David's Berkeley Hills garden, the "final" stop on an unbelievable day

Looking back it's hard to believe that on a Saturday in late March I woke up in Davis, CA (Gerhard's garden) and by 9am I was standing in Max and Justin Cannon's Oakland garden. After that I revisited Ann Nichols garden, stopped by Kipp McMichael's garden (uninvited), and then spent quality time in Marcia Donahue's garden. That's some serious powerhouse garden time right there! But there was one more garden to visit, a garden belonging to David Neumaier, who some of you probably know as slow_boat on Instagram. It took me awhile to realize this David was that David.

Many gardens could have been a letdown after a day spent visiting other gardens of such caliber, but not this one... 

Oh! My first sighting of "the fern"... the earliest Instagram conversation I had with David (in August of '24) was about photos of this fern, an unknown Pleopeltis sp. that was a pass along that may have come from UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. Seeing it in real life my heart was filled with lust (and yes, David sent me home with a chunk).

I moved on...

These first photos were taken in part of the garden that bordered the street, sort of a parking area. Oh that all parking spots were this fabulously planted!

David has been gardening on this piece of land for almost four years now, before that it was under the care of Mat McGrath, founder of Farallon Gardens. See Gerhard's post about the garden when it was Mat's back in 2021 here, and a look at Mat's current garden here.

David has definitely made the garden his, reworking many areas and adding a ton of plants, including 31 palms. Seriously.

There's that fern again!

I love this vignette so much, just look at all those fabulous plants!

This definitely says Bay Area to me...

Moving on (towards the driveway)...

Beschorneria bloom close-up...

I mentioned Mat, the former tenant/gardener here is the founder of Farallon Gardens, but David also works there (you can read more about them both here). Aren't the graphics on their van great?

I've walked down to the end of the driveway now and I'm admiring a planting area off to the side.

Then I turned to walk towards the front door and OMG! Things got really crazy...

Turns out David and I both have a bit of a container collection...

So many blooming tilandsia!

Studying the different plant mounts around the house was a Master Class (there will be more in the second part of my visit)...

Eventually I tore my eyes away from all that and turned back towards the plants in the ground, on the other side of the wooden deck that surrounds the home.

This garden is unique in that the garden actually slopes up from the front of the house, it's great for privacy and for seeing your plants from the house.

Okay, here's where I end the first part of the tour around David's garden. It's not an elegant break, but with 74 photos to share I had to stop somewhere. More on Wednesday!

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All material © 2009-2025 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

What's growing in my crop tanks?

Since I kinda/sorta photographed the driveway crop tanks for my then and now post last Friday (that's a new name I thought of for the stock tanks, and I love it), and this week I wrote about all the edible and "cuttable" crops growing in Linda's garden, well I figured it was time to look at what I'm growing this year in this space just outside our back door...

In the large black pot on the far right (above), basil. A summer without fresh basil isn't really a summer at all.

In the cutting garden tank (one for veg, one for vases) is a crazy assortment of things...

I've never cut a stem from this Russelia equisetiformis for a vase, I wonder how it would do?

I just enjoy it here, since it's not reliably hardy in the garden. Common name, firecracker plant.

I was frustrated some seeds I'd sown in the tank hadn't gone anywhere (more on that below), so when I saw starter plants of these ‘Mermaid Blue’ Lisianthus (Eustoma russellianus) for cheap I thought what the heck, I'll try them! Kris at Late to the Garden Party has been using Lisianthus in her vase combinations for years and I've always been intrigued by them.

What I didn't realize is that I'd bought dwarf Lisianthus. Yep. These plants max out at 8"... that means really small vases.

So it turns out there's a theme at work in my cutting garden tank. Seeds that went nowhere, plants I bought that I didn't realize were dwarf... 

And this! These Zinnia were supposed to be Zinnia elegans 'Queen Orange and Lime'—which look like this. Not mine, mine look like this...

The others were supposed to be Zinnia elegans 'Queen Lime'—which look like this. I had hope, I willed those buds to open into something sweet and varied. 

Nope. This is what I got...

The last flower that I'm waiting on to open is this, SunFill™ Green, a "novel green sunflower"—which is supposed to look like this. My fingers are crossed.

Meanwhile I'm also using this tank as a catch-all for an assortment of sun-lovers that have yet to be planted out in the ground. 

And there are a few of those seeds I mentioned just now sprouting (there were others that got larger and kind of sort of bloomed at about 3-4" tall). They are Moluccella laevis, Bells-of-Ireland, and should be 24-36" tall. Such a dissapointment!

Moving on...

The sarracenia assortment loves the summer sun and heat...

As does this crazy tangle.

I bought two 4" pots of Mexican sour gherkins (Melothria scabra) and they've exploded!

So far I've just been snacking on them while I garden, but soon I'll need to harvest them and work them into dinners. Maybe I'll even have enough for a batch of quick-pickles.

This is my first time growing ground cherries (after trying one last summer at Secret Garden Growers).

Physalis pruinosa 'Aunt Molly's'

They're ripe when the husk turns yellow and falls from the vine. Small ones are starting to ripen for me now, but there are larger ones ahead, lots of them.

As you might have guessed, if I'm going to devote time, space, and water to growing edibles they should be things that are not readily available at the local market, so I'm also trying a Toma Verde Tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica). This variety is supposed to mature early and taste like "a cross between a lemon, a pineapple and a tomato. This dependable, prolific variety also produces larger size fruit than others, up to 2” in diameter"... not so much here though. I have lots of blooms, but only 3 fruits that are maturing. 

Earlier in the year I had this tank filled with rat-tail radishes, Raphanus sativus, var. caudatus, I grew from seed. That experiment was a huge success and I will definitely grow them again. We ate the long, seed-filled pods for weeks, I took them to gatherings and made radish pickles too.

One other seasonal planting to show, Datura meteloides 'Double Lavender'. It's taking a little break at the moment but has been blooming non-stop since I bought it just after Memorial Day weekend (yes, those bumpy things are seed pods).

Here are flower photos taken on a sunnier day...

That's the driveway crop tanks for 2025, along with several spiky plant friends...

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All material © 2009-2025 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.