Steve Super's super plants

The three and a half days I spent in Santa Barbara last month were packed with visits to private gardens and nurseries. One of them was Steve Super’s nursery in Los Osos on the Central Coast. I’ve known Steve virtually for a number of years and have several of his plants growing in my garden, but I’d never met him in person. This trip was the perfect opportunity to remedy that.

Steve Super sells his plants at local plant events as well as online. He has both an ecommerce website, Stevesupergardens.com, and a store on Etsy. He sells a wide variety of weird and wonderful plants, ranging from bromeliads and epiphytic cacti to aloes and agaves, including his own hybrids. He’s also been making his own mangaves and is now selling the first one on his site, Mangave ‘Watercolor’. I have another one of his mangaves in my garden, Mangave ‘Black Widow’; it will be available for purchase in the near future.

Steve shares two growing spaces with Nick Wilkinson, owner of Grow Nursery in Cambria and landscape design firm Botanica Nova. I visited the location in downtown Los Osos where Steve meets with customers by appointment. I knew I’d arrived at the right place when I saw the rows of Aloidendron ‘Hercules’ planted outside the fence:

Row of Aloidendron ‘Hercules’ and other aloes

The nursery itself isn’t large, but there was plenty to discover. Steve let me poke around by myself while he was taking a phone call.

Oxalis palmifrons

I’ve never seen dudleyas displayed like this before

The largest specimen of Agave marmorata ‘Papilio Platanoides’ I’ve ever seen. This is a rarely seen dwarf mutation of a very large agave.

I did a double-take when I saw this green stuff. Moss in pots? It turns out it’s a spongy, mat-forming perennial called Scleranthus biflorus. It’s native to Australia and New Zealand where it goes by the common name cushion-bush.

I was tempted to buy one to replicate this staging, but I doubt it would have lived very long in my climate

Bright green cushions (soft) butting up against gray-green cushions (anything but soft)

The gray-green cushions are Deuterocohnia brevifolia, a terrestrial bromeliad from Argentina and Bolivia

Aeonium tabuliforme is almost flat

Competing in the flatness category, Haemanthus deformis

If cushiony or flat isn’t your thing, how about zig-zaggy? Wire-netting bush (Corokia cotoneaster) from New Zealand.

I’ve lusted after this Cotyledon undulata for years, but it has a reputation as being very finicky, which under my care would spell speedy death

Ruffled echeveria, pretty but too fragile for our hot-summer climate

I don’t know which aloe this is, but the leaves were RED

Agave parryi ‘Excelsior’ and other agaves

Sport of ×Mangave ‘Mission to Mars’ which Steve discovered in a batch of tissue culture plugs. One of a kind and not for sale.

Cool rocks, too (and a bicycle)

Steve and Nick are great guys, and I spent a fair amount of time yakking with them:

Nick Wilkinson (left) and Steve Super (right)

Nick has been a vendor at the Sacramento Cactus & Succulent Society Show & Sale for a number of years, and he said he’d participate this year as well (May 3-5, 2024). That’ll be a great opportunity for people in Northern California to get their hands on his plants. My much loved sand lily (Veltheimia capensis), for example, originally came from Nick. Maybe Nick can talk Steve into accompanying him to Sacramento, or at least bring some of his plants.

Here’s my haul from Steve Super (some for a local friend, some for me):

Aloe ‘Nessie’

Aloe nobilis variegated

Dyckia ‘Mega Tooth’

Dyckia ‘Solar Corona’

Echeveria ‘Cherry Jubilee’

Echeveria ‘Ebony’

Mangave ‘Black Widow’

Orthophytum magalhaesii

After I’d taken my plant haul to my car, I walked across the street to photograph the landscaping in front of what I believe is (or was) a thrift store:

I don’t know if Nick or Steve had a hand in this, but I wouldn’t be surprised, seeing how succulent-heavy it is.

Aloe thraskii in the back, Aloe cameronii in the front

It was great to see such beautiful landscaping in front of a small business instead of cheap shrubs or a sea of bark mulch. Well done!

© Gerhard Bock, 2024. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.