This weekend I had a chance to revisit five of the twenty gardens that will be on the 2015 Garden Native Tour on March 28-29. One cool sighting was the new CNPS sign that features a monarch butterfly feasting on native milkweed.
The gardens were looking nice now, and should be great at the end of the month for the tour. Here are a few great details:
A compact, long-established garden at a condominium, with large, mature shrubs and lots of dappled sunlight…a step into a bright woodland…
Winter blooms on the Howard McMinn manzanita
The sheltered woodsy plants beneath a dark-trunked Howard McMinn manzanita
Tasty strawberry on a native strawberry–a bright green groundcover that supplies you with treats while you’re weeding…
The interpretive native plant landscape at Old Town San Diego State Historical Park–The site will serve as one of the sign-in points on the tour weekend.
The historic McCoy House on the edge of the Old Town native plant landscape
White yarrow against the white picket fence in front of the McCoy house–what a cool planting idea!
Lupines at their peak in Old Town
Fuchsia-flowered gooseberry, in crazy bloom at the Old Town landscape
…and some random great ideas…
A delicate planting of our humble native ranunculus, R. californica
A gloriously wild, unmowed “lawn” of sedges
A bright yellow yarrow selection planted on the edge of a rain-permeable driveway
I have too many things going on this month, but–hey–this will have to be one of them!
Twenty gardens! We visited 17 over three days during the Portland Fling and it was pretty exhausting. This was a nice taste. Do show more.
Maybe over two days twenty won’t be way too much. But yah there’s definitely a garden tour glaze that can hot around garden number 5 or so…