Native Plant Garden Photo Contest

[queerbychoice]

Gardening Gone Wild is having a native plant garden photo contest. Participants can enter up to three photos. Here are mine. The first one is red bush monkeyflower (Mimulus puniceus) in my front garden bed this morning, with coral bells (Heuchera maxima) in the background. Both plants are native to southern California. (I'm in northern California, but these plants are under the eaves where they get less rain, making the environment closer to souther California's.) The monkeyflower just started blooming last week, for the first time.




The garden photos aren't required to be of our own gardens, and since I've only been gardening for just about exactly one year, restricting myself to my own tiny, barely established (though very native) garden would severely limit my chances. So this next photo is of Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) in the California State University, Sacramento Arboretum in July 2007.




And I'm not entirely sure that this third photo even qualifies, since I'm not sure whether the plant was actually planted intentionally by a gardener. But growing through a chain-link fence the way it is, I'm not sure it can be considered exactly "wild" either; it's been smoothly integrated into the obviously artificial landscaping below it. This is endangered Pine Hill flannelbush (Fremontodendron californicum ssp. decumbens), growing on Pine Hill in May 2008. I'm not quite completely happy with the composition of this one, but the plant itself is so spectacular that it hardly matters. How could anyone look at this and not want it in their garden?

Comments

photos

[(Anonymous)]

Gayle, I'll have to admit to finding the third photo really compelling--the endangered plant spilling over into the decidely human territory, nature trying to reclaim its space against the march of human development. Something like that...

James @ [ Lost in the Landscape ]

Re: photos

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think the saddest part about that one is that this plant grows nowhere in the world except on Pine Hill and within a few miles of it, and all of Pine Hill and its surround vicinity has become "decidedly human territory." So there isn't any territory left at all that belongs exclusively to the plants. Even though the Pine Hill Preserve was established to protect these plants, there are houses built all over the place inside the preserve, because the houses were there before the preserve was established.

[morningloryblue.livejournal.com]

I love the Pine Hill photo! I planted a couple of desert plants today ===

[(Anonymous)]

Well the contest is done and results posted over at GGW early next week. Thanks for your entry and I am giving each photo bit of constructive criticism.
Your first photo is clearly the best and even though your garden is new, this is the way to illustrate it - with a close up. If you had backed off a wee bit you would have better focus (don't put something out of focus in the very center) and it would have looked more like a garden.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Thank you, although I'm afraid that in the case of my garden, backing up tends to make it look more like a weed patch with a few plants stuck in it!