Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) is a beautiful, hardy plant for Alta California. This downy, bushy, evergreen subshrub produces white or purple flowers clasped by soft purple calyces from late summer to frost. It grows 3 feet tall by 3 feet wide, and is great for the border. Salvias are some of the showiest plants for containers, annual borders, and …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2020 is Isotoma ‘Starshine Blue’ Laurentia. It features showy powder blue star-shaped flowers with lavender overtones rising above the foliage from late spring to early fall. Its attractive deeply cut ferny leaves remain dark green in colour throughout the season. Starshine Blue Laurentia is often used as a ‘filler’ in the ‘spiller-thriller-filler’ container combination, …
Read More »
Our Sunnyvale garden in March 2019 was filled with flowers.Spring blossoms on the plum, apricot, and orange trees. Spring bulbs like Crocus, Freesias, Grape-Hyacinth, Hyacinth, Tulips, Dutch Iris, and Spanish Bluebell. Spring vegetables like snowpeas and kale. Excellent cool-season annuals with Violas and Pansies. Rainy-season perennials like Cyclamen, India Hawthorne, Lewisia, Verbinium, Geranium, Rosemary and Lavender. Lots of foliage on …
Read More »
This variety is one of the familiar, and welcome, giant spring Crocus, which are colorful companions for early Daffodils. They are terrific for bedding, rock gardens, shrub borders, and naturalizing in grass. Reserve a few bulbs to pot up and force, and you will soon be the bearer of sweet little gifts that are inexpensive yet rich with the promise …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2019 are lupines. They are spectacular in the garden and in the nature. Choose a sunny site with average, well-draining soil. Lupines are legumes and can improve a soil’s fertility over time. Light: Full sun is preferred. Lupine can grow in part shade, but flowering will be lessened. Soil: Lupine needs well-draining soil above …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2019… Echeveria derenbergii is an evergreen perennial succulent with a basal rosette of pagoda-shaped, frosted, fleshy leaves colored silvery-blue with bristly tips. In winter it bears clusters of bell-shaped yellow flowers with red tips . Echeveria aggressively offsets from a young age, forming clusters quickly. Short arching racemes of golden-yellow flowers with red tips …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2019 is Grevillea lanigera – A low, dense ground cover/shrub to grows to 2 feet tall and 4 feet wide with small, narrow gray-green foliage that is soft and woolly. I have planted ours in a tall container with the hope that the long branches will hang. The cream and pink flower clusters form …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2018, this Mediterranean native adds texture and summer color to the landscape with minimal care. Whorls of butter-yellow flowers contrast with woolly, silver-grey leaves on a dense shrub-like form. Plant this sun-loving, water-wise perennial as a border accent or mass on a sunny slope for a dramatic effect. Despite its name, it is actually …
Read More »
New to our Sunnyvale garden in 2019 is Lewisia cotyledon, commonly known as Siskiyou lewisia. Lewisia blooms from spring to mid-summer, producing large individual six-petal flowers in orange, pink, red, salmon, white or yellow that are held high above the foliage in a spray, lasting for several weeks. Lewisia is eye-catching in bloom, although, when grown from seed, it is …
Read More »