Early Spring in Mendocino Coast Botantical Garden

I had to go back to the wonderful Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden before I left. I ended up taking off a day in order to get  good light for photographs.

The magnolias, rhododendrons, azaleas, jonquils were in bloom. The cacti and succulents were amazing and the heather was just as spectacular as it was last time.

This blog will be going up a few days after I arrived at Malheur NWR.  I got here safely mid afternoon of February 28.  I'll be telling you the story of my trip and early days there in the next few blogs. And so much is happening that I'll have to blog a little more often.

Winter Visit to the Mendocino Coast Botantical Garden

When I checked the parks and gardens near where I was in Fort Bragg, CA on my visit to the coast, I found I was very near a botanical garden,  I love them and often visit them with my friend, Natalie.  Last year we even took a vacation to visit several gardens including the Missouri Botanical Garden, a  definite must-see one.

As soon as I entered the parking lot, I was immediately blown away by the landscaping. Even in winter, there was lots of excitement and textural interest from mostly grasses and shrubs. A few  shrubs were blooming wildly. I decided it was probably worth a few hours of my time to visit the garden proper.  I took my little camera and immediately started taking pictures. After several minutes, I got to the entrance and paid $10 for my ticket to visit.

The docent gave me a map of the gardens and told me that they have collections of camellias, rhododendrons, including tender scented ones from cloud forests, old hybrid ones, and a collection of ones that grow well locally.  Other collections include the heath/heather collection, fuchsias, dahlias, begonias, native plants and a vegetable garden/orchid. They also have a wonderful little nursery with lots of different plants to sell.  And the grounds themselves are a wonderful mix of forest, coastal plain, and formal gardens. 

These pictures were taken in the parking lot.

The original forested area has been left and enhanced with understory shrubs and ferns. It makes for a serene time on this trail.

The rhododendron garden is in the shade of trees as well as out in the open more. Only a few of them had any blooms.

 

 
 I was totally blown away by the heather garden. I kept coming back from different angles and falling in love and lust all over again. The landscaping is just so perfect with the color combinations and the soft mounds undulating through the garden. And I loved the subtle changes in textures here.

 

There is a lot of sculptures in the garden. They are all for sale.

The Garden is currently building a conifer collection. I loved these "candles".

 

This garden is famous for it's Camilla collections.  Right now, that beauty is only a promise.

They have a wonderful succulent garden here. I was totally unable to do it justice.

And the perennial garden is also totally off the wall.

The overriding theme of this garden was texture.  It was everywhere I looked. Almost no plants were alone but with plants that complemented their color and texture.

Another important collection is their fuchsias.  I was wowed by a shrub at least three and a half feet high and five feet across. There were many other large fuchsias there.  Obviously the ones I use to buy in the fall and throw out in the spring were babies struggling for life in a hostile environment.

 I was charmed by the children's garden. These eggs, big enough to hold a two year old human hatchling, were my favorites, but they had a native teepee, a sandbox, and a place to hunt for dragonflies among other fun places to be.

I heard and saw robins all day but this one plopped down on a bench just in front of me and posed.  So I had to take his picture.  Over 150 species have been documented here.

This little garden shed was also charming. It is near the vegetable garden and apple orchid. The original owners grew apples and potatoes here. The garden was mostly dormant but had some beautiful greens growing. And the texture theme is carried out here as well.

After you walk out through the forest, you come to the coastal plain and get to see this view.  I could have stayed here for hours watching the waves.  In fact, I shot bursts of the waves coming in to catch the best sprays.  Then I spent more hours deleting most of them.

Here is the map of the gardens. Notice the different habitats here. The original backbone of the land is intact and helps set the structure of the garden. And many of the changes to the land are from many years ago, so appear part of the normal California flora.

I ended up staying here until the garden closed at 4:30P.  I'm definitely going back just before I leave to get another garden fix. I ran two cameras out of batteries and want to go back with my macro lens for better pictures. And I'm advising that this garden should be on your top 100 gardens to visit before you die.

The staff are also starting a collections of plants native to this area of California. This will be a great resource to people wanting to grow natives and for people wanting to learn the names of the plants they see in the natural areas.

 
And there's MORE!  This is a great whale watching site and should be wonderful in February.

Going to the Coast

As I set off before dawn last Wednesday, a song kept going through my head, over the mountains and through the woods, to the coast I go.  I had decided to follow Hwy. 20 further than I had made it the last time I set out that way, and to just see what I could see. I had two cameras and my binoculars and even my scope.  I planned to just stop whenever something interested me but had no particular destination.

As I began to climb through the foothills, dawn broke behind me while the moon seemed to be bouncing up and down and to the right and the left as I wound up and down the mountains.

I managed to not stop until I was near the north of Clear Lake. I stopped to look for birds but only found one beautiful image of frost  This was when I noticed I had left my jacket home.  However I had a spare jacket in my backpack and a heavy shirt on so I was OK.

I stopped to check out the historical district of a tiny town called Upper Lake. It was very colorful and even had decorative hitching posts outside some of the buildings.

I admired this decoration on top of an antiques store.


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This basket looked very colorful.  But the color is coming from the geranium leaves. This area was all frosted over when I was driving through so they don't have very many flowers in bloom.

Another interesting place that caught my eye was the Jackson Demonstration Forest.  I was a long way from the coast  on roads that kept me averaging about 45 mph, so I only stopped a few minutes to see what it was all about.  This boiler looking thing mounted on big long redwood logs caught my eye.  I found it was called a steam donkey, but nothing else. I looked it up and found it was a steam driven winch.  A long cable was attached to a fallen tree and then the steam donkey pulled it out to a logging site or to a pick-up point.  The steam donkey could even drag itself to a new location. It was anchored to a big tree or other anchor and then pulled itself toward the anchor.

When I  got to Clear Lake, I stopped a few times to look for ducks. These common mergansers were in a lake west of Clear Lake and very far down the bank from the road.

I had to stop a lot to take pictures of the beautiful views. As I went further west,  the hills were covered with more and more trees.

I saw a sign for Lake Mendocino Recreational Area and went in to find a tiny stream and a closed park. But, this stream  runs into the large, dammed Lake Mendocino.

There were several wineries along the way.  The grape vines added yet another texture to the landscape.

And this old barn was another beautiful texture. The frost was still on the ground and even on moss growing on the old posts and fence slats.

As I traveled west, the land looked like it gets much more rain and has more and more trees until mostly all there is are trees and understory.. The last stretch of the road wound tightly through dark forests. The north side must only get full sunlight in summer. In many places, there wasn't much room for error - there is a mostly a sheer drop on the right side. And the views were to tree-covered mountains.  The driving rule is that the slower driver has to pull off where there is a place to do so. But I also stopped in a lot of the pullouts to check out the views.

Finally, about four hours after I started, I got to Fort Brag.  I had set my GPS to show me parks in the area.  I saw one called Ten Mile Coastal Trail that looked really interesting, so I set my GPS to go there.  But when I got to Fort Brag, I took one more look at the GPS and found that Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden was only a few miles south. So I decided to detour there before heading north to Ten Mile Coastal Trail.

This is one of the pictures I took while still in the parking lot. I was immediately hooked, and went in and paid my $10 dollars. It was now almost  noon but I had lots of daylight left.  I ate a orange before starting out for a quick peek.  That peek lasted through two camera batteries and the rest of the day.

To be continued. 

And on a postscript to the falcated duck story,  I got to spend the whole morning there for the last two days.  The bird is fantastic and comes ever closer and feeds and displays to the oohs and ahs of his adoring audience. But even better, to me, is that six weeks of having a constant human presence from dawn to dusk on the viewing platform, has convinced the birds that people there are no threat and we can now get closer pictures of pintails, gadwalls, cinnamon teals, shovelers, American and Eurasian widgeon and even greater white-fronted geese and snow and Ross's geese than we can from the photo blinds. Today we had a coot coming towards me and another visitor from about twelve feet away.  So hurry up to see the falcated duck and all his friends at and Colusa NWR. .