A Visit to Filoli

I wanted to visit the gardens again at Filoli while I was back in the Bay Area in June. Its been awhile since I’ve been here and I was looking forward to seeing the beautiful roses and transition to summer flowers in the various gardens.

It’s wonderful to see a well run organization with lots of support at Filoli. I was impressed with all the gardeners, docents and other volunteers helping to make every visit special. Starting with our volunteer docent Donna, she gave an educational and entertaining two hour visit to the home and
gardens.





The tour began with the gardens since it was cooler in the morning, and the grounds were not too crowded,  leaving ample space to have great discussions to the various rooms and their history and for picture taking.




We entered the sunken garden facing the garden pavilion and pond. A stand of delicate purple alliums popped out with huge purple globes dotting the walled border, along with salvia and cotinus coggygria in the background.


A detail of an allium head.





One area of the walled garden had beautiful grass walkways lined with topped Irish yews, pansies and spring flowers creating a nice vista down to the natural meadow.






The garden pavilion over looking the pond was built to just the right scale mimicking the grand brick home. The English renaissance style with the formal gardens is not so common in Bay Area gardens, but it works very well in this naturally preserved environment.







A colorful spring bouquet inside the garden pavilion filled with flowers from the cutting gardens. Many of the interior rooms of the home were decorated with impressive floral displays from  experienced floral volunteers that have worked here for many years.








On the other side of the tea room is the rose garden and it is an amazing collection! Every rose and experimental variety seemed to be perfectly displayed and cared for in this garden. No doubt, the organic treatment and over 1200 Filoli volunteers help to make the beds impeccable. (not all gardeners though). The summer displays of roses were just starting to come out into full glory, I would love to see this place again in a few more weeks to see even more glorious summer display.






Perfect beds with trimmed boxwood edges allow you to see the roses closely and even take unlimited whiffs of wonderful scents. You can see that the rose gardens are the main showcase garden at Filoli.



Rounded and lined boxed topiaries and trimmed green walls add form and texture to the rose garden, and create a green base to make each rose plant shine into a stained glassed effect which is what the owners wanted in this garden.




Lots of beautiful sitting areas including this bench and arbor covered with this dazzling display of creamy white to peach roses.







Purple irises and blue campanula, create a sea of calm in this section of the walled garden.







A beautiful shady parterre garden with just planted summer blooming plants, (I’m guessing zinnias). This all green room will be bursting with hot colors in a few more weeks.






From the parterre, I spot a beautiful ornate gate leading into the orchard and flower cutting beds and further down into the Irish yew corner where the one and only official family wedding took place at Filoli, a restriction the owners wanted before deeding the property to the non-profit organization.






Many of the fruit trees like these bartlett pears are starting to develop fruit, this one looks loaded with fruit already.  The gardeners experimented with espaliered techniques to add more trees and to include a design element into the orchard.





One of my favorite rooms was the ornate herb and knot garden. The colors were just starting to come out with the various herbs that were blooming.





A detailed shot of the various herbs in this garden including santolina, berberry, lavender and rosemary, and thyme.







All the masses of colors are so beautiful clumped in large clusters and the red berberry interspersed to introduce the knotting effects.






Surprisingly the working kitchen garden was very small, I’m assuming that since the home is not in full use, the kitchen garden is mostly used for display and some of the greens grown to be used in the café.







There were large sections utilized for the cutting gardens so the beautiful floral displays throughout the home could utilized a plethora of year round flowers available for arrangements.
Below is one of the areas showing beautiful beds developing new flowers plants.





It was a full day touring the home and gardens so at this point, I think I will end for now and continue in the next post to show more rooms and then the beautiful exteriors to the home.

This is my contribution to June garden bloom day, to visit more gardens around the world go to http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/

Back Yard Center Island Progress

 

I’m loving this new center island berm in the back yard, its set in classic display and will be filled with an eclectic grouping of tropical plants  and succulents.

Below you see the urn has the white bromeliad, Alacanterea Oderata with a circle of red thin leaved dracaenas around the rim.

 

 

More progress is happening at a faster pace now, I’ve started planting the front portion by the cherub below.

 

 

Here’s a better shot of the lower grassy area with the jungle in the background that is being reclaimed.

 

 

In the front section with the fish fountain, I’ve planted an interesting collection of echeverias, black mondo grass, purple heart and mini aechmea starlight along with two yellow aechmea blanchetiana as acccents.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve completed the stone surround and have filled it with crushed lava rocks, now the plantings around the sides and back of the bed are starting to take place. I’m planting a variety of different bromeliads and minis around the lions below.

 

The mini red bromeliads called neoregelia’Scarlet Charlotte’ adds a nice contrast to the variegated ‘Wee Willy’, a rose colored aechmea and behind the lions are variegated white/green neoregelia sp.

 

 

The other side with a portion of the back area which is still in progress, I haven’t decided what to put in the back outside of these variegated white and green bromeliads, I’m looking for some interesting texture like dyckias which I think will work well but I have to do some nursery shopping, or hopefully visit a friend’s garden for some freebies.

 

 

Well that’s taking place very nicely in the lower garden. Now take a look below and see what else is waiting for me in the back yard.  I’m sure it will be a real long work in progress even at this stage were most of the jungle crowded with thick vines, junky trees and shrubs have already been weed whacked and partially taken out. The area that used to be a vegetable garden is finally coming back but I’m not really sure what will be in this space because there is no access to watering from a hose to this area and I’m not about to carry water in buckets to the growing plants here. What do you think, any suggestions for this space?

 

 

Okay time to get outside and pull more vines and weeds from this area, it’s a dirty job and I’ve got a lot of weeds to get rid off. Stay tuned for more updates.

A Major Back Yard Re-do

Too many projects going on with the various garden areas around my home lately. I’m now tackling some major work and new beds in the back yard which have been so neglected due to many non-gardening related activities. But, spring time has given me a new incentive to make some big and dramatic changes to the back yard.

Most of the back yard towards the right side was a neglected vegetable garden, becoming a jungle area again. Reclaiming this from all the deeply rooted vines, junk trees and shrubs is  going to be a major undertaking that I’ll be tacking on later.

The grass area is large and divided into an upper and lower section. I’m planning an elevated center bed with a combination of aged statuary mixed in with colorful bromeliads, succulents and other tropical adornments.

These cement lions below along with some other statuary will be placed into the new island in progress.





After a few days of playing around and moving rocks, the center island bed is coming into place with a classic urn place on top of a lava rock base and filled with crushed lava rocks.








After taking massive breaks from moving the heavy rocks into place, the outer walls are coming into a floral patterned bed.








I decide to place a tall white leaved bromeliad on top of the urn as an accent to the black lava rocks so it would look dramatic…what do you think, does it work?







Here’s a close up detail of the island with the statuary in place.






I think its falling into place pretty well, don’t you agree?  I can’t wait to start putting in all the beautiful plants next. Stay tuned for the fun part coming up in the next post.