"It's winter! What's blooming in your garden?
Annie Urquhart: Growing chard, spinach and herbs. Started a hydroponics garden, with tomatoes and peppers
Russel Ray: Aeoniums, bougainvilleas, and kalanchoes.
Jim Bishop: Aloes!
Lorie Johansen: Aloes in their glory
Charlotte Getz: In my yard in Encinitas now blooming are varieties of leucadendron, grevilleas, wax flowers and yellow euryops daisies. That’s it for now. Roses are cut back and fruit trees are dormant and have had two sprayings with copper fungicide to prevent leaf curl and other diseases when the trees leaf out in a month or two.
Cathy Tykla: Who would have thought after this dry year.... but my jade is going off. Loads of pinkish white flowers are all over the yard in Escondido!
Linda Bresler: Lots of plants are blooming in my garden right now. I live in northern Escondido. Among the plants are bougainvilleas, Cape honeysuckle, grevilleas, some Tecoma stans, Natal plum, Polygala (Sweet Pea Shrub), and Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia). Among the succulents are aloes, Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi, Kalanchoe luciae (Paddle Plant), Crassula ‘Campfire’, and the regular jade plants (Crassula ovata). Daffodil bulbs are also blooming now.
Marilyn Wilson: has loads of grevilleas, waxflowers, succulents and poinsettias blooming. (You never know when you'll need a bouquet, no matter what time of year it is.)
Stephen Zolezzi: Another advantage of having succulents and cacti in the garden are the blooms this time of the year—aloes are the star of the garden!
Lisa Bellora: Purple lantana, bird of paradise, Grevillea ‘Long John’, Grevillea ‘Superb’, paperwhites, hibiscus (a 50+ year old plant), Mexican marigold (Tagetes), and euryops. We inherited many of these plants when we moved into our 1956 home 1.5 years ago.
Madhuri Jarwala: Blooming in my garden: birds of paradise, ivy geraniums, lantana, jade, rosemary, and African daisies.
William Skimina: Acacia dealbata, Aloe capitata, and Agave attenuata. The Aloe cameroni will be blooming in few days or week.
Connie Beck: The 15' tall Cup of Gold (Solanum maximum) outside my bathroom window is covered with huge blossoms. It's a very cheerful vista on these cold grey mornings!
Marilyn Guidroz: Winter bloomers are a delight in the Southern California garden! With the winter rains this year my garden is colorful indeed. What is blooming right now? The lovely Salvia greggii in reds and purple, the fragrant Rosmarinus 'Prostratus' in light blue, the bold Echium candicans in brilliant violet, the snowy white of the reliable Crassula ovata, and my all-time favorite: the bright orange and purple of the Strelitzia reginae. Happy gardening!
Harold Nelson: Beautiful camellias that are rosy red and covering the bush
Susi Torre Bueno: One of the reasons I moved to California from the East Coast was so that I could garden and enjoy the garden all year. That's impossible to do in New York City, where I'm from, when it is 19 degrees and there is snow on the ground. As I write this, January 14, 2019, here's what's blooming in my low-water garden: Aloes (many species and cultivars)
Abutilon 'Pink Supreme' (won at a SDHS meeting in 2008. It has bloomed almost every month for the last 10 years with virtually no care).
Abutilon palmeri (native, blooms almost all year) Agave attenuata Aloysia virgata Arctostaphylos 'Sunset' Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Gold' (blooms all year, food for butterflies, but can self-seed too much) Bougainvillea 'Orange Ice', 'Blueberry Ice', 'Purple Queen' (blooms all year) Brugmansia cultivars (which bloom on and off all year) Bulbine frutescens 'Hallmark' Calliandra haematocephala & C. californica & C. eriophylla & C. surinamensis (blooms all year) Cordia boissieri (blooms most of the year) Crassula species (several) Cyclamen (some nicely-scented white ones have been in bloom almost non-stop for 10 years) Echeveria pulvinata 'Frosty' Epidendrum ibaguense (a violet-flowered reed stem orchid, blooms all year with virtually no care) Gerbera hybrida (blooms on and off all year) Gomphrena decumbens & Gomphrena pulchella 'Fireworks' (blooms almost all year) Heliotrope (white) Iochroma cyaneum 'Royal Blue' & I. fuchsioides (blooms most of the year) Iris 'Ruth's Love' (reblooms on and off all year) Iris unguicularis (blooms fall to spring) Jordaaniella dubia Justicia fulvicoma (fall through winter) & J. spicigera (blooms all year) Kalanchoe marnieriana & K. manginii Lantana (several colors, planted by the birds, bloom pretty much all year) Moraea polystachya Narcissus 'Grand Soleil d'Or' Oscularia caulescens Pandorea jasminoides (2 cultivars of this pink-flowered vine bloom nearly non-stop with almost no care) Penstemon 'Garnet' Plectranthus neochilus (deters gophers) Poinsettia (colors up from late October through March or longer) Polygala virgata (blooms most of the year) Poinsettia (colors up from late October through March or longer)
Rosemary (4 cultivars bloom all year) Salvia 'Indigo Spires' & S. discolor & S. sagittata & S. leucantha & S. flocculosa 'Curtis Blue' (these all bloom almost all year), Salvia madrensis (fall through winter) Sedums (many species and cultivars) Senecio jacobsenii & S. mandraliscae (but I don't like the flowers and cut them off; the dead flowers are very messy if left on the plant) Sphaeralcea ambigua (native, blooms most of the year) Tecoma stans 'Yellow Queen' (blooms on and off all year), T. 'Orange Jubilee' (non-stop bloom) Teucrium fruticans (2 cultivars bloom much of the year) Thunbergia alata 'Spanish Eyes'
William Van Dusen: Two things are really standing out: paperwhites and Mexican sunflowers are spreading themselves everywhere and in full bloom. And let’s not forget the uninvited, stinging nettles.
Cindy Sparks Bruecks: My volunteer lettuce is going crazy, coming up in the chunky mulch I spread all over my pathways. Winter rain is a real blessing. In addition, my Queen's tears is in bloom. The rest are producing food for us to eat.
Sharon Lee: Camellias, camellias camellias....tiny and huge....pink, red, white, pale yellow, variegated and sometimes fragrant. They are so elegant and add lots of color to your garden in the winter. Another one of my winter bloomers is the Dombeya wallichii. It reminds me of an upside down, pink, hanging hydrangea. 92075