Succulents and More™

Yesterday afternoon (December 29, 2013) our backyard thermometer read 65°F. I was working outside in my t-shirt and I was hot! Crazy, but in a good way. After being sick for 10 days and then gone over Christmas, I finally removed all the frost blankets we had installed for the artic blast in early December. The damage looks to be fairly minor, with only a few losses, but I’m not ready to write about my own garden quite yet. Instead I want to stay in Arizona a little while longer, at least in my mind. Today’s post is the last one from Tucson. While as a city Tucson is far from perfect—too much sprawl for one thing—it holds a special place in my heart. If I were looking to relocate, it would be near the top of my list. The last place I visited while I was in Tucson in early December was the Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG). Like so many public gardens, it started out as a private property. The structure you see in the photo below was the home of the Porter family, built in 1929. Many of...

Yesterday I showed you some the wonderful African plants found at UC Davis. Today we’ll continue our walking tour of the campus with a bunch of fascinating plants from the Americas and Asia. The first set of photos were taken at the Cycad Garden front of Storer Hall . But before we get to the cycads, let’s look at some of the other plants here, like this fantastic Acacia hindsii . Acacia hindsii