San Diego Botanic Garden, Part 1

This is the scene that greets you as you arrive at the San Diego Botanic Garden...

My visit occurred on December 20th, 2014. I was concerned the garden would be covered in strings of Christmas lights. Thankfully that was not the case, the ones wrapping this tree trunk and another, deeper in the garden, were the only ones I saw.

There was art, but it was not distracting, of course it would take a lot to outshine those aloes!

This was one of my favorite plants in the garden...

Of course it's only hardy to 20-25F.

So crazy-cool!

The San Diego Botanic Garden, formerly known as Quail Botanical Gardens, is located about 30 minutes north of San Diego in Encinitas, CA. The gardens began as the private estate of Ruth Baird Larabee who, in 1957, donated her house and the surrounding grounds to the County of San Diego. The Quail Botanical Gardens Foundation was established in 1961 and the name of the garden was changed to San Diego Botanic Garden in 2009.

Adenanthos sericeus (Coastal Woollybush)

Sadly I didn't catch the name of this one. Not everything had a label/sign that I could find, and at times I even found myself rather confused as to which part of the garden I was in. Paths criss-crossed and I didn't want to miss anything so that resulted in my going in circles. If you want to see a map of the garden there's one here.

When planning this vacation I was thrilled to discover both the SDBG and Balboa Park (coming up in future posts) featured an Australian Garden. Sort of. In Balboa Park the Australian Garden was extremely difficult to find. It was shown on the map I looked at online, but not on the paper map they gave us at the visitors center. Everyone we asked just looked at us like we were crazy, an Australian Garden? No, not here. When we finally found it I felt the same way (an Australian Garden? No, not here). So I was hoping for something better at the SDBG...

Did I find it? Looking through these photos two months later it looks like I did.

But at the time I was underwhelmed. It was the same feeling I had when visiting the Australian Garden at the Huntington. The plants were great, but the garden itself was sparse, as though it was still under construction. Southern California is so lucky to be able to grow these marvelous plants, it's a pity their public gardens don't make them seem more desirable.

Melaleuca styphelioides (Prickly-leaved Paperbark)

Bocconia frutescens?

Another part of the world with simply fabulous plants.

One of those crazy cussonia.

Now I've worked my way into the Hamilton Children's Garden. Originally I was going to avoid this area, the garden is huge and in the interest of seeing it all this was the part that had to go. That would have been a mistake.