The hot summer days are starting to stress hydrangeas that get near full sun but they are still a wonderful eye full. If you desire fewer, but larger, blooms the secret is to remove all but one or two buds from each stem in the springtime. The available energy for blooms will be concentrated on these fewer outgrowths.
A home in my 92131 neighborhood has this beautiful herb lawn. If you know the species please email us. It does attract a lot of bees and so I am not sure you would want to walk across barefoot.
An old Bourbon rose propagated in France and named for Queen Victoria. Original Bourbon roses derive from planned and spontaneous hybridization of roses on Reunion Island, known then as, Isle de Bourbon.
Photo from R. Gale
Exotic and fragrant! If you want a consistent spring bloomer and a bulb that will reward you every spring then you need to plant Peruvian Daffodils Bulbs (Hymenocallis festalis). They love our zone 10A and they are extremely reliable blooming each and every spring. Also, they produce offspring bulbs on a regular basis every year. You plant one Peruvian Daffodil Bulb and within 5 years you’ll probably have six or seven surrounding the original mother bulb. For some very obvious reasons some people call them, “spider lilies.”
I bet there are many so called “monkey flowers” around the world and despite the absence of monkeys in southern California this is our bush monkey flower, Diplacus aurantiacus. It is perhaps our most common and distinctive flowering plant in the coastal chaparral. Photo courtesy of S. Castellana.