Top 10 January Blooms (& a Blood Moon Wednesday Vignette)

I'm joining Chloris of The Blooming Garden with a top 10 list of January blooms.  There's admittedly overlap with my Bloom Day report but in this case I've whittled down what's blooming in my garden to my current favorites.  As it was hard enough to pare down the list to 10 plants, I'm not going to even try to prioritize my choices so here they are in alphabetical order:

I use Aeonium arboreum to fill in empty spots all over the garden.  The plant is easily grown from cuttings and offers wonderful textural contrast for a wide variety of foliage plants.  As the plants age, some produce stalks bearing clusters of glowing yellow blooms.  The rosettes producing the flower stalks die afterwards but the non-blooming rosettes live on.  Right now, the yellow spires are popping up throughout my garden.

Arctotis 'Pink Sugar' is off to an unusually early start this year.  I suspect this is due to our exceptionally warm winter temperatures.

Bauhinia x blakeana (aka the Hong Kong orchid tree) has been blooming almost continuously for almost 3 months now.  To my recollection, this is its best performance yet.  The only time it was without a mass of blooms was a brief period following our one and only winter rainstorm in early January.  An inch of rain stripped the tree of its open blooms but not its buds and within days of the storm's passage it was in full bloom again.  While I'm unhappy about the lack of rain, the tree is making the most of the dry conditions.

Calendula 'Bronzed Beauty' may be an odd choice for a favorite plant.  It's an annual; it's produced only a half dozen or so flowers thus far, all on short stems; and the flowers themselves are relatively small.  But I absolutely love the subtle colors of its petals.

Camellia 'Taylor's Perfection', a hybrid of C. williamsii, isn't happy about this week's high temperatures or the repetitive bouts of Santa Ana winds we've been experiencing this month but it's still pumping out blooms.  The curling dark pink edges of the petals are a response to the hot, dry conditions.  Unfortunately, I've seen this happen before.

I've long admired the delicate flowers of Saxifraga but I've never been successful in growing plants in that genus in my climate.  The sprays of tiny pink and white flowers of succulent Crassula multicava scratch that itch.  

While many of the large-flowered Grevilleas bloom year-round here, Grevillea lavandulacea 'Penola' blooms for a few months beginning in winter.  The blooms are small but profuse.

I planted 3 Hippeastrum papilio bulbs in a hanging basket in November.  Two of the bulbs produced bloom stalks.  (I think the third was planted too high.)  After  they've finished flowering, my plan is to transplant the bulbs to a bed outside our living room window.  I was successful in getting the bulbs to naturalize in my former garden and I'm hoping they'll appreciate this spot, where they'll be exposed to morning sun.

The colored bracts surrounding central cones of many Leucadendrons do a good job imitating flowers.  I think L. 'Wilson's Wonder' is perhaps the best of the bunch.  The green bracts turn yellow and, with sufficient sun exposure, eventually take on a pink tinge.  Last week's tree trimming provided this plant the increased sun exposure it needed to get its pink on.

After resting for several months from late summer through fall, all the Osteospermums are waking up.  While I love them all, this one, O. 'Summertime Sweet Kardinal', with its magenta flowers, is producing the most noticeable flush of bloom.

For more January bloom favorites, visit Chloris at The Blooming Garden.

Early this morning before the moon set, my husband and I got up to view the Super Blue Blood Moon.  The lunar eclipse that accompanied the supermoon began at 4:51am PST.  We were concerned that our view might be spoiled by the hills to the west of us as the moon dipped lower in the sky.  Added to that complication is the fact that, when it comes to taking nighttime photos, I've no idea of what I'm doing.  However, I did get one half-way decent photo at 5:22am before the moon disappeared from our viewing spot in the front driveway.

This is the moon setting over a house above the main road.  The large white structure always makes me think of city hall but it's a private home.  The orange cast to the moon's color, which gives it its name of "blood moon," is an effect of the eclipse.

And, since I was up, here's a bonus sunrise shot from the backyard garden:

The blood moon shot is my Wednesday Vignette.  For more Wednesday Vignettes, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.


All material © 2012-2018 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Plants with Great Foliage and Flowers (Foliage Follow-up)

Many times, spring peaks in March here.  As is the case this year, temperatures can take a dramatic upswing, causing everything to bloom seemingly at once.  Remarkably, this is when I most appreciate the foliage in my garden.  Foliage gives the eye a place to rest when brightly colored flowers all seem to scream for attention.  Foliage also gives the garden the structure it needs to ground all that floral chaos.

While I tend to think of plant selections in terms of foliage versus flowers, there are a large number of plants in my garden that offer both.  For this month's Foliage Follow-up post hosted by Pam at Digging, I thought I'd feature some of the foliage plants I treasure in my garden for also offering floral interest, albeit not during the early spring floral fest.

Arthropodium cirratum (aka Renga Lily) is a graceful foliage plant for dry shade areas.  It usually blooms in late spring/early summer, producing beautiful sprays of white flowers with yellow and purple stamens.

Callistemon 'Cane's Hybrid' is glorious when it produces flushes of delicate coral-pink bottle-brush blooms at intervals during the course of the year but its vase-like structure and silvery new growth make it a standout any time

Crassula multicava (aka Fairy Crassula) is new to my garden but I've long admired the sprays of tiny flowers the plants produce in winter.  Here, the undersides of the leaves offer an echo of the Cuphea 'Starfire Pink''s flowers above.

Echium candicans 'Star of Madiera' is already getting ready to produce its blue bloom spires but its variegated foliage makes it a focal point in my garden all year

Pelargonium 'Oldbury Duet' offers much the same effect as Echium 'Star of Madiera' albeit on a smaller scale.  Its variegated foliage is very attractive but so are its maroon and pink flowers.

Plectranthus ciliatus 'Zulu Wonder' offers quilted green leaves with purple veins and underside color all year but in fall, when there's not much else in bloom here, it bears delicate lavender flowers

Prostanthera ovalifolia 'Variegata' is a gorgeous, if short-lived, shrub with scented foliage that also flowers

I have LOTS of rosemary but Rosmarinus 'Gold Dust' (shown here in front of yellow-flowered Bulbine frutescens) is my favorite.  Its medium blue flowers are an added bonus.

I haven't actually seen Yucca 'Bright Star' bloom in my own garden but the flowers I've seen in photos are impressive

There's another group of foliage plants with flowers that I can take or leave.  The flowers are fine but, if the plants don't bloom, it's really not an issue in my view.

Clockwise from the upper left, this group includes: Melianthus major, which has never bloomed in my garden; Aeonium haworthii 'Kiwi', which produces small flower stems, leading to the plant's decline; Abelia 'Kaleidoscope', better know for its bright variegated foliage than its white, bell-shaped flowers; Agave attenuata, which produces an impressive "foxtail" bloom when mature, then dies; Correa 'Wyn's Wonder' with tiny coral pink flowers that are often hidden by the foliage; Pelargonium peltatum (aka peppermint geranium), another plant producing flowers almost lost within the foliage; and the green and lemon-lime forms of Santolina virens, which produce small yellow button-like flowers

And finally, there are some foliage plants that I like best without their flowers.

From the left, these include: Aeonium arboreum, the bright yellow flowers of which can be more freaky than decorative; Coleonema pulchellum 'Sunset Gold', which produces tiny pale-pink flowers that strike me as being at odds with the strong gold foliage; and Senecio vitalis, whose dusty white blooms I usually cut off when they appear

For a look at other plants offering fabulous foliage, visit Pam at Digging.

All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party