eloise_ca, It is a lovely garden. I love it, thanks for posted them.

There is a lavender trumpet vine on campus that has been blooming its head off this whole month. I didnt know what it was and was planning on taking a picture to see if anyone could ID it. Luckily, i recognized it in your photo. Thanks. I like that it is evergreen, and that the leaves are glossy.

Eloise

Wow! Just beautiful! Thanks for posting your pics! Great - just great!

Mike

eloise that was a great FIRST clickable fotoseries. keep them coming. Beautiful Garden. Thanks you for sharing with us.
Lucy

ok I am not awake yet. The german side in me is to present lol. I need to correct that PHOTO series lol

Eloise they are gorgeous. All you zone 9 and 10 people are making me so jealous. Your echium is to die for! Mine will never look like that. Do you eat the cardoon stems?
Karyn

Everything is just Beautiful!!! Thank you so much for using the clickable pic...LOL
Kylie

Eloise, your yard and flowers are beautiful!
What kind of potatoe vine is that?..the ones I had never bloomed.

eloise_ca, beautiful garden photos!! But ya know your cardoon has sharper looking leaves then ours do, is that due to the soils there?

Ahhh so beautiful and relaxing to look at. I just love the pink rose and the water lily. Maybe I can talk you out of a little start of both later on when I can pay postage or something.

How hard is the cardoon to grow and why is it one of your favorite plants? Is it because ot the neat leaves or does it bloom or something else?

Thanks for sharing all the wonderful photos. I'm so mad I can't do that with my camera, but I'm still trying to learn how to do everything. I may remember a little bit but b y the next morning, I've forgotten it again...(ARGGGGHHHH)

Marian

Eloise, what is the tree/shrub behind the house in the photo of the echium? The one that is blooming violently purple flowers. It looks like a tibouchina (princess flower) but i can't really tell. Plus, i don't think tibouchina would be in full bloom right now.

we have to add Eloise to the list of green thumbers.
Wonderful Garden and great care, I am sure..

Yes.......... I am interested in the Cardon also, Will it grow here, and what does it taste like?

Eloise ! How beautiful ! Please don't don't think I am a dumb a**, I never knew that avocados grew on trees! I just never thought about it. What does the bloom look like ? I would love so much to have a grapefruit tree... I guess we always want something we can't have..LOL.. Is that your 90' palm in the background ? I don't know what cardoon is. I learn something every time I get on this forum ! Your Duranta is huge, and beautiful !! Edna

Eloise, your avocado will get HUGE really fast. Here is one down the block from my house. This subdivision of homes is from the 60s, so this tree is younger than 50 years.

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Edna, this tree is in full bloom. What a shame i took the pictures with a phone and not a real camera so the pics are a bit blurry. Nonetheless, you can see masses of small, non-showy blooms on the close-up picture.

Edna, if you are asking about a 90' palm, its probably a washingtonia robusta. Those can grow to over 100' tall and live over 100 years. The palm in the background of the anna apple picture is a phoenix canariensis. Here is a view of palms from my backyard. The tall, skinny ones are washingtonia robusta and the other ones are phoenix canariensis (what is in eloise's photo). There were planted in 1912 by the guy who founded our town, so these are nearing 100 years and probably even 100 feet tall! Theres telephone poles there for size comparison.

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Eloise, being a Californian native, i am ashamed that i have never tried an artichoke. To make matters worst, there are clumps of naturalized cardoon on pretty much every country roadside. Theres a clump on the corner of my street that is blooming right now. How do you cook it? any favorite recipes? i think i'll go to the store and buy myself an artichoke to try. Or maybe i'll take a walk and harvest the 'wild' ones. lol

Thanks all, I had been wanting to take pictures before now when some of the blooms were at their best, but didn't have time.

Cali, the lavender trumpet vine is on that entire side of the fence. The blooms are beautiful, but the vine is too much sometimes. On that same side towards the right, but not in the photo, is a lime tree that gets covered up so lots of times I just yank the vine off the tree before it totally swallows it up! What you see on top of the roof behind the Pride of Madeira (misspelled name on photo) is a magenta colored bougainvillea.

Karyn, isn't it funny how we always see the grass greener on the other side? I would love to have some of the trees/plants/flowers that you all can have, e.g., pink dogwood, redbud (been trying these two and they either die or barely grow), peonies, ferns, astillbe (sp) keeps dying, columnar apples, cherries, etc., the list is long, LOL! I do not eat the stems of the cardoon, and probably won't as I grow the plant for how it looks.

Carmie, it's called white potato vine 'Solanum jasminoides'. Maybe you need a grandson to plant one for you :-) It was full of blooms about two weeks ago, but is now slowing down.

Karma, Marian and Barry. This is the only cardoon I've had since 1999 through a lady in my gardening group, and is planted in a half-whiskey barrel so don't think it's the soil that makes the leaves that way. I love this plant because of the shape of the leaf, the silvery leaf color, the height of the plant (will get larger), and when it blooms, the flower is a beautiful purple/lavender color and has the shape of an artichoke (will post a picture when it blooms), which it is related to. I assume it will grow there Barry as it dies back each winter; have never tasted it.

Marian, are you good at rooting rose cuttings? You can certainly have cuttings of the rose. I posted on the Rose ID section to i.d., but so far no one has. It's got a very nice perfume to it. I must have the name somewhere in my files. I'll check if the pink waterlily (named Piaget something) is big enough to divide and you can have a start.

Edna, that's funny, but it makes sense. The bloom is very insignificant, i.e., very small and similar color to the stems. See how the tree looks sort of fuzzy, well that is the end of the bloom so hopefully I get lots of avocados this year!I love grapefruit (actually haven't come across any fruit I don't love). That is a white grapefruit tree, and I have a dwarf pink grapefruit in a pot. Those palms are two houses behind mine. That duranta is one of two I have in the front yard.

Cali, guess we were posting at the same time. I planted my Hass avocado in 1999 from a 5 gal. container. It did grow quickly, and each year I top it off because there is a wire overhead that goes from the street post to my house. I love artichokes just barely steamed and with butter, yummmy, but you would not eat the cardoon flower.

Elosie, your gardens are breathtaking. What a great job, you should be proud. Barbra

Wow, what awesome pics. I have yard envy again, lol. How deep of water do you need to grow the water lilly? Hubby brought me home one from walmart I know nothing about them. It just says drop in the pond with the string attached to the fake flower, lol. I don't have a real pond so I need to figure out if it will grow in my little one or if I should take it back.

Eloise it has been awhile since I rooted any roses. Yours is beautiful enough that I should at least give it a try again. The way I've done it before is in a large 2 liter plastic coke bottle. Cut the top 1/4 off and put some good potting soil in the bottom of the bottle and fill it about 3 to 4 inches deep.Lightly water the soil. Then dip the rose cuttings in root tone and then put the cuttings in the soil. Cover with a plastic bag and set in a bright window with indirect sunlight, and watch it. About 7-10 days later you will need to start opening the top of the bag so it can BREATH, a few more days and then you just take the bag off and leave it off. Shortly there after you should have a rooted cutting of your rose. LOL

What do you think. You going to root them or me????
Happy Gardening, Marian

Thanks Bonnie. As you know, there is always a lot of work to be done in gardens! When I retired in '05, my plan was to work in the yard all the time. But when my DD was expecting, I offered to watch my grandbaby when she returned to work. Now I don't have as much time, which is fine, because my grandbaby comes first before my garden!

Kristy, this waterlily is in a half-whiskey barrel and it blooms every year! Go for it!

Marian, I'll try to root, but promise nothing, LOL! I did once stick some cuttings in soil of my china rose 'Mutablis' for a friend that lost hers, and one rooted! BTW, meant to tell you about photo-taking and download, etc. What I did in learning how to post pictures is, I copied the instructions given by a couple of people on this site and printed them out. It's easier to follow instructions when you can see them in front of you while trying them out on the computer.

Eloise, here is the lavender trumpet vine i told you about. I didnt know what it was until i identified it on your photo above.

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And here is a calycanthus occidentalis (western spicebush) that is blooming as well. This is a Californian native and the fragrance is REALLY stong and spicy. They smell kind of like a cross between a really fragrant rose and a passion fruit flower and can be smelled from afar. The flowers are really interesting too.

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You have a beautiful garden Eloise. I would love it if avocados were hardy here... For a minute I thought you had a variegated form of avocado and I was about to beg for cuttings! Keep posting more pics, these are great!!!

Beautiful! I had Santa Rosa plums in SC, and it was a bit too cold for them where I was. I only got two crops in the 5 years I was there, but boy, what bumper crops! I gave away plums in 5 gallon buckets.

Wow, those are beautiful too. I love the lavender and pretty much any fragrant plant. Is that a vine or a tree, lol. Its huge! Never mind I don't need to know anything more about them if they are not hardy here, lol. My garage isn't going to get any bigger this winter, lol. Ok tell me how to do the water lilly in the container. Just water or do you have dirt in the bottom like the lotus?

Eloise, you know that it's not nice to send in photos from the national botanical garden and call it your yard. WHAT? You mean that these are REALLY your yard? Absolutely magnificent!!!!!!!!!!!

Jim

Josh, I really need to get a native spicebush!

Wildflower, thank you. Is there a variegated avocado? I saw some baby avocados on the tree, just under pea-size right now.

jyg, aren't Santa Rosa plums delicious? My tree also gives a lot, but last year, kids and their parents thought it was o.k. to sneak into my yard and take them! This year, I ordered a sensor water sprayer, LOL!

Kristy, which large plant are you referring to as a vine or tree? My waterlily is planted in a terra cota pot with this small gravel-like stuff used to plant water plants (I'll look at the bag and tell you the exact name), then sunk into the pond (whiskey barrel). I know you can also plant in garden soil and then put some gravel on top to keep that stuff from floating out, then sink in the pond slowly.

Jim, thank you so much for your compliment! It's great having this size lot to garden on. It's big enough to have plants I want, yet small enough where I can manage it. Now if only I could move the lot and my home to another area. I live by a school and those kids and their parents are messy to say the least!