The deer had eaten most of the flowers in my friend Allenda’s hillside gardens, but this gardenia and a few mums had escaped a place in their salad table. More flowerless photos will follow in a subsequent post.
April asked if gardenias are edible. Yes, in fact they are said to have a sweet taste when eaten raw. For a recipe for crystallized gardenia petals, go here:
http://simmerandboil.cookinglight.com/2014/10/08/edible-flowers-crystallized-gardenia-petals/
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/09/19/flower-of-the-day-september-20-2016-dahlia/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Are gardenias edible flowers?
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This one wasn’t so far! Ha.
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This one wasn’t, at least so far!
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That answer scares me. Are you going to taste test this?
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You are correct, April. I shouldn’t have been so flip. In fact, gardenia petals are edible. They are said to be sweet when eaten raw. For recipes, go here: http://simmerandboil.cookinglight.com/2014/10/08/edible-flowers-crystallized-gardenia-petals/
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I can’t wait to share this news with my daughters.
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The end of the season is upon us. 😀
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A beautiful shot of a beautiful flower!
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The deer deserve to be able to compete for foods. Yet as a gardener who more than once lost crops when in peak condition, to them. It’s can be hard to feel charitable. We found by collecting human hair and spreading it around on the crops was helpful with keeping them off. Also remnants of soap bars pierced with hole and strung around, similar. Yet the most effective way, we found was water sprinklers. I’ve read you can buy motion sensors that will turn them on? We just used to water at night, while the dogs were in and penned. Here in Victoria, B.C. the deer have a high time of it, mostly protected and roaming from lovely garden to lovely garden … Mmmm Yum! Cheers Jamie.
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Yes, deer like the tasty and the pretty. I’m told they especially love the fruity; here that means the apple, plum, cherry trees, etc. And Scotch pines. 😦 Ours were eaten right to the ground until we went for the soap bar stake-outs on all our valuable trees. As for flowers, dear won’t eat yarrow so I planted lots. But when you can grow gardenias and hibiscus… 🙂
Do all your flowers die back or get dormant there like ours do here, or do you have something blooming all year round?
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Christine.. this was my friend’s garden in Huntsville Alabama. It seems everything blooms during a different season there but most flowers go dormant in the winter. In Mexico, where I live, things bloom year round.
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Well, I’ll comfort myself that our cold winters kill most of our insect pests. 😉
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Gardenias are my favorite, I’ve planted several shrubs in the garden to try to get that fragrance, but nothing comes close.
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