My Home-Office Garden

Forgive my deviating from the no-nonsense tenor of this blog but I am enjoying how the deck planter outside my home-office is looking now and thought you might too.

The third picture includes my doggie Einstein.

Click on the images and they'll enlarge.

It's remarkable how little work it takes me to produce a good garden in the San Francisco Bay Area with absolutely no spraying for pests or fungus. The keys are an automatic watering system and that I've carefully selected hybrids for beauty, length of bloom season, and disease-resistance.

The bright pink plant is Godetia Grace. The light pink daisy bush is Argyranthemum Pink Comet. The orange zinnia is Magellan Coral. It blooms beautifully for eight months and available in many nurseries for just $3 or $4 for a six-pack or by seed from many vendors, for example, Harris Seeds. The large white daisy is Snow Lady. The small bright red rose is one I hybridized and is commercially available: Paint the Town.

I know that "heirlooms" and non-hybrids are today's fad, perceived as more "natural" but most of those really are inferior: less beautiful and more disease-prone.

The rest of my garden is looking good now too. Here's just one picture from it. It's of three bougainvillea: left to right: Spectabilis, James Walker, and Imperial Delight.