Succulents and More™

The San Francisco Succulent & Cactus Society (SFSCS) usually meets at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park. The February meeting last Tuesday was an exception: It was held at the Ruth Bancroft Garden (RBG) in Walnut Creek, one of my favorite places to visit. I don’t often make it to the regular SFSCS meetings because Golden Gate Park is a good 1½ hour drive, even longer if traffic is bad (it often is). The RBG, on the other hand, is just an hour away, which makes it a much more convenient destination for me. The RBG is usually closed on Tuesdays, and they opened it just for us. The activities started at 4 pm with a tour of the garden. There were three options: a tour focused on the history of the garden, another on cacti, and the third on aloes. That’s the group I joined. It was led by RBG curator Brian Kemble, who showed us many of the aloes currently in bloom. Brian has been with the RBG for over 40 years and has an encyclopedic knowledge of succulents. I...

While the Ruth Bancroft Garden  (RBG) in Walnut Creek, CA is a great place to visit at any time of year, it's particularly beautiful right now. The photo below shows you why: Many of the aloes are in bloom. The RBG has an extensive collections of aloes, both species and hybrids. Brian Kemble, the garden's long-time curator, is a world-renowned aloe expert and has been creating hybrids for decades, many of which are planted out at the RBG. Last Saturday I had the opportunity to get into the RBG at 7:30 am as part of an open photography session. My earlier post  highlights the breadth of succulents on display at the RBG. This post is all about aloes. It's not meant to be comprehensive; it simply showcases the aloes that caught my eye. If you live in Northern California, why not make plans for a visit and experience the aloe bloom for yourself? Flowering aloe panorama

A couple of weeks ago I attended a media preview party held by Timber Press, the Portland-based publishing company, at the Ruth Bancroft Garden to celebrate the upcoming release of The Bold Dry Garden: Lessons from the Ruth Bancroft Garden . Written by Johanna Silver, the garden editor of Sunset Magazine, and featuring photographs by Marion Brenner, this is the first book dedicated to the RBG. While the book won’t be available in stores until early October, everybody who attended the event received an advance copy signed not only by Johanna Silver and Marion Brenner but also by Ruth Bancroft herself! I will have a separate book review soon. Ruth Bancroft and curator Brian Kemble who has been working alongside Ruth since 1980. With his encyclopedic knowledge, Brian has been instrumental in making the RBG what it is now. (Photo © 2016 by Stephen Lysaght. Used with permission.) During the event, Ruth was sitting in the front row with her two daughters and friends. After visiting her ...

As luck would have it, I visited the Ruth Bancroft Garden (RBG) twice over the last two weekends. On October 4, my friend Michele and I made a quick stop before Cricket Riley’s garden party celebrating the launch of her book Designing the Lush Dry Garden , written in collaboration with Alice Kitajima and Kier Holmes. And then a week later, on October 11, the Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society (SCSS) went on a bus trip to the RBG. The weather was glorious both times, and I took more photos than I had initially realized — so many, in fact, that I need to split this post into two parts. This is part 1; here is part 2 . I’ve blogged about the Ruth Bancroft Garden countless times over the years, and many of you have been there yourselves. If you’re not familiar with Ruth Bancroft and the iconic garden she started when she was 63 years old, read my review of Designing the Lush Dry Garden for a brief summary. If you’re interested in the full story, check out Johanna Silver’s book The ...