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From my neighborhood park. She was known as Tabebuia chrysotricha but is now Handroanthus c. just because of some extra minute hairs on the leaves and flowers. Job well done, petty botanists!

From a senior Chinese painter’s garden in El Cerrito, north of Berkeley.

Salix caprea ‘Pendula’ @ Yamagami Nursery

Location:E El Camino Real,Mountain View,United States

Even though this winter has been unusually warm, it is still nice to feel the return of spring. The days are getting noticeably longer and the temperature is rising. Of course we wouldn’t mind a few more good soaking rainstorms, but the last two wet winters should be enough to let us put off worrying about droughts and water rationing this year.

I have been working on my own garden for the last several months. It was a major undertaking since I had to get rid of tons of concrete pavings that were improperly sloped. The front yard is mostly finished and here is a comparison of the before and the after:

Most of my clients know that I always recommend against front lawns, and I have to admit that the fresh patch of green did look nice and clean. Unfortunately, it takes too much water and maintenance in our Mediterranean climate. In the long run, I hope that my feature-rich new garden will appeal to more people with its low water usage, diverse plants, and functional living space.

Here are a couple more photos from my front yard. The fountain is hack job of a table-top fountain and a large pot from IKEA. My wife and I did it together since we could not find any ready-made ones that would satisfy both of us. It has been a big draw for neighborhood birds as soon as I set it up, and very few people can resist the joyful charm of seeing birds thrashing and playing in water.

In early June, I happend upon a Playhouse Tour at the trendy Stanford Shopping Center. A total of 15 structures were lavishly designed and built by Bay Area architects, designers and builders. Most were auctioned to benefit Rebuilding Together Peninsula, a non-profit organization helping low-income family to repair their homes. It was a real treat to see this great collection of functional and innovative structures for juniors’ outdoor living.

First are some classical themed ones. The slides could use some camouflage.

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It is the time of the year that our resident female monarch (Paulownia tomentosa) is showing off her collection of fancy gowns and fine jewelry. If you head back a young specimen to ground (stooling) every winter, you will never get the jewelry(flowers), but you will be rewarded with gigantic tropical-looking leaves about two feet across on next year’s new shoots.

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For a cool $645k, you can become the new master of this magnificent dragon, plus a free small house behind. According to the friendly agent, Thailand is the birth place of this bronze sea serpent, and his name is “Ralph”, who enjoys water play on important occasions.

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For those who do not know, Getty Museum hosts a world-class collection of Western Arts in two locations, one is the sleek and modern Getty Center overlooking the Los Angeles basin, and the other is the Getty Villa, the original musuem on the Pacific coast in Malibu. A few weeks ago, I visited both, with the latter being the first time.

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Schefflera taiwaniana (台湾鹅掌柴) is a new evergreen shrub from high mountains of Taiwan. The unique thing about this elegant beauty is that it is much hardier than your typical house plant Scheffleras (S. arboricola and S. actinophylla ). Now Monrovia Nursery may have been too optimistic to give it a cold tolerance rating of USDA Zone 7, which is 0F or -17.8C, but judging by the reports from zone-pushing gardeners in UK, it is at least good to about 20F. So it should be great as a tropicalesque backdrop for most Bay Area gardens.

It was Dan Hinkley the renowned plant explorer who first brought this plant back to the U.S., but while his fellow collector from UK has had it available at Crug Farm Nursery for quite some time (For plant lovers, it is painful to see many other exciting Schefflera species exclusively available there), Schefflera taiwaniana never went into trade here. A certain large seed company may played a part when they bought Dan’s independent nursery, Heronswood, and subsequently moved it to the East Coast.

The fortune has finally changed a couple years ago, when Monrovia and Dan teamed up to offer a line of collector plants including S. taiwaniana. It is scheduled to be widely released in spring 2012, but a few plants has gotten out last year (2010) and it caused quite a stir among serious gardeners in the Pacific Northwest.

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Today and tomorrow (April 29-30) are the Gamble Garden Spring Tour days. I signed up early this year and joined the mostly female crowd to see five beautiful gardens in Palo Alto today. Ever since my plant interests shifted to the more exotic groups a few years ago, I have been skipping this event since my impression from before was that the plant palettes were on the conservative side. From what I saw today, the loss is on my part since even though these gardens still are not quite cutting-edge plant-wise, they do have very impressive hardscapes. Here are some highlights:

The first garden has several sitting areas under wisteria arbors. This one is right next to house with a hidden polycarbonate roof for rainy days

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