Succulents and More™

One of my gardening goals for 2026 is to critically assess every plant in the garden, especially in the coveted sidewalk bed in the front, and be ruthless: Any plant that doesn’t do it for me anymore gets pulled and replaced with something more compelling. I know, that sounds a bit silly, but it’s what I need to do to keep things exciting. As with any new year’s resolution, there’s no guarantee that it will last, but I’m determined to at least give it a try. And I’m happy to report that I’ve completed the first removal of the year. My target was the blob in the middle: Nolina texana It’s Texas beargrass or sacahuiste ( Nolina texana ). As Wikipedia puts it so poetically, Nolina texana “is a plant in the asparagus family that resembles a large clump of grass.” That’s what it looks like although it isn’t a grass at all but rather a relative of agaves, yuccas, and dasylirions. My Nolina texana was just a little thing when I brought it home in my suitcase from the 2018 Garden Bloggers F...

While the second half of September will be all about a major project in the backyard (more on that in an upcoming post), the first half was mostly this and that. Let’s face it, so much of gardening is exactly that: a string of odds and ends. That suits me very well because I’m a putterer at heart. ⤵ I’ve been trialing Artemisia pedemontana , a low-growing wormwood with bluish-green silvery leaves. I planted it in a cactus bed that doesn’t get much irrigation and fully expected it to croak during the multiple heatwaves we’ve had this summer. But the opposite happened: It has thrived and spread, still remaining just a few inches tall. Its compact size and spreading habit make it the perfect plant to unify heterogeneous planting schemes (which pretty much describes our entire garden). Artemisia pedemontana is hard to find (the UC Davis Arboretum will have some in their upcoming fall plant sales ) so I decided to take some cuttings. Another surprise: The cuttings rooted exceptionally fas...

Another week and weekend without rain. Isolated cells dropped some H₂O near us, but our part of Davis remained dry. However, downtown Sacramento's record of 212 consecutive days without measurable precipitation was broken, and that counts for something. A sunny and mild weekend meant I was able to get work done in relative comfort. Project #1 involved relocating the plant producing the mass of strappy green leaves you see in the photo below: Drimia maritima  (green leaves) and  Euphorbia characias  'Tasmanian Tiger' The wavy leaves belong to Drimia maritima , commonly known as giant sea squill, a bulb native to the Mediterranean basin. Its leaves emerge in the fall and die back in late spring. In mid-summer, it produces tall inflorescences with masses of small white flowers ( see photo here taken at the UC Davis Arboretum).  I don't know if Drimia maritima  is the largest bulb in the plant world, but it's got to be close. According to Wikipedia , Drimia maritim...

Another weekend, another bout of weekend warrioring. This time I went a bit easier on myself because of ongoing shoulder issues and some pain from a recent flu shot. Plus, I kept getting distracted by pretty sights like these: Guernsey lily ( Nerine sarniensis ) in full flower, set off beautifully by a backdrop of hechtias and agaves. Unfortunately, the flower stalk snapped off in yesterday's high winds. Multi-branched Aloe fosteri  inflorescence nearing its peak With its orange and yellow flowers, Aloe fosteri  is the perfect Halloween aloe ↴  Last weekend's main project involved a bunch of flagstone remnants I originally got at Urban Ore Ecopark in Berkeley: The goal was to build a raised planter in this spot along the sidewalk that had been empty since early May. It had been the former home of  Agave 'Crazy Horse' , which I removed because it had grown too large—and was producing too many pups on rather long runners. At the time, I wasn't sure which replacement ...