What's Up At The Huntington At May's End?

Above, Agave 'Ivory Curls'
Heavy overcast on Sunday made for a cool, comfortable visit on the cusp of summer.  The Entry Garden looked fabulous.  Plenty of flowers still in the Desert Garden, though at this time of year, other plants have mostly taken over the show from Aloes.  The Rose Garden, while not in spectacular spring flush, had many flowers. 
Verbascum:

I like how the leaning Kalanchoe in the far left pot is balanced out with a minor eruption of Senecio:

 Hey, they've got a Phylica, too!

 Hesperaloe 'Brake Lights' makes a broad swath of red:

 Pensetemon by the rill.

 Golden grasses with blue, yellow, and purple accents

 Yellow and purple, light greens and dark

 More and more lush.  Summer heat will change it soon.  The blue yucca foliage and red Anigozanthos flowers echo the Hesperaloe colors we saw previously, though its not a particularly harmonious combination, is it?

 We enter the Desert Garden now.  A striated Agave americana with yellow Anigozanthos behind it.  Smallish A. appalanta 'Cream Spike' to americana's lower right.

 Two different plants from the same cross, (A. sinkatana x A. harlana), Aloe 'Kujo' (orange flowers) and Aloe 'Evil Twin' (yellow).

 Aloe porphyrostachys is closely related to A. pseudorubroviolacea, the flowers that curve inward as they open are similar in habit and color, from the same furnace-hot region of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

 Fuzzy-flowered Aloe tomentosa

 Fouquieria flowers add orange touchs to the bubbling carpet of golden barrel cacti.

 Agave ovatifolia 'Frosty Blue'

 Puya alpestris, of the unreal metallic blue-green flowers.

If you look closely, there's a bee's bum just visible in one of the flowers

 An enormous Agave parryi truncata, at least a meter across.  The center is shortening, so the plant is preparing to flower.

 This appeared to be a Yucca rather than an Agave, but I didn't look closely--too busy admiring the s-curve filaments.

 Another Puya of unreal floral and stem color, with a bee, legs bulked up with pollen, partaking.

 A juvenile male hummingbird, recently fledged by the awkwardness of his flying maneuvers, also feeding from Puya flowers.  He'll be strong and feisty soon enough. 

 Agave 'Blue Flame' when young and small is middling-attractive.  When large, it's quite a bit more thrilling.  This one was chest-high:

Agave attenuata 'Nova' foreground right, in a tableau vivant of texture. 

 We left the xerics to walk through the pond area to the Australian Garden, passing Agapanthus beginning their late spring show.

Panoramic photo by Beloved
 A few more plants in the Australian garden--they are working on it, slowly.  Grevillea 'Fire Sprite'

 Red Eucalyptus, E. ficifolia

 Anigozanthos 'Harmony'

 Melaleuca nesophila is not uncommon in Southern California.  It forms a large shrub, 20' tall, 12' wide and produces lavender pink pompom flowers from late spring to fall. 

 Callistemon flavovirens.

 Grevillea 'Long John'.  This one was about 7' tall and 10' wide.

 This is a more representative specimen of Anigozanthos 'Harmony' in Southern California.  Fussy plants, sometimes often. 

 The rose garden looked excellent, if not in peak bloom.

 'About Face' with the rich color May-Grey enables

 'Distant Drums'

 On to the Shakespeare Garden, to admire the artichokes.

 An Echium with white-margined foliage

 We were getting tired of walking.  A sit down under a grape covered pergola, then on the way home...

 Past golden grasses accented with Cycads, Aloes...

 ...Eucalyptus, and Agaves. 

Long lovely walk, now time to go home.