Kyle's garden, late March 2025 (front)

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ve seen photos of my friend Kyle’s garden in Sacramento. (If not, click here to check out my previous posts.) Kyle is the most active gardener I know, continuously tweaking and refining. I get to see his garden quite frequently, and yet, every time I visit, I notice things that hadn’t been there before. No garden is ever finished, not really, and that’s doubly true for Kyle. He has boundless energy, and it flows right into his garden.

I caught up with Kyle last week and took a bunch of new photos. I was going to squeeze them into one post, but there are so many it makes more sense to spread them out over two posts.

This post is about the front yard. But before we dive in, take a look at this picture I took in December 2022:

December 2022

Keep this photo in mind as you look at the pictures that follow.

March 20, 2026

Kyle has gradually increased the elevation along the perimeter of the front yard by raising the soil level and adding tons (literally) of rocks. This has created multiple planting surfaces — not just horizontally, but also on the sloping sides. The rock placement produces many different pockets — ideal for succulents that naturally grow at an angle, including dudleyas, hechtias, and some agaves.

You can never have too many golden barrels

Agave oteroi ‘Filigree’

Mangave ‘Red Wing’

Mangave ‘Pineapple Express’

Aloe aculeata

Mangave ‘Tooth Fairy’

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Kyle has added a lot of different companion plants that complement the succulents, for example Plectranthus neochilus ‘Mike’s Fuzzy Wuzzy’

Agave titanota ‘Lion’s Mane’

Hechtia argentea growing vertically in a crack between the rocks — like a giant spider

Just one small vignette...

...but check out the plant variety!

Echeveria cante

Over the last few years, the front lawn has shrunk considerably. To use a somewhat tortured metaphor: If the lawn originally was a family-size pizza, so many bites have been taken out of it that it’s now just a mini pizza. The latest “nibbles” are the meadow areas you see below; Kyle wanted to make space for flowering annuals native to California and beyond. This is the first year, so he doesn’t really know how this experiment will shake out, but it looks very promising.

Here’s another area that used to be lawn. Now it’s a great place to sit and look at the garden.

The master of his domain

The most recent changes in the front yard are along the side that faces the neighbor’s driveway. Kyle extended the rock border and created a strip for more succulents and companion plants. On the neighbor’s side of the rock border he planted three maiden grasses (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’) that will act as a visual screen and give him and his wife some sense of privacy as they grow taller.

Maiden grasses (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’) for screening

More room for plants

Gazanias and other South African daisies are the perfect perennials for our climate. I’ve never seen one with flowers quite this large.

This ice plant (probably Lampranthus aurantiacus) is such an intense color that it stops passers-by in their tracks

Kyle’s garden continues to be a big inspiration for me. His energy has rubbed off on me in no small measure. As a result, I’m doing things in my own garden that I might otherwise not do, like constantly analyzing what’s there, removing plants that no longer bring me joy, adding more rocks (you can never have enough rocks). In other words, not settling, but always striving to create something better. That’s huge, and I’m very grateful to Kyle for that extra push he’s given me.

Check back in a couple of days for a look at Kyle’s backyard.

© Gerhard Bock, 2026. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.