Patty and I visited the San Antonio Botanical
Gardens Sat. to attend Mary Irish's program on
Agaves and Yuccas. Mary worked at the
Phoenix Botanical Gardens for 11 years and has
written quite a few books on desert plants. Some were written with her husband Gary. I
counted about 10 titles on Amazon. There is no doubt she knows her stuff and her
two hour presentation with handouts and almost a
100 slides was VERY informative, lively and entertaining! She is
now the plant sale director for SABG. If you ever get
a chance to attend one of her programs do
go.

Mary ...

After the program we took a spin around the
gardens. No visiting dinosaurs to surprise us this
time, but here are some of the things that jumped
out visually for me.

I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful Althea ...

What I was most impressed by was the tree form. Is
this the form they will grow to with age? I've only
see them as an upright bush ...

The rose garden was looking very good ...

The daylily beds, which are maintained by the local daylily society, were in full bloom ...

The terra cotta colors and the BLUE door on the cottage got my wheels turning. Although it doesn't need painting I would love to see our storeroom in these colors. I'm sure Bob would say, "Have at it." ... :-)

The bed in front of the cottage blended perfectly in choice plants, form and color ...

Where does one get the blue glass mulch? Maybe Joey, who works there, can find out ...

I was especially impressed in how the succulent wall is coming along ...

If we don't have a wall we could stack some rocks and plant in them. That's going to be my next project. (I'll think about painting the store room later :-)

The sight and scent of these lilies were out of this world. I thought about you Plantmaven Kathy ...

When driving into the gardens we noticed a sign that a Daylily Show and Sale was in progress at the Garden Center next door so after our tour of the gardens we headed over there.

Here's a couple of photos from the winner's table. The flowers were huge -- bigger than my hand ...

We very much enjoyed the exquisite arrangements using daylilies. This is just a small sample ...

They had daylily plants and fans for sale at reasonable prices and were giving away seeds. We both took seeds that had been hyridized by one of the participants. It will be fun to see what we get. They will bloom their second year.

This is a nice time to visit the gardens. Lots is blooming and there is always a breeze there.