Succulents and More™

My previous post  was about Roger's Garden, an upscale destination nursery in Corona del Mar, a wealthy coastal community south of Los Angeles. Roger's Gardens has been around for decades. It has a large loyal clientele, and I bet many of their customers are into decor as much as plants (or even more so). I enjoy visiting Roger's Gardens once or twice a year, however often I happen to be in the area, but it's not really my kind of nursery. You know what is? Solana Succulents, a small nursery in the coastal town of Solana Beach in northern San Diego county. I've blogged about Solana Succulents before, but their eclectic inventory changes constantly so there's always something new to explore. There are many nooks and crannies in the nursery, as you'll see below. Poking around is not only fun but also completely unpredictable, seeing how you never know what you might find. A large  Aloidendron barberae  and several massive cactoid euphorbias, including  Euphor...

I just got back from a quick trip to Southern California to drop daughter #2 off at college (again). Traffic through the Los Angeles area was busier than at the end of March when we picked her up—and shelter-in-place ordinances had just gone into effect—but not as bad a pre-COVID days. I did manage to carve out time for a few plant-related outings. The first one was to  Roger's Gardens  in Corona del Mar (essentially Newport Beach). Roger's Gardens has a storied history . From the beginning, it's been more than just a business selling plants. Today, its motto is “Discover, Experience, Connect,“ and its inventory is as heavy on home decor as it is on plants. A well-loved restaurant  focusing on locally sourced foods and seasonal boutiques round out the offerings that make Roger's Gardens a destination for shoppers from Orange and neighboring counties. Newport Beach  is one of the wealthiest communities in California (their striking  Civic Center  is a succul...

I pay a lot of attention when I visit other gardens. Interesting details jump out at me seemingly on their own. The same cannot always be said for our own garden. Maybe it's because I see the plants on a constant basis so I take their special characteristics for granted? But taking the time to smell the roses look closer can reveal amazing things. This post is a great example. Take a look at the loooooong spines on these two cacti! Whether you're a fan of spiky plants or not, you've got to admit that these are impressive! Some of the spines on this Ferocactus rectispinus are a full 6 inches long! That's more than 15 cm for all the metric folks out there.

Last Saturday the air quality index in Northern California was firmly in the unhealthy-bordering-on-hazardous range. Not as bad as in Southern California, Oregon and Washington, but still bad enough.  Not that I let myself be stopped by that. Sick of being cooped up inside, I made the 1-hour drive to Martinez to pick up some plants from plantsman extraordinaire Troy McGregor, former nursery manager at the Ruth Bancroft Garden and now in business for himself creating low-water landscapes. Troy is one of the chief enablers of my plant hoarding; may the universe bless him for that. I've blogged about Troy's garden before ( October 2018  ⏐ September 2018  ⏐  April 2018 ), but it's constantly evolving so there's always something new to see. Troy used the downtime resulting from COVID-19 restrictions earlier in the year very well—all too often, landscape designers have no time for their own space. The biggest change is the addition of a chicken coop in the backyard. But i...

The smoke from wildfire  continues to hang heavy in the air, leading to unhealthy (or worse) hazard air quality index (AQI) readings. As bad as our air seems, it pales in comparison to the off-the-charts AQI values in Oregon. Portland has been in the high 400s (on a scale from 0 to 500), and some areas have reported readings in the 700s —apparently something never thought possible by the creators of the AQI scale. My heart goes out to everybody affected. I took the following photo yesterday on Interstate 80 between Vacaville and Fairfield . This area was burning not even a month ago as part of the 350,000 acre LNU Lightning Complex fires . The hills you see in the distance are black now instead of brown. I applied a stack of effects to this photo so you can clearly see the smoke in the air

At the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley (UCBG), the hill that is home to the Southern Africa Collection  looks down (literally) at the New World Desert. This is what you see: If this were my garden, I'd be ecstatic! With so many agaves, there's always something in bloom. Here's an octopus agave ( Agave vilmoriniana ) whose flower stalk is covered with bulbils—miniature plants which, in time, will detach and fall to the ground where they will hopefully find a bit of soil to root in. But that's in nature; I'm sure that at the UCBG the inflorescence will be harvested.

The University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley (UCBG)  is open daily from 12 to 5 pm, but visitors need to make a reservation. Fortunately, that's easy to do online , and same-day reservations are usually available. The upside of the reservation system is that fewer people visit at any given time, making it much easier to find parking at the Garden's parking lot. In late July, I blogged about the Mexico and Central America Collection and the Australasia Collection . This post is about the Southern Africa Collection; the next one will be about the New World Desert. The Southern Africa Collection features everything from spring-blooming bulbs (now dormant), to proteas, ericas and restios, to cycads. What I'm most interested in, of course, are the succulents, especially aloes.  While late winter/early spring is the best time to see aloes in bloom, there were a few even now. But aloes are beautiful year-round; the flowers are just a temporary bonus. The beauty...

This post continues where part 1 left off. It covers the area marked #2 in the satellite photo shown in part 1. The side yard on the south side of Mariel and Ian's property gets full afternoon sun. To take advantage of this, Mariel created a couple of mounds planted with a wide variety of succulents: Take a look at the slabs of stone framing this bed: