Succulents and More™

Below are all the posts about my December 2017 trip to Southern California. Sherman Gardens OVERVIEW POSTS My 1,000 mile Southern California succulent adventure Of course I'm buying plants on my trip! DETAILED POSTS Piece of Eden truly is a slice of paradise (part 1) Piece of Eden truly is a slice of paradise (part 2) Kay's garden: hillside haven for succulents and bromeliads Roger's Gardens: what a nursery should be Sherman Gardens: home of the world's most famous succulent mosaic Visiting Kris of Late to the Garden Party South Coast Botanic Garden: new life on top of a landfill MANY MORE TO COME!

I don't want you to think I'm "just" visiting gardens on my Southern California trip. Yes, that's the main reason why I'm in the Southland, but I've been doing of plenty of plant shopping. Here are a couple of quick snapshots of my haul so far, with a full day left: Yucca 'Bright Star', Leucadendron 'Jester', Phylica pubescens , assorted groundcover succulents

...literally. Samoyeds Boris and Natasha welcoming me to their garden paradise. Photo by Hoover Boo. If you follow Hoover Boo's fabulous blog Piece of Eden , you know who these cuties are.

When I first became interested in succulents, these were the kinds of books available: I'm sure you're familiar with them. A fair amount of information, although some of it turned out to be inaccurate, especially with regards to cold hardiness. Or advice like adding peat moss to your soil. But there was one area where these books really sucked: images. Photos were either dull and grainy or weirdly oversaturated. The print quality was mediocre, resulting in an altogether unsatisfying product. Of course that's seen through today's lens. At the time, it was what is was. We've come a long way since then. Not just in terms of photo and print quality, but also in the way books are written and designed. The book I'm reviewing in this post is a perfect case in point. I'm always on the lookout for a good succulent reference for beginners that I can recommend. It needs to be full of relevant information, starting with basic botany and then going into a...

We're spending Christmas with my mother-in-law in the mountains of Northern California. When I walk around her 2-acre property, I often think of the kind of garden I would have if I lived here. Only a few of the succulents I grow in Davis would survive outdoors in this zone 6b/7a climate—others, including aloes, would not. What would do well are hardy sedums. They, ironically, languish in Davis (zone 9b). As a rule of thumb, the hardier a sedum is, the less heat it tolerates. That's why I've lost seemingly easy sedums like Sedum spurium  and Sedum reflexum . They're hardy to zone 3 and zone 5 respectively and would turn into beautiful mats in my mother-in-law's garden. On our Iceland trip this summer, I visited  Reykjavík Botanical Garden  one evening. In addition to a wealth of alpine plants, most of them new to me, I also saw several sedums that were in full bloom. Typically I think of groundcovers as unassuming plants whose main role it is to hide bare dirt, ...

Think of a Japanese garden you've visited. What attributes come to mind? For me, it's tranquility, stillness, and self-reflection. You might say peace, meditation, a connection with nature. A refuge from the everyday world. Or you might feel transported to a faraway land that seems exotic and yet strangely familiar. In his introduction to Visionary Landscapes: Japanese Garden Design in North America  (Tuttle Publishing, 2017), Kendall Brown, Professor of Art History at California State University Long Beach, explains it like this: [T]hese gardens often exist as dreams of elsewhere and constructions of otherness. As microcosms of an idealized Japanese tradition, the landscapes can provide a compelling alternative to the banality of the here and now. Japanese gardens also serve as a kind of road home, a way of connecting us with idealizations of nature that restore us mentally and physically. Cover Attesting to the power of Japanese gardens, their popularity has spre...

At this time of year, one of my daily rituals is checking the weather, especially the night-time lows. I don't worry too much as long as temperatures don't drop below 30°F. I woke up this morning to an unpleasant surprise: Tonight's low is forecast to be 26° or 27°F, depending on what weather service you look at. The only dissenter is my favorite weather app, Morecast, which is forecasting 37°F. Hmmm, a 10°F difference? I don't think I've ever seen that. Clearly, somebody will be wrong. Not wanting to tempt fate, I scrambled in the late afternoon to move my most sensitive potted plants up against the house and covered them with frost cloth. A tray full of aloe seedlings and a few prized plants ( Euphorbia horrida  'Snowflake',  Agave albopilosa , and  Aloe ferox  'Mediopicta') were quickly shoved into the garage where they'll spend Christmas.

Dudleyas are succulents with fleshy leaves hailing from southwestern North America. Many of the 45 species are native to coastal California where they happily cling to cliff faces or rock outcroppings, often in a manner that appears to defy gravity. In their natural habitat, they are perfectly adapted to going without water for months at a time. In the summer, they often go dormant, shriveling up to just a fraction of their normal size. As is often the case with California natives, dudleyas can be challenging in cultivation when conditions are significantly different from what they're used to. Rot is the biggest problem. A common cause is watering in the summer when dudleyas expect to be completely dry. In addition, since many dudleyas grow vertically, they have a hard time dealing with water left sitting in their crown or on their leaves. That's why dudleya experts typically recommend planting them at an angle and never watering them from overhead. Having killed more dudle...

In my last post , I reported on the flowering progress of my own aloes. This morning I checked on the aloes on the University of California Davis campus. Unfortunately, when I tried to take my first photo, I realized the battery in my DSLR was dead. Not wanting to rush back home, I ended up using my phone camera. The photos aren't as good as they would have been on my regular camera, but they give you an idea of where the UCD aloes are at in terms of flowering. Yellow-flowering Aloe arborescens  outside the Botanical Conservancy greenhouses on Kleiber Hall Drive

As much as I dislike winter, it has one bright spot: It's flowering time for many aloes. In our zone 9b climate the peak is usually late January so we still have a few weeks to go before the fireworks go off. However, that doesn't stop me from checking my aloes every day. I enjoy seeing even the smallest amount of progress! Here's a look at what's happening right now. The Aloe cryptopoda  next to our driveway started to flower a month ago. It sent up two flower stalks, but unfortunately one of them (on the right in the photo below) got bent over by the nasty winds we had a few weeks ago.

I vividly remember getting a coffee table book about the Caribbean islands when I was a young adult. Looking at the glossy photos was like being there in person, and the book ignited a passion for travel that continues to burn bright to this day. Stirring the imagination—that's the power of a well-produced coffee table. Private Gardens of the Bay Area  by Susan Lowry and Nancy Berner, with photographs by Marion Brenner (who also worked on The Bold Dry Garden: Lessons from the Ruth Bancroft Garden ), is such a book. It takes you on a journey to destinations that are as exciting as the Caribbean but a lot more varied: Some gardens evoke England, others France or Italy; some look like a South Pacific paradise, others like the desert; many are firmly rooted in the California landscape around them.

The Wave Garden in Point Richmond  may be one of the best kept secrets in the Bay Area. There seems to be some hesitation to share its exact location. Maybe it's because the Wave Garden is privately owned even though it's open to the public and meant to be enjoyed by the wider community. More on the history of this unique place a little later. I visited the Wave Garden in February 2014  and again in May 2015  and had been wanting to go back ever since. Since it's only 15 minutes from Annie's Annuals and Perennials, I caught two birds with one stone last weekend. After spending a couple of hours shopping at Annie's , I made the short drive to Point Richmond. As on my previous visits, there was nobody else there. For an hour I enjoyed what has to be one of the most scenic and peaceful spots on the east side of San Francisco Bay. One of several seating areas, this one overlooking the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge  crossing San Pablo Bay

It's no secret that  Annie's Annuals & Perennials  in Richmond, CA is one of my favorite nurseries. Now through the end of the year they're having a 15% off sale on everything in the nursery: plants, gift items, even gift certificates. Is there a better reason to visit? Granted, the best time for planting is over for the year, but what is life if you don't push the envelope a little bit? In that spirit, I made the one-hour drive yesterday. My partner in crime was my friend Brian who volunteers at the Ruth Bancroft Garden . While it's fun shopping with somebody who is as plant-obsessed as you are, it's also dangerous because you end up pushing each other to buy even more than you had planned: "Hey, doesn't this plant look good? You should try it!" Or "This plant does really well in my garden. You need to get one, too." I apologize to Brian if I made him buy something he hadn't planned on buying! Richmond is in zone 10a. Davis,...

Gardeners love plants, but plants don't necessarily make great gifts unless you know exactly what the recipient really wants. Gift certificates are handy but impersonal. That's why I think books are the ideal gift for gardeners. Even if you give a book your gardening friend or relative would not have picked themselves, it might nudge them to explore something new. This list is fairly random but it contains books that stood out to me in 2017. At the bottom I've added four books on my own wish list. Maybe I'll find one or two them under the Christmas tree. All books are available from the usual sources. SUCCULENTS Designing with Succulents, Second Edition  by Debra Lee Baldwin This long-awaited update to Debra Lee Baldwin's classic exceeds every expectation I had. Completely rewritten and reorganized with hundreds of new photos, this book is the perfect gift for any succulent lover, beginner or expert. Click here to read my in-depth review.

On Sunday, November 26, Ruth Bancroft passed away at her home in Walnut Creek. She was 109 years old. I will miss her greatly even though I met her only once, briefly. Somehow I had thought she would live forever and that at some point there would be another opportunity to visit with her. Ruth Bancroft and RBG curator Brian Kemble who has been working alongside Ruth since 1980. Photo © 2016 by Stephen Lysaght. Used with Stephen's permission. Ruth started her now iconic succulent garden in 1972 at the age of 63. I bet she had no idea that she would live another 47 years to see her labor of love mature and inspire tens of thousands of gardeners to plant dry gardens as well. At the time, she was often asked why she would embark on such a big project at her age when it was more than likely that she would never see the plants grow to maturity. This was her reply: “Well, who cares if I’m around or not? Someone will be around. And if I don’t plant it then nobody will get to see ...

The most useful book on our recent Pacific Northwest trips has been  The Pacific Northwest Garden Tour: The 60 Best Gardens to Visit in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia  by Donald Olson, published by Timber Press in 2014. Now Don Olson has written a companion guide for California:  The California Garden Tour: The 50 Best Gardens to Visit in the Golden State . Selfishly speaking, the timing couldn't have been better. I'm planning a late-December trip to Southern California, and I've been using The California Garden Tour for inspiration and information. In addition to big names like the Huntington, the Los Angeles County Arboretum and the Getty Center and Villa, Don also takes readers to gardens I'm not familiar with, including Virginia Robinson Gardens, Hortense Miller Garden and Rancho Los Alamitos. I can't wait to explore them in just five weeks. Now let's take a closer look at the book:

In a recent post , my friend Kathy who blogs at GardenBook  talked about the "hateful areas" in her garden. I can relate only too well. In recent years, it seems most of our backyard has become a hateful area. With our attention firmly focused on the front garden, the backyard has fallen into benign neglect. That is about to change. Actually, it already has started to change. The area I'm going to show you today is outside the dining room slider; the desert bed we created in 2014 is on the other side of the fence. A year ago, we had an 'Aristocrat' pear and a clumping bamboo removed ( read about it here ) to create a blank slate. The first new plants to go in were an Acacia baileyana 'Purpurea' and a Grevillea 'Flora Mason' ( see here ). In recent months I've been slowly adding more plants. This area only gets a few hours of direct sun but is fairly bright most of the day because of light reflecting off the house. Let's take a closer...

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Do you like plant mysteries? If so, I have a good one for you. In recent weeks I've noticed this volunteer in the backyard: When it was smaller, I thought it was a weed but out of curiosity I decided to let it grow. However, as it got taller, I became even more baffled. 

In my previous post I showed you thickets of weedy  Agave americana  growing in two front yards just a block apart. On the same street I made another discovery—one that almost had me slam on the brakes with excitement. (I managed to contain myself enough to safely pull over to the curb.) Take a look: This is the kind of front yard I would have if I started with a blank slate: rectangular terraced planting areas in different sizes and colors filled with a variety of succulents and waterwise perennials. I love everything about this design. Hands-down, this is my new favorite front yard in Davis. The fact that I discovered it purely by chance makes me wonder what other treasures there are close to home? Instead of visiting gardens elsewhere, I need to spend more time exploring my own town! 

I love agaves. All of them. Well, almost. There's one species I'm not fond of, and it happens to be the most common one in gardens around here: Agave americana . The reason for that is very simple: Agave americana  is a baby-making machine. It pups so prolifically that you could supply your entire neighborhood with offsets and never run out. Just take a look at the photos below, and you'll see what I mean:

I recently participated in a black & white photo challenge on Facebook: for seven days, post a B&W photo of your everyday life, no explanation, no people. What initially seemed like a chore quickly became more fun than I had expected—and the catalyst for this post. Nobody sees the world in black & white—not even dogs —so B&W photos are, by their very nature, an abstraction. In the absence of color, shapes, textures, and the relationship between light and dark take on outsize significance. The natural world has been a favorite subject of B&W photographers since the invention of the medium. There is no shortage of beautiful images of plants and flowers—just take a look at the floral work of  Tom Baril  and Ron van Dongen —but succulents have traditionally taken a backseat to less prickly favorites such as tulips and calla lilies. There are exceptions.  Imogen Cunningham  photographed agaves and aloes in the 1920s, and  Brett Weston , son ...

Prepare yourselves for a shocking confession: I've never met a plant (sale) I don't like. OK, you're probably not all that surprised to hear that. After all, I regularly write about my plant sale escapades. The saga continued this past weekend. On Saturday, the UC Davis Arboretum held its final plant sale of the season. Traditionally, this is a clearance sale where all remaining plants are 10% off. This year they went all out and upped the discount to 25%—with Arboretum members getting an additional 10% off, for a total of 35%. To sweeten the deal even more, many plants were marked down to $6. Take 35% off $6, and the final price for those plants was $3.90! Practically free! What could I do? I simply had to go. I met up with fellow blogger Kathy Stoner ( click here to visit her blog GardenBook) and we spent a intensely focused hour and half on the very serious business of plant shopping. Both of us had gone through the inventory list ahead of time and marked ...

Remember this song from the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun ? Highway to the danger zone Right into the danger zone Highway to the danger zone  Gonna take you right into the danger zone Substitute "danger zone" with "Danger Garden" and you have the theme song of Loree Bohl's popular blog . After all, its motto is "Careful, you can poke an eye out." As I said in this post , I didn't lose an eye or any other vital body part while exploring Loree's front garden on my mid-September trip to Portland, Oregon. But more danger lurks around the back, behind this impressive agave gate designed by Loree's artist husband Andrew (read more about the gate here ).

With its icy blue leaves,  Aloe suprafoliata  is a striking landscape plant, as seen here at UC Davis: Four Aloe suprafoliata at the UC Davis (the flowering aloe with bluish leaves) What attracts most people to this aloe species, however, is its juvenile form: Juvenile Aloe suprafoliata at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory Its botanical name, suprafoliata , actually means “leaves stacked on top of each other.” The common name in Afrikaans is boekaalwyn , literally “book aloe.” It’s easy to see why: the stacked leaves of a juvenile plant resemble the pages of an open book. As the plant matures, the leaves swivel into the rosette you see in the first photo.

Sunset Magazine  has been a staple in my life for what seems like decades (probably because it has been decades). Granted, I haven't been happy with the inexorable shift away from gardening towards lifestyle topics but I understand the pressures Sunset must be under to adapt and meet the needs of a changing demographic. Call it loyalty or habit, but I still read Sunset every month. Their garden- and plant-related articles are typically well written and equally well illustrated. Perusing the November 2017 issue, I was excited to see a photo of agaves nestled in a bed of rosemary. Any blurb about agaves is a good thing in my book—agaves need all the help they can get to raise their profile in the gardening world. As I was reading the short article that goes with the photo, I began to laugh. Why?

Plant sales are like catnip to me. Winter and summer are safe because there are no sales. But spring and fall are full of temptations, and I generally can't resist. This usually results in a mess of nursery pots in the front yard. I leave my new purchases in a highly visible location so I'm reminded several times a day that they need to be put in the ground (or in larger pots). In the last month I've accumulated more plants than usual because of two plants sales at the UC Davis Arboretum Teaching Nursery and a trip to Green Acres Nursery in Sacramento. I did manage to plant the mangaves I bought at the first sale  but the other stuff I got—and my new purchases from the second sale—were still there on the walkway near the front door. Sunday was a perfect fall day, sunny with afternoon temperatures in the low 70s, so I got stuck in, as they say in the UK. I didn't get everything planted—mostly because I don't know yet where some plants will go—but I made good prog...

Succulents are fine by themselves, but they're even better when surrounded by companion plants that complement their shapes and textures and have similar cultivation needs. Based on what I get asked, it appears that many gardeners are interested in trees that go well with their succulents. It's no secret that I love palo verdes , especially the thornless hybrids 'Desert Museum' and 'Sonoran Emerald'. We have three, and I'm happy to see that they're becoming more available in our local nurseries. This post is about another tree that's near and dear to me:  Acacia baileyana  'Purpurea'. In my recent post about our front garden  I briefly mentioned that we had planted an  Acacia baileyana  'Purpurea' to replace an unsightly, diseased 'Aristocrat' pear. Today I want to show you what this Australian native, which goes by the funny name of Cootamundra wattle in its homeland, looks like as a mature tree: The grouping of ...

Last Saturday I hosted an open garden for members of the  Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society . In preparation I did a fairly thorough clean-up of the front yard. I even hauled out the pressure washer and blasted away years of grime from the flagstone. The wind undid my raking and leaf-blowing efforts three times (grrrr), and in the end I simply had to accept the fact there were more stray leaves than I wanted. Such is the life of a gardener. This coming Saturday I'm hosting the California Horticultural Society  for coffee in the garden, so I'm able to kill two birds with one stone. In addition, the front garden is finally looking good enough to give you an in-depth tour. It's been a while since I did that. There are 70+ photos in this post so grab your favorite drink and settle in for the duration. All photos are available in a higher-resolution version. Simply click any photo to access the lightbox view. From there you can scroll through all the images. ...

As I always do, I took lots of photos at the 2017 Succulent Extravaganza  held on September 29 and 30 at Succulent Gardens in Castroville on California's beautiful Central Coast. My earlier post  talked about this fantastic — and free! — event in more detail. This post is nothing but plant porn from Succulent Gardens , Northern California's largest succulent grower. Most photos are of the demonstration gardens but a few are from inside the retail greenhouse where thousands upon thousands of plants are for sale. Be warned: This is a long post, containing 70+ photos. Take your time. I promise you it's worth it. Aeonium 'Sunburst' and Agave attenuata 'Ray of Light'. This is in the demonstration garden Andrea Hurd created for the 2015 Succulent Extravaganza .

October 7 was the first plant sale of the season at the UC Davis Arboretum Teachning Nursery . I had printed out the plant list from their web site so I knew what to expect. (Their plant list is very handy because it contains not only brief information about each plant but also the aisle in the nursery where to find it, the price, and how many are in stock.) I was thrilled to see that the plant sale inventory contained a number of new mangaves from Walters Gardens . Mangaves are crosses between the genus Agave  (or, in many of these cases, another  ×Mangave )   and the genus Manfreda . I had several already, thanks to Loree aka Danger Garden who shared her mangave bounty with me earlier in the year, but there were some others I didn't have. I'm making a bold prediction right here and now: 2018 will the the year of the mangave! Many of these new hybrids will find their way into nurseries and, hopefully, into customers' gardens. Look for a dedicated mangave post soo...

Plant sale season is kicking into high gear. If you live on the Central Coast, the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is having their fall plant sale on Saturday, October 14. For more info, visit their web site . Much closer to home, the UC Davis Arboretum  will kick off their fall sales tomorrow, Saturday, October 7 (9:00-11:00 for members, 11:00-1:00 for the public). There will also be a sale on Saturday, October 21 and a public clearance sale on Saturday, November 4. For more information and to download the inventory for each sale, visit their web site . This morning, the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory , an "interactive and multi-sensory museum containing a large diversity of live specimens relied on for teaching or research purposes," had their pre-sale. The tables were well stocked with succulents, carnivorous plants, houseplants, and the usual quirky assortment of oddities. The prices were great, too: $10 for 3 $4 plants, $20 for 7. The Botanical Conservatory will have tab...

The 2017 Succulent Extravaganza at  Succulent Gardens  in Castroville, CA took place this past Friday and Saturday, September 29 and 30. Both days were jam-packed with presentations, socalizing, looking at plants, and of course shopping. I didn't arrive until late afternoon on Friday so I missed out on Friday's activities. But I enjoyed a full day on Saturday visiting with old succulent friends and meeting new ones, taking photos of the wonderful plants at Succulents Gardens (the demonstration gardens looked better than ever), and listening to four presentations. I bought a few things, too, but oddly enough none of them were succulents.

Loree Bohl is one special woman. Her blog, Danger Garden , was one of the first gardening blogs I started to follow, and it has had a lasting impact on my own garden and my personal plant preferences. But Loree is not just a talented writer and photographer, she's also a truly gifted gardener. If there was a Gardening Hall of Fame, I'd start a campaign to get her inducted. A couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of hanging out in Portland with Loree, Mark and Gaz of Alternative Eden , Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery , and a bunch of other plant nerds. Needless to say it was a blast, and I came home with a nice assortment of plants . Since I was staying with Loree, her husband Andrew, and their adorable chug Lila , I had ample opportunity to poke around in the Danger Garden. In this post I'll show you the front garden. In a future post, I'll take you around into the back garden. The two areas are quite different, but they're united by Loree's sharp eye for ...

Our garden will never be "finished." It took me a while to realize this. I used to think, "as soon as we're done with this project, the garden will finally be done." But nothing is ever static in a garden. Plants continue to grow and need to be managed. Sometimes "managing" involves the most drastic of measures: complete removal. That's what I did in the front yard, in the bed inside the fence. It used to be home to things like salvias, globe mallows and similar perennials ( 2010   2011   2013   2016 ). They look great in late spring. But by the end of summer they're rangy and ratty. And in the winter many of them go dormant. I finally had enough and took virtually all of them out in the spring. I only left the Meyer lemon, the 'Golden Tulip' leucadendron to the right of it, and the 'Jester' leucadendron and white sage to the left. This is what the area looked like on Saturday,September 23, 2017:

I spent a fantastic weekend in Portland, OR hanging out with friends and doing all kinds of plant-related things. Fellow blogger Loree " Danger Garden " Bohl had arranged a visit to the garden of John Kuzma. His garden, created in collaboration with Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery , was one of my favorite destinations on the 2014 Garden Bloggers Fling , and I was excited to see it again three years later. The Yucca rostrata in the front garden have definitely grown! Check out my post from 2014 to see the difference.

Last Saturday, after I had safely stowed my haul from the Ruth Bancroft Garden plant sale  in my car, my camera and I took a leisurely stroll through the garden. I didn't have to go far for my first photo stop. These beauties caught my eye right at the garden entrance: Backlit cactus always make for great photos

The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA is about to undergo what might be the biggest change since Ruth Brancroft first started it in 1972. In just a few days, construction will begin on the $4.6 million Visitor and Education Center . This will give the Garden much-needed indoor space for events, classes, and offices. And there will finally be indoor restrooms--no more porta potties! To make room for the construction, the existing nursery will move to the north side of the garden. It will occupy one half of Ruth's Folly and one of the greenhouses next to it. Before the move, the nursery is holding its biggest sale ever. On Friday, plants were 20% off, yesterday 35%, and today (Sunday, September 10) 50%. If you're in Northern California, you still have time to head on over; the sale runs until 4pm today. Click here for more details. Agave montana  at the entrance to the garden. It's pushing a massive flower stalk and will die after flowering.

After reading my recent posts about the Scottsdale Xeriscape Demonstration Garden and Cavalliere Park , both in Scottsdale, Arizona, you might be reaching Corten and gabion overload. But the place I will show you in this post is so well-designed that I hope you'll stick with me. It's Arizona State University's Polytechnic Campus in Mesa. The main campus of Arizona State University (ASU) is in Tempe. It's a sprawling site the size of a small town (642 acres). According to Wikipedia , "76,844 students [were] enrolled in at least one class on campus in fall 2016." That's a staggering number! In addition to the main campus, there are four other campuses in the Phoenix metro area. One of them is the Polytechnic Campus  in Mesa. It opened in the fall of 1996 on the grounds of the former William Air Force Base. In 2009, Ten Eyck Landscape Architects  helped turn 21 acres in the heart of the campus from a concrete wasteland into what it is today: a lush dese...

It's hot. Somewhere near 103°F here in Davis. Temperature records tumbled all over Northern California in the last few days. San Francisco smashed the all-time record on Friday with 106°F (41°C). That's the city about which Mark Twain once said: "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco." Hot summer weather is par for the course for us, but this summer has been particularly brutal. And it's not over yet.  Cool fall weather won't start in earnest until sometime in the second half of October. If then. Blazing [Death Star] I continue to hide in the house most of the time. I did a bit of yard work this morning but it was simply too hot in the sun. So back inside I went. But I did brave the heat again a little while ago to take these pictures. Many plants continue to thrive, while others have decided to go dormant permanently. So it goes.

Work has kept me busy in recent weeks and now it's too hot outside to do much gardening. The forecast for the weekend is even more dismal: 110° on Friday, 111° on Saturday, and 105° on Sunday. Even on Monday (Labor Day) it's still supposed to be 103°. I doubt I'll get much yard work done! So instead of going outside to take photos of the garden, let me show you another awesome place I visited on my Arizona trip last December. On my way to Cavalliere Park  in north Scottsdale, I drove right by 3,169 ft Pinnacle Peak. Rising almost 600 ft. from the desert floor, it's impossible to miss! Pinnacle Peak shrouded in mist After I was done at Cavalliere Park I decided to stop at Pinnacle Peak Park  (managed by the City of Scottsdale) even though the sky was getting ever gloomier. I was expecting to have the park to myself, considering the weather and the fact that it was New Year's Eve. Not so. The parking lot was more than half full, and the trail up the mountai...

The Scottsdale Xeriscape Demonstration Garden  wasn't the only remarkable public space I visited in Scottsdale, AZ last December. Located in north Scottsdale,  George "Doc" Cavalliere Park  is a 34-acre gem seamlessly integrated into the rugged desert terrain. Corten steel and gabions are liberally used to create architectural features that are both sustainable and attractive. While a public project like this encompasses a much larger scale and has a significantly higher budget than a residential landscape, it can be a valuable source of inspiration. Completed in February 2012 with a budget of $4.3 million, Cavalliere Park was a national pilot project for the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES)  program and the first SITES-certified project in Arizona .

The barrel cactus in this post is particularly special to me. Not because it's rare (it isn't), but because it's been with us for quite a while and because it has good memories attached to it. This summer it's giving us more flowers than ever before. What more could I ask! Ferocactus herrerae , with Agave vilmoriniana 'Stained Glass' behind it

Scottsdale, AZ is Phoenix's wealthy neighbor to the east. The city is known for its upscale resorts and golf courses; the New York Times called it "a desert version of Miami's South Beach." As a result, the City of Scottsdale has more resources at its disposal than other cities of comparable size. Case in point: the Scottsdale Xeriscape Demonstration Garden . This may be the most surprising public garden I've ever visited. I say surprising because instead of cookie-cutter hardscaping and the run-of-the-mill greenery you typically find in a public park, the City of Scottsdale created an outdoor lab showcasing water-saving landscaping techniques for Arizona homeowners as well as plants that are adapted to the harsh desert climate (the garden has over 7,000 plants from 200 species). The 5.5 acre Scottsdale Xeriscape Demonstration Garden is part of Chaparral Park and seamlessly incorporates the adjacent Chaparral Water Treatment Plant in its layout. In fact, the ...

On August 23, 2017, Timber Press will release the completely revised second edition of Designing with Succulents by Debra Lee Baldwin . The first edition sold over 180,000 copies and has become a classic. The second edition is even bigger and better. In addition to delighting fans of the first edition, it will appeal to a whole new audience interested in incorporating succulents into their own landscaping. Click here to read my review of the new edition. Debra Lee Balwin holding her "new baby" (photo © Debra Lee Baldwin; used with permission) As I was reading Designing with Succulents  I started to compile a list of random questions that popped into my head. Being the good sport that she is, Debra Lee Baldwin graciously agreed to answer them. Read on to find out more about the second edition of Designing with Succulents , new succulent trends, and what Debra's favorite succulents are.