Succulents and More™

The Carhart Garden was the first stop on the 2024 Fling , an annual meetup of garden communicators (bloggers, Instagrammers, TikTokers, Facebookers, etc.) who get together in a different city each year to visit gardens, socialize, and exchange experiences. The destination this year was Tacoma and the Puget Sound . Day 1 was spent on Vashon Island , a short ferry ride from Tacoma. The Carhart Garden is located on Maury Island, a small island connected by an isthmus to the larger Vashon Island . The cultivated garden is 3 acres and is surrounded by 15 acres of stewardship forest . To somebody who gardens on an 8,100 sq.ft. property, 3 acres seems immense – even more so when you can’t see it all laid out in front of you because there are thousands of trees and shrubs. Whit and Mary Carhart have been developing their garden for almost 25 years. Carving a garden into the steep hillside meant backbreaking labor, much of it done by the Carharts themselves. The largest section, the woodland s...

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you have heard me mention Troy McGregor. I first met Troy when he was the manager of the nursery at the Ruth Bancroft Garden, a good 10 years ago . He was instrumental in growing what used to be a small plant sale area into a specialty nursery known all over Northern California for its excellent selection of succulents and water-wise plants, including a large variety of shrubs from Australia and South Africa. Since then, he’s established Gondwana Flora , a landscape design and build company specializing in climate-appropriate front yard transformations. Waltzing Matilija Nursery began in 2018 as an extension of Gondwana Flora. “I was unable to find many of the plants I love to landscape (and garden) with,” Troy said when I spoke with him last year, “so I started to grow my own. One thing leads to another and now here we are.” Troy with Protea ‘Arctic Ice’ In 2021, Troy moved Waltzing Matilija to its current location, a ½ acre l...

Last week was dreamy as far as the weather was concerned. The daytime high was 75°F just the other day – those are San Diego temperatures! But fall is still a number of weeks away and the heat is likely to return, so I’m not doing any major (re)planting yet. And I do have holes to fill, like this one: Mangave ‘Mission to Mars’ My large Mangave ‘Mission to Mars’ (above) rotted following the two heat domes we had this summer. As I was removing it, I realized what a large plant it was. To fill the space, I planted an Aloe ‘Birds and Bees’ behind where ‘Mission to Mars’ had been (below). This aloe hybrid originally found at the Ruth Bancroft Garden will develop a trunk over time ( see this post for photos ), leaving room for something else, probably an agave. I’ll play musical chairs in my head for a few weeks until I make a final decision. Newly planted Aloe ‘Birds and Bees’ (left), Agave ‘Red Bull’ (right) I recently found another victim of the heat dome, Agave parrasana ‘Fireball’. A...