GardenBook

 This comfrey cultivar is fortunately less robust than the common green version, which is both large and difficult to dig up. But the color !  These are hard to find locally, and I finally scored a couple at Digging Dog , where it is still offered occasionally-get it when you can as they often sell out. I've seen these get much larger in garden that benefit from summer rains-mine have to live on the stingy irrigation allotment they receive in my summer-dry climate.  Visit   The Danger Garden to see more faves of the week..

 April is colorful month in my garden, thanks to the roses ..and I will always keep a few of them around , though they have been edited here in favor of spaces for other stuff. Always need other stuff. Brass Band, an excellent floribunda.. and excellent for me means no blackspot. Jean Giono.. Madame Issac Perrier...I finally figured out the only way to photograph this rose and get an image anywhere close to it's actual color is to avoid direct sun at all costs.This looks somewhat like the real thing. Mme Isaac is a Bourbon rose, introduced in 1881. Blackspot can be an issue here, but I don't care;I happily strip off  Mme Isaacs spotty foliage and wait for a clean set to grow. Gruss an Achen. This is the David Austin rose 'Prospero'. Impervious to everything..a cast iron rose. I don't gow Symphytum 'Axminster Gold' for it's flowers, but here they are , doing thier best to upstage the foliage--an exercise in futility I fea...

  A couple weeks back I performed my annual trek to the wilds of  San Mateo to attend the San Francisco Garden Show. Since the show moved it's venue from the spacious Cow Palace in South San Francisco several years ago to the long-in-the-tooth San Mateo Event Center, I have come back from the show each year faintly dissatisfied ..see my post from last year here. .last year the line up of speakers was particularly disturbing , featuring a whole bunch people I had never heard of . Not to imply that I am a competent speaker critic, but I know what I like, and TV people just don't do it for me.   In the ensuing year, the show has changed ownership , and we were promised a re energized event.  In spite of some freshman year issues (long lines at ticket sales, late arriving programs and poorly marked speaker venues)  I feel optimistic that the show is on the right path. The display gardens were segregated behind black curtains which gave them an air of importa...