april plant combinations

The gar­den is always chang­ing. As plants mature and oth­ers come into bloom, I’m always see­ing com­bi­na­tions of plants and inter­est­ing rela­tion­ships between them. Here are a cou­ple plant com­bi­na­tions in the yard that I’m par­tic­u­larly happy with.

This is Home­ria col­lina, a South African bulb, with an uniden­ti­fied rosette-forming succulent–quite likely a grap­topetalum, pos­si­bly G. ‘Point Dexter’s’ or G. paraguayense–bloom­ing in the fore­ground and cas­cad­ing over a retain­ing wall. It’s right on the side­walk in front of the house, and it’s extra-nice that you see the com­bi­na­tion at eye-level.


I like how the purple-gray tones in the suc­cu­lent com­ple­ment the color of the block wall, and how its orangey tones work well with the homeria.

In the back yard there’s a dif­fer­ent group of things con­verg­ing, a bromeliad going out of bloom, some red Russ­ian kale that’s just about ready to pick, plain white land­scap­ing pan­sies that are near­ing the end of their lifes­pans, and a Pen­ste­mon with its first flow­ers of the sea­son. (The kale was much more pur­ple just two weeks ago, before the weather started to warm up.)

In a cou­ple of weeks these com­bi­na­tions will be gone, and there’ll be new ones that I’ve never seen before. All these joys of gardening!

April 08 2008 05:58 pm | Categories: gardeningmy garden | Tags:

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