Succulents and More™

Over the last few years, my friend Kyle has created a garden that is one of a kind. It’s beautifully laid out, with rock-lined mounds full of choice plants that are lovingly cared for. I’ve written about Kyle’s garden before ( here , here , here , here , and here ), but it’s been seven months since my last post. That may not seem like a long time, but Kyle is the most active gardener I know, and his garden is constantly evolving. High time for an update! Kyle is a geologist by profession, and he loves rocks. It comes as no surprise that his garden is full of them – rocks used to create the infrastructure as well as rocks used ornamentally. He thinks that he’s brought in at least 6,000 pounds of rocks, probably more. Inspired by Kyle, I’ve been adding more rocks to my own garden, but whenever I visit him, I realize that I still need a lot more. As you look at the photos below, and particularly Kyle’s backyard in part 2 of this post (coming soon), you’ll see that virtually all succulents

The massive sycamore ( Platanus × hispanica ) in our neighbor’s front yard provides valuable shade for her house, but in the fall, it becomes the bane of my existence. It produces a seemingly endless stream of leaves – large leaves that curl up and are difficult to dislodge with a leaf blower. Our neighbor’s sycamore at the very beginning of its leaf drop Because of our prevailing winds (typically from the north), a lot of the sycamore leaves get blown our way. The most immediate destination is the driveway bed my friend Kyle helped me redo last December ( see here ). This bed is full of hechtias, agaves, and aloes – spiky, toothy, and/or prickly plants that trap the leaves and make manual removal painful. In an effort to make my life a little easier, I decided to try something new: bird netting, like you would use in an orchard to prevent birds from eating the fruit. And it seems to be doing the trick. Here’s a photo of the leaves piling up on our neighbor’s side instead of being blo

Of all the shrubs in the garden, my favorite is Acacia aphylla . This oddball from Western Australia lacks traditional leaves (hence the common name “leafless rock wattle”). Instead, its zigzaggy blue-green stems perform photosynthesis. These stems, which give the plant its striking sculptural appearance, are adapted to reduce water loss in the dry, arid conditions where it naturally grows – not so different from here. From a distance, Acacia aphylla looks like a bluish cloud hovering over the sidewalk bed. In late winter, mid- to late-February, it’s covered with bright yellow ball-shaped flowers. This is what it looked like this year: The red-flowering shrub behind it is Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’, thought to be a hybrid of Grevillea rosmarinifolia and another unknown grevillea: I like the two together, but both were getting too large for this spot – or any spot in our small garden. This is what Acacia aphylla looked like yesterday morning: With curbside yard-waste pickup coming up