I’d better get this edition of “This and that” posted before early November becomes mid-November. Time is moving much too fast for my liking, especially since what we’re moving towards is winter, my least favorite season. I’m still finding it hard to accept reality when daytime temperatures are in the 70s, but nighttime lows in the low 40s don’t lie.
Many South African bulbs are dormant in the summer and wake up in the fall. Here are a few in my garden. All of them are Boophone disticha. The degree of waviness seems to vary from year to year. This year, these are two waviest specimens:
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| Boophone disticha |
The large specimen below has completely straight leaves this year. Last year, they were noticeably move wavy.
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| Boophone disticha |
While most aloes in my garden won’t flower for a few months yet, one of my favorite species is starting now, Aloe lukeana from Uganda. The flower heads are very distinctive:
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| Aloe lukeana |
Kyle’s and my plant sale last weekend far exceeded our expectations. Our goal was to get cool landscape plants out into the world, and at that we succeeded. A lot of people showed up, and most of them bought plants.
Check out the number of cars earlier in the day:
This was a little later in the day when things were a bit quieter. Quite a few plants had already been snapped up:
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| The plant sale photos were taken by Kyle. I completely forgot to take pictures. |
I was very happy that my friend Tracy of
tz_garden came all the way from Livermore, about 80 miles away. She posted a nice write-up of our sale on her blog (
click here to read it).
Tracy brought me four
Raoulia australis after I had
admired it in her garden. In spite of its frail appearance, this mat-forming New Zealand native has proven to be quite tough in Tracy’s garden even though it’s from subalpine and alpine zones above 2,500 feet. Fingers crossed it’ll thrive in my garden, too.
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| Raoulia australis in front of Hechtia purhepecha in the front door bed |
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| The leaves are so tiny! |
Last week, I got another plant gift from a friend; plant peeps are simply the best (thank you, M). No, it’s not a real ivy (Hedera helix), it’s a Senecio macroglossus, a succulent vine from South Africa where it’s known as wax ivy or Natal ivy. It can grow to 10 ft, either climbing up a trellis or cascading down from a hanging basket. Unfortunately, it’s too tender to spend winters outside.
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| Senecio macroglossus |
One bit of advice I gave to people at our plant sale: While it’s OK to plant aloes now (most are winter growers), wait until spring to put agaves and cacti in the ground. They prefer to be dry in the winter, and newly grounded plants could be susceptible to rot.
So what did I do the day after the plant sale? I planted an agave, this striking Agave palmeri ‘Kutsugen No Mai Ogi’. Why? Because I’d found a great spot in the sidewalk bed where it will get plenty of sun in the winter. Plus, I really wanted to plant something.
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| Agave palmeri ‘Kutsugen No Mai Ogi’; the Japanese cultivar name means ‘Poetic dance with a folding fan’. I love how wonderfully creative the Japanese are when it comes to naming plants. In the US, it would probably have received a pedestrian cultivar name like ‘Red Teeth’. |
And just because, here are some agaves that caught my attention recently:
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| Agave shawii |
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| Agave titanota ‘Lion’s Mane’ |
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| Mangave ‘Bloodspot’ × Agave oteroi |
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| Agave mitis ‘Chocolate Edge’ |
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| Agave ocahui surrounded by golden barrel cacti |
Aeoniums are tender succulents from the
Canary Islands. They’re winter growers (like many aloes) and are going gangbusters right now. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of named aeonium hybrids and cultivars already. This year, Dutch grower Succulents Unlimited (now
Uniq) released the WHEELS™ series, 25 unique aeonium varieties with names like ‘WHEELS of Captivation’, ‘WHEELS of Fascination’, all the way to ‘WHEELS of Stripification’ (I’m not kidding; you can see all of them
here). Some of them are truly striking, like this ‘WHEELS of Captivation’, which I picked up recently at
Green Acres in Sacramento:
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| Aeonium ‘WHEELS of Captivation’ |
Dudleyas are succulents native to California, Alta and Baja. Like so many California natives, they’re dormant in the heat of the summer and do all of their growing in the winter. I’ll have a separate post on dudleyas later this winter. As a teaser, here’s one of the prettiest, Dudleya pachyphytum from Isla Cedros off the coast of Baja California:
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| Dudleya pachyphytum |
I often get asked if I did the landscape design of our garden myself. The short answer is yes, but nothing is really based on a grand plan. Instead, I plant one thing, figure out what might look good next to it, and go from there. Fortunately, this can lead to serendipitous results. Here is a good example:
Senecio ficoides ‘Skyscraper’ (aka ‘Mount Everest’) next to, and intermingling with, pearl bluebush (
Maireana sedifolia), a small shrub from South Australia with very distinctive foliage:
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| Senecio ‘Skyscraper’ (aka ‘Mount Everest’) and pearl bluebush (Maireana sedifolia) |
One of the plants I most associate with fall is Mexican bush sage (
Salvia leucantha). The specimen in the photo below is a few blocks away; it exemplifies everything I love about this easy-to-grow perennial:
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| Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) looks at its best at this time of year |
A few more plants that are active now after a long summer dormancy:
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| Massonia pustulata, another South African bulb that is not there most of the year — this pot looks empty for nine months at a time, which is why I stick it under the shelves in the greenhouse. I’ll have photos of the flowers in a few weeks. |
Lachenalia is a fairly large genus of (you guessed it) South African bulbs. I’ve posted about them before, especially
Lachenalia quadricolor, arguably the
prettiest species. Below is another species,
Lachenalia pustulata, appearing out of nowhere (seemingly bare spots in the sidewalk bed are coming alive right now):
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| Lachenalia pustulata in the sidewalk bed |
California poppy seedlings are popping up in many places, as is this South African annual daisy, Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Fire’:
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| Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Fire’ now |
Pretty soon it’ll look like this:
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| Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Fire’ in a few months |
And finally, the squirrels. The squirrels, Stella’s nemeses. They are hyperactive right now, eating as much as they can before winter comes, even though they don’t hibernate like they would in climates with real winters.
I often see Stella in the backyard, standing perfectly still, laser-focused on the squirrels in the trees. And the squirrels love to tease her with their teeth chattering and jerking head movements. Or maybe they’re telling her to get lost. Whatever it is, there’s no love lost between the squirrels and Stella. Or, for that matter, the squirrels and me.
© Gerhard Bock, 2026. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.
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