On Monday we collect the next edition of MountainGetaways from the printers, in good time for the Spring Festival. Louis designed the front page with the spring theme taking up the whole of the upper half of the cover, instead of just the masthead. As I sit here in short sleeves, spring is suddenly alarmingly close, even though everything is still quite grey’nbeige and I thought it time to wet your appetite – and that of the growing number of potential visitors to Sequoia Gardens who visit my blog – with a few spring pictures from the past. All of them were taken at Sequoia Gardens…
Here my father poses proudly in the arboretum (‘collection of trees’) which was his great project through the 90s and which is now looking very impressive.
Marching up between two rows of widely spaced Tulip Trees is an avenue of azaleas. Later in the year the dense canopy of large leaves shield blue and white hydrangeas; still later the autumn leaves are a bright and cheerful yellow.
Another part of the arboretum; evergreens and deciduous trees of all kinds abound.
The deciduous azaleas, usually in shades of yellow and flame, are often beautifully scented as well.
Blossoms, azaleas, and the freshness of the first greens – these are what spring is about on the mountain.
However Sequoia Gardens offers much else besides… here we have Wisteria and Bearded Iris…
…and Wisteria and Japonica.
In fact Wisteria features all over Sequoia Gardens, sometimes in formal settings, sometimes scrambling through trees, or even self-supported.
Here are a few more photos, taken during late September and early October at Sequoia Gardens.
The delicacy of the early leaves of some Japanese maples have to be seen to be believed!
To begin with there is very little green, but gradually the leaves on the trees change the whole density of the views, and in a gentle year the soft greens of the young growth are one of the overriding impressions of spring.
I do think I prefer the delicate signs of spring to the in-your-face brightness of massed azaleas…
…but that doesn’t stop me from getting as carried away as everyone else when I have a camera in hand! 
Why don’t you pay us a visit and come see for yourself?!
