Gardens of the California Missions
Mention of California mission gardens evokes romantic images of jasmine blooming under arcades, geometric beds of exotic flowers, and balconies smothe…
Regions: Northern California
Nor. Cal
Planting the Plantsman’s Garden: 3 — Herbaceous Perennials
In the preceding article I mentioned a division between, on the one hand, those gardeners who are primarily plant collectors and are more interested i…
Planting the Plantsman’s Garden: 2 — Herbaceous Perennials
It is an axiom that serious gardeners love plants for themselves. They want to possess them, to grow them, to look at them, and, more generally and si…
Planting the Plantsman’s Garden
By all rights, this winter should be noted as a most significant centennial for all serious gardeners, since it was in November 1883 that William Robi…
Native Plants For Coastal Gardens
A benign, temperate climate extends along our botanically rich Pacific Coast from the San Francisco Bay Area to southwestern British Columbia. The man…
El Novillero Revisited
When Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Donnell hired Thomas Church to design the garden of their ranch home in the Valley of the Moon, George Rockrise and Lawrence H…
Luther Burbank and His Sebastopol Farm
Luther Burbank (1849-1926), naturalist and staunch believer in the theories of Charles Darwin, left us an unequalled legacy of plants and insights int…
Native Oaks and Urban Sprawl
Vancouver and other early travelers recorded their enthusiasm for oaks and the beauty they contributed to the western landscape. In 1850, Bayard Taylo…
Growing California Native Lilies
California is blessed with many lilies. There is hardly a place in California where a lily cannot be found, but while all belong to the Lily Family