Flowers, Trees and Prayer Flags

 

Last week I took you to the Spirit Guides exhibition at the Sonoma Botanical Garden. Most of the colorful sculptures are displayed along the California Oaks Trail where a California Native Garden had also been created. But this botanical garden had so much more to offer.

The California Oaks Trail leads right into the "heart" of the garden which is focused on plants from Asia. As soon as you enter the Asian part, you find yourself in beautiful wooded areas with lots of shade and you feel a drop in temperature which is very welcome on those warm and hot summer days.

We were extremely lucky that the Emmenopterys henryi tree, native to China, was in bloom. We first only saw its display of creamy-white leaves.

But getting closer, we noticed the actual flowers. This tree is very rare and near-threatened in the wild. While it may produce a few flowers some years, a big bloom like this one is unusual. The last time that this tree bloomed "bigly" was in 2022. The creamy-white flowers have a sweet jasmine-like scent.

Being in an Asian garden, you would expect an arched bridge.

Beautiful art sculptures of birds could be found in the dense foliage.

I especially liked the base of this tree, a Père David's Maple (Acer davidii).

The pictures you see today are actually from two visits to the botanical garden, because a week after I was there with Liz, I took the Geek there as well. The two of us walked a little bit further than I did with Liz, and we decided to take the short, but steep climb to the summit. 

We had to go through this beautiful conifer tunnel.

There is a prayer flag display at the summit. When I was here the very first time - 2010 or 2011, when it was still called Quarryhill Garden - the prayer flags had already been here, and some of them showed their age.

It's a beautiful quiet spot, and thankfully there was a bench where the Geek and I took a short rest and enjoyed the beautiful view over the Valley of the Moon. Right across from us is Jack London State Historic Park, another favorite place of mine.

Back in the woods I was delighted by all the beautiful flowers and berries.

Some kind of magnolia (there wasn't a sign and I wasn't able to find out what kind of magnolia this is),

a viburnum, I think, maybe Viburnum dilatatum, but I'm not sure,

and Fringed Pink (Dianthus superbus).

Then we discovered something very interesting, and I think Erika aka BioArtGal will like this. A tree nest for honeybees!

Aren't these flowers beautiful? I have no idea what exactly they are, so Liz and I decided to call them "tall water lilies".

Of course, there were "normal" water lilies as well. When Liz and I were there they covered the pond, but a week later they were all gone. I guess they have become too invasive and the garden staff had decided to remove them.

Above the lower pond we saw Himalayan Gloxinia (Incarvillea arguta) and if you look closely, you can see an Anna's Hummingbird in the lower left corner - I blends into the green of the foliage behind it. There were so many hummingbirds flitting around this flower.

One flower that shouldn't be missed in an Asian garden is the Japanese Anemone (Eriocapitella x hybrida). They are stunning, but can get quite invasive. However, they do fit into this kind of garden.

These are my flower faces for Nicole's Friday Face Off today.