Nathan Smith’s Garden Notes

I was up in the San Francisco Bay area last week for a meeting of APLD (Association of Professional Landscape Designers) and to visit friends. UC Botanical Garden Horticulturist Meghan Ray and husband Eric Anderson kindly hosted me a day and took me to see the recent installation by green wall guru Patrick Blanc at the Drew School in San Francisco. It’s a remarkable installation and features a palette of mostly California native plants. I especially liked the diagonal sweeps of blue fescues and monkeyflowers.  There were a few plants I was surprised to see, including Fremontodendron in the upper reaches of the wall.