you paid money for that?

At the plant sale attached to the recent suc­cu­lent show a cou­ple of the soci­ety mem­bers looked at one of the plants I had in my hands and made all sorts of approv­ing noises. “Great plant!” or “Wow, you scored!”

That was not the reac­tion when I got the plants home.

While John didn’t quite come out and say some­thing like, “You paid good money for that?,” it was there in impli­ca­tion in what lit­tle he said.

I sup­pose it’s the curi­ous gardener’s curse, get­ting all excited over some of the odder botan­i­cal life forms that didn’t get sprin­kled on with the magic uni­corn glit­ter that makes a plant con­ven­tion­ally pretty. Add to that the more gen­eral gardener’s curse of being able to see the future in rec­og­niz­ing the promise in a packet of black seeds indis­tin­guish­able from dust or a bag of brown bulbs look­ing no more promis­ing than a heap of shallots.

Here’s one of the lit­tle plants, Ipomea platen­sis, a species in the same genus as morn­ing glo­ries. This is the young plant.

Some day it’ll grow up into some­thing look­ing like this plant in the main suc­cu­lent show. Very cool, but we’re miss­ing the magic uni­corn glitter.

This is a cool plant with a Latin name that would draw snick­ers from a junior high school sci­ence class, Fockea edulis.

Some day I hope mine grows up into some­thing look­ing like these larger plants in the main show…

Here’s a more mature spec­i­men of Dioscorea elaphan­tipes, another of the lit­tle plants I got. I think the form of the caudex on this one looks pretty amaz­ing. So far these are three caudex-forming (cau­di­ci­form) species, but the inflated plant parts all look quite dif­fer­ent from each other. The foliage, too, looks totally dif­fer­ent one plant to the next.

Oper­culi­carya decaryi also has a cool inflated stem…

…and tiny, dark, del­i­cate leaves.

And then there was this one, Tyle­codon stria­tus, a plant that even I think is kin­duv ugly. Lots of brown stem and not much else. They have com­pe­ti­tions to find the ugli­est dogs. Do they have ugly plant con­tests? This species stands a pretty good chance of win­ning. And I paid good money for it!

Not all was lumpy and bul­bous at the plant sale, and there actu­ally was a lot of uni­corn glit­ter spread over many of the plants.

Echevaria After­glow and Sedum adol­phii ‘Oranges’

Golden sedum

Dud­leya brittonii

Flower on Ade­nium obe­sum, a rel­a­tive of the trop­i­cal plume­ria. Like most of the plants I pur­chased this species will form a dra­matic caudex, but peo­ple seem to buy it at least as much for the flowers.

I liked the for­est of plant labels at this vendor’s booth. One of them bears the really unhelp­ful plant name of suc­cu­lent…


There were succulent-friendly pots, too. Just look at all that drainage.


And of all the pots I came so close to going home with this one by Don Hunt Ceram­ics. Isn’t the glaze ter­rific? You wouldn’t care if the plant inside was as ugly as one of my new ones!

Con­sid­er­ing what I purchased–and espe­cially what I did not buy–this might just be the last time I’m allowed to go shop­ping unattended.

June 25 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • • | 8 Comments »

succulence

Rebu­tia muscula

Copi­apoa hypogaea var. barquitensis

One of the halls in San Diego’s Bal­boa Park almost always seems to have a plant show ded­i­cated to one group of plant or another. This past week­end it was the turn for cac­tus and suc­cu­lents, cour­tesy the San Diego Cac­tus and Suc­cu­lent Society.

This show fea­tured an expected sam­pling of cac­tus, but a sur­pris­ingly low num­ber of plants with col­or­ful, splashy foliage like you’d find on some sedums or echevarias. Maybe some of them don’t trans­port so eas­ily, and many oth­ers get too big to take to a show. Or maybe there’s a cer­tain snob­bery against easy-to-like plants that are prob­a­bly a lit­tle over­ex­posed in gar­den cen­ters and home stores around town.

I’m not sure how to react to this entry, a carved up spec­i­men of the com­mon San Diego County coastal prickly pear, Opun­tia lit­toralis. Most botan­i­cal gar­dens will have van­dal­ized cac­tus and suc­cu­lents, with ini­tials carved into plants that will carry the scars for the rest of their lives. And here’s another act of cre­ative van­dal­ism. It’s fun, but I’m a lit­tle too uptight to enjoy it with­out feel­ing some guilt or dis-ease. But in the end it’s prob­a­bly a bet­ter deal for the plant than to chop up the leaf for a big serv­ing of nopales.

Noto­cac­tus leninghausii

Mam­mil­laria carmenae

Sul­core­bu­tia rauschii

Rebu­tia fulviseta–sorry for the awful focus on this one…


Euphor­bia poissonii

Euphor­bia unispina

And yet another euphor­bia, this one E. mis­era, native right here in coastal San Diego County.

Oops…I didn’t get the name of this won­der­ful won­der. Sorry. Maybe one of you knows? EDIT JUNE 12: Hoover sug­gested that this might be Cal­ibanus hook­eri, and it looks like that is indeed the plant. Thanks, Hoover!

This decades-old spec­i­men is Ade­nia glauca.

What­ever the rea­son for the dearth of “pretty plants,” weird was in, and I found myself grav­i­tat­ing to the side of the exhi­bi­tion hall with plants that took up the idea of suc­cu­lent growth habits and ran with it in ways you don’t see in cac­tus or rosette-forming suc­cu­lents. Pretty many of them are not, but there’s a major cool fac­tor with these.

Out of these I really grooved on the cau­di­ci­form species, plants that develop grossly enlarged stem bases, stems or roots to store water for the plant to use dur­ing the dry months of the year.

It was easy to snap up a big pile of pho­tos at the show with my cell­phone cam­era, but the qual­ity of almost all of them was been pretty pathetic. Low indoor light = Slow expo­sures = Blurry pho­tos. And con­trol­ling focus is really really touchy to nearly impossible.

I’m not about to give up my real cam­eras, but gosh these lit­tle devices are handy, like the con­ve­nient Host­ess Twinkies of the pho­to­graphic world. Amaz­ing how much we’re will­ing to give up for the sake of con­ve­nience. Still, every now and then the pho­to­graphic Host­ess Twinkie god­dess smiled on me and gave me sharp images that were focuses almost where I’d have focused with my camera.

Any­way, you might have guessed that where there’s a plant show, there’s usu­ally a plant sale. But that’ll be the topic of a future post…

June 07 2011 | Categories: gardening | Tags: • • • | 9 Comments »

roadkill flower

When I got home Mon­day it was almost dark, one of the sure signs that sum­mer is over. Out in the gar­den a pot of Stapelia get­tl­ef­fii was show­ing off its first flower of the sea­son. It was dark enough that I had to use the cam­era flash.

I’ve only had this South African plant for a few months and this was its first bloom for me. Elab­o­rately striped and fuzzy with hairs that look like fur, I’m try­ing to decide whether the flower is “pretty” or not. It’s def­i­nitely in the weird and won­der­ful cat­e­gory, though. The flies like it too, mainly because it’s gen­tly fra­grant like some­thing that’s been run over on the interstate.

I’ve grown another of these car­rion flow­ers, Stapelia gigan­tea, for a few years now. That plant has flow­ers that last for just a day, and I was expect­ing the same thing with this species. But when I went out ear­lier today that first flower was still open, draw­ing a small crowd of ador­ing flies. (They got camera-shy for this shot.)

This is a frost-tender plant, so it’d work only if you brought it indoors for the win­ter in regions colder than zone 10. I’m not sure I’d want this as a house­plant when it’s flow­er­ing, but it for­tu­nately blooms before it gets so cold out­side that you’d have to bring it inside.

Pretty or not, it’s def­i­nitely a conversation-starter.

September 24 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • | 9 Comments »

solana succulents

Indulge me, if you would, a quick return to last month’s San Diego County Fair. There, in the flower show going on in the botan­i­cal build­ing, I ran across this one class they had for “most unusual foliage.” Flow­ers are great, but so are leaves. This lit­tle dis­play included a few pretty spe­cial examples.

Here you see var­ie­gated milk this­tle and a fuzzy kalan­choe leaf, thick and rigid like many lay­ers of felt.

This was the win­ning leaf, from a suc­cu­lent echevaria. Not the pret­ti­est thing on earth, but it def­i­nitely fit the “most unusual” category.

While at the fair I ran across the dis­play I ran across the dis­play mounted by Solana Suc­cu­lents. The place has been around for a while, but I’d never taken the short trip to north county to check it out. This past week­end I took John up for a quick visit.

Head­ing north, once you clear the thin atmos­phere of Del Mar, you come upon a chain of fun, funky lit­tle beach towns on the way up the coast. A visit to Solana Beach and neigh­bor­ing Encini­tas will give you some com­fort that the 1960s never went away very far, though they did get a lit­tle rein­ter­preted and gentrified.

Solana Suc­cu­lents occu­pies the out­door spaces of a lit­tle house that’s been con­verted into a shop. I liked its tight, funky feel. You’ll find lit­tle suc­cu­lent gifts, big­ger land­scape spec­i­mens, as well as some wild curiosi­ties that’ll prob­a­bly keep a con­nois­seur happy. With so many pointy, sharp plants around, this is no place to take your tod­dler. But for two peo­ple who find suc­cu­lents totally cool it was a great way to spend part of an afternoon.

Here’s a brief gallery of some of the hun­dreds of neat plants there. I tried to get the names, but a few plants weren’t labeled. And beyond that there were some unknowns mixed into the offerings.

A cool red aloe or gaster­aloe hybrid.

Another aloe or aloe hybrid with cool red sum­mer coloring.

Aloe andon­gen­sis, a species with gen­tle spots and a dis­tinct gold aura.

The fuzzed flower buds of Aloe tomen­tosa. The plant is a pretty basic green aloe, but these woolly flow­ers make up for the ordi­nary plant.

Espos­toa lanata: Was it Freud who said, ‘Some­times a suc­cu­lent is just a succulent?’

One of the var­ie­gated forms of Agave lophan­tha, a nice lit­tle spiky bun­dle not much over a foot across at this point.

A nice boxed euphor­bia specimen.

Euphor­bia polyg­ona, one of many Old-World euphor­bias that mimic New-World cactus.

And a real New World cac­tus, one of the weirdly blue-colored species in the genus Pilosocereus. The owner needed to look up the exact species, but he said it wasn’t the more com­mon azureus.

I really flaked on the name of this one. Maybe one of the stapelia rel­a­tives? EDIT 7/16/2010: Thanks to Candy, who has iden­ti­fied this plant as Euphor­bia pug­ni­formis f. cristata.

There was this short lit­tle plant with a bul­bous, suc­cu­lent base. It had fewer than a half-dozen leaves. But what stun­ning leaves. I thought they had a great gold-dust effect to them. And then John sug­gested that I wipe the pot­ting soil off the leaves. Okay, no more gold dust effect, but still a great plant. Not all suc­cu­lents are squat, spiny, leaf­less lit­tle audi­tions for a hor­ror movie. This plant is proof. But I think a lot of the other plants I’ve shown are fur­ther proof of that.


July 16 2010 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • • • | 9 Comments »

fairly cool plants

On my recent trip to the San Diego County Fair the hor­ti­cul­tural dis­plays seemed to divide into two big cat­e­gories: exhibits that fea­tured cool designs (usu­ally entered by a land­scape design firm or indi­vid­ual) and those that fea­ture some pretty cool plants (mostly in exhibits assem­bled by spe­cialty nurseries).

I’ve talked enough about the cool designs. Here are some fairly cool plants. Some have been around for cen­turies, oth­ers are fairly new to our gar­dens. Hope­fully the new intro­duc­tions are fairly tame, oth­er­wise you might be see­ing here the new exotic weed pests that’ll be keep­ing us busy for the next hun­dred years.

Ptilo­tus exal­ta­tus \‘Plat­inum Wal­laby,\’ a plant that has been show­ing up in nurs­eries this past year.

Oh look: Another note­wor­thy plant, another ptilo­tus, Down Under.

Christ­mas in July? The Ecke poin­set­tia ranch folks who sup­ply a huge per­cent­age of the world’s poin­set­tias were show­ing off this new white vari­ety, Polar Bear. My county used to be poin­set­tia cen­tral for the world, but cheaper pro­duc­tion costs have dri­ven a lot of that to Cen­tral America.

Char­treuse, green, white and near-black: Lob­u­laria Snow Princes, two kinds of ipo­moea, with Coleus Col­or­Blaze Alli­ga­tor Tears.

Gera­nium crispum, var­ie­gated form. This is one of many foliage plants that have flow­ers that don’t seem to add much to the foliage.

Gosh, yet another note­wor­thy plant with a ‘Note­wor­thy Plant’ sign next to it. (Kin­duv reminds me of those turnoffs labeled ‘scenic view­point’ on high­ways through spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes, as if you needed the sign to tell you you were look­ing at some­thing scenic or–in this case–noteworthy.) This was labeled a ‘Pine Nee­dle Fern,’ but not with its species name. My quick web trawl didn’t turn up much with that name, only a fact that it’s con­sid­ered one of the more pri­mae­val kinds of fern. Very cool, what­ever it is.

Rice flower, Ozotham­nus dios­mi­folius, a plant drought-tolerant selec­tion that, like the ptilo­tus plants, comes from Aus­tralia. You’d think they’d have run out of their notable plant signs by now.

Men­tion the word suc­cu­lent and peo­ple have visions of a fairly desert-ey land­scape. Here’s a dis­play by Cor­dova Gar­dens that instead comes off as a really lush flower arrangement.

Deute­ro­coh­nia bre­v­i­fo­lia, a fairly amaz­ing suc­cu­lent. (Edit: this is actu­ally a bromeliad!)

Mam­mi­laria parkin­so­ni­ana, a fairly amaz­ing cactus.

A nice mixed plant­ing of cac­tus and suc­cu­lents at the Solana Suc­cu­lents display.

A gor­geous pur­ple prickly pear Opun­tia Santa Rita, part of the Solana Suc­cu­lents exhibit.

Agave victoria-reginae, a nor­mally prim lit­tle bun­dle of green and white botan­i­cal joy. Check out bloom stalk in the next photo, however…

OMG, when that thing blooms, stand back! This lit­tle two-foot plant has prob­a­bly pro­duced a twelve-foot inflo­res­cence. How do you design with this plant? Is it a fore­ground plant? Or some­thing for the back­ground? Not a bad quandary to be in.


July 03 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • | 7 Comments »

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 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • • • • | 11 Comments »

agave update

We inter­rupt our series on the gar­dens at the Hunt­ing­ton Library with this quick update on the progress of the bloom spike of my Agave atten­u­ata.

At this point there flow­ers have opened on about three feet of the spike. The low­est ones are begin­ning to wither.

So far the blooms are prov­ing to be extremely pop­u­lar with the hon­ey­bees. (Notice the bee on the flower and ignore the bright red car in the back­ground. Thank you.)

In this last image you can even see the pollen that the bee has attached to its back legs for trans­port back to the hive.

Thanks for your patience. With the next post we return to the gar­dens at the Huntington…

Pre­vi­ous posts on this plant:
One agave, eight ways (Decem­ber Bloom Day)
When plants collide

December 31 2009 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: • • | 6 Comments »

when plants collide

Agave attenuata colliding with tree aloes

Fif­teen years I’ve been wait­ing for this plant to bloom. Fif­teen years. And now that it’s bloom­ing it throws its big bloom stalk into a tan­gle of two tree aloes grow­ing together in what’s now a big three-plant smashup.

The flow­er­ing plant is Agave atten­u­ata, the fox­tail agave. Native to higher ele­va­tions in Mex­ico, it’s sup­pos­edly fairly rare where it orig­i­nates. But in zone 10 and 9b-plus South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gar­dens it’s fairly com­mon, with sev­eral gar­dens in every block of my neigh­bor­hood hav­ing one or more plants.

Many agaves, includ­ing the local native Shaw’s agave, Agave shawii, come armed with attrac­tive but sharp spines. But A. atten­u­ata is as soft and friendly a suc­cu­lent as you’ll ever meet, and that’s one of its big appeals for home gar­dens. Another bonus is that it requires no sup­ple­men­tal water­ing in gar­dens near the coast.

Almost all of the agave species will bloom once and then die (mono­carpy). For­tu­nately one plant of this species will have many rosettes, with only the bloom­ing rosette dying back, leav­ing the rest to bloom in future seasons.

Agave attenuata with maturing bloom spike

At this point the stalk is taller than I am and is start­ing to grow down­ward in a thick arc.

Agave attenuata flower stalk with buds

The indi­vid­ual blooms are still closed up for busi­ness. Soon, though, the indi­vid­ual green­ish white flow­ers will open up a few at a time, begin­ning at the base of the inflo­res­cence and then slowly mov­ing towards the end.
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Agave attenuata at the neighbors

Here’s a plant at a neighbor’s house in full bloom last win­ter so that you can see what the agave does when it isn’t busy run­ning into other plants. Very grace­ful, don’t you think?

I wish the flow­er­ing stem hadn’t col­lided with the aloes. The stalk is assertive and solid so that there’s no stak­ing it or coax­ing it out of harm’s way. Oh well. I can sit back and enjoy the flow­er­ing, even if the flow­ers aren’t in the place where I’d like them.

Any­thing that you have to wait fif­teen years for it to bloom isn’t going to be the most con­ve­nient of species.

November 29 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: • • | 10 Comments »

lawn reform

Susan from Blue Planet Gar­den Blog dropped me a note about a new ini­tia­tive she was involved in. Lawn Reform, a col­lab­o­ra­tion of nine blog­gers from around the US, is try­ing to reshape how we all think about lawns and their roles in gardens.

If you’re not already out there cry­ing, “Kill your lawn” (or at least some­thing like “Reduce the size of your lawn”) the site lists six good rea­sons to think again about the green mon­ster out­side your house, “Pol­luted Water­ways,” “Pesticide-Treated Lawns that are Toxic to Humans and Pets,” “Guz­zling of Water, a Resource in Short Sup­ply,” “Single-Species Mono­cul­tures that Pro­vide Noth­ing for Wildlife,” “Fre­quent Mow­ing, with Air Pol­lu­tion” and “Overtreated and Over­wa­tered Lawns that Waste $$ and Keep Ask­ing for More.”

To that list I’d add a more philo­soph­i­cal rea­son to rethink a green expanse, the idea that a lawn rep­re­sents some weird macho dom­i­na­tion of all things nat­ural, that nature isn’t accept­able to live with until it’s been chopped to smithereens and reshaped into some­thing that’s a pale imi­ta­tion of itself. Start with this mind­set and it’s not a a big leap to Silent Spring, global warm­ing or The Bomb.

To promo Lawn Reform, Susan is host­ing an “I used to have a lawn but now I have…” con­test, where you’re encour­aged to sub­mit pho­tos and sto­ries related to trans­form­ing lawn into some­thing else. The win­ners, drawn at ran­dom, will receive a copy of John Greenlee’s new book, The Amer­i­can Meadow Gar­den: Cre­at­ing a Nat­ural Alter­na­tive to the Tra­di­tional Lawn.

Dead Grass

I’ll share a cou­ple of life-after-lawn pho­tos of my own. The newest expanse, which might be described as “I used to have a lawn but now I have dead grass,” is a fairly unat­trac­tive alter­na­tive to lawn, a patch of unwa­tered grass that’s in part a response to our cur­rent water rationing. This is prob­a­bly noth­ing that’s going to make any­one do some­thing else with their lawn, but it’s ugly enough that we’ll have to do some­thing about it.

Front yard overview

The sec­ond shot is an overview of my front yard, taken dur­ing the unflat­ter­ing light of mid­day in the heat of Sep­tem­ber, some­thing like 18 years after the we took out the front lawn. At the time we, along with much of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, were into a lot of South African species, so there are a cou­ple dif­fer­ent forms of a stately tree aloe, Aloe bar­berae (a.k.a. A. bain­seii) to the right, along with a big mound of Aloe arborescens. To the left is a big clump of the maligned red foun­tain grass from far­ther up in the African con­ti­nent; it’s a plant that peo­ple tell you not to plant because of its inva­sive ten­den­cies, although this ver­sion hasn’t self-sown in two decades. (Other ver­sions of foun­tain grass, how­ever, can take over an ecosys­tem in no time.)

We’ve tried var­i­ous Cal­i­for­nia natives over the years in this space. The most suc­cess­ful has been the row of coy­ote bush brush cas­cad­ing over the front wall, Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris ‘Pigeon Point.’ It’s a plant that’s been said to have a ten year use­ful life. For us it’s dou­bled that num­ber of years, though it’ll prob­a­bly get renewed this plant­ing sea­son. Another cor­ner of the ex-lawn, not shown here, fea­tures some buck­wheats and plants from the Chan­nel Islands. They’re fill­ing in nicely as they pro­vide more of a Cal­i­for­nia fla­vor to the yard and soften a yard that used to be a lot more about succulents.

Front yard succulents

Before we under­took this big lawn replace­ment we asked a ques­tion about what we really used the front lawn for. Mostly we walked through it on the way to the front door. Why not put big mound­ing accent plants where we’d never walk? And in the place of where we used to have one species of grass that required lots of water and pam­per­ing we now have sev­eral dozen species of plants, almost all of which will make it through the sum­mer with next to no addi­tional water­ing. Greater diver­sity, check; less water use, check. The project also suc­ceeds in all the other ways Lawn Reform sug­gests a lawn replace­ment would succeed.

But that’s just one suc­cess story. There are prob­a­bly as many dif­fer­ent ways to replace a lawn as there are gar­den­ers. What would you do?

September 22 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • | 11 Comments »

not in the doldrums

It’s the end of sum­mer and most areas of the gar­den seem to be in some sleepy botan­i­cal tor­por, exhausted from the heat. Not much is bloom­ing. Brown is everywhere.

August succulents with Crassula perfoliata

And then by con­trast there’s this lit­tle over-performing cor­ner, formed in large part by chunks of suc­cu­lents that John has col­lected over the years…

Cas­cad­ing over a back wall are the shock­ing red flow­ers of this cras­sula (I think it’s Cras­sula per­fo­li­ata var. minor, a.k.a. Cras­sula fal­cata). Its com­pan­ions in this photo are a cou­ple of other suc­cu­lents, one of the goth-black aeo­ni­ums (Aeo­nium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’) and what’s likely Grap­topetalum paraguayense. The three are pretty easy to find and like nice combined.

Crassula perfoliata with curled summer leaves

After the win­ter rains the foliage on all of these plants plumps up and looks pretty spec­tac­u­lar. But as sum­mer set­tles in the aeo­nium and and grap­topetalum drop their larger leaves in favor of a tight clus­ter of leaves packed at the grow­ing end of the stalks. The big­ger the leaf the greater the water loss. The cras­sula will retain its leaves, how­ever, although they’ll look a lit­tle shriv­eled in the drought. The fact that the leaves are folded in half prob­a­bly helps to shade the leaf, reduce tran­spi­ra­tion and reduce mois­ture loss.

August succulents with Crassula perfoliata last year

The flow­er­ing of the cras­sula varies by year. The photo above is from this sea­son, actu­ally not one of the bet­ter years. To the left is a shot from last August. This year’s not quite as flashy, but in the slow heat of August and Sep­tem­ber, I’ll take it.

September 01 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • | 7 Comments »

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