Succulents and More™

As I first mentioned in this post from February 2024, San Marcos Growers (SMG) in Santa Barbara will close its doors for good on January 1, 2026. The 23-acre property leased by the nursery will be redeveloped by the owners to help meet Santa Barbara County’s urgent need for housing, including affordable housing. For more details, read this announcement on the SMG website. While I suppose this will ultimately be good for Santa Barbara, it’s bad news for gardeners and the horticulture community in California at large. As a wholesale nursery, SMG is not open to the public, but its plants are carried by independent retail nurseries across California and the Pacific Northwest. Over the past 40 years, SMG has been instrumental in introducing rare and unusual plants. Even now, SMG sells plants that literally no other nursery has. The loss of one of the most innovative – and, yes, beloved – plant growers in the state will hit many of us hard. Aloes and other plants ready to go to a customer ...

Most of the trips I write about are plant-focused. Often I go by myself because my family would be bored to tears. Last weekend, however, the whole family went on an outing to San Francisco. If traffic cooperates, the drive from Davis takes about 90 minutes. But traffic and parking in San Francisco can be brutal, so we opted to take the ferry from Richmond: Ferry terminal in Richmond We left our car at the Richmond ferry terminal. There’s plenty of parking, and it’s free – as in $0. The ride across San Francisco Bay takes about 35 minutes and costs $4.70 one way. Compare that to $35+ for parking in San Francisco plus $8 toll to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge. Route map © San Francisco Chronicle To my delight, one of the first things I saw after exiting the ferry terminal in San Francisco was this mass planting of Agave ‘Blue Flame’ and Agave attenuata ‘Ray of Light’: As we were walking over to the Ferry Building Marketplace for coffee, I spotted several wooden planters on wheels fille...

No road trip is complete without a plant haul. Here’s what I brought home from my recent trip to Santa Barbara : Cargo area of the Prius Back seat Backseat Of course I got a few agaves. It would be a crime not to bring home agaves from a plant-centric trip: Agave potatorum ‘Cherry Swizzle’, a San Marcos Growers introduction Agave pelona Agave desmetiana ‘Galactic Traveller’ Agave quiotepecensis , a close relative of Agave oteroi Mangave ‘Bloodspot’ × Agave oteroi , a Nick Deinhart hybrid (for a friend) However, the bulk of my haul are aloes to be planted out in our front yard. Most are hybrids, except for these: Aloe labworana , a beautiful species from Uganda Aloe fievetii  cutting. See what A. fievetii  flowers look like here , photographed at the Huntington. Aloe hybrids: Aloe  ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, a very cool Aloe dawei  hybrid originally found at the Huntington. More info here . Aloe ‘Hot Flash’, an Aloe aculeata hybrid originally discovered at Aloes in Wonde...