The magic of ginkgos

We've had ginkgos at the three houses that we've lived in over the years we've been homeowners.

The first came with the house.  It was magical.  It was a lovely shape, probably induced by early pruning, and released all of its leaves in a carpet of yellow.

I have a lovely snapshot from long ago of my gardening companion, Tim, with our first Golden, Chessie, playing with the fallen leaves -- I don't think that I've digitized it, but it's vividly in memory.

Ginkgo in front of house

We planted at least 5 ginkgos in our Piedmont garden, grown from seeds collected from female trees on campus.  They had gotten very large and were spectacular by the time we left that garden last spring, but hadn't revealed their sex!

Here in the mountains, we planted a known male, with excellent color, from a favorite local nursery in the Piedmont. It replaced an unremarkable red maple in front of the house.

It's lovely right now.

Fall gingko

We had a pair of luminous ginkgos at the South Carolina Botanical Garden, my workplace for over 2 decades.

This was one of them.