What do you see on your garden walks?

[Fermi]

Fermi, I really like the native "paper daisies" you show.  Are these Helichrysum species?

And don't tease me with the Pacific Coast Iris, I've never been able to grow them successfully, but just look at the colors and forms you got from seed , love the rotund yellow one!  The dwarf bearded Iris named forms are luscious too.

Hi Mark,
these were helichrysums but now are Leucochrysum albicans and forma tricolor.
As far as irises are concerned we seem to be in an ideal climate for a great number of sorts other than the ones that want lots of coolth!
Here's Siberian iris "Blue Bird"


And Iris (spuria ssp) halophila


cheers
fermi

[RickR]

Yesterday was a rainy day!  I felt like Oliver, singing "Food, glorious food..." (except "rain, glorious rain...").  But it was a reason to take off and visit other gardeners, so I visited two chapter members across town.  

It's cyclamen time here and both members have nice specimens.  Yul is from Slovenia, and he grows Cyclamen purpurascens sourced from the area near Bled (in Slovenia). Bled is a famous tourist destination and the area is home of what could be the darkest color forms of the species.  Here is a couple of his plants in the garden (not particularly dark, though):

        

        

No doubt, many of you have seen a similar picture of Lake Bled.  This print hung in my Grandmother's house for as long as I can remember.

              

Yul showed me a book he recently received:
http://www.botanicni-vrt.si/content/view/130/1/lang,en/
Jože Bavcon also has written small books on crocus and another genus that I don't recall at the moment.

A dreary day, and great for taking photos in some respects, and in others, not so good.  The view from Yul's balcony is envious, and we had some lunch while it down poured.  But it let up now and then that opted for some nice pics.  

              

        

[RickR]

Then on to Jean's house, and more Cyclamen purpurascens.

        

and Cyclamen hederifolia.  Not as hardy as purpurascens for us in Minnesota, but some get away with it.

              

And time for some tea and cardamom bread...and šlivovic  

Tricyrtis usually doesn't make a splash this far north, but Jean grows Tricyrtis formosana 'Butterfly Cloud' and 'Miyazaki' very well.

        

              

Maybe I can stump someone here: can you guess what this is?

            

[McDonough]

Gorgeous leaf forms on Cyclamen purpurescens!  

I love Tricyrtis but I have miserable luck with them, they always die out.  The longest one I kept was the incredible T. macranthopsis with fat tubby bells of golden yellow heavily speckled inside... had it for about 4-5 years.

Is the seed pod a Cimicifuga?

[RickR]

Right.  Cimicifuga racemosa

Here's the foliage to go with it:

               

[Lori S.]

Well, you certainly had me stumped, Rick!  Your friend certainly does have a beautiful view and a beautiful garden.

Here are a few late-bloomers in the yard... Arabis androsacea; Osteospermum barberiae var. compactum 'Purple Mountain'; Hylotelephium 'Autumn Joy':
   

Some interesting foliage... and hopes of flowers to come:
Convolvulus suendermanii (x2) - bought from Beaver Creek this spring
 

Potentilla divina:


Sideritis phyrgia:


Androsace albana:


Saxifraga callosa:


A tiny thing, snuggled into a crevice in the tufa - Saxifraga umbellulata v. pectinata:

[Jandals]

Nice yard Lori . I guess this post is technically from my yard too .  ...from my metre doesn't have the same ring to it .

Whilst posting these pictures I have realised that I grow a lot of variety alba's . I think that even though I am growing some exotic plants , I have a subconscious love of NZ flora where there is so much alba they had to drop the epithet because it became tedious.

Took these pictures today because we are supposed to get a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow  and I really hope that we get some .

Gentiana verna alba



Meconopsis pseudointegrifolia



and just to prove there is an exception to every rule , non-white flowers on Pittosporum tenuifolium . Also fragrant and popular with bees

[Toole]

Took these pictures today because we are supposed to get a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow  and I really hope that we get some .

It's on its way Steve --the wet stuff started here a few hours ago...

Lovely shot of the Gentiana ,(and the Clematis marmoraria on the other thread).

Cheers Dave.

[Kelaidis]

The party may not be over, but with 8" of snow on the ground and lows in the lower teens...the season will not be the same. And just a few days earlier, the fall color was the best I'd seen in Denver. And these tresures shown below were just a smattering of the flowers you could find. I kinda got stuck on the colchicums and crocuses however. I think most of them will come through the cold just fine. I just hope the still green oaks and rowans will still color up after such chilly nights: next week is predicted to be glorious Indian Summer. Such are the challenges of gardening on the steppes of America!

[Tim Ingram]

I've always tried to grow crocuses but generally fought a losing battle against the rabbits in recent years. They are the most exquisite of plants and I shall keep trying! Lori - I really like the 'silvers' in your garden, just my sort of plants. I am interested to see Arabis androsacea having just bought this from Ron McBeath. It looks a very tidy plant.

Most of the show in our garden is now the autumn colours which have arrived in just the last few days. The sand bed in the front garden is overlooked by Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst', which is soft-yellow throughout they year but is more richly coloured now. One of the few flowering shrubs is Grevillea rosmarinifolia 'williamsi', virtually never out of flower and a really good form of the species selected in New Zealand (according to the 'Grevillea Book'). In the back garden the colours tend to go with a certain disarray; hostas exemplify this rather well. We have a wide range of apple varieties in the garden too which add to the autumn picture.

[Kelaidis]

Your garden looks very intriguing, Tim! I am amazed how you grow Western Americans. I am on 80 feet of pure sand on my current garden, and struggle to grow many of our westerners (which prefer clay). I am mystified by your mentioning Arabis androsacea: I just cleaned the seed of it today to send to NARGS exchange: this is the first time it has set much seed, although I have grown it for years: it isn't as compact or woolly as A. bryoides, but its much easier to grow and similar (and permanent). We had our first hard frost last Wednesday (and 8" of wet snow) which knocked many of the gloriously colored leaves off trees--we'd been having a memorable and resplendant fall color season. The oaks and rowans are only just coloring, and they came through the frost pretty well, so there will be more to look at in the next month (including a few last crocuses, and other tardy flowers!). Gleditsia triacanthos 'Sunburst' is commonly grown in Denver, incidentally, where it can be spectacular in its pale yellow coloration for weeks on end in early summer. When it finally gets really hot mid-June or so it turns a typical dark green for us: you do have many blessings in more maritime climates, you see!

[Kelaidis]

Just found a picture of Arabis androsacea, Tim!

[James McGee]

Tim,

     The rabbits have not bothered my crocuses.  I think it is because my crocuses are in the front of my house.  Rabbits tend to spend most of their time near cover.  My back yard is edged with evergreen shrubs and a chain link fence.  Rabbits love chain link fences because they can escape through them and predators cannot follow.  The rabbits usually stay near the shrubs in my back yard grazing on lawn grass and weeds. 
     The only exception was when I parked a car on the driveway near a garden in my front yard.  This car provided excellent over head cover for the rabbits.  It was also parked near the chain link fence that extends from my back yard around the side of my house.  My expensive coneflower cultivars were being nibbled to stubs.  A little chicken wire solved this problem.
     A neighbor recently has let their cat wander the neighborhood.  It is not surprising that the garden in my backyard has become a favorite hunting destination.  I do not want to debate the issue of outdoor cats.  However, this has caused the few surviving rabbits to rarely leave the cover of taller weeds in a neglected corner of the yard.  My wife and I miss seeing the rabbits lazily grazing on our lawn.
     In winter I did have a problem with rabbits eating small twigs and stripping bark on my smaller shrubs.  I found this was easily solved by removing snow that was covering lawn grass.  The rabbits would flock to the patch of exposed lawn grass leaving my shrubs alone.  This worked as long as I quickly removed the snow after each storm.  I was lazy after one storm and was not motivated to shovel my grass.  The rabbits soon started crewing up my shrubs which was all the motivation I required!
     I guess the moral of the story is ... if you do not plant near cover and the rabbits have a better food source then you probably won't have a problem with them.  If this is not feasible, then some chicken wire will solve the problem.


Sincerely,

James

[Lori S.]

Just found a picture of Arabis androsacea, Tim!

What I have been growing as Arabis androsacea is essentially stemless* (though the plant description, below, said 4cm stems), and quite furry.  The seeds were from Holubec and described as: "ex. Turkey: Ala Dag, 2200m, limestone scree; small cushions, white hairy rosettes, white flowers on 4cm long stems; 2009 seed".  I have photos of them in full bloom somewhere in my vast, unlabelled(grrr!!) photo collection but only this recent photo showing a late, repeat bloom is readily available:


*Edit:  Wait, the stems do elongate with time. Here's another photo:
http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=274.msg8868;topicseen#msg8868

[Lori S.]

What rabbit species do you have coming to your garden, James?  Must be very small ones to get through chain link fences, unless maybe the styles of mesh are much bigger there than what is used here?  (N. B.   It would be really helpful if you could add your general location to your signature or to your profile, so that readers can see how closely their situations relate to yours in terms of geographics, climates, zones, etc..  ) 
Here, the rabbits one sees most often in the city are whitetail jackrabbits - big, long-legged, long-eared critters of the open plains that are not much tied to cover.  (I suppose people who live on the edges of the ravines may have the smaller, cuter snowshoe hares coming into their yards, but I don't know if that is so.) 
I don't have any real complaints with their feeding... so many plants for them to choose from in the yard and elsewhere that their impact is small.  Well, okay, I admit I sometimes get mildly irritated at their nibbling my drabas in the troughs out front, though this seems to be a new thing related to the recent snowy winters we've had, where snow has covered things they'd probably otherwise be eating.  They also seem to have found my Trifolium rubens irresistible this spring, and munched it to the ground, but it recovered.  Oh well, overall, very minor damage and I don't begrudge them their choice of food.