Plant sale purchases

I went to the sale on Saturday (it turned out the Friday night sale was only for members of the Botanic Garden), and came away with four plants: a golden currant (which is supposed to actually bear fruit, plus have beautiful yellow flowers in spring), an erodium -- a small tufty plant with white flowers that have dark pink veins, a sort of iris that has blue flowers, and a white cistus (non-thorny, non-scented roselike flower).

The helpfulness of the garden volunteers at the sale was just amazing. No sooner did you pick up a plant, than a volunteer would appear at your elbow, offering to carry it to a safe place for later pickup. When you were ready to pay, you went to the pickup place and verified the plants they had set aside for you, and collected a slip of paper with the prices. Then a volunteer would ferry the plants on a wagon to the garden exit, where you could pick them up by showing your "paid" slip. If you wanted to load plants into your car, there was an extremely efficient system for waving you to a special section of curb and bringing you the box of plants you'd purchased. Everybody was friendly, too, not just efficient -- they seemed really glad to see you planning to use native plants in your garden.

As Californians become more water-conscious, using plants that don't need summer watering makes sense.

-- Rachel


Agave?