bacopa
Bacopa (buh-KOH-puh) answers the dilemma of gardeners in search of long-blooming plants for balcony containers and hanging baskets. It also does a magnificent job spilling out of planter boxes and tr...
