Garden Conservancy - Open Gardens

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Max and Justin’s Oakland garden is a horticulturalist’s collection.   A small gardens packed full of epiphytes around their cute bungalow.  Intimate spaces to sit, relax and meditate.

May Flowers in San Francisco

 A few snapshots of May Flowers in my gardens of San Francisco.

Iris - Each stalk yields 8-9 double-socketed buds

Dearborn Garden's Rose Border

On Friday mornings, there is no parking along this section of Bird Street.    This is effectively the Rose border for Dearborn Community Garden.  Well maintained by a dedicated member of the garden.  

Saint Francis Woods Garden - April Flowers

This is the start of the second spring for this newly plants residential backyard.  The layers of bulbs, annuals, flowering perennials and shrubs fill two rectangular beds.  

Narcissus, Geum and Leptospermum (Tea Tree)

Bernal Hill Garden - April Flowers

 

Wisteria trained up a thin pole. 

Curious Flora Nursery (Reincarnation of Annie’s Annuals)

 

With much anxiety Angele and I drove up to Richmond, California to the new nursery called Curious Flora.   I was curious.  I was hoping for the best but prepared to be disappointed and ashamed.  The best being a thriving commercial nursery producing fun and new things along with those successful heirlooms. The worst, a possible commercial implosion and the loss of a great gardening resource.

The Ruth Bancroft Garden & Nursery

I took BART over to Oakland to eat lunch with Frank.  We both have been traveling recently and haven’t hung out in weeks.  After lunch we decide to drive to The Ruth Bancroft Garden & Nursery.   Frank has a project that requires a lot of drought tough plants.   Here’s what I saw and a few of my thoughts. 

Marshall Beach

 It has been over 15 years since the Presidio became a national park in San Francisco.   This area between Baker Beach to the south and the Golden Gate Bridge to the north has undergone a transformation removing many invasive weeds and planting all natives.   

Flowers of March

 What is flowering in my gardens:

Freesias at Dearborn Community Garden

Book Review - The Gardener’s Palette

By Jo Thompson

A journey into color, this book with over a hundred selected color schemes will test your knowledge of what colors go together. Each scheme is two or three pages with a large photo and a plant list. It is hard to say if this is a reference book. Looking up say red,purple and apricot planting scheme is not easy as there is no real organization of the book. Or rather, I can’t figure out how this is organized. Maybe that will come to me on its second reading. 

Flowers of February

 

Book Review - Shrouded in Light

 By Kevin Philip Williams & Michael Guidi

For the last few months I have been systematically reading my library of garden books.   With my morning cup of coffee I read front cover to back the many gardening books I have collected.

Great Highway, San Francisco

 I took the N-Judah street car to Ocean Beach and then walked the five miles back home.  Here’s some characteristic street scenes. 

Neighbors often get inspiration for each other, or think it is horticulturally acceptable. 

Model Train City for the Holidays

 Every year around Thanksgiving we start to unpack and build the model city located this year in the dining room.  So far we only have a basic layout but here are some from past years. 

A good three tiered layout with three nested loops. 

Book Review - Mien Ruys - The Mother of Modernist Gardens

 By Julia Crowford

    A good introduction to this gardener, designer, sometimes landscape architect.   Known for her simple shapes and clean lines, she utilized modern materials to create garden spaces for people to mingle with Nature.  

This make me think back to my visit to her home garden in Dedemsvaart in 2016 ==>>