This and That - May 24, 2105

I'm kind of stuck about what to write at the moment so I'll just send you some pretty pictures from Red Butte Garden so far this year and maybe some random thoughts and call it good. We have had a LOT of rain this month and so the flowers are looking great. Right now it's the irises that are stealing the show.

At the moment, these peach colored ones are my favorites

Red Butte Garden - end of May 2012

I have left Salt Lake City in order to spend the summer in the Black Hills, but before I left, I put in a lot of hours doing gardening at Red Butte. I will miss going there, but I'll be able to return in August. Meanwhile here are some pictures of how things looked during the last couple of weeks in May.

Daffodils were gone. We had spent a lot of time deadheading the spent flowers, and when I left, we were beginning to cut back the foliage which was starting to look crummy. Instead of daffodils we had irises.

White irises.

The always classic purple ones.

All yellow ones.

Bi-color yellow ones.

Orange ones.

Bronze-red ones

And my very favorite pink ones.

The fragrance garden was looking filled in and lovely.

But I know it will look quite different when I return, because we did a lot of planting in here, and I know that much of what you see is destined to be torn up pretty soon (most of what you see here that's yellow may already be gone, for example.)

We also got the herb garden all planted, but it still had some growing up to do to fill in the spaces.

Roses were beginning to show up.

These are in the amphitheater where the concerts are held. Concerts began last weekend.

I was surprised to find this beauty.

But these are just the best because they are an old fashioned variety that still has the most beautiful fragrance. It's named 'Souvenir de Philemon Crochet'. When it emerges, it has a pink blush to it that eventually fades so the bloom ends up being all white.

I can't have too many photos of it. I hope it will remain in bloom a long time. My friend Layne will see that all the roses get deadheaded while I'm gone so that they will continue to bloom all summer.

But I have to say that my latest favorites that were doing well just as I was leaving were the columbines.

There were lots of lovely yellow ones.

And finally the classic blue ones, that state flower of Colorado...one of my favorite places to have lived in.

That's it for now. Next time around I imagine you will see lots of rose photos. Don't forget to go visit the garden this summer and see what I will miss in June and July.

Red Butte Garden Ready for Winter

I walked at Red Butte last weekend, checking out all my gardens. A lot was all torn up, not looking that good, ready for winter.

Here's part of the rose garden, for example. You can see there is some snow that has stayed because of the elevation that's higher than the city.

Right now you have to find the beauty in the shapes and textures.

Many grasses still look good.

The hardscapes and art are always lovely.

 And the vistas are mighty fine, as usual.

I was fascinated by the look of the roses blossoms that had frozen on the plants. We did not cut off all the flowers because that encourages new growth which we did not want towards the end of October, so there were plenty of these really interesting rose flowers to check out.

Some of the red roses really retained good color.

There WAS color throughout. Some yellow things,

the evergreens, of course, (and talk about interesting shapes and textures ...look at the cones here)

but the predominant color was red. Red leaves,

red berries,

red branches

red bushes,

red thorns on roses. This IS Utah, after all, the red state in so many ways.

The pond was frozen, the geese gone.

Even though it's not exciting right now, I still love to spend time there.

There's always something interesting to see.

Red Butte Garden in Early October

Folks at Red Butte Garden have decided that we will set some kind of record for the number of spring blooming bulbs. To that end we are now planting 100,000 of them. That's about all we are doing, sitting on the ground planting bulbs. Sometimes we do get up and hack things to the ground (aka cutting back perennials for the winter & throwing away spent annuals). These activities do not make for good photos.

Before we started all this, I did take some photos of the lovely things that were happening in early October. We are no longer deadheading roses, but there were plenty that were at their height in early October, especially yellow ones.

Thought that many of the rose blooms were especially large.

We have some special fall flowers like colchicum.

I always love the grasses,

and many have changed color for fall.

The red garden was looking pretty good.

And the four season garden is fine in this season as usual ... notice the beautiful grass.

There were some early signs of autumn color,

although only a few trees had actually turned colors.

Here are some more grasses.

It's hard to resist taking photos of the roses.

There were just so many beautiful plants.

I could go on forever, but I won't.  Well one more....

Welcome to Red Butte Garden. Autumn is a great time to visit.

Red Butte in August

It's time for an update about what's looking good at Red Butte Garden. The short answer is everything. Roses are the big draw right now.

I'm having a lot of trouble , as I was with the daffodils, in selecting my favorites.

Maybe this.

It's hard to resist the yellow ones.

But there are so many sweet pink ones.

Or the multi colored ones. Red and yellow isn't usually a combination that works well, but check these out.

These orange ones are right by the main entrance and my friend Layne takes great care of them.

Here are some orange ones in the new rose garden.

Oh, I just can't decide.

But I have been spending whole days, like today for example, deadheading roses to make them all look the best.
We are mostly doing deadheading, a bit of weeding (in many areas we don't really find that many weeds right now), tidying up, and a bit of cutting back.

We have cut back a lot of lavender because the heads are all dry right now. We probably will get another  round of flowers.

I chopped back the thyme here along the walkway one day.

Here are the day lillies I tidied up one morning.

Speaking of day lillies, we still have a few in bloom.

I filled a big pop-up container with brown leaves from these Beverly Sills irises. It's a good thing the flowers are so gorgeous or else I would have been inclined towards a scorched earth policy here.

But here's why you should come for a visit right now. This view of the four season garden is just the best.

The fragrance garden really does look like a meadow.

We've got flowers everywhere.

I've been told the name of this beaded plant, but I can't seem to remember the name. Maybe you know.

These smoke bushes are so cool looking.

I like these almost black scabiosas.

Speaking of black, these peppers just sparkle in the sun. I'm told they are REALLY REALLY HOT to eat so I probably won't ever try them out.

And I love these bi-colored lemons.
So if you're in town, please come to walk in the garden. There's so much to see.