the huntington desert garden

The late-December light was fad­ing when I headed to the wild and won­der­ful plants that make up the Huntington’s Desert Gar­den. The gar­den dates back many decades and fea­tures some immense spec­i­mens the likes of which you’ll almost never see. But what I love most about the gar­den is that it incor­po­rates these great plants into land­scapes that both honor the plants and use them in strik­ing combinations.

Many aloes were bloom­ing with their dra­matic spikes of hot, bright col­ors. The the­atri­cal light­ing helped to make some of the scenes even more dramatic.

(Be sure to click onthe third image to enlarge it. In its unearthly weird­ness, it’s got to be one of my favorite gar­den pho­tos I’ve ever taken.)



One zone of the gar­den focuses on plants you’d find in Cal­i­for­nia. Here a cre­osote bush serves as a screen for a radi­ant gray-white agave.

And this scene employs the coastal and Chan­nel Island buck­wheat, Saint Catherine’s lace (Eri­o­gonum gigan­teum)–a plant that tech­ni­cally doesn’t come from a desert–with other dry­land plants. The gray-green foliage on all of them helps to unify this diverse planting.

The Hunt­ing­ton is in a warm sub­trop­i­cal area just east of Los Ange­les. That doesn’t mean that it’s warm enough for all of these plants. Patio heaters of the kind that you see out­doors at restau­rants keep plants warm at night in one area of the gar­den. (These are the frigid depths of Decem­ber, after all.)

Now, as much as I was try­ing to focus on the over­all land­scape, I have to share a few pho­tos of indi­vid­ual species that caught my eye.

Look­ing up at a very large Yucca fil­if­era from Mexico…

(There’s an extremely sim­i­lar shot of the exact same plant on the Germanatrix’s post on her visit to this same gar­den at the end of Novem­ber. Check it out: here.)

Two tall palms with immense tree aloes, Aloe bar­berae. At the Hunt­ing­ton the species is iden­ti­fied as A. baine­sii, but the tax­on­o­mists have had a change of heart. I have two of these in my lit­tle front yard, the tallest of them still under twenty feet but still impres­sive at that size. The writeup on this plant says it can hit fifty feet or more. The Hunt­ing­ton spec­i­mens are just about there, I’d guess.

A dynamic and lyri­cal tan­gle of leaves on sev­eral plants of the var­ie­gated form of Agave amer­i­cana… (Homage to some­body… later Willem de Koon­ing? Franz Kline?) Agaves with their per­fect rosettes seem to appeal to the part of our brains that appre­ci­ate sym­me­try and order. This plant­ing sub­verted the expected into a beau­ti­ful mess.

A tall, dense stand of Cleis­to­cac­tus straus­sii…

As we left the Hunt­ing­ton the light that had made the Desert Gar­den extra-interesting was col­or­ing up the flanks of Mount Wil­son and the the rest of the San Gabriels.

Not far away from the Hunt­ing­ton is Pasadena, the site of the annual New Year’s Rose Parade, which should be get­ting under way not long after this post hits the web. (Okay, it’s sort of a lame way to try to segue this post to the topic of New Year’s Day, but–hey!–I had to give it a try.)

Happy New Year’s to all of you, and best wishes for a healthy and pros­per­ous year filled with amaz­ing botan­i­cal highlights.

January 01 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • • • •

11 Responses to “the huntington desert garden”

  1. steve on 01 Jan 2010 at 7:50 am #

    Wow, James. You are right about that 3rd photo, man. Like Alice in Cac­tus Won­der­land! I really enjoyed this look at Hunt­ing­ton. You are cor­rect — we need to be thank­ful indeed that some­one lav­ished the care and atten­tion on these stun­ning plants. Dude, I want to see more, lol!

  2. Charlotte on 01 Jan 2010 at 8:40 am #

    Thanks for this — looks amaz­ing and I shall put it on my list for my Cal­i­for­nia visit in the spring.

  3. Pam/Digging on 01 Jan 2010 at 10:15 am #

    I hope to see this gar­den one day. Thanks for the vir­tual tour.

  4. Loree/danger garden on 01 Jan 2010 at 11:20 am #

    Won­der­ful pic­tures! We vis­ited Hunt­ing­ton back in Octo­ber, what a mag­i­cal place! It was a bright and sunny day, the light in your pic­tures is much more mys­te­ri­ous. Thanks for the tour!

  5. Susie on 01 Jan 2010 at 11:54 am #

    Great photos…I love the desert gar­den sec­tion. Han’t been in awhile.…your post­ing has made me want to take the treck out there to visit.

  6. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 01 Jan 2010 at 11:57 am #

    Beau­ti­ful pho­tos. I haven’t been to the Hunt­ing­ton in years — not since I lived in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. AT the time, I was not a land­scape designer and was barely even a gar­dener. Makes me won­der if I would look at it with dif­fer­ent eyes now, or just enjoy its beauty with­out try­ing to analyze.

  7. Brent on 01 Jan 2010 at 12:09 pm #

    Those are some nice pho­tos! I’ve been gain­ing an appre­ci­a­tion for desert plants recently, so your post had some nice syn­chronic­ity for me.

  8. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » framing the garden view on 01 Jan 2010 at 1:39 pm #

    […] to come: posts on the Huntington’s Japan­ese Gar­den, Con­ser­va­tory and Desert Gar­den. bookmark, […]

  9. Town Mouse on 01 Jan 2010 at 5:09 pm #

    Great pho­tos! I lived in Tuc­son, AZ for sev­eral years before I moved to CA and really like the aes­thetic of the cac­tus and suc­cu­lents. Green almost seems a bit bor­ing when you can have shades of gray, green, yellow…

  10. ryan on 02 Jan 2010 at 1:00 am #

    These are great. Some­thing really fan­tas­tic about the var­ie­gated agave.

  11. Germi on 24 Feb 2010 at 9:42 am #

    GULP!
    What BEAUTIFUL images of one of my favorite places in the WORLD! You cap­ture the sur­real gor­geous­ness SO well! And thanks ever so much for men­tion­ing me — we are obvi­ously drawn to the same plants! That enor­mous yucca/pachypodium/beaucarnia stricta/plant so old I can’t even iden­tify it is almost like a totem — one must bow down before it!
    FAB post! Thanks!
    Best,
    Ivette (Germi)

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