the San Luis Obispo botanical garden, which in the future will be 150 acres on the hill leading to Eagle Peak west of Cal Poly SLO. The current garden is 2.5 acres., and is mostly California natives.
the future vision of the San Luis Obispo botanical garden. The preview garden is in the lower left corner.
this is the edible garden. Creative use of cinder blocks...
the new SLO nature center with a seasonal cattail marsh just sprouting
hummingbird sage--smells wonderful!
English lavender
California buckwheat
a view of the hillside that will oneday be the completed SLO botanical garden.
a view of one of the "Morros" which are a chain of extinct volcanoes that end at the coast at Morro Rock
another Morro
Cal Poly SLO also has a 5 acre arboretum, but it wasn't open on Sundays.
here is the prsion-like dorm compound at Cal Poly SLO
the water treatment site at Cal Poly SLO
Coyote Point park in SF bay, south of SF Intl. Airport
The SF Botanical gardens are 34 acres opened in 1940 located within the much-larger Golden Gate Park. The garden has areas devoted to plants of California, the Redwoods, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Austalia, SE Asia and South America.
I only took pictures in the California and Redwoods sections...the yellow flowers are flannel-busk, aka fremontia
Monterey Pines
milkweed
lilac
a Torrey Pine, native to San Diego
another lilac
this is the redwood section of the SF botanical garden
mallow
woolly blue curls--best smelling plant in the sagebrush community
black sage
Next, I checked out Strawberry Creek park in Berkeley, which is a restored creek that was in the middle of an old railroad yard. The park is a block south of University Ave. and a few blocks east of San Pablo Ave. Before visiting, I strongly recommend visiting the Indian buffet restaurant at 8th and University ave. just east of the 80 freeway offramp. Awesome! http://www.indiachaatandsweets.com/
the community garden at Strawberry creek park
this willow tree was trying to take over the sidewalk
Next stop: Tilden Park in the hills east of Berkeley
looking west at Oakland
The Wildcat Canyon botanical gardens at Tilden Park are simply amazing and my photos don't do the place justice. The 10 acre garden features all of the plant zones of California.
this is the so-calif zone
yerba santa, which smells kind of like strawberries...http://www.highsierraadventures.com/plants/yerba_santa.htm , or http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&ei=KGcNS7zMGILKswOhudmaAw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=Eriodictyon+crassifolium&spell=1&start=0
sticky monkey flower
lupine
the flowers look like clarkia
in the San Franciscan section--this is the Lombard Street trail
the botanical garden's trails run on both sides of Putah Creek, which thru the university looks pretty stagnant...
a prostrate form of coastal sagebrush growing in a two foot tall mound
the redwood grove
some water propaganda I saw in Coalinga on the way home (200 miles from L.A.) This group wants more water from the Sacramento River delta sent to the south, ostensibly for farming (wink-wink!)
