Last week I wrote about all the unseasonably early bloom times of many plants this year thanks to the record-setting mild winter and hot spring weather here in SoCal. With all the early blooming I have seen, there is one plant that has still managed to stay on schedule. It is the same plant that even after…
Every late spring the San Diego Botanical Garden has a Palm, Cycad, Bamboo and Tropical Plant Sale. This year it was held May 31st. Because I enjoy going to the San Diego Botanical Garden so much I try to time one of my visits with this sale. It really is a great time to see a bunch of rare flowering trees in…
Back in 2007 I purchased a small seedling of a type of Jacaranda that I had never heard of before; I purchased it from XOTX-Tropico. I was told it had the darkest purple flowers of any of the Jacarandas, so of course I couldn’t pass it up. Once I got it home I checked on Google to…
This weekend I read the first quality opinion piece in some time on the phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder. It came from Marla Spivak and was found on CNN of all places. It was one of the first opinions not written from the usual subjective point of view. It seems the norm the last few years for some garden bloggers…
How can we top a record-breaking winter here in Southern California? How about a second week in less then a month of high heat and brutal Santa Ana winds in spring? It is happening and I can not recall another time since I have lived here when we have had two separate weeks of high…
In the summer of 2010 I went on a flowering tree buying spree. I wanted to add a few hard to find, but even harder to grow, flowering trees. One of the plants I acquired was a small Fernandoa magnifica that I purchased from Top Tropicals in Florida. Other than a few photos found on the Internet, not much…
When it comes to lizards in your Southern California garden, chances are you know the Great Basin Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentals longipes). This species of lizard is the most commonly found, as it is quite abundant around populated areas. It is often seen basking in the sun on rocks, fences, and walls, and then scurrying…
Almost ten years ago, when I started my garden, my landscape designer talked me into planting five large Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island Date Palm). He said that there was not a better show-piece tree that could be found for a San Diego yard. He said they were easy to care for and low maintenance past cutting off dead…