Photobotanic

Do we really want drought tolerant plants for our gardens ?  Let's look for climate tolerant plants. All plants are drought tolerant in their native habitat and no plant can live without water. No matter where a garden is located, anywhere...

The new book is well underway.  A new book ?! The Summer-Dry Garden (Timber Press 2019) will update and replace Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Area, the award winning book published by East Bay Municipal...

God creates gardens. Whether you consider God to be a benign Overseer, or Nature, or Gaia, or things Unexplained, the beauty we gardeners see in the plant world is magical - and greater than ourselves - and we are privileged...

I have always wanted to go to a destination workshop.  Now my friend and colleague David Perry has organized one in Seattle. I get to join him at Albers Vista Gardens on July 11 and we fully expect to have...

Quite often when we want to take a picture of a beautiful flower other blossoms in the background clutter up the view. Our eyes are so attuned to the one flower we don't realize the camera will not be able...

Sunnylands is a conference Center and gardens near Palm Springs, California. It was established by Walter and Leanore Annenberg to "address serious issues facing the nation and the world community" and has been a meeting site for Presidents, corporate executives,...

No, this is not a gardening tip on how to prune trees, it is about careful cropping of a photograph. I have been photographing these 'Liset' Crabapple trees for many years. They are centrally located in the San Francisco Botanical...

The California Redbud trees (Cercis occidentalis) are in bloom at UC Davis Arboretum. The Warren G. Roberts Redbud Collection along the Putah Creek path that winds through the Arboretum is a fantastic testimony to this California native tree.  Redbuds are...

I often think of a photo composition as a combination of shapes linked together, like jigsaw puzzle pieces within the rectangle of the camera view finder. I call this blocking, borrowing a term from theatre production where the director organizes...

Winter is Camellia time at San Francisco Botanical Garden. The garden is renowned for its flowering magnolias this time of year but any visitor looking for winter flowers cannot miss the Camellias either. These large flowering evergreen shrubs have their own...