Succulents and More™

When my Portland friend Loree ( danger garden) was down here in March, one of the things she wanted to do was visit the garden of Ann Nichols in Oakland. She had been there in 2013 as part of the Bay Area Garden Bloggers Fling ( read her post here ) and really wanted to see it again. Our Oakland friends Max and Justin (I blogged about their garden recently) know Ann well and arranged for a visit. I was as excited as Loree; I had been to Ann’s garden once myself, on a Garden Conservancy Open Day in 2017 ( read my post here ), and was eager to go back. Ann Nichols with Max (center) and Justin (right). Photo by Loree Bohl. Ann Nichols is as modest about her garden as she is passionate. But talk to anybody in the Bay Area and you quickly realize that she is a local icon. Everybody loves her garden, and everybody loves her. When Ann and her husband bought the house in 1983, the landscaping was basic and dull: “This was one big boring garden,” Ann said in a 2024 interview with Splashpad Ne...

Folks in Northern California, what are you doing this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? If you don’t have plans, come to the giant San Francisco Succulent Expo at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park, put on by the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society . And if you have plans already, change them! This is an event you don’t want to miss. Click here for a recap of last year’s event. This year will be very similar: 40 vendors selling plants and pottery, a show full of spectacular succulents, as well as educational talks and live demonstrations. There is no event in Northern California even remotely like it. Succulents are able to survive long periods of drought by storing water in their leaves, stem, or base. That will be the focus of this year’s event. The show judges will select the plants that best embody the theme “LEAF, STEM, BASE.” And the speakers will give talks centered on these three categories: LEAF – Julia Etter and Martin Kristen (botanists and fie...

In addition to the Echinopsis hybrids I showed you in my last post , the following cacti also flowered in the last few weeks: Acanthocalycium spiniflorum Astrophytum asterias Astrophytum capricorne Astrophytum myriostigma Astrophytum ornatum Chamaecereus hybrids Echinocactus horizonthalonius Echinocereus dasyacanthus Echinocereus dasyacanthus var. ctenoides Echinocereus pentalophus Echinocereus poselgeri Echinocereus reichenbachii Echinocereus rigidissimus var. rubrispinus Echinocereus schmollii Echinocereus viereckii var. morricalii Echinocereus × lloydii ‘Persimmon Orange’ Homalocephala texensis Lo...