Liz Cordova's Anaheim Hills, California garden is a treasure!
"The Angels continue to tend my All Season garden. I started it some 27 yrs. ago. I used to garden on days off and weekends while working full time and 2 kids & found joy doing it. But after getting so sick (which now affects my eyes) I can only garden in minuscule dashes when conditions are right. Like right now it's raining in Anaheim Hills, CA, I put out my potted Japanese that are in the patio out in the rain. The flowers and foliage bring joy to me and friends who visit or ask for a bouquet to bring to their mom.
I divided the garden into rooms- English & antique roses in the perennial garden, a quiet Secret garden with exotic plants, Japanese Maples & ferns under the pergola which I use for an extension dining room when friends drop by, some orchids in the patio (living room extension through the French doors), I used to read in the secret garden now I just tarry awhile with dear friends who choose to sit beside me and through this painful journey. I've made several planters with groupings of same need plants, for friends without charging them. It's beautiful to see the joy in their eyes."
Have a garden you'd like to share? Please email 5-10 photos (and a brief story about your garden) to [email protected], or tag your photos on Instagram or Twitter with #FineGardening!
Whether you've never shared before or you've been featured multiple times, we want to see your garden! You don't have to be a professional garden photographer – check out our garden photography tips!
Do you receive the GPOD by email yet? Sign up here!
Fine Gardening Recommended Products
A.M. Leonard Deluxe Soil Knife & Leather Sheath Combo
Fine Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site, including Amazon Associates and other affiliate advertising programs.
Comments
Hi, Liz, thank so much for sharing the lovely pictures of some of the special parts of your garden and telling a bit about yourself. I'm sorry that you have some health conditions that are limiting your ability to work as industriously in your garden as you'd like. You have obviously created many beautiful vignettes through the years and I'm glad they continue to give you pleasure. Your container compositions include some of my favorite succulents and I adore that honeysuckle that is so artfully climbing up the metal trellis. Its blossoms look like a delectable sorbet dessert.
Thanks! There's this thing I say to myself,
"If I can't share my gifts and talents, God will not multiply them..,". So those container compositions end up being taken home by dear friends when they beg and my heart just goes weak. So I make more! Each creation becomes a catapult to a next better one!
I have to admit that it is tempting to move to California so that I can be your friend and take home your containers. They're beautiful! Wait, did I just share my greed at Christmastime? I'm generally on the 'naughty' list! :)
LOL ! That so made me laugh! Yes please do move to CA so I have a friend who I can talk to about gardens and plants! And I promise I will share a container or two with you!
Then I'll have someone to go to garden tours with me who won't be bored when I talk plant Latin names.
Oh but you have to forgive my grudgings like when I stomped my feet all around the garden because I asked this yards keeper to trim the podocarpus hedge in the secret garden but he chopped the prized Michaelia Alba Champaca! Confession- I cried! Takes seasons to grow! That's so expensive to boot! Oh the delicate perfume it exudes when the starlike blooms when they strut their wares!
Oh, I've done my share of foot-stomping and crying, and I've certainly bored people to tears with plant talk and latin names! I had an arborist solicit business from me, and as he looked at my small trees on my small lot, he kept stepping in the garden and being sternly warned. Needless to say, if you don't know about soil compaction in a perennial bed, you don't know enough to do work in my yard!
I've never smelled a Michelia blossom, but I hear it is heavenly. I can imagine, since they are related to Magnolia. Sorry about the errant pruning.
Champaca- close your eyes and imagine a soft delicate whiff of a concoction of light sprinkling of the Goldflame honeysuckle with Lily of the Valley
mixed with notes of the blooms of the YlangYlang. It's delicately demure. One of the base notes of Dior's Diorissimo perfume. Have it by the garden bench to be enjoyed.
Oh I found a garden friend!
I used to machete all the hedges in between work and life. Those people don't know about prunings. When I walk and see the topped trees I cringe! I practice my Spanish from college when I talk to them.
Haha.
Ha, oh, Liz, you have definitely found your separated at birth twin in Tim when it comes to feeling comfortable with using latin names. I always admire those of you who do the research and strive to be more exact.
You're right about that, Michaele!
Haha! What do you know! Found in opposite sides of the country!
I'm still learning. In between baking, volunteering & reading..,
Anyone want to go to Roger's Gardens with me today? It's chilly, in Corona Del Mar
by the beach,
but quietly ambling through that gardens is good for the soul! So beautiful!. I met a couple from England last weekend while enjoying Sherman Library & Gardens Light Show. . They've never been to the Chelsea Flower Show! Oh I have been dreaming about that! Or go back to the Butchart Gardens!
The hillside garden in the 1st photo is really nice & the blue container grouping is outstanding. The blue birds feeding with their young ones must bring you a lot of happiness & contentment. I had to stop feeding the birds because of the neighbors cats & I miss them.
Good luck to you, Joe
Thanks Joe! It's an old glazed pottery I won that had a scraggly plant, I recycled to show case the succulents.
Yes our neighbor's cats linger in my garden as well. Beautiful ones too. So I hung the feeders from the pergola and find ways for all of them to coexist. Me? I shoo them away!
I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. It sounds to me that while your illness has changed your life it is not stopping you from enjoying what you love. Your efforts & attitude to keep pushing on are inspiring. I wish you a brighter & healthier New Year. Good luck, Joe
It's beautiful, peaceful and inspiring. Thank you for sharing your work with us, your creation has brought a ray of sunshine into my snowy morning.
Awwww.,.Your kind words brought hope in my day. It's drab outside as well but I'm thankful it rained! The camellias & ferns are loving it!
So sorry for your health issues. Your gardens and containers are lovely and are appreciated by MANY! You have done a fabulous job creating special areas in your gardens for you AND your visitors to enjoy. Thank you for sharing with us as well! Best wishes to you and all our fellow GPOD'ers!
Thank you Margaret! I'll keep on hoping to be better so I could garden some more..!
Thank you for sharing your garden and your story, Liz. I'm so sorry for your struggles. This is such a beautiful garden and these are wonderful images. I've never been a huge fan of roses, but roses with a cabbage form, like in your photo, get me every time. I wish our bluebirds were not so shy of urban areas. They are some of my favorites. All of the best to you!
Thank you Tim! I'm very honored my garden is shared !
I love antique roses and English ones as well as David Austin ones. In my opinion
They're like a well dressed elegant lady that you remember.
I have a friend who lives in NYC. She thought the garden & bluebird pics I posed on FB were lifted from magazines or photoshopped. I can't even go on the computer as it hurts my eyes. I take pics with my iPhone. Then she visited me and she swooned. Haha. They're real like in the photos, Liz!
Isn't it crazy how great an iPhone takes photos!? I'm enjoying your comments, Liz. Thanks for sharing and filling in more info.
It's Christmas Tim! You can give credit to the iPhone operator? too.
Have a beautiful Christmas!
Hi Liz, the photo of your roses is gorgeous and crystal clear. I would love to see more pics of your antique and English roses. The humid East Coast and blackspot have conspired to put me off of roses. Only have a few left. I would love to see/know more about your secret garden and other garden rooms. Love the shots of the fledgling bluebirds. I had a bird who insisted in building a nest in my window boxes on my shed. My cat could have easily jumped up onto the low window boxes. Fortunately my cat never disturbed the nest and her eggs hatched and the fledglings left. I actually tossed her nest a couple of times in the beginning since I had to water everyday. A wet nest would be unhealthy. She persisted so I left it in place, but kept the plants alive to shield the nest. I thought she would abandon her fledglings due to human "interference". But we coexisted and it all worked out.
Thank you! I too used to have several roses, more English & Antiques, but a garden is only as good as the gardener; but I'm happy God is still healing me so I can " play in the garden". I used to go to all garden tours, get inspired, and visit beautiful garden everywhere life takes me.
Gardens fill you up with immense joy, when you see a juxtaposition of colors or textures but quietly speaks to your soul...
Oh I just used my iPhone to take all the pics!
Try antique and English roses ! David Austin too! I have this antique rose Marie Pavé, that is almost thornless! No rust, no black spots or aphids in them. I plop cuttings everywhere when I trim in January. That's the hardest part for me
when I have to go out there in sunlight and breezes and deadhead and prune the rose bushes. But then they grow more beautifully like a vase of flowers.
The Western Bluebird nest box was a birthday gift from my son last year in Octobet. I love getting things that keep on giving. It faces my kitchen window. You could just imagine my joy when after the deciduous crepe myrtle shed its leaves, a male bluebird checked it out! Then brought his mate ! I took pics of the Tiffany blue eggs, my family visiting from out of town got to hand feed them mealworms too !
The garden exists for everyone to enjoy!
California roses are the best! I also love your succulents in containers. I am very sorry you are not well, I hope you have a blessed Christmas.
Thanks Rhonda! Merry Christmas!
Liz, I'm so sorry you are suffering with health problems and can no longer garden as you would like to do. It is inspiring that you continue to enjoy some gardening and are able to offer that joy to others as well. Your photos show that you have created a beautiful garden that will continue to be a comfort to all that visit. That rose is a classic!! Best wishes!!
Thank you! It's Christmastide. I can hope for my Christmas miracle! Love U!
Liz, thank you for sharing these photos of your beautiful gardens and containers, they are like delicious appetizers and have left me hungry for more!
Gardeners never seem to lose their desire to primp and prune their beauties, to get their hands dirty or just sit among the plants they love to nurture... it's the air we need to breathe. I'm so happy you have found a way to continue gardening. It may not be to the extent you dream of, but you are still gardening! Life takes unexpected turns, but from these photographs you are still enjoying what you love. Merry Christmas to you, Liz, and I hope the New Year will bring many smiles to your face!
Oh such heart warming words... Thank you Sheila! That's so beautifully humbling from a passionate gardener like you! Yes, to still find a way to garden despite the painful challenges, it's a passion. Everything I love doing entails my eyes - reading, cooking & baking, writing... But it's been told that when a door closes, God opens a window where your own gifts can still be used where it will bring him glory and others will be blessed..
Merry Christmas! Love to you!
Love to you, too, Liz.
Good morning Liz and all our garden blog friends! These are great photos to see and especially on a cold, dark and dreary day! Gardens sure do lift us up! Iam so glad that you can still do some gardening Liz. Once it is in your soul...which is our mind, will and emotions it is impossible to remove it! Your rose is outstanding as i believe it is a David Austin one. I grow theirs as well. What a wonderful treat to have bluebirds near your window! We dont have them around here in western washington but i have always enjoyed much in seeing pictures of them. They are beautiful birds. I hope for you that this new year ahead will be full of joy and healing in every way! Merry Christmas!
6 am but so dark! Good chilly morning to you too,Jeanne!
Did it snow there yet?! My daughter lives by Lake Boren, Newcastle and every few times my eyes could muster travel, I get excited! Excited mostly to witness the gorgeous rhododendrons, Japanese maples that I can't covet here in my zone. We'd walk and I get so behind seeing all these beautiful handiworks of nature. You guys grow them like weeds! Me? I have to fertilize with organic acid bloomers!
Yes that Austin tree Rose is Scepter'd Isle. I have a few more Englisg roses in the back but my eyes couldn't scroll through my thousands of pics on my iPhone. I planted a couple to flank the dining room window, sunk a metal planter box in the middle to put Heucheras so I see something beautiful while at the table. In front of the planter box is where the bluebird mealworm bowl is. God knows I can't go out there all the time so he brought those darling bluebirds in my garden!
I concur with you that when there's that love and passion in your heart, and hope springs, you do something somehow to make things work. I've become more creative. In my weakness and brokenness God shows his strength through me.
Today I'm on a marathon cook duty for Christmas dinner, that's my other love cooking, baking! Yes all that I do, I do with passion ( I cry later from the eye pain from heat exposure).
Wearing dorky diving goggles doesn't work so I just wing it.
Thank you for your warm loving words.
Have a beautiful Christmas!
I'm glad I found garden friends in here..,
Love to you...!
Log in or create an account to post a comment.
Sign up Log in