Succulents and More™

Located in Half Moon Bay on the California coast south of San Francisco, Dry Oasis Plants is a small nursery focusing on plants suited for dry gardens and xeriscaping, offering everything from small 4-inch pots to 15-gallon architectural specimens. Their primary specialties include aloes and agaves as well as cacti and other succulents. Operating out of a nearly 14,000-square-foot space in a greenhouse complex off Highway 1 , the nursery provides high-quality plant material for both individual enthusiasts and landscape professionals. Hans Brough Dry Oasis Plants is the brainchild of Hans Brough. He graduated from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo with a degree in Landscape Architecture but worked as a web designer and software engineer for many years while collecting and growing succulents in his private garden. In 2023, he moved into a greenhouse that had originally been a hydroponic lettuce-growing facility. In this blog post , he describes the labor-intensive process of dismantling the ...

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’re probably familiar with Tony and Holly Krock. I’ve visited them at their private home and their greenhouse on previous trips to Santa Barbara. On our recent trip , Kyle and I checked in with the Krocks to see what they’ve been up to. A lot, as it turns out. Read on. But some background first so you don’t have to dig through my old posts: Tony and his wife Holly, a horticulturist by profession, operate Krock Nursery in Santa Barbara, specializing in rare and unusual agaves and other succulents for the collector market. The nursery focuses heavily on variegated plants and specimens with unique morphological features, like pronounced teeth and spines. While many of their plants go to overseas collectors, they also sell on online platforms such as eBay and Palmstreet . Tony and Holly Krock, true salt of the earth folks Tony is widely recognized for his expertise in agave propagation. He uses advanced methods (cringe-inducing for regular folks...