Verso

When Ben Oki first saw a bonsai tree as a curious youngster of six, he asked his father what bonsai was. "It's something people do when they retire," his father explained. Luckily for the world of horticulture, Oki didn't wait that long to start.

Brandon Tam and Lance Birk know what it's like to drive the 101 Freeway with a truck full of orchids. Last summer, they helped move more than 6,000 orchids from the Santa Barbara home of the late S. Robert Weltz to the greenhouses of The Huntington.

Another post in a series about Mr. Huntington's Garden by the botanical director of The Huntington.

I want to quickly introduce you to one of the beauties of the Fall-planted vegetable garden: Osaka Purple Mustard. This Japanese mustard green has a spicy, wasabi-tinged taste that is great in stir fry

Sweet alyssum is a common flowering plant, easily available in seed or in pony packs at your local nursery. It is usually planted in the fall in Southern California. This is what it looks like today

Forget shamrocks. The best plant at The Huntington on St. Patrick's Day is a bromeliad. At the bottomof the Desert Garden is the giant Puya berteroniana, which amazes us each year at this time with green flowers.

With this posting, I'm beginning an on-going commentary in which I hope to explain the potential mysteries of why change happens (or doesn't) in the gardens, giving fair warning as to what plans and projects are in the offing, and making suggestions as to what corner of the grounds you might wish to explore at the moment.

For months now, we have been looking forward to an unusual exhibition—a display of works created by the Southern California sculptor John Frame. For the better part of five years, Frame has been assembling a body of work that features, at its core, an eclectic cast of fully articulated characters.