Last month, I went to visit an old gardening friend of mine, Chris Woods, who has recently become the head of Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden. As you may recall, Chris was the visionary behind the transformation of Chanticleer from a private estate to one of the great American public gardens as we know it today. From chatting with[...]
Over the years I’ve gone through a slew of spring blooming trees that either got knocked down by storms or that I had removed due to landscape renovations. Those years allowed me to experiment with a variety of plant material and learn what it was that I didn’t want in my garden. It wasn’t until[...]
I had all of the pictures of my trees, bushes and flowers taken and ready to post: that is, until I made a quick sprint over to Chanticleer on Wednesday. What can I say except that I thought all of you would appreciate what they have in bloom much more than anything I can show[...]
In response to Nan’s topic this month for Garden Blogger’s Design Workshop, I have only one thing to say, I can’t get enough of stone: beautiful, authentic slabs of stone in different intensities and blends of color, textures, shapes and thickness. These stones are a real turn on for me, perhaps because they are so[...]
I promised myself this year that I would run over to Chanticleer once a week to maintain a record of what is in bloom. As I sprinted through the garden last week on a beautiful spring day, I was blown away by the magnificent spring plantings. After scanning through the photos at home, what struck me was how the same specimens were used in[...]