We’ve tried to make a weekly ritual of biking to the Jardin Botanique Sunday mornings for a coffee in their café and a wander around the gardens. As mentioned before, our Accès Montréal card gives us free access to the outdoor (best) parts of the garden.
Weekly visits reveal the changing of the season, and show us just how diligent the gardeners are in keeping the place pristine. This last weekend, Manon pointed out the exquisite artistry in the arrangements of the demonstration garden beds, and how perfectly maintained they are.
Frequent visits also introduce me to plants I don’t know from Southern California. I mentioned peonies before. This month’s discovery was Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos). The flowers are huge and showy and reminiscent of their tropical hibiscus relatives. Weirdly, this plant is a northern California native and supposedly is grown all over, so either I just haven’t been paying attention, or these cultivars have been hybridized into something dramatically different.
It may not be obvious from these pictures, but those flowers are easily 10″-14″ (25-35cm) across. And that goth one is an astonishing, uncapturable deep red.
One reply on “Rose Mallow”
Wow, that big?!