This is the plan….

 English gardens, farm fresh food and quirky authentic culture…

Evolution of Bernal Heights Cottage Garden

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. 

Bay Street Perennial Beds

 Three beds of perennials: Forest Edge, Gold, Silver and Bronze, Meadow bed.   Here is the third in a series highlighting the gardens I am hired to take care of.   This post shows you all eight years, in reverse order, since I designed and grew this garden.  

After viewing this video clip again, I realized I should have cut that digitalis out of that bed.  That purple ruined the entire sweep.   I knew it when I took the video, but I have difficulty cutting back prime self sowers.

Book Review - The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book

By Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence

Since returning from England in 2023, I decided to stop reading the news every morning with my coffee and started reading my gardening books as my morning ritual.  I have not read most of my gardening books from cover to cover.  But since I changed my habit, I have finished over a dozen or more.   So I am starting a new series about my book collection.

First up a book I have had since my City College Horticultural days.  It is a simple premise that doesn't require a full book to understand although there are good ideas throughout, mostly for vegetable gardening.   Mulch your soil with hay and over a course of three years, you will see a dramatic improvement in your soil.  I am one that believes that I am really tending to the soil and the plants are on a separate level.  

MUG’s Personal Garden with Nursery

 This is my small urban garden located in the Mission Delores neighborhood of San Francisco.   I have gardened this small strip since 2003.   Lots has happened here over this period and its current theme in the long border is spring pinks, blues and whites moving into summer reds, yellows and blues.  

Some still photos of the long Spring/Summer border.

Potrero Hill Cottage Garden

 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:

RHS Hyde Hall Excursion 2024

My past visits to gardens, in England and elsewhere, were always curated to show the beautiful, curious or informative.    First photographs excluded people or other garden visitors.  Focused only on the plants and their vignettes.  Then It was the celebration of how many people (mostly English) were at these gardens especially the flower shows.  This past visit I filmed more in video rather than still photos.  I was trying to show how movement plays into experiencing these gardens in person.  The subtle movement of the air or a sequence to show perspective and other physical attributes.  

M&F Micro Group Garden Excursions for 2024

Frank Eddy and I, Michael Collins (M&F), have been traveling to England most years since 2012.  Fulfilling a desire to see all these magical gardens we've only read about was the reason for our first trip over there.   But we found something much bigger.   An cerebration of nature and the expression in green spaces.   The UK has a land mass about 60% of California.  But they have 26 million more people there.   They utilize every bit of space but nature is very important to them and make it fit in everywhere.   Since 2014 we have wanted to share that with our friends and colleagues back home.   

This year is exciting because we got bold.  We're offering three distinct tours from three very different parts of England.  Yes each has beautiful folksy villages but with very distinct regional differences.  We've put together a string of gardens to show the history of gardening in England; along with Botanical gardens, Royal Horticultural Society plant driven gardens, and display gardens from some of the most renown nurseries in the UK.

You can't create a beautiful garden if you have never seen one.   

Glen Park Garden for Sale

 

White Flower Terrace

 In 2016 we decided to expand the white flower garden around the stairs, which consisted mainly of two iceburg roses and a large viburnum along with the usual annuals, to included the next terrace in front of the studio.  Here we had more real estate to have some fun.  I started adding more as each season came and this year it is looking full.  

May 2023

Philly Fling - A Garden Blogger's Retreat

 

Thursday, September 21 

We arrived at Longwood Gardens for an eight hour visit.   Longwood Gardens is large but we are having multiple events for our group of garden bloggers.  First we get a behind the scenes look at their production greenhouses.  Then a slideshow introduction to the currently under construction grand conservatory.  

Swarthmore College

Sunday, September 24, another rainy morning.  The first two gardens today were cancelled due to the illness of a host.   Instead, we're off to Swarthmore College campus.  Many big campuses start with a house.   

Paxson Hill Farm Gardens and Nursery

One our last day of the Garden Blogger's Fling outside of Philadelphia and we find ourselves at
Bruce Gangawer’s Paxson Hill Farm in New Hope, PA.  A large nursery with an impressive display garden.

The Gardens of Mill Fleurs

Every garden has something to teach me.   Here we are at the last garden of our four day tour.  The Gardens at Mill Fleurs is located along the Tohickon Creek in Pennsylvania.   We were getting lots of rain from the Hurricane Ophelia and this was a wet visit.  Nevertheless, one I enjoyed very much.  Barbara and Robert Tiffany are the current guardians of this dramatic location.  Barbara, pictured below with the purple umbrella loves to share this space and her stories from the past thirty years creating this garden space.  

Jenny Rose Carey’s Northview Garden