Easter Inspiration: Proteaceae

Spring is here and Easter is just days away! Out of all the holidays, Easter has the most vibrant seasonal proteas to choose from. There's just something about this stunning family of flowers that makes my heart swoon and skip a beat.

So, get ready! After filling Easter baskets and planning the ultimate egg hunt, you'll want to create a festive protea centerpiece of your own. And springtime offers the most abundant array of proteaceae like Leucospermum, Leucadendron, Banksia, Isopogon, Protea and textural Grevillea flowers + foliage. Some of my favorite designs don't require fancy containers, utilizing a galvanized bucket, wicker basket, ceramic bowl or wooden box will suffice when you have such eye-catching blooms to showcase. And you can use your centerpiece as inspiration for your table settings and other floral arrangements on display around your home.

The best part? Proteas make great ‘leftovers’ as they will last for weeks after the celebration, and many will dry beautifully... so they can be enjoyed for years. To fully round out your Easter decor, get inspired by these arrangements.

Farm Tour: The San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society

Every September, we commemorate the start of gardening season with a bountiful nursery, farm tours and protea workshops. Autumn is the best time of the year to plant perennials, shrubs and even seeds. Plants established in the fall grow faster in the spring and require less water when summer comes.

This month, we opened our farm gate and welcomed the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society (SDCSS). This passionate group of hobbyists, researchers, and enthusiasts all share a common interest and appreciation for the uniqueness and beauty of plants. The SDCSS ‘s mission is to promote knowledge, study and interest in cacti and succulent plants through educational programs, public exhibits, a public garden, and special events.

Given the abundance of South African and Australian plants being grown here in San Diego County, having this group of 50 tour the farm and experience our day to day activities seemed like a natural fit. With the perfect mix of Proteaceae, we knew it would be the just the place for them to capture some garden inspiration.

Many thanks to the SDCSS for visiting and helping us celebrate a new season and all things protea. The love of plants is something we all share together.

Flower News: Octobers’s Articles and Blogs of Interest from Around the World

October Tree of the Month: Fire-Wheel Tree

“Fire-wheel Tree” may seem like a strange name for a tree, until you see its fiery-red, circular-shaped, flower clusters (called umbels), which look like flaming bicycle wheels!

3-inch long flowers are the “spokes” of each wheel (6 to 20 flowers per umbel); these radiate out from the umbel’s central “hub” and bear at their ends (at the “rim”) globular yellow tips where the floral organs are located. The flowering time is usually in autumn but can occur sporadically at other times of the year. The nectar is wonderfully sweet - attracting hungry moths for pollination.

Read more here.
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Cal Poly students begin harvesting flowers
to decorate school’s 2019 Rose Parade float

Construction on the Cal Poly Rose Parade float is well underway. But this past week, work got started on another — perhaps more subtle — aspect of the float: harvesting the flowers that will decorate this year’s entry.

Students grow and harvest a portion of the plants from the on-campus Rose Float flower fields. These include marigolds, strawflower and statice, which will be used as colorful decorations.

Read more here.
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7 Must-Try Floral Techniques to add Beauty
with Branches

Autumn is awesome with possibilities for adding seasonal materials to your floral arrangements.

But there’s more to creating captivating fall flower designs than just incorporating the colors and textures of the season.

Adding a linear element like branches allows you to expand the space of a floral composition. You’re adding dimension while creating a visual connection to the outdoors.

Here are seven techniques (plus a twig-tree project from Smithers-Oasis Floral Design Director Kevin Ylvisaker AIFD, PFCI you can try) that will enable you to turn twigs and branches into seasonal beauty your customers will want to bring indoors.

Read more here.
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Rose Parade efforts in full swing

Plans for the first two Certified CA Grown entries at the 2019 Tournament of Roses Parade are already underway, and the ramp up to the New Year’s Day tradition has begun.

The entries from Cal Poly Universities and FTD Companies Inc. – the first to announce so far – will both feature CA Grown flowers and foliage. Additional CA Grown entries will be announced in coming weeks, including a number of equine entries.

Read more here.

Protea Madiba

Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do. - Nelson Mandela

The true hero of South Africa. The man who fought for equal rights for all and a country that stands ‘United as One’. Nelson Mandela is one of the most influential, respected and loved men in South Africa. And, did you know he has made such an impact on South Africa and has such a legacy that he has a Protea named after him? South Africa’s national flower is the King Protea and there is a special vibrant red variety that is absolutely striking, and known to many by Mandela’s tribe name, Madiba.

Farm Tour: San Diego Gardener

Heeding the call of the San Diego Gardener, we opened our farm gate for the second year in a row to this enthusiastic group of passionate gardeners. With 2,150 plant species, San Diego County has more species of plants than any county in the contiguous United States. The geography of the county ranging from salt marshes, lagoons, coastal sage scrub, grasslands, chaparral, oak woodlands, stream sides, mixed conifer forests, freshwater marshes and meadows, to desert makes gardening here fascinating and complex. The San Diego Gardener is dedicated to educating residents about gardening in this rich horticulture environment through their Facebook Page discussions, activities, and events.

Given the abundance of South African and Australian flowers and foliage being grown here in San Diego County, having this group of over 75 tour the farm and experience our day to day activities is a natural fit. With the perfect mix of Proteaceae, we knew it would be the just the place for them to capture some garden inspiration.

Cape Floral Kingdom

The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest of all floral kingdoms and is the only one to fall completely inside the borders of a single country.

It occupies about 90,000 square kilometers - that's only 0.04% of the total surface area of the Earth - yet it contains 9000 species of flowering plants - that's about 3% of the Earth's species.

Furthermore, two out of three of the Cape Floral Kingdom species are endemic, that means they occur nowhere else on earth. The highest level of endemism in the world.

What is a Floral Kingdom?

Floral Kingdoms are the largest natural units that can be determined for flowering plants. Regions that share the same combination of plant families form part of the same Floral Kingdom.

There are six Floral Kingdoms in the world: Australian, Antarctic, Cape, Holarctic, Neotropical and Palaeotropical.

The Cape Floral Kingdom is a World Heritage Site.

In Celebration of Earth Day

On Saturday, April 15 at Alta Vista Botanical Gardens, we celebrated the Earth and learned how to be more mindful of taking care of this planet we all call home. Resendiz Brothers was just one of several vendors who joined in on the fun during the gardens’ annual Earth Day Festival. It was a family friendly event that included: children’s activities, plant and pottery sales, music and entertainment, eco-exhibitors, artists, a Lions Club BBQ and guest speakers… including our favorite farmer - “Mel”. It was wonderful day in the garden, inspiring us all to be more diligent in taking care of our environment and the places that sustain life for all.

New in the Field: Grandicolor

Our fields are looking a little more colorful these days thanks to ‘Grandicolor’, a new hybrid protea from Australia. This beautiful cultivar is a combination of P. grandiceps and P. aurea, a very unusual and unique cross to say the least. Its greenish-cream bracts, which deepen to peach at the base, have a delicate pinkish rim and conspicuous hairs like the grandiceps and surround rusty-red centers. Grandicolor produces dainty, petite blooms off and on from autumn through spring. The egg-shape foliage is small and leathery with a silvery-green hue and the stems straight and upright like the aurea.

From our field to the vase Grandicolor lives up to its name!