Sunday, April 4, 2010

Garden Party

A couple of weeks ago before the San Francisco Garden Show took over my life for awhile, I went to a garden party at Ken Monger's house. A talented garden designer himself, Ken now owns the property that previously belonged to Wayne Roderick. Wayne Roderick, now past, was an amazing horticulturalist and former director of Tilden Botanic Garden and head of the CA native section of the UC Botanic Garden for years, so of course his property has many fantastic plants growing there. Ken has been kind enough to bring seed of some of his more choice plants that we should soon be offering at Annie's. I was thrilled to visit and see what might be blooming. The entrance promised many treasures inside.

entrance

A sweet Erythronium blooming:


erythronium

Fields of just-waking Anemones:

anemone_field

anemone_inside

Bulbinella (elegans maybe?)

bulbinellas

Bulbinella latifolia doleritica

bulbinella_latafolia_doleritica

Marching Crocosmia:

crocosmia

Not of the Plantae Kingdom, but still pretty- Turkey Tails:

turkey_tails

Back up at the house, I was loving the Brunsvigia finials:

brunsvigia_seedhead

And the Devil's Claw wall decorations:

devils_claw_chain

The view from the house was lovely:

treasures_below

And the greenhouse held some pretty cool things too:

greenhouse

The host with a green calla:

green_calla

It was fun to see the Hellebores blooming. Awhile back, Annie's had a crop or two of plants from the seed of Wayne Roderick's hybridized hellebores. I have a few that bloom beautifully in my garden every year. It was neat to see some of the parents.


hellebore

Some lovely white cyclamen:


cyclamen

I look forward to returning at other times of the year to see the even more wonderful things in bloom.


kew

I'm trying out larger pictures. I hope they are not annoyingly large. Let me know if they are.

5 comments:

  1. It's really cool to learn about where you guys collect seeds from for Annie's. Between the Ruth Bancroft garden- and now here- it's exciting to learn about the origins of some of the plants I purchase! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like the larger picture format...and love seeing Wayne Broderick's garden as was. I met him a couple of times and always admired his work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like larger format pictures. There are several in the post that are stunning, particularly the marching Crocosmiaand the Bulbinellas.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the large format, though these are a little too large for my computer. I can't actually see the entire photo on the browser window, and I would imagine that's the case for many other people. They're nice photos. That garden looks pleasant.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Carri- Yes, we are lucky that gardeners are such a happily-sharing kind of bunch!
    Nancy - I remember Wayne Roderick from Cal Hort meetings years ago. He always sat in the front row and was such a cute older gentleman. I wish I had talked to him more.
    Les and Ryan - Thank you. I like the larger format photos but I think I'll not do all the photos that way. Makes the post a bit long. I wish Flickr would let me post the pics somewhere between medium and large. It is such a big jump between the two.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.