My garden really is not much to talk about. Really. It is just a bunch of redwoods with a bit of other native vegetation dominating the few items that I added into the mix. There are fourteen stock fig trees, but they are very small and mostly obscured by the underbrush. The elderberries, currants and huckleberries are the same as what grows wild, so they do not look like much either. Even the cane berries look very similar to the native blackberries. There is a quince tree, some rhubarb, and some small prickly pear, but they are barely visible amongst the other vegetation. Well, that is enough talk about why my garden is not much to talk about.
These pictures are from one of the gardens that one of my colleagues maintains.
1. Hibiscus is probably the flashiest bloom in this garden now. I have no idea what cultivar this hibiscus is; and I am not even certain about the species. It sure is impressive though. This flower is more than six inches wide!
2. Red honeysuckle is something that I really want to grow, but can not justify it. I mean, it does not exactly ‘do’ anything more than look good. It is not fragrant like Japanese honeysuckle is. This one took a while to bloom.
3. Zonal geranium happens to be one of my favorite perennials, even if others consider it to be too cheap and common. I do not know if this one is pink, peach, salmon . . . or one of those odd colors that only girls can see.
4. Mandevilla is my best guess. Again, I do not know the species. Did I mention that this is not my garden? I do happen to like this one though, because it is so perfectly white. Otherwise, I am none too keen on mandevilla.
5. Morning glory is quite happy here. This one is annual of course. There was a perennial white morning glory known as a moonflower nearby, but it succumbed to frost last winter. Hope for its recovery ran out months ago.
6. 4:00 (four o’clock) is a prolific naturalized exotic species. I would not say that it is invasive, but merely prolific. I do not know if this one is 4:00 a.m. or 4:00 p.m., but I do know it will not be the last. More on that later.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Thank you for sharing …very nice. Love the honeysuckle!
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You are welcome. I like showing off, even if they are not mine.
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A very vibrant bunch
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Thank you. The hibiscus looks like cheap red vinyl.
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It’s Salmon .😎
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Okay . . . thank you . . . guys can’t see that.
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I think you’re right, the geranium is one of those colours girls can only see, (guava, perhaps) but I’d be really challenged to describe the colour of the last one.
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Someone already mentioned that the geranium is ‘salmon’, although guava sounds good too. I suppose that there is a guava out there somewhere that is that color. I believe that the last one is a red four o’clock, even if it is actually another color. What I mean is that if pink or red were the only options, I would tend to say that it is red only because it is more than pink.
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Those were very familiar plants that grow in my area. My four o’clock blooms at 6pm. It seems to be on California time.
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In Southern California, they might bloom all day if the weather is right. They grow like weeds in some neighborhoods around Los Angeles. In the Santa Clara Valley, they grow like weeds too, but sometimes stay closed if they do not like the weather at the time.
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These were very nice but honestly, I’d rather see your garden! Although I don’t have redwoods in my garden, sadly, I do have lots of native trees. Now I want to start putting in trees for food and I am not sure how to go about it in all the shade I have, so I’d love to see how you do it. I do have a blueberry~1 of 3 I planted that survived. It is pretty much buried in the underbrush and I didn’t see any berries this year. I should cage it from the rabbits.
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This is why I do not show my garden: https://tonytomeo.com/2018/01/28/brent-is-still-an-idiot/
I do not really grow figs there. I just grow the stock trees. It is too shaded and cool for figs to develop. I only grow the native blue elderberries because they are naturally understory plants anyway. The native gooseberry and huckleberry do well there too, but again, only because they do not mind the shade. I will eventually get back to gardening in a sunnier spot, but that will not be anytime soon. The fruit trees that I miss so much from the Santa Clara Valley need more sunlight. There is no substitute for sunlight. I do not really do much gardening in the shade. I just grow what grows there naturally.
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Ah, that is disappointing. I’ve got books that suggest it is possible to grow fruit in the understory but I hadn’t figure it out how they do it. Perhaps only fruit I wouldn’t consider eating!
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Well, blueberries are understory plants (I think). I do not grow them because I do not like them much and because they do not do well here. Huckleberries are another species that is related to blueberries. I happen to grow them because they were there before I started gardening there. They are not as productive as garden variety blueberries, but they are something. The native blue elderberry also does well, although I do not know how the black elderberry that grows elsewhere tolerates shade. Unfortunately, they (blue elderberries) are not good fresh. I cook them and then juice them for syrup and jelly. Paw Paw also does well in partial shade, but they are not available here.
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Nor here; they grow in southern Illinois, and are host to a beautiful swallowtail butterfly.
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(I am determined to grow paw paw!)
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I’ve added it to my list as well. My family insists that we won’t be in this house much longer so I’m waiting for the “forever” house.
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Your garden sounds interesting. Is it productive?
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This one is not my garden, and it is not as productive in regard to fruit as I would like it to be. However, it is productive in other important ways. My colleague maintains it for school children and their Outdoor Science class, so likes a diversity of plants. He likes to showcase a few flowers, but also wants to show evergreen contrasting with deciduous plants, how plants produce seed, what plants sustain insects . . . . there are all sorts of things going on in the garden. Those who teach the classes sometimes ask for particular plants. For example, they like the aromatic foliage of a small eucalyptus tree.
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Now I WOULD say Four o’clocks are invasive! Ha ha. I spend a lot of time trying to get rid of these – they just take over! A friend warned me that I would not like them, but I was lured by the splash of vibrant red. She was right, I’m sorry now that I put them in my front yard flower beds.
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So, they are open 24 hours?
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You are so modest about your garden, but the photos are lovely, especially the honeysuckle – a great close up.
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This one is actually not my garden. I would grow more fruit trees in my own garden. I was hoping for a better show from the honeysuckle. I have never grown it before. It was badly infested with aphid in spring, so did not grow much. I really wanted to see what it was capable of. I think I will layer some stems this winter anyway. I can determine if I like it or not later.
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Wow that Hibiscus! It’s huge! And the colour of the Morning Glory is spectacular!
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Yes, that morning glory was a surprise. I had seen the vines earlier, but had not payed much attention to them. My colleague had been telling me about the hibiscus for a while, but I did not believe that it was ‘that’ impressive.
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It really is!
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That made me laugh “I just have redwoods”. What an admission! What a treat! Lovely flowers, the hibiscus is incredible, and I love 4 O’Clock, we have a yellow one here, although that colour is very desirable!
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Well, . . . redwoods are sort of a limiting factor.
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When I started reading you Six, I thought you were going to show us six red things but the Mandevilla broke my mind. (I particularly like honeysuckle, so beautiful!) About the Four o’clock flower, I grew them 5 or 6 years ago, and they bloomed around 6PM (French time). Hummingbird hawk moths loved them
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Hey, this ain’t Sesame Street. You don’t need to know “which one of these things doesn’t belong here”. (Although, I have done all white before – my favorite color.) I really do not know which mandevilla that is. All these modern cultivars complicate identification. I sort of like it only because it is white. We do not get much frost here, but we get enough to damage most types of mandevilla. Ironically, I really like the red honeysuckle, just because I have been wanting to grow it for so long. I really enjoy the yellowish white Japanese honeysuckle because of the fragrance, but I wanted to grow a North American species. The species that is native here is not all that great. I brought back a small weedy native of Oklahoma that blooms nicely, but lacks fragrance. This red one is a treat, even though is is neither fragrant nor white. I have not grown four o’clocks for many years, although I have collected many seed to send to my niece in Los Angeles. Even though they are weedy, no one wants to admit that they are undesirable. We all seem to like them. Technically, they are growing on their own, so I am not growing them. . . . really.
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