Succulents and More™

One of the blogs I follow, Loree Bohl’s Danger Garden , has a regular feature dedicated to Loree’s favorite plant in the garden in any given week. I’ve long wanted to do something similar, so this is my first entry in the Plant of the Week category. My favorite this week is a plant I picked up at Peacock Horticultural Nursery in Sebastopol, CA a couple of Sunday ago. I was immediately attracted to its rather odd look: deeply guttered leaves with wavy margins and bold brown spots. Another plant that would be right at home in a Dr Seuss garden. This interesting looking fella is a Manfreda undulata ‘Chocolate Chips’. Manfredas—there about 20 different species and an increasing number of cultivars and hybrids—are closely related to agaves. Like agaves, they form rosettes and and their flowers appear at the end of a long stalk. Unlike agaves, however, manfredas are deciduous (they lose their leaves in the winter) and polycarpic (they don’t die after flowering). Their flowers are quite...

Yesterday I talked about the Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight’ which is contributing a nice pop of color along the front yard fence. You’ll see it again in some of the photos below. But the focus today is on the potted plants on top of that fence. Most of them are cacti, with a couple of beaked yuccas ( Yucca rostrata ) and a desert rose ( Adenium obesum ) thrown in for good measure. The first container I put there is this large but s hallow bowl . I contains three different varies of claret cup cactus ( Echinocereus triglochidiatus ) as well as a miniature agave ( Agave toumeyana var. bella ). Claret cup cacti ( Echinocereus triglochidiatus ‘White Sands’, Echinocereus triglochidiatus , Echinocereus triglochidiatus var. mojavensis f. inermis ) and Agave toumeyana var. bella The original reason I chose this location is that in the summer it gets full sun for 6+ hours—just what these desert dwellers want for healthy growth. It may sound ironic, considering we have 267 sunny days a year ...

Salvias are among my favorite perennials. I have many species all over the yard, and most of them are hardy in our zone 9b climate. However, as is so often the case, my favorites are the ones that push the envelope in terms of hardiness. These include the salvias from Southern Mexico, which I usually grow as annuals because they simply don’t survive our winters (it might be more because of our heavy soils, which stay wet for extended periods, than because of absolute temperatures). Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight’ is one of these tender salvias. It has been putting on a great show for about a month, and I finally got around to taking some photos before it is done blooming. As you can see, this is a tall salvia. If the stems weren’t flopping over as much, they’d be five or six feet tall. The violet-blue flowers are beautiful in their own right, but the most outstanding feature for me are the chartreuse calyces. This truly is a stunning combination.

In the spring I waxed poetic about a blue jacaranda ( Jacaranda mimosifolia ) I spotted around town. Jacarandas are not very hardy, and I’m still surprised the tree I photographed has managed to grow as tall as it has without being cut down by a hard frost. I even considered planting a blue jacaranda in our own front yard as a replacement for our nasty cherry plum tree but ultimately chose a palo verde instead . It’s no secret, then, that I’m very fond of blue jacarandas. There are few trees that can beat them for visual impact in the spring when they’re covered with masses of bluish purple flowers. Unlike many spring-blooming trees, jacaranda flowers last for many weeks. And the fallen petals look beautiful, too, as they form a carpet beneath the tree. Here in the northern hemisphere we’ll have to wait another six months before we see jacarandas in bloom again, but down under they’re at their peak right now. Last night our friend from Sydney, Australia sent us a few photos of blue...

  Click here to read part 1 of this post While many of the plants at Peacock Horticultural Nursery were in autumn mode, one tree was blooming like it was the height of spring: Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ The tree, Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ aka Florist Silver Dollar, was alive with bees, their buzzing audible from quite a few feet away. Eucalyptus pulverulenta ‘Baby Blue’ I was very surprised to see a tree positively covered with flowers at this time of year but apparently this gum tree blooms from fall to spring. Here are a few more photos:

Located in the small town of Sebastopol in Sonoma County, about an hour north of San Francisco, Peacock Horticultural Nursery is a treasure that deserves to be more widely known. Although it’s been a while since my last visit, I try to stop there whenever I can on my way to the coast ( Bodega Bay is only 20 minutes from Sebastopol). On Sunday I found myself in Sebastopol for ARTrails , an open studio tour organized by the Arts Council of Sonoma County. But before we even went to the first open studio, we dropped by Peacock Horticultural Nursery to do some exploring. The nursery is owned and run by Robert Peacock. It won’t take you long to realize that this is anything but a conventional nursery. Robert is a plant nut, and while he is in the business of selling plants, it’s quite obvious he also collects them. The property is a couple of acres, if I had to make a guess, and not only encompasses the nursery but also the house where Robert lives. In fact, walking the meandering paths...

My favorite group of cacti are the barrel cacti. Everybody loves the golden barrel ( Echinocactus grusonii ) and so do I, but my favorite is the blue barrel ( Ferocactus glaucescens ), also known by its Spanish name biznaga. Here is a particularly nice trio at UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley … …and here is a clump at Ganna Walska Lotusland in Santa Barbara :

Large, hairy and stinky flowers. Doesn’t that sound inviting? I think so! I'm super excited because my Stapelia gigantea is finally blooming. I’ve had it for three years and have overwintered it outside without ill effects. I don’t know why it didn’t bloom before but I assume it has to be a certain size. Take a look at this beauty! But let’s rewind a bit. I first noticed three weeks ago that flowers were forming: October 4, 2013

I  met a bunch of wonderful folks at the recent 2013 Succulent Extravaganza . One of the most interesting people I talked to was fellow Succulent Fanatics member Chris Hansen . Having flown in from Michigan, he was the clear winner in the Who Traveled The Farthest contest. Chris is the co-owner of Great Garden Plants , a mail-order plant nursery, and the breeder of a line of stunning and super-hardy sedums he calls SunSparkler . Three hybrids have been released so far: ‘Dazzleberry’, ‘Lime Zinger’ and ‘Cherry Tart’. They’re only 6-8” in height, which makes them perfect groundcovers. Chris didn’t have any samples with him at the Extravaganza but he gave me a brochure with lots of beautiful photos. I loved what I saw, and Chris kindly offered to send me a few plugs next spring. Last week I swung by one of my favorite nurseries in our area, Morningsun Herb Farm in Vacaville, CA to pick up a bunch of perennials for the planting strip outside the front yard fence and for our newly ...

One of the presentation at the 2013 Succulent Extravaganza was entitled “Coring agaves.” What does that mean, you might ask? I must admit I didn’t really know either when I arrived at Succulent Gardens. Since the talk was about agaves, my favorite group of plants, my curiosity was piqued, and yet for a brief second I toyed with the idea of skipping it in favor of hanging out with other Succulent Fanatics folks. In hindsight, I’m very glad I didn’t because it ended up being my favorite presentation of the entire event. RIGHT: Regular Agave ‘Blue Glow’ LEFT: Highly variegated Agave ‘Blue Glow’ The presentation was given by Tony Krock, succulent buyer for and co-manager of Terra Sol Garden Center in Santa Barbara, CA. ( Click here to read about my visit to Terra Sol this spring. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Tony at the time.) Tony is a passionate collector of variegated agaves and has been very successful in creating specimens that show a high degree of variegation. His secret? Cor...