Christmas Roses by John Nash

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Sidewalks of San Francisco

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For a person visiting San Francisco from "The Great White North", one is struck not only the weather but also by the plant life that flourishes in this ideal mediterranean climate. I've just returned from a week in this lovely city, and again I was impressed by the quality, variety and creativity of gardening that I found there. In this post I am paying particular attention to the gardens I found in the front gardens which often  overflowed onto the sidewalks and boulevards. Many of the plants that I saw there are the same that I grow outdoors and have to move indoors from November to April. And since the San Francisco plants are grown in the ground they are huge compared to my container grown collection.
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Plants at My Front Door

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Last year I had a rather autocratic message from the UK suggesting that my love of limey, gold and chartreuse plants could lead me down the path to "brassy" tastelessness. I bristled at this, but tried to ascertain whether this was a fair comment. My critic, perhaps had not taken into account that I live in a completely different environment from her, and that the quality of light and extremes of climate affect our reaction to colour in a different way. In our hot, humid summers and brilliant sunshine, I find that these yellow/greens are actually cooling and rather than being strident, are very subdued and complimentary to other colours in the garden. Well, judge for yourself. I'm showing here an arrangement of plants at my front door, which I find very pleasing, A cooling vignette in the last few days of a very hot summer. Plants at my front door. Durantia, Angelonia 'Purple Stripe' and purple Callibrachoa. Coleus 'Fishnet Stockings...
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Many succulents have bloomed for me this year, perhaps this is not so remarkable in more temperate climates, but here in Montréal these plants have to be wintered over indoors and live a life with considerable human intervention. This I believe might discourage their normal flowering cycle. So for whatever reason, this has been a bumper year for flowers on plants that I grow mainly for their foliage. The most recent to bloom is  Crassula rupestris sap. marnieriana, it has curiously beautiful foliage that forms chains of compact succulent leaves that take on the apperience of a bucket of worms as they snake out of their pot.
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