Succulents and More™

«   Back to  January—March  |  April—June  |   July —September Continuing the year in review... ⬐ OCTOBER I finally had the opportunity to visit the garden of my  Sacramento-area plant friend Theresa . I was blown away by the size of her property (2 acres), the Southwest architecture of her house, and the many creative touches in her garden. New Mexico or Sacramento? Open door in the front garden, just because

«   Back to January—March  | April—June Continuing the year in review... ⬐ JULY Back to the Ruth Bancroft Garden   for a change of scenery. It's an easy 60-minute drive, and the therapeutic value is priceless. Leucadendron 'Ebony' next to a large Agave ovatifolia Erythrina × bidwillii and Agave montana

«   Back to January—March Continuing the year in review... ⬐ APRIL In April we were sheltering in place. Many people were transitioning to working at home, but since I've been working at home for years, my work routine wasn't affected. In the midst of all the confusion, the garden became even more of a a sanctuary. Vriesea fosteriana 'Red Chestnut' Side yard

Hindsight is 2020. A bad pun, I know, but I've been wanting to say it all year. And now that I've indulged myself, I won't say it again. I want to take this opportunity to review what 2020 had in store for me as far as gardening and plants were concerned. Garden visits and opportunities to hang out with fellow plant nerds were few and far between, but as far as our plants were concerned, 2020 was just another year with a long dry summer and a dry fall.  Originally, I'd planned to do one consolidated year-in-review post, but to my surprise I had more ground to cover than I'd expected. To keep the number of photos manageable, I'm going to cover one quarter per post, for a total of four installments. ⬐ JANUARY January was the beginning of aloe season. Ours were just starting ... Our aloes getting ready to flower but the aloes in John Miller's Oakland garden were in full bloom when I visited him at the end of the month:

We spent Christmas with my mother-in-law in Mount Shasta, in the mountains of northern California near the Oregon border. The days before Christmas were sunny and dry, but on Christmas morning it started to snow. The timing couldn't have been more perfect!  While I did venture outside to take the photos for this post, this is the view from my mother-in-law's large living room window: Western redcedars ( Thuja plicatilis ) with falling snow

In our climate, fall is a great time for planting. Since our winters are mild, the soil never freezes and roots can continue to grow over the winter, albeit slowly.  Because of COVID-19, we've had far fewer in-person plant sales this fall, but I still managed to accumulate a stash of plants begging to be put in the ground. Here's a photographic record of what I've done in recent weeks. RIGHT: Aloe ferox × capitata The aloe on the right in the photo above and below is a new acquisition from Rancho Soledad Nursery . It's a hybrid between Aloe ferox and Aloe capitata . The flowers aren't open yet but I think the color will be a creamy yellow. The plant itself already has the beginnings of a trunk (inherited from the Aloe ferox parent). RIGHT:  Aloe ferox × capitata

In September, I had the opportunity to visit Rancho Soledad Nursery in North San Diego County. Founded by legendary plantsman Jerry Hunter in 1954, Rancho Soledad has been a pioneering force in the California nursery industry for over half a century. Rancho Soledad was one of the first nurseries in the world to establish its own in-house tissue culture lab to produce landscape-worthy plants on a large scale. Popular agave hybrids like 'Blue Glow' and 'Blue Flame' are just two of their many introductions. Rancho Soledad Nursery is located outside the small town of Rancho Santa Fe , about 10 miles inland from the coast. The sprawling nursery is at the end of Aliso Canyon Road in a rural area increasingly dominated by multi-million-dollar houses on large lots. For a cool $20 million you can buy this 16½ acre ranch three miles away! I bet San Diego County looked very different when Jerry Hunter bought the property in 1960. I got a personal tour of the nursery grounds by ...

Finally, after months of waiting, we have what I would call rain. Not a gully washer, but more than the feeble drizzle we had a few weeks ago. It's a steady light rain that washes off the dust left by a long summer and soaks into the ground instead of running into the gutter. We need many more days of this to make a difference, but at least it's a start. Another benefit of rain: plants begin to glisten and take on super saturated hues. Here's what I saw during a quick wander: Aloe  'Christmas Carol', its loud colors popping even more

The year is almost over, and it's high time for another × Mangave roundup. Previously, I attempted to list all mangave varieties in cultivation. This year, I'm going to focus only on the ones currently growing in our garden. In this post , I proclaimed 2018 to be the “Year of the Mangave.” Since then, the love children between two closely related succulent genera,  Agave and Manfreda , have become even more popular and are now on the verge of entering the mainstream. My original post  gives a comprehensive overview of the novel genus × Mangave . In a nutshell, mangaves have evolved from naturally occurring hybrids (such as 'Macho Mocha' and 'Rio Verde') to man-made novelties (the ever popular 'Bloodspot') to commercially viable ornamentals (the successful “Mad About Mangave” introductions by  Walters Gardens ). × Mangave  'Mission to Mars' (lower right) getting along very well will all kinds of plants in our front garden This development was ...

I rarely take photos of the backyard because I'm perennially dissatisfied with it. Granted, there are areas I like, but as a whole, it's never come together the way the front yard has. The reason is simple: dry shade. There's a lot of it because of the way the lot is oriented; our next-door neighbor's house; and four mature California bay trees ( Umbellularia californica ) with a canopy so dense, it sucks up all the light. How I've tried to deal with dry shade, that's a topic for a separate post. For now, suffice it to say that I haven't been very successful. Still, here's a collection of photos I took earlier today just to prove to myself that there are things worth showing. This is our lone contestant in the fall color contest, a Chinese pistache ( Pistacia chinensis ). The Chinese pistache is indeed related to the pistachio ( Pistacia vera ) as well as the turpentine tree ( Pistacia terebinthus ).