[ Lost in the Landscape ]

peak february bloom

The storm was pass­ing, and the after­noon light was per­fect. The suc­cu­lents bloom­ing in the front yard never looked bet­ter. I had to get the cam­era for this one!

In bloom are Aloe arborescens (orange-red) and a cras­sula species or rel­a­tive (yel­low). To the right, not in bloom but still dra­matic, are two clones of a tree aloe (Aloe bar­berae). The low filler plant to the right is the Cal­i­for­nia native coy­ote bush (Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris pilu­laris ‘Pigeon Point’). I don’t nor­mally love the neighbor’s big pointy juniper in the back­ground, but I think it com­pletes this pic­ture nicely.

February 08 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe arborescens • Aloe barberae • aloes • crassula • in bloom • succulents | 6 Comments »

view into the january garden

This is one of the rea­sons why peo­ple live in a Mediter­ranean cli­mate like San Diego, suf­fer­ing the fre­quent 70-plus degree day­time tem­per­a­tures. Here’s the view out the front room win­dow onto this huge, mound­ing pile of bloom­ing aloe. I think it’s A. arborescens, one of the more com­mon species that you see all over town. (There’s a lit­tle epi­den­drum orchid bloom­ing just out­side the win­dow, but who’s going to pay it any atten­tion with the aloe going off in the background?)

A closer look at the flowers…

…and a closer look at the leaves of the aloe (ser­rated edges, much softer than they appear) and the agave (straight edges).

For some peo­ple, it’s not win­ter with­out see­ing snow. For me, it’s not win­ter until I’ve seen the aloe. Okay. I’m ready for spring now.

January 30 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe arborescens • aloes • seasons • succulents • winter | 3 Comments »

balboa park’s desert garden

Jan­u­ary can be an amaz­ing month for suc­cu­lents and other desert plants. Many aloes and agaves explode into bloom, and plants with ephemeral foliage are green with leaves in ways you don’t often see them.

San Diego’s Bal­boa Park houses one of the prime local col­lec­tion of cacti, suc­cu­lents and other desert dwellers from around the world. The Desert Gar­den, the larger of its two suc­cu­lent gar­dens, was estab­lished in 1976, but many of the plants are senior cit­i­zens much older than the age of the garden.

Aloes star in its Jan­u­ary land­scape, with red and orange torches of flow­ers that dou­ble as hum­ming­bird magnets.

And shown here, lurk­ing in the shad­ows, is one of the local hum­ming­birds, stak­ing its territory.

Among the big, mature spec­i­mens are sev­eral dragon trees, Dra­caena draco. In this first photo, on the near trunk, you can see a red­dish patch where the plant’s red sap has dried. When cut, these plants ooze a fluid that in some Euro­pean leg­ends was pur­ported to be dragon’s blood, hence the plant’s name (draco = dragon).

This is a pub­lic gar­den, and so it’s sub­ject to fund­ing glitches and bat­tles over civic pri­or­i­ties. I’d con­sider the gar­den to be in great con­di­tion con­sid­er­ing those limitations.

One thing I would have loved to have seen, though, would be more plant labels. I encoun­tered so many inter­est­ing species, but very few of them had name tags. I have this thing about need­ing to know the name of a plant–Call me com­pul­sive. But the lack of labels drove me crazy. I real­ize, how­ever, that tags don’t come cheap. And in a wide-open pub­lic gar­den, labels can walk away with pieces of suc­cu­lents in the hands of evil plant addicts.

One of the plants that was labeled was this Natal Bot­tle­brush, Greyia suther­landii. A bit scrappy-looking as a plant, but what great flowers!

Also labeled was the Mada­gas­car ocotillo, Allu­au­dia pro­cera. I loved the spi­ral pat­tern­ing of its spines.

Another prob­lem with this being a pub­lic gar­den is that there are quite a few spec­i­mens where people’s temp­ta­tions to carve their ini­tials in the plant life got the bet­ter of them. This euphor­bia was scarred many times over. But that wasn’t going to stop it from blooming.

After vis­it­ing the gar­den I was sur­prised by how many shots I’d racked up in the cam­era. And for some rea­son, the major­ity of them were ver­ti­cals. Is there some­thing about succulents–particularly the upright-growing kinds that mimic the way a human stands–that scream out for pho­tograph­ing them in an upright orientation?

Some yuc­cas, I think, with spent bloom stems.

Boo­jum trees, Fouquieria colum­naris, native to Baja Cal­i­for­nia. This plant is in the same genus as the Cal­i­for­nia desert’s spec­tac­u­lar ocotillo, which inter­est­ingly isn’t related to the Madas­car ocotillo, above.

Aloes and kalan­choes in bloom.

The main gar­den is a flat, easy stroll over wide decom­posed gran­ite path­ways. As part of a recent expan­sion, the gar­den now also includes this switch­back down into Florida Canyon, also part of Bal­boa Park. The plants along the descent are still young, but should look spec­tac­u­lar in a decade or so.

Not every­one in the world loves cac­tus and suc­cu­lents. They might point to the defen­sive spines many of the plants have, and they might say the sculp­tural shapes of the plants don’t look soft and cozy like leafy shrubs or fra­grant roses. Next to the Desert Gar­den is Bal­boa Park’s rose gar­den. Dur­ing spring­time, thirty sec­onds of walk­ing would take you from the world of cac­tus and suc­cu­lents to a gar­den manic with flow­ers and heavy with the aroma of roses. But on this bright Jan­u­ary day, the adja­cent roses were pruned down to naked stems and pierc­ing thorns. It was the cac­tus and suc­cu­lents that looked warm and welcoming.

The Desert Gar­den is located across Park Boule­vard from the Nat­ural His­tory Museum on Bal­boa Park’s museum row. The gar­den has no walls, no entry fee, and is open 24/7, 365 days of the year.

If the 2.5 acres of the Desert Gar­den isn’t enough of a cac­tus and suc­cu­lent fix, cross Park Boule­vard and take a stroll over to the Bal­boa Park Club, maybe ten min­utes on foot, and take in the parks orig­i­nal 1935 cac­tus gar­den, which, accord­ing to the park’s web­site, was estab­lished “under the direc­tion of [San Diego gar­den­ing leg­end] Kate Ses­sions for the 1935 Cal­i­for­nia Pacific Inter­na­tional Expo­si­tion.” There you’ll find “some of the largest cac­tus and suc­cu­lent spec­i­mens in the Park,” along with a nice col­lec­tion of proteas.

January 11 2009 | Categories: gardening • photography • places • plant profiles | Tags: Balboa Park • Balboa Park Desert Garden • cacti • desert plants • drought-tolerant landscaping • in bloom • succulents | 3 Comments »

water-conserving gardens

Every year the water dis­tricts in San Diego county spon­sor a con­test to rec­og­nize gar­dens that use low amounts of water. The California-Friendly Land­scape Con­test has win­ners for each water dis­trict, and then over­all win­ners in three major cat­e­gories: best do-it-yourself, best pro­fes­sion­ally designed, and best native plantings.

Here are a few images of the prize win­ners this sea­son. I think they show that you can have a lively yard with­out using swim­ming pools-full of water to keep things green. Some of the win­ners fea­ture cac­tus and suc­cu­lents, but you can see below that you don’t have to do the desert-thing to use less water.

Best California-native. Win­ner: Gid­lund. Our native flora has plenty of choices that should be used more fre­quently. Flow­er­ing selec­tions in this gar­den fea­ture sages (salvias), asters (erigeron), and mon­key flow­ers (mimus or dipla­cus, depend­ing on which author­ity you side with).

Best in City of San Diego. Win­ner: John­son. Suc­cu­lents with con­trast­ing leaf col­ors and forms star in this gar­den. This image fea­tures agaves, euphor­bias and senecios among the assortment.

Best do-it-yourself. Win­ners: Mendell, Kirk (sorry, they only listed the last names…). This entry was another of the succulent-intensive ones, but this shows a por­tion of the gar­den with mounds of low plants with con­trast­ing foliage, as well as plants in the dis­tance in bloom. Most of us like flow­ers, don’t we?

Best professionally-designed. Win­ner: Whit­ney. A num­ber of broad-leaved plants with beau­ti­fully con­trast­ing foliage fea­ture in this land­scape. I think the con­trasts are absolutely gorgeous!

Many of the pho­tos show land­scapes that aren’t 100% mature, but you can get a sense of what the gar­dens will look like in a few years. Also, as in many land­scap­ing con­tests, the hard­scape seems to get a lot of the atten­tion. I’m of two minds on that issue. For a land­scaper, a large por­tion of the profit resides in the hard­scape details, with markup on a gazebo being way more than on a few shrubs. So some of the land­scapes seem to push the human fea­tures rather than nat­ural ones. But in the case of a well-placed gar­den path: what bet­ter way to imag­ine your­self in the new land­scape than by “walk­ing” through the space with your eyes, fol­low­ing a gen­tle mean­der through your beau­ti­ful new garden?

Check out all the win­ners. The dead­line to enter next year’s com­pe­ti­tion is April 6, 2009, so that gives us all a few months to do a lit­tle replant­ing. In the end, any gar­den that helps save water can be declared a winner.

October 24 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: drought-tolerant landscaping • hardscape • native plants • succulents • water use | No Comments »

what elephants eat

Polit­i­cally I’m fairly far afield from the Repub­li­can party, but I’m think­ing that one of my plants must be a card-carrying mem­ber. Por­tu­lacaria afra marked the open­ing of the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion a cou­ple weeks ago by qui­etly com­ing into bloom.

So what’s the con­nec­tion between the Repub­li­cans and this plant? Ele­phants.

In its native habi­tat this plant can be good for­age for ele­phants. (And I’m sure you know that the ele­phant is the sym­bol of the Repub­li­can Party.) Accord­ing to a treat­ment on this species by Robert J. Baran, 80% of the diet of ele­phants in South Africa’s Addo National Park con­sists of this plant. Hence one of its com­mon names, “ele­phant bush.”

Out­doors in San Diego the plant is ridicu­lously easy to grow. Full sun, occa­sional sum­mer water (ca. every 2–4 weeks) and well-drained soil are all it asks. If you want more of the plant, break off a chunk and set it some dirt. Instant new plant.

Its flow­er­ings are rare here, how­ever, and it’s easy to miss the lit­tle pink puffs of smoke that hover over the plant for a cou­ple weeks.

The plant in the pic­ture is maybe ten years in the ground in this spot, and is about four feet tall. Some reports say it’ll get three times this size, but you can eas­ily break off any chunks that offend you. So far so good in this loca­tion. And in pots it’s much more con­strained. (The ugly fence in the back­ground and its trans­for­ma­tion into some­thing much more fab­u­lous will be the sub­ject of an upcom­ing post…)

The plant report­edly also does well indoors in colder cli­mates. Its easy-growing nature has caused a lot of peo­ple to call it as a vari­ant of the clas­sic beginner’s jade plant (Cras­sula ovata). But aside from the cur­sory sim­i­lar­i­ties the plants are in com­pletely dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies. If you’ve been lucky enough to live where it’s warm enough to see them both bloom you’ll def­i­nitely believe that their rela­tion­ship is pretty far apart.

Mealy­bugs haven’t been an issue with this plant for me out­doors, but they seem to be an occa­sional prob­lem when it’s grown indoors in bright sun. Shade-grown, over-watered suc­cu­lents seem to attract the crit­ters. Try a brighter spot, and cut down on the water­ing if the lit­tle beast­ies are a problem.

Over­all, this is a happy plant that eas­ily crosses party lines. But you might want to keep it out of sight when the ele­phants come to loll about in your koi pond.

September 17 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: elephant bush • in bloom • jade plant • Portulacaria afra • spekboom • succulents | 1 Comment »

space alien in san diego?

The evi­dence!

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. Despite a cer­tain resem­blance to the clas­sic “Mar­t­ian pop­ping thing” avail­able at Archie McPhee’s, it’s actu­ally the final two leaves on a Pachy­podium geayi, a suc­cu­lent and spiny first-cousin to the bet­ter known plume­ria that is such a fra­grant sta­ple in Hawai­ian leis.

Kept moist, and dur­ing the cooler and wet­ter parts of the year, the plant is a spiny col­umn ringed with a rosette of long gray-green leaves. Drop the water­ing, and the plant goes into defen­sive mode, drop­ping its leaves and mak­ing like a cac­tus. Where we have it, in the back of the back yard, it gets to dry out along with the rest of the drought-tolerant plants, so we get to see its “cac­tus” behav­ior most of the sum­mer and into fall. When the water starts up, the leaves come back and it’s happy again.

This species can pro­duce pen­dant cream-colored flow­ers with reflexed petals. They’re not the most spec­tac­u­lar bloomers in the Pachy­podium genus–P. lamerei could be con­fused for a plume­ria if it weren’t for the spines on the plant.

This plant is about ten years in the ground and is com­ing up on four feet tall. Mature plants will get triple or quadru­ple the height of this teenager. More water would help it along, I’m sure, but in my yard it gets what it gets.

So far no pests have both­ered it. Would you?

June 14 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: drought-tolerant landscaping • Pachypodium geayi • succulents | No Comments »