Succulents and More™

Often, people are surprised when they find out I don’t have a greenhouse. Somehow they assume that I have a large collection (of what?) that needs to be housed in a protected environment. Not so. That doesn’t mean I don’t have plants that shouldn’t be sheltered from the elements, mostly seedlings I started myself. Case in point: the echinopsis hybrids I blogged about last summer . In addition, I typically save offsets from aloes, agaves, and mangaves when I (re)move the mother plant. More often than not, the babies are left to their devices, sitting on the ground somewhere in the black hole that is the backyard. And finally, I do have some smaller succulents that could fall under the umbrella of “collector plants.” They get tucked away here and there, wherever there’s a bit of space on a shelf. All in all, a pretty disorganized and unsatisfying state of affairs. Still, I’ve resisted getting a greenhouse because I was afraid I might accumulate even more plants that just end up sitting ...

In my previous post , I showed you what was in bloom in the South African Garden when I visited Seaside Gardens Nursery on my recent Santa Barbara trip . This post focuses on the Succulent Garden, another of the 12 vignettes in the nursery’s fantastic demonstration garden. The Succulent Garden was originally designed by Mary Pat Moloney and Donna and Bill Baker. Bill Baker, who died far too young in 2009, was a renowned plantsman widely credited with popularizing Aloidendron ‘Hercules’ ( see story here ). Much of the plant material in this area comes from the Bakers’ garden, including several ‘Hercules’ which have now reached stately proportions. Winter is a great time to visit because the aloes are in full bloom – as you can see below, they put on quite a show. When I arrived at Seaside Gardens, the fog hadn’t burned off quite yet, softening the contrast and intensifying the colors. Aloidendron barberae (left), Aloe ferox (center) The Succulent Garden is anchored by two types of t...

Seaside Gardens is a retail nursery in Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara. I’d first visited in 2015 , and I took the opportunity to go back when I was in Santa Barbara this January . What makes Seaside Gardens so special is its 3-acre demonstration garden. It’s subdivided into 12 vignettes created by local landscape designers. Each one showcases a different type of garden ranging from Asian, Australian and South African to Californian, Mediterranean, Grassland and Cottage. Because of the time of year, most of them weren’t at their best, but there were two notable exceptions: the South African Garden and the Succulent Garden. They were arguably at their peak. This post is about the South African Garden; I’ll have a second post about the Succulent Garden (think aloes in full flower). To get to the South African Garden, I walked through the Asian Garden designed by Pat Brodie: At this of year, the Asian Garden is a quiet study of greens – quite different from what you’re about to ...