Posts Tagged ‘succulent’

An entry from last year

First of all, thank you to my friend Alice for point­ing out that the Rose Parade is never on a Sun­day; there­fore it will be held Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 2nd. For those of us who like to see sparkling fresh flower cov­ered floats, I rec­om­mend going out to Pasadena Sun­day night some­time after about 9pm. All the floats are pulled up on Orange Grove Avenue in front of the Wrigley Man­sion wait­ing for the parade to start the next day. (What did you think, they wait until the last minute?) They are spotlit and it is a fes­tive scene…and you can get really close and see the detail. I took these pho­tos last year between about 10:00pm and 1:00 am. I can only tell you my expe­ri­ence, and hope that noth­ing has changed. I drove north on South Arroyo Park­way and parked as close as pos­si­ble to Orange Grove Blvd. between East Col­orado Blvd. on the north and East Del Mar Blvd. on the south. The streets are closed off to the east so you will have to walk up a hill but you will see some great old homes. Take some hot choco­late, have an adven­ture and let me know how it goes! Happy New Year to us all!!!

Another 2011 float

On the Web:

• Thurs­day, 1/​5, Los Ange­les Cac­tus and Suc­cu­lent Soci­ety talk on “Places you’ve never heard of, plants you’ve never seen” 7pm @ Sepul­veda Gar­den Cen­ter, Encino (www​.lacss​.com)

Sat­ur­day, ¹⁄₇:

- Rose prun­ing work­shop @ Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum, Arca­dia (www​.arbore​tum​.org)

- Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens sem­i­nar held in Pomona on Sam Mal­oof exhibit and sea­sonal gar­den­ing (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)

Con­tin­u­ing my low coun­try trip, the next stop after Charleston was Savannah.More of a “real” work­ing city than Charleston, Savan­nah is home to the ter­rific art school SCAD (Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design), and has a very “lived-​in” look. There are lit­tle restau­rants and bars in every square (and some alleys). We enjoyed tour­ing the famous 22 squares, or vest pocket parks, with Jonathan Stal­cup, a local archi­tect who restores and sells his­tor­i­cal struc­tures (www​.archi​tec​tural​sa​van​nah​.com). The high point of the day was the urban for­est of South­ern live oaks, or quer­cus vir­gini­ana (ques­tion: if Eliz­a­beth the 1st hadn’t been a vir­gin what would they have named every­thing?) It must be such a priv­i­lege, liv­ing with these gor­geous trees. The heav­i­est of the native hard­woods, these trees were used for struc­tural beams and ship build­ing. Some of the old­est trees are over 1000 years old, with 35′ cir­cum­fer­ences and a height of 55′. They are uni­formly draped with tilland­sia usneoides, mis­named span­ish moss. My sis­ter Mary Lynn and I picked some to take home, ignor­ing the chig­ger warn­ings. The next day we had some bites and the tilland­sia went back on the trees!
On the web:

Tues­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₅:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens, San Marino: Lec­ture on prop­a­gat­ing, grow­ing and car­ing for figs (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)
• San Diego Botanic Gar­den, Encini­tas: Suc­cu­lent wreath class (sdb​gar​den​.org)

Thurs­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₇: The Arbore­tum, Arca­dia: Prop­a­ga­tion work­shop with Dave Lar­rom (arbore​tum​.org)

Sat­ur­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₉:

• ***** Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ojai (aus​tralian​plants​.com) is extend­ing their sale to Sat­ur­day, 10/​29 — Click on box to the right!*****
• Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Native Plants, Sun Val­ley: Native plant hor­ti­cul­ture with Lili Singer and Low Impact design class on man­ag­ing rain and irri­ga­tion water (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery, Ven­tura (nopali​tonurs​ery​.com) : Plant­ing, prun­ing and water­ing native plants in the fall /​free with preregistration.

Bot­tle tree @ RBG

I am vis­it­ing my brother Scott and his wife Kate in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. They live in Wal­nut Creek, about 25 miles east of San Fran­cisco and at the foot of Mount Dia­blo (site of a recent con­tro­versy con­cern­ing the name “Mt. Devil”, but that’s another story). There is a trea­sure right down the street from their house, the very first project of the revered Gar­den Con­ser­vancy. That would be Ruth Ban­croft Gar­dens, ded­i­cated to the preser­va­tion of as fine a col­lec­tion of water con­serv­ing plants as you will find on the planet. Started by it’s epony­mous founder in 1971, the 3 acre gar­den is located on a fruit farm owned by the Ban­croft fam­ily since the 1880’s. I have always found suc­cu­lents easy to love for their form, color, ease of pro­poga­tion and most of all archi­tec­tural good looks. The suc­cu­lent and cacti col­lec­tion @ RBG is thrilling for it’s con­trast­ing tex­tures, forms and col­ors, espe­cially in the spring.

The bot­tle tree (Brachy­chi­ton Rupestris) shown above is lit­er­ally a giant suc­cu­lent. Using it’s trunk for water stor­age, the Aus­tralian native is slow grow­ing up to 40′ in height; it doesn’t dis­play the bot­tle shape until 15 years along. The good news is that if you have more money than time the bot­tle tree can be trans­planted very easily.

Ruth​ban​croft​gar​den​.org