Succulents and More™

After I was done at the UC Botanical spring plant sale , I walked over to my favorite areas in the garden, the New World Desert and the Southern African Collection. Somebody had told me that the puyas were in bloom. “In bloom” turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration but they are definitely starting. Unfortunately, the most impressive puya of them all, Puya berteroniana , wasn’t flowering yet, but the massive clump of Puya venusta on the edge of the New World Desert had quite a few flower spikes. Puya venusta   Puya venusta

Last Saturday I did something I’d been wanting to do for a long time: I attended a plant sale at UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley . As an on-again, off-again member and somewhat regular visitor (if once or twice a year counts) I’m fairly familiar with their collections and I know that many of their plants are unusual and rare. Not surprisingly, quite a few plants propagated from UCBG stock make it into their plant sales—which, I might add, are legendary in Northern California gardening circles. Succulents lined up along the walkway

A couple of weekends ago I attended the spring plant sale at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that this is one of my favorite public gardens in Northern California and that I try to go to every one of their sales. Not only is it great fun to browse hundreds upon hundreds of fantastic plants, many of them rare or brand-new introductions, it’s also a great opportunity to spend some time checking out what’s new in the garden or visiting old “friends.” I could spend all day walking through the Ruth Bancroft Garden In fact, the sale tables are scattered throughout the garden, so by the time you’ve looked at all of them you’ve walked through a large part of the garden. I like to bring our old Red Flyer wagon so I don’t have to hand-carry my plant picks as I explore and photograph. Aloes in bloom

The botanical highlight of our recent visit to my parents-in-law in Mount Shasta was seeing the manzanitas in bloom. In Mount Shasta manzanitas are everywhere. I don’t think many homeowners plant them; they’re just part of the natural landscape. With their evergreen leaves and their contorted trunks and branches, which vary from a rich reddish brown to a purplish black, manzanitas are attractive year round. In the spring, however, their beauty peaks when bell-shaped flowers ranging from white to pink erupt in dense clusters.

On our recent spring break trip to Santa Barbara I managed to squeeze in a visit to a nursery that came highly recommended: Terra Sol Garden Center . As it turned out, it was only a couple of miles from our hotel . It’s not a big nursery but the second I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore (or, in my case, Davis). Our nurseries just don’t have displays of bougainvillea out front! The photos in this post show plants that are unusual or exotic in one form or another. Terra Sol also has most of the basic nursery staples—flowering annuals, plenty of veggies, bagged soil, fertilizer, etc.—but I decided to skip those. View from the parking lot Talavera pottery

On our way home from our visit to Santa Barbara , we decided to do some exploring in the hinterland of northwestern Ventura County . According to Wikipedia: North of Highway 126, the county is mountainous and mostly uninhabited, and contains some of the most unspoiled, rugged and inaccessible wilderness remaining in southern California. I love backroads, and State Route (SR) 33 crosses an area neither I nor my wife had ever been to before. Map of our route from Santa Barbara to I-5 The initial stretch of Highway 33 beginning in the town of Ventura is called the “Ojai Freeway.” This is a bit of an exaggeration since this is a fairly windy country road that isn’t particularly fast. It quickly begins to climb into the hills where we found our first surprise: avocado orchards! Avocado orchard along the Ojai Freeway

← Ganna Walka Lotusland 4 CACTUS GARDEN The last garden I visited at Lotusland is also the last one that was installed. Its beginnings, however, go back many decades. Cactus aficionado Merritt Sigsbee Dunlap started his collection in 1929 and in 1966 promised it to Madame Walska, whom he had known since the 1940s. It was finally donated to Lotusland in 1999, 15 years after Madame’s death, but due to a lack of funds and the sheer size of the collection – 530 specimens from over 300 species – it took another few years before the new Cactus Garden was finally unveiled. Merritt Dunlap attended the 2003 opening and in the same year celebrated his 97th birthday in the Cactus Garden. He is said to have been very proud of how it turned out. Entrance to the Cactus Garden

← Ganna Walka Lotusland 3 WATER GARDEN If I had to pick out my favorite spot in all of Lotusland, this might be it. There is something so peaceful and serene, and it’s achingly beautiful. If I were a plein air painter, this is where I would want to set up my easel and paint away until the light begins to fade. What is now the Water Garden once was the swimming pool of the estate’s second owners, the Gavit family. It was built in 1925; the pool house was designed by George Washington Smith , a leading proponent of the Spanish Colonial Revival style that gives much of Santa Barbara its distinctive look. Ganna Walska transformed the swimming pool into a pond and stocked it with Asian lotus , the inspiration for the name “Lotusland.” According to our docent, the Water Garden is a riot of color in the summer when the lotus start to bloom.   Lotus pond and pool house Closer view of pool house; notice the pride of Madeira ( Echium candicans ) in bloom

← Ganna Walka Lotusland 2 ALOE GARDEN The Aloe Garden was started in the 1950s and today features almost 200 different aloe species, including many tree aloes which have reached impressive heights. However, the first thing I noticed when entering the Aloe Garden was a wall of black bamboo ( Phyllostachys nigra ). You don’t often see bamboo planted right next to aloes, but at Lotusland anything goes. Black bamboo ( Phyllostachys nigra ) forming the border between the Japanese Garden and the Aloe Garden Some people might think that a garden dedicated to a single genus is boring. Not so here. The genus Aloe offers far more diversity than most plant aficionados realize, and the Aloe Garden at Lotusland presents a stunning cross-section. Just take a look at the photos in this post, and you will agree! Aloe plicatilis

Once upon a time, California’s Central Valley was full of valley oaks ( Quercus lobata ). The largest of the deciduous oak trees endemic to the U.S., the valley oak can grow to 100 ft. and live to 500 years. Over the past century and a half, 90% of the marshy wetlands that were once a dominant feature of the Central Valley have been transformed into drier farmland and the natural habitat of these majestic trees has all but disappeared. Driving home from my in-laws recently, I spotted a pocket of valley oaks on a ranch near Redding . While these aren’t the methuselahs found at Micke Grove Regional Park in Lodi, they are beautiful in their own right, especially at this time of year when they sport of new coat of vibrant green leaves.