This sidewalk hell-strip garden has a harsh southern exposure surrounded by concrete and asphalt. It is irrigated in the summer dry months. I have been replacing those plants which couldn't take the exposure like a mop head hydrangea, I do not lie, with Mediterranean and California native plants and cultivars.
This is a year in review post and these most recent photos were taken the first week of July, 2024.
I am starting my twenty-first year tending to this cottage garden on Bernal Heights near Holly Park. Last year, the previous owner told me she was selling and moving into an assisted care apartment in Healdsburg. I thought that was the end of this job. But the new owner turned out to be the next door neighbor and wanted me to continue to work this garden and also take on theirs. They built a new fence between the two spaces with two openings that will eventually connect the two gardens. Lots of opportunities here and I look forward blending these areas together.
In 2018, I started maintaining this front cottage garden. It was planted with the typical one-offs that survived our dry summers, that included horrible things like phormiums and loropetalum with the ever present tibochina. But I took on this space for its potential. A single story Victorian with stereotypical San Francisco wood details with the white picket fence.
Now the days have overtaken the night, things have gone boom.
This was taken last year on May 30, peak bloom.
More stills from May 30, 2023:
I have been working this tiny front plot for about five years now. I have slowing been planting new layers of flowering plants in the Potrero Hill garden. New addition this spring is the ruby red Ixias in the last couple of photos.
