Category: Gardens

Spring is Here

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 […]

Interesting Details at Getty Villa

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 […]

Gamble Garden Tour 2011

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 […]

Wave Garden in Point Richmond

The season of garden tour is upon us and I am already getting a head start with a trip to the Wave Garden last Sunday (April 10) organized by our venerable Bay Area Horticultural Group aka The Hortisexuals. Point Richmond is definitely a diamond in the rough. The troubled reputation of the city of Richmond […]

More Spring Flowers

Yesterday (April 11) I attended a board meeting of my local district of Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) in Palo Alto. With a little free time before the meeting, I went by Elizabeth Gamble Garden for a quick tour. Gamble Garden is a local oasis of horticulture with two and a half acres of […]

Presidio Habitats Exhibition

Last Sunday (April 3, 2011) I joined a small group for a guided tour of the Habitats Exhibition at the Presidio in San Francisco. This is an outdoor art exhibition with a theme of designed habitats for wildlifes that are currently here and those that once lived here. It is sponsored by FOR-SITE foundation and […]

2011 San Francisco Garden Show

I went to the SF Garden Show last Sunday (3/27) to help man the Hot Plant Picks booth. The crowd was big and the show gardens were very excellent again. Here are some of my favorite gardens: First is a show garden sponsored by Filoli and built by the Garden Route Company. The fuzzy green […]

Garden of Flowing Fragrance

In early May, I was fortunate to get invited by the Huntington Botanical Garden to give a talk about Classical Chinese Gardens in Suzhou. While over there, I went back to visit the Classical Chinese Garden on site, Liu Fang Yuan (流芳园) The Garden of Flowing Fragrance.

In Memory of My Old Garden

It has been terribly busy in the last few months since we are moving to a bigger home. We have put up our old home for sale and it is almost certain that it will be sold in the next month or so. When we first bought it in 1999, the backyard was 1000 square […]