Succulents and More™

There was a time when I didn't know Steve Martino's name, but his signature aesthetic—vibrantly colored walls, sculptural desert plants, dramatic interplay of light and shadow—is something I've been familiar for as long as I can remember. Previously, the only way you could see Steve Martino's work was in magazine articles. His website  has great photos, but there are never enough for my taste. And with the majority of his projects being private residences, primarily in the Southwest, it's virtually impossible to visit them in person. That's why I was so excited when a couple of years ago Steve Martino mentioned on his Facebook page  that a book was in the works. That book is now here: Desert Gardens of Steve Martino , written by Caren Yglesias and photographed by Steve Gunther, published in April 2018 by Monacelli Press .

This is the continuation of a three-part post about the University of California Botanical Garden (UCBG) in Berkeley. Part 1 was about the Southern Africa Collection . This post is about the New World Desert Collection. New World Desert Collection as seen from the hill that makes up the Southern Africa Collection This is how the UCBG web site describes the New World Desert Collection: Garden expeditions from the 1920s to the 1960s yielded many of the specimens in this collection, including desert plants from the southwestern United States, Mexico, and as far south as Chile and Argentina. Several beds feature plants from Mexico's Baja California peninsula. This collection is one of the oldest in the Garden. Deserts receive 25 cm (10 in) or less of rain each year. Many desert plants cannot tolerate our winter rains. Positioning the collection on a southwest-facing slope provides warmth and drainage critical to the survival of these plants. Plants from desert environments in ...

High Country Gardens, a mail-order company specializing in drought-tolerant perennials and cold-hardy cacti and succulents, is going out of business. That’s the sad news Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery posted on Facebook this morning. Receiving High Country Gardens’ printed catalog in the mail was like having coffee with a friend. I will miss them, and I wish owners David and Alma Salman the best for the future. I hope they will continue to share their expertise with the gardening world through some other channel. During our Southwest trip this summer , we stopped at Santa Fe Greenhouses, High Country Garden’s retail store in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Everything was 40-60% off then—the writing was on the wall. Below is what I originally wrote about our visit.

After showing you some of the many agaves and cacti growing at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) outside of Tucson, I’m going to wrap up my trip report with this post on some of the many other wonderful plants found there. As you will see, the variety is staggering. I only took photos of the plants I found interesting; there were many others, especially foliage shrubs, that I skipped. As impressive as the naturalistic areas are, I found the landscape plantings outside the buildings just as interesting. Just take a look at the masterful combination of shapes, hues and textures in this photo: Saguaro ( Carnegiea gigantea ), ocotillo ( Fouquieria splendens ), Spanish bayonet ( Hesperoyucca whipplei ) and senna ( Senna polyantha )

Many of my posts from our recent Southwest trip showed plants growing in their natural environments. Soon I will have more detailed posts about my visit to B&B Cactus Farm in Tucson, AZ and Santa Fe Greenhouses in Santa Fe, NM. Today I want to show you some of the most interesting plantings I encountered in public spaces, at motels and in front of restaurants. Predictably, most of them feature drought-tolerant succulents and perennials, but I also saw a surprising number of annuals in containers. The photos that follow were taken in many different places. I’ve arranged them by plant group, not geographical location. One plant followed us from the California desert south to Tucson, Arizona and then resurfaced in Moab, Utah: Caesalpinia pulcherrima , commonly called “pride of Barbados” or “Mexican bird of paradise.” This beautiful shrub with feathery leaves and complex flowers is extremely heat tolerant and was in full bloom everywhere we encountered it. I’ve seen specimens at t...

Here is an index to all of my posts from our Southwest trip this summer. This will make it easier to access a specific post.

This is the last post from our two-week trip through the Southwest. It’s short because we tried to get home as quickly as possible—and frankly, there isn’t much to see in eastern and central Nevada, at least not along the I-80 corridor. We left Moab, UT after a great breakfast at Eklecticafé . Highly recommended for tasty and more wholesome fare than what many restaurants offer. We stopped briefly at the Arches National Park visitor center so my kids could get their National Park Passports stamped and I snapped one last photo of red rock country: Last photo taken in Arches National Park. Yes, the sky really was that blue. Usually I look forward to returning home from vacation, but this time I didn’t want to leave. Writing this, I really do feel a bit depressed.

After our rafting adventure on the Colorado River we didn’t have much time left to visit the national parks near Moab— Arches and Canyonlands —as well as Dead Horse Point State Park which offers fantastic views of the Colorado River (and was the location of the unforgettable final scene in Thelma & Louise , one of my all-time favorite movies). We decided to do a short tour of Arches National Park since it’s the closest to Moab and it was already past 6pm when we set out. It was actually drizzling when we left Moab and the cloud cover looked to be fairly dense. However, by 7pm the clouds began to break up and pretty soon the sky looked quite dramatic.    

My original idea for the day had been to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Park right outside of Moab. But I realized that my family wasn’t as enthused as I was about visiting yet another couple of parks dedicated to rocks so I suggested we go rafting on the Colorado River instead. It took zero arm-twisting to convince them. Fortunately, we found an outfitter that still had four openings on such short notice.