Succulents and More™

I’m always on the lookout for small groundcovers suitable for planting along the edge of the sidewalk. In January, I found myself at Morningsun Herb Farm , a fantastic small nursery about 25 minutes from here. I was thrilled to find a new line of delospermas called Jewel of Desert . I’d tried several delospermas before, including the spectacular Wheels of Wonder line, but they didn’t last longer than a season or two. I still don’t know why, but I’ve heard that the Wheels of Wonder delospermas are short-lived and/or need cold winters to keep going. The Jewel of Desert line was developed by the same breeder as Wheels of Wonder, Koichiro Nishikawa. His story is as interesting as his plants: He started breeding delospermas in Japan in 1996, but he was frustrated by the short growing season. In 2006, he moved to Ecuador with his family where the mild climate makes it possible to grow delospermas all year. Now his plants are available all over the world. In the US, they are distributed by C...

In recent weeks, I've been focusing a lot on aloes—no surprise, seeing how they're at their bloom peak right now.  But there's another group of succulents from Southern Africa that give us vibrant color at this time of year: ice plants native to winter rainfall areas. This common name refers to the succulent members of a huge family, the Aizoaceae . Some people also call them mesembs, after the genus  Mesembryanthemum,  which once contained most of the commonly seen species. In South Africa, they're known as “vygies,” meaning “little figs” in Afrikaans. The photos in this post were taken at the Ruth Bancroft Garden last weekend. I was fortunate enough to run into curator Brian Kemble, and he identified the plants for me. I'm able to recognize maybe a handful of different species by sight, but the vast majority of them eludes me. Many ice plant species hug the ground and are ideal for filling bare spots. I'm making a concerted effort to add more to our garden fo...

After lunch I happened to peek over the 4-ft. fence that surrounds our front yard and my bleary eyes feel upon this sizzling sight: Drosanthemum micans

The other day I posted a photo of Cooper’s hardy ice plants ( Delosperma cooperi ) nestled against a clump of Cape balsam ( Bulbine frutescens ) and Jerusalem sage ( Phlomis fructicosa ). The color of these ice plant flowers is so intense, it looks almost fake. Delosperma cooperi , flowers open But like so many plants commonly given the moniker “ice plants,” Delosperma cooperi produces flower colors that border on the fluorescent. If they didn’t close up at night, they might light up your entire yard! This is what the same clump looks like in the morning and evening: Delosperma cooperi , flowers closed