Today we have some lovely garden-flower photos contributed by reader Patricia Morris. Patricia’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.
You may think I mostly go for wild colors, and you’d be right. Santa Cruz on the central California coast is a in mild Mediterranean climate: USDA zone 9b. We have wet winters and occasional frost but a true freeze is extremely rare. We are completely dry from April to October, except for the marine layer fog and drizzle, but we have a lot of that from spring until late summer. Here it is ‘May Gray’ and ‘June Gloom’ and they just haven’t found rhymes for April, July and August. The cold California current and persistent northwest winds provide the moisture that supports our redwoods, who comb the fog, getting as much as 40% of their water from it. Those winds also drive the upwelling that provides our marine abundance. If we are lucky, the marine layer retreats for a few hours of sunshine in the afternoon, but the usual gray inspires me to want bright colors in the garden. We do get a warm, sunny ’summer’, it just happens in Sept. and Oct. when the northwest winds die down and the interior of the state is not as hot.
Ruffled Yellow Pansy ‘Frizzle Sizzle’ – Viola x wittrockiana:
Blue Love-In-A-Mist, Nigella damascena. A short flowering annual that has flowers of many different blues all on one plant. It reseeds like crazy, so I just let it take over parts of the lawn for its brief season and it pulls out easily when done:
Pincushion Shrub – Leucospermum ’Sunrise’:
Rock Rose Shrub – Cistus X purpurea:
Geranium ‘Brookside’ about 20” tall, multiplies:
Pink Rose Bud – variety unknown – it has been around 39+ years:
Pink Bromeliad – Aechmea fasciata – The flower lasts for months and they multiply faster than you can find new homes for them. Both the leaves and the flower are prickly:
Double White Iceland Poppy – Papaver nudicaule ‘Champagne Bubbles’ – or (Oreomecon nudicaulis) – not from Iceland. This was just an unusual (mutant?) double petaled individual:
Matrix Pansy ‘Blue Wings’ – Viola x wittrockiana:
Bamboo Iris (Iris confusa) – the fan of leaves is held on a stem above ground, it has numerous small flowers on each stem. It spreads like bamboo:
Red Hot Poker – Kniphovia uvaria It is rare to see Bullock’s oriole in my yard but they stop by specifically for this plant when it blooms:
Minoan Lace – Orlaya grandiflora – reseeds well:
Beautiful garden flowers! We have many of the same flowers in the Pacific Northwest. I love the geraniums. We have several varieties in gardens here—some of them (almost) blue. They’re a far cry from those red cultivars that my grandmother had in her window boxes.
Hey, we have “June gloom” up here, too!
So nice to wake up to these beautiful flowers. We have a rose bush here that came with the house that is probably 45 years or so old. The smell is so magnificent. Bought roses have no smell. That’s the beauty of a rose! It’s a shame they cultivate them without that intoxicating rose smell.
Wonderful post! Thanks!
So true Debra. Our 60 year old bush that came with the house provides luscious blooms whose scents fill any room we put them in. And they are so full and beautiful. My wife is responsible for all other flower plantings; my responsibility is to nurse the old rose bush through the seasons each year.
Thank you Patricia. These are lovely.
Very nice photos. Used to love gardening when I was younger.
Wow! Those are very beautiful!
Lovely!
Ooooooh, so vivid and joyful! We dwellers of the hot interior are envious of the botanical profusion you have at the coast — both the garden plants and the natives are so much more diverse.
Such an upper to view these, thank you.
Beautiful flowers. And, that Matrix Pansy ‘Blue Wings’ seems like a candidate to show up in the “Things with Faces” that we see here so often. Pareidolia ftw!
Great pictures!