Embark on a botanical journey through the seasons with us! In this article, we explore the diverse flora that graces each season, from the delicate blooms of spring to the fiery foliage of autumn. Discover the beauty, significance, and wonder of nature's ever-changing tapestry in our exploration of seasonal plants.

TREE: Elephant Heart Plum. This is a tree that will produce some wonderful plums in late summer, which is not typical of so many plums. Harvest time in the Central Valley is in September. The Elephant Heart plum tree was another fantastic creation of Luther Burbank in the early 1920s. Elephant Heart plums are large, heart-shaped fruit with thick, bronze-green skin that turns reddish purple when completely ripe. They have juicy, blood-red, freestone flesh with a distinctive rich flavor. The Elephant Heart plum tree produces higher yields with a Santa Rosa plum as a pollinizer. It is a favorite for the home orchard and has low chill requirements, so it's a good one for California. I enjoyed one at my old homestead and I tried to graft a flowering plum rootstock with Elephant Heart scion wood, but alas, the graft didn't take (althoughLaroda plum grafts did).

PERENNIAL FLOWER: Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). The PurpleConeflower blooms profusely for up to two months in mid- to late summer and sometimes re-blooms in the fall. Perfect for both small gardens and large prairie meadows, the showy flowers are a favorite nectar source for butterflies, bees, and myriad pollinators. It's a popular perennial with smooth, 2-to-4-foot-long stems and long-lasting, lavender flowers. The plants have rough, scattered leaves that become small toward the top of the stem. Flowers occur singly atop the stems, and they have domed, purplish-brown, spiny central discs and drooping, lavender-purple (rarely white) rays. It's an attractive perennial. I just planted two in my front yard and hope they do well in the coming year. I enjoyed these at my old home next to my patio.

PERENNIAL FLOWER: Gray Santolina (Santolina chamaecyparissus). This is a wonderful Mediterranean herb with aromatic silver foliage that covers itself with hundreds of deep yellow, button-shaped flowers in summer. These bright yellow button flowers make it a striking shrub in any garden. The mounding evergreen foliage is an attractive groundcover that is deer and rabbit resistant, and the fragrant foliage and flowers can also be used in sachets. It is ideal for California gardens where we have hot, dry summers, since it likes full sun. It grows about 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide. This beautiful plant is good for accent growing, edging, ground cover, and rock gardens. I enjoyed the one I had at my old home which was covered in blossoms, as per this picture which I took eleven years ago. I recently planted one at my new home.