Plant Sale Strategies

This weekend presents a seasonal high point for avid gardeners in the Monterey Bay area. Marking the beginning of the spring planting season, three significant plant sales offer a fine array of plants to choose from for your garden.

The Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will offer several categories plants that are native to the Golden State. The sale will be on Saturday, April 13th from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 for CNPS members and 12:00 to 4:00 for the public. There is more information about this sale today in this paper’s Home & Garden section. 

The UCSC Arboretum and Botanic Garden will hold its spring plant sale, presenting collections of plants that are native to South Africa, Australia, and California, plus some from other dry summer regions. This sale is at the same time and place as the CNPS sale. The Arboretum  is “a favorite destination for those who love  plants, birds and natural beauty. [It] inspires stewardship of the world’s biodiversity through research, education, and the conservation of rare and extraordinary plants.”

The Arboretum’s sale event includes a first-ever Silent Auction of striking and uncommon plants. This activity will be active from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. , with a last call bidding opportunity at 12:55. Winning bidders must be present at the end of the Auction to claim their winnings.

For lists of the sale plants and the Silent Auction plants, visit the Arboretum’s website and click on the Events calendar.

The CNPS and Arboretum sales are at the Arboretum, the entrance for which is on the west side of the campus, off of Empire Grade. For driving directions, browse to the Arboreum website and click on the Visit menu.

South African Blossom
Leucospermum erubescens Photo by Bill Bishoff

Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society will conduct this weekend’s third plant sale. It will be held at the Community Hall, 10 San Jose Street, San Juan Bautista. This is a two-day event, from 9:00 to 5:00 on Saturday, April 13th, and 9:00 to 4:00 on Sunday, April 14th. Use Google Maps, MapQuest or other service for driving directions from your location.

The MBACSS event brings together several advanced growers of cactus & succulent plants for a combination of a show of well-grown exceptional plants and a sale of mostly young plants that are easy to cultivate in the Monterey Bay area’s moderate climate, and that bring a fascinating range of colors and forms to local gardens. Many gardeners enjoy collecting different cultivars within a genus, or a variety of different genera from South Africa or Mexico or other areas of the world. In addition to adding plants for your garden, the plant show provides an unique and enjoyable opportunity to see and study outstanding specimens of cacti and succulents.

The sale also includes creatively designed containers and planting supplies. 

Advanced growers will be available on request to provide growing advice and background information for specific plants.

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When planning to participate in one of these sales, or visit a garden, or select plants from a mail-order catalog, optimize your satisfaction potential in these three ways.

1. Determine the plants you want or need to add to your garden. Be specific! What is the desired mature size of the plants you want? Will they be in full sun, partial shade, or full shade? What colors would support your design? What plant forms would work best?

2. Decide on the low and high amounts you want to spend. The low amount would be appropriate if only a few plants meet your objectives, and the high amount would serve to control your urges on an occasion was lots of what you see is appealing.

3. When plant lists are available online, as with the Arboretum’s sale, take the time to mark your targets for possible purchase. Unless you are already a plant maven, this process could require “Googling” the plants by name. With very rare exceptions, such a search will yield good information about the available plants. This preparation is particularly wise for the Arboretum’s Silent Auction.

Your plant search could extend over all three of this weekend’s plant sales.  Enjoy the hunt!

Succulent Events Blooming

As we write this column on April 1st, our focus is on cacti and succulents. Three factors inspire this topic, as summarized in these paragraphs.

Spring Show & Sale of the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society.

This local organization, an affiliate of the Cactus & Succulent Society of America, presents two of these two-part events each year, in the fall and the spring.

The show presents a variety of exceptional plants, representing prime specimens from several different succulent plant genera. This display provides an extraordinary opportunity for both novice and advanced gardeners of these plants to see mature plants that have been grown expertly and shown aesthetically in selected containers.

The sale brings offerings from multiple growers, all of whom are members of the Society. Generally, several tables each present small and reasonably priced, inviting gardeners to select multiple plants to add to their indoor or outdoor gardens. The sale tables might also include specimens of relatively rare plants. Gardeners with special appreciation for unusual plants often quickly gather up these premium oifferings.

The Society will hold this event on April 13th & 14th, at San Juan Bautista’s Community Hall, 10 San Jose Street. The accompanying photos can be spotted on flyers posted in garden centers and other public places throughout the Monterey Bay area. Photography by Fred Valentine.

Succulent plant in container
Mammillaria blossfeldiana grown by Elton Roberts
succulent plant
Boophone disticha grown by John and Lisa Bloss

Succulent Blossoms on Stamps

To draw attention to the Society’s upcoming show & sale, the United States Postal Service has released ten new First Class stamps depicting the blossoms of ten cacti. Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps with photographs taken by John P. Schaefer. Visit usps.com/stamps, and scroll to “Cactus Flowers” for more information, including images of the stamps. The many growers of succulent plants will appreciate these stunning stamps.

Succulent Blooms by Month

Some gardeners have impressive awareness of the timing of events in their gardens, particularly when various plants burst into bloom. I am not one of those gardeners, but one who typically discovers new blooms with surprise and delight. A gardener who knows when succulent plants bloom has helped those of us with less awareness with a monthly series of photographic collections of succulent plants in bloom.

The gardener is Geoff Stein, who describes himself as an “obsessive, compulsive collector of all oddball tropical and desert plants.” To date, he has produced photographic overviews of succulents in bloom in December, January, February, March and April. The April issue of this series extends to nineteen pages and includes scores of photos.

Geoff Stein is a prolific garden writer who has created scores of lengthy articles on a range of topics within his interest in “tropical and desert plants.” Each of these pieces includes numerous photographs of the plants under discussion. Some of his articles are broad in scope, e.g.,, “Introduction to Dyckias and Hechtias,” while others deal with specific cultivars, e.g., “Easy Succulents: Graptoveria ‘Fred Ives’.” For a list of his articles go to https://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/ and search for “Geoff Stein.” His writings are definitely worth exploring.

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Admittedly, the USPS produced its Cactus Flower stamps in recognition of the growing interest in gardening with cacti and succulents, not specifically for the Society’s Show & Sale. April Fool!

Still, that event will be a pleasure for avid gardeners interested in these fascinating plants.

Hybridizing Aloes

Hybridizing plants is an easy process: bees do it! They’re usually pollinating plants of the same species, but occasionally, they move a plant’s pollen to a different, compatible species and, without intention, begin the process of natural hybridization.

Human hybridizers, by contrast, have a plan: to improve specific plants. Pursuing this goal requires more than accident. Legendary hybridizer and sometime romantic botanist Luther Burbank said, “The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.”

Another important secret, according to contemporary hybridizer, Karen Zimmerman, is fun! She strongly recommends and enjoys hybridizing aloes and growing plants from seed.

Zimmerman is the Succulent Propagator for the Huntington Library, Art Galleries andBotanical Gardens, in San Marino, California. The Huntington’s Desert Garden is one of the largest and oldest assemblages of cacti and other succulents in the world, so her work includes a generous measure of fun.

Speaking to the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, Zimmerman focused on hybridizing aloes, a genus of succulent plants that includes some 450 species.These include the common Aloe vera, which has a variety of medicinal uses, including soothing sunburns, but a wide range of other forms exist within the genus.

As a hybridizer, Zimmerman studies the several kinds of aloes and explores the potentials of combining features of different kinds to produce hybrids with desirable characteristics. She described several categories of aloes:

  • Size & Form: miniatures, shrubs, trees, and creepers
  • Unusual Leaf Arrangements: fan, spiral rosette
  • Teeth, Prickles, “Warts” or Bumps
  • Colors: white, green, red, black, various patterns

She recognized several prominent hybridizers of aloes, including Kelly Griffin ofAltman Plants, and Brian Kemble of The Ruth Bancroft Garden & Nursery. Hybridizing can build upon the products of other hybridizers, or work primarily with natural species. Hybridizers typically welcome efforts to add to their successes by crossing their hybrids with other plants. This approach is not so much plagiarism as respect. 

Generally, hybridizing can seek improvements in plants for landscape appeal, flowering, vigor, pest or disease resistance, or other characteristics. Zimmerman emphasizes what she terms “fantasy aloes,” which have unusual colors, patterns, or spinose teeth on the leaf margins. She has introduced several hybrid aloes with names that suggest fantasies, e.g.,  ‘Dragon’,‘Gargoyle’, ‘Wily Coyote’, and ‘Chameleon’.

Aloe ‘DZ’ a hybrid by Karen Zimmerman

The process begins with transferring pollen from one plant to another. Zimmerman uses various tools for this task, and currently favors her fingers, tweezers, and dentistry tools.

The nextstep is to collect the resultant seeds, which are small and easily lost.Zimmerman recommends mesh drawstring gift bags, which are inexpensive and effective in catching seeds.

She plants the seeds with labels indicating the “pollen parent” and “seed parent,” plus date and other information of interest. Her planting mix is 80% pumice and 20%forest humus, with the seeds covered with grit. The seeds need to be kept in warm, moist conditions, which can be provided with a closed plastic bag in indirect light.

Aloes, which are monocots, germinate and produce one leaf from the seed in about two weeks. As the plants develop, the hybridizing process consists of editing: the cross between two plants produces numerous seedlings, some of which hopefully will exhibit the desirable traits the hybridizer intended, and others (perhaps all!)will be—as Zimmerman describes them— less interesting, boring, or even ugly.

The seedlings will take various amounts of time to show their mature form. Zimmerman compares them to human teenagers, who reveal their “true selves” at various ages. Some very young seedlings will be unique in interesting ways, while others might be late bloomers.

Editing the seedlings can be the hybridizer’s most important function. It involves choosing those that are worthy of continued development and those that are discarded to make room on the nursery bench.

The hybridizer thinks of appropriate names for the successes and eventually introduces them to commercial distribution. That process uses tissue culture(cloning) to propagate enough cultivars to meet market demand. Seed propagation doesn’t work because growing hybrids from seed yields unpredictable results.

Throughout her talk, “Aloes on My Mind,” Zimmerman demonstrated her continuing enthusiasm for hybridizing aloes, and revealed that, “The real fun is imaging what’s next!”

The succulent gardeners in her audience recognized that hybridizing plants is easy and an enjoyable aspect of gardening that they might just try themselves. One of them could produce next season’s most exciting hybrid aloe.

Repotting a Container Plant

At a recent talk by a skillful gardener, I learned new techniques for repotting plants in containers.

First, let’s review the usual approach to this routine process.

When a plant has outgrown its container, the goal for repotting is to encourage and support the plant’s further growth.

The signs that a plant has outgrown its containers include roots growing out of the drainage hole, or roots filling the container (observed after lifting the pant from its container), or an abundance of multiple shoots or offsets. Additional signs of a pot-bound plan: a plastic nursery pot might bulge with the plant’s roots, or the soil in the container dries out quickly.

When the gardener observes the beginnings of such signs, it is time to remove the plant from its container and replant it in a larger container with fresh potting soil and irrigate to settle the soil around the roots. The common wisdom is to move the plant into the next larger container, e.g., from a one-gallon pot to a one-and-one-half gallon pot.

When a plant becomes significantly root-bound, however, good practice calls for root pruning. If roots have been circling the pot, cut through the roots with a hand pruner, and in some cases, peel away the outer layer of roots. If the roots are packed tightly in the pot, loosen the roots, cut away up to one-third of the roots, and make vertical cuts about one-third of the way up from the bottom of the root ball. These actions will stimulate the growth of new roots.

When reducing the root ball in this way, it could be appropriate to replant the plant in the same pot it had outgrown. This might be desirable when the gardener favors the container, or the container complements the plant nicely.

During this process, cut back a proportionate amount of the top growth to reduce the plant’s demand on its reduced root structure. In a short time, the plant will recover from repotting and resume vigorous growth.

Briefly, these are the usual steps to take to rescue a root bound plant and help to continue growing.

Then, Keith Taylor’s eye-opening talk and demonstration for the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society introduced different goals and techniques for repotting plants.

Medusa Plant by Keith Taylor

Taylor has been growing cacti and succulents for about twenty-seven years, with a previous background in bonsai cultivation. He has developed bonsai-related techniques for cultivating succulents, with an emphasis on caudiciform plants. Those are plants that develop a swollen trunk, stem or root—called a caudex—that stores moisture. These unusual plants are candidates for bonsai treatment and often favored by collectors.

(Note: The specimen shown here is a Euphorbia, which is not a caudiciform.)

Instead of repotting plants to encourage and accommodate growth, Taylor seeks to limit their size, promote larger and wider caudices, and stimulate compact top growth.

In pursuit of these goals, Taylor’s distinctive approach to repotting includes severe pruning of the plant’s roots and top growth. Without hesitation, he would cut off a plant’s taproot and close to all its fibrous roots to reduce the root ball to fit into a shallow bonsai pot. With some caudiciforms, he would cut the caudex literally in half, and wait for it to develop new roots.

Top growth pruning was equally extensive with the same objective of constraining the plant’s overall growth.

The roomful of avid gardeners of cacti and succulents understood Taylor’s bonsai pruning method, although this approach to gardening was unfamiliar them. These gardeners were familiar with limiting the size of their plants by keeping them in small containers with lean soil mixes and minimal moisture.

At the same time, many were astonished by Taylor’s relatively extreme pruning practices, which freely exceed the usual guideline to remove no more than one-third of a plant’s roots or top growth. While Taylor admitted that some of his early trials of such pruning were unsuccessful, he has found that many plants tolerate this treatment and respond well in time.

The gardeners in attendance learned that the one-third rule for pruning could be overly conservative and that more severe pruning could be effective in limiting plant growth. Bonsai-style pruning of cacti and succulents remains as a specialized form of container gardening and not everyone’s preference we learned that extreme pruning does not necessarily kill a plant.

Taylor’s distinctive pruning practices are closely related to his work in creating containers for plants. Examples of his extraordinary ceramic pots can be viewed on his website,  and his Facebook page, where he is known as “Kitoi” (his childhood nickname).

Even when we know basic gardening methods, new knowledge is always ready for discovery.

Discovering a Chilean Plant

Ochagavia litoralis

It’s not easy to find plants for my Chilean garden, so I was pleased to come upon a fine specimen at a local garden center. Its common name, calilla, must mean something, but because I don’t speak Chilean I will use its botanical name, Ochagavia litoralis.

The plant is a member of the Bromeliad family, which, with a few exceptions, is native to the tropical Americas. The family is quite large, with 51 genera and around 3475 known species. Some of its relatives are familiar, e.g., pineapple and avid gardeners will recognize some others: tillandsia, billbergia, puya,

My new acquisition, which grows to about one foot high and wide, has look-alike relatives, including Dyckia (from Brazil and central South America) and Hechtia (from Mexico). There are differences, including flower color, that require close examination.

In the course of my Internet searching, I learned about the Crimson Bromeliad (Fascicularia bicolor), which is a close relative of my new plant, and also from Chile. It is even rarer than the calilla, and about twice its size with softer spines and rosette centers that become bright red. My Chile garden should have one of those!

The Ochagavia litoralis forms multiple rosettes. The plant I bought looked like a candidate for division into three or more offsets. I have been pleased on occasion to acquire a plant that has outgrown its container because I could get multiple plants for one price. When I pulled this plant out of its pot, however, I found that its rosettes were more like branches than offsets so dividing it would be tricky. I just cleaned up some dry leaves and planted it without dividing.

The plant’s roots had filled its 1.5–gallon nursery can. For some time, the plant needed to move into a larger pot, or into the ground. San Marcos Growers, a wholesale nursery just north of Santa Barbara, had grown the plant. I have visited that impressive nursery, and have often drawn plant information from its excellent website. This plant, which some people regard as quite rare, might also have infrequent demand, with the result that it languished too long in the can.

Realistically, there are not many gardeners with an interest in Chilean horticulture, and even fewer that find very spiny plants appealing. The Ochagavia litoralis has foot-long spine-margined leaves, making it attractive in its own way, but hazardous to handle. I wore my newly acquired goatskin gloves with cowhide gauntlets and planted this specimen without the slightest injury. The gloves will be equally protective when dealing with roses, agaves, and cacti.

My new calilla is now safely and happily installed in my Chilean garden. I will need to practice its name.

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For an inspiring garden tour this weekend, visit Love’s Garden, which on the west side of Santa Cruz. This free tour, from 1:00 to 4:00 on Saturday, features a permaculture food forest, with dozens of edible plants, a rainwater catchment and greywater recycling, all on a small residential lot. The enthusiastic gardener behind all this, Golden Love, is an ecologically friendly horticulturist and the proprietor of a long-standing landscaping business. For information and registration, visit the Love’s Garden website.

Spiny Plants in the Garden

Some attractive succulent plants can be dangerous!

Agaves, in particular, are often armed with spines that challenge both creatures that threaten to eat the plant and gardeners with the best of intentions.

Agave 'Blue Glow'

A popular hybrid Agave ‘Blue Glow’

The spines of many agaves generally occur as wickedly sharp points at the ends of leaves. These are called terminal spines, or more technically spinose apical processes. Spines that occur on the edges of leaves are marginal spines or spinose teeth.

By either name, they amount to the plant’s formidable defenses as well as to its aesthetic qualities.

Other spinose structures on plants include thorns and prickles. Here’s a primer for keeping them straight:

  • Spines are modified leaves or parts of leaves and are found on most cacti and some succulents.
  • Thorns are modified branches or stems and are found on some trees (citrus, hawthorn, honey locust, natal plum, etc.) and shrubs (pyracantha or“firethorn”, bougainvillea, Silverthorn, etc.)
  • Prickles are derived from the epidermis, which is the single layer of cells that covers the leaves, flowers, roots, and stems of plants. An informal definition of a prickle is “any pointed, sharp plant part that isn’t where a branch or leaf would be.” The rose provides the most similar example of prickles, which are often incorrectly called thorns of the rose. Other examples are the pink silk floss tree (Ceiba speciosa) and the less common white silk floss tree (Ceiba insignis).

Gardeners who practice the Chinese art of feng shui probably should avoid spiny plants entirely, especially near the entrance to the home. These plants are thought to stop the flow of chi, the central life force.

Still, many gardeners regard agaves as attractive, despite or because of the spines that many agaves develop. There are a few strategies that allow gardeners to cultivate spinose agaves or cacti without becoming harmed.

Some gardeners will snip the plant’s terminal spines. This approach might be appropriate for plants that are very near walkways or readily accessible to small children, but gardeners so concerned about spiny plants should avoid them in favor of softer varieties.

The most basic defense strategy involves simply being careful and alert to the potential harm.

Some uncommon gripping and cutting tools can be helpful in removing dead leaves or weeding around such plants. One online source is http://cactuspruner.com. Amazon also offers German-made 17.7-inch cactus tweezers that are angled for convenient use.

When planting or transplanting dangerous plants, leather gauntlet gloves and a long-sleeved sturdy shirt provide good protection.

An inexpensive and functional tool for such tasks is a bath towel, which can be used to wrap the plant for safe lifting and transport.

For an interesting brief video on using a winch to transplant a large cactus safely, browse to youtube.com and search for “Repotting a Giant Golden Barrel Cactus.”

With preparation and appropriate tools, gardeners can handle spiny agave plants without acquiring scratches or puncture wounds, and with the enjoyment of their dramatic beauty and a great variety of colors and forms.

Designing a Succulent Garden

The recent surge of interest in gardening with succulent plants combines the appreciation of colorful plants with architectural interest, drought-tolerance, and ease of maintenance.

Succulent plants are often grouped in the landscape because they share a preference for limited irrigation. This approach, called “hydrozoning,” simplifies watering tasks, and, conversely, avoids accidentally over-watering succulents.

This emphasis on the design of irrigation plans often results in garden designs that consist entirely of succulent plants. This approach can produce interesting “desert landscapes” that compare and contrast the range of colors, forms, and textures of the plants. The plants might be spaced widely or clustered closely.

Examples of such landscapes can be viewed at these websites: https://tinyurl.com/y7kclnee and https://tinyurl.com/y8vhzje4.

Succulent plants, by definition, are native to places with limited moisture: sandy deserts, rocky mountainsides, and plains that have extended periods of drought and occasional downpours. A desert landscape design will be most successful aesthetically when the plants are in fact native to a similar dry environment. Two basic styles are the rock garden, simulating a mountainside, and a desert-like sandy or gravelly bed,

A second consideration in planning such a landscape is to focus on plants from the same geographic region. While succulent plants grow in many parts of the world, the specimens that are most commonly available from garden centers and mail-order sources are from either Mexico or South Africa, with Australia as a distant third.

In the Monterey Bay area, succulent plants from all of these areas will thrive, but mixing them in a garden design often yields a haphazard appearance. The arbitrariness of the combination will be obvious to gardeners who study succulents, and subtly “off” to casual observers.

Another basic approach to the succulent landscape design involves combining succulent plants with drought-tolerant perennials. Such combinations certainly occur in nature, so an authentic design that rings true intuitively requires some research. This approach can provide interesting contrasts between relatively static succulent plants and visually active plants, such as grasses.

A third approach involves deliberately showcasing plants from a variety of native habitats. The plants used in such a landscape still need to be appropriate to the growing environment, and might require selective irrigation from a well-planned drip irrigation system, but can be educational from a horticultural perspective. An accompanying annotated garden map would add value to such an essentially educational landscape.

If you are now or might become inspired to develop a small or large landscape devoted to succulent plants, decide on a thoughtful approach, do some preliminary research, and install the landscape that fulfills your unique vision. The result is most likely to satisfying to yourself and appealing to visitors to your garden.

Right-size Plants for the Garden

While selecting plants to bring to your garden, considerations begin with basic cultural issues: exposure (sun, partial shade, full shade); moisture (infrequent; regular; ample); and drainage (fast, normal, boggy). Other more advanced cultural issues exist for future discussions.

Once we satisfy the basic cultural conditions, the selection process can proceed to aesthetic issues. There are many such issues, potentially, because they involve site-specific priorities and gardener-specific preferences. Today’s column addresses the mature sizes of plants as factors to consider when selecting a new plant for the landscape.

Plant size might seem an obvious concern, according to the Louisville privacy fence company, an all-too-common error is to install a plant where it will grow eventually to intrude on a pathway, overwhelm nearby plants, unintentionally block a view, or reach over a fence into a neighbor’s space.

Such issues could arise with all kinds of plants, although some grow more slowly than others and could become a problem only after several years of maturation.

Thoughtful gardeners favor purchases of small plants, knowing that they could buy at lower cost by growing the plant themselves rather paying a nursery to care for the plant for one or more seasons. That’s a good and frugal practice for gardeners, and it brings the additional pleasure of watching the plant grow in the garden.

Garden centers often carry selections of herbaceous perennials and succulents in four-inch—and even two–inch—containers, and woody shrubs and trees in one-gallon or smaller containers. These small plants often have labels that indicate their mature size, and the gardener has the responsibility to read the label and select plants that are suitable for the space they are intended to fill.

Small plants can be misleading, however, when the label provides insufficient information about its eventual size, or when the buyer overlooks this important information. If the label doesn’t tell the story, search for the plant’s botanical name on the Internet to learn about its full size.

For example, I recently brought home a four-inch pot holding a Dasylirion longissima. The common name, Mexican Grass Tree, suggests its eventual size, which is eight-to-ten feet wide, with a flower stalk that could reach up to fifteen feet. I’m looking for the right spot to plant it.

Photo of Large Succulent Plant

Mexican Grass Tree (Dasylirion longissima) at the UC Botani cal Garden

My garden already has a Dasylirion wheeleri, a related plant that is known as Desert Spoon. This plant has already grown to its full size of three feet wide, and once developed an impressive flower spike over eight feet high. It is, however, too close to a walkway, and its leaves have saw-tooth edges that are inhospitable to passersby and the occasional weeder. I will need to bundle it before attempting to dig up and move it to a better spot.

Large plants can be excellent specimens in the garden so this “mature size alert” is not intended to discourage the use of botanical behemoths. Given enough space, big plants can be striking additions to the garden, but it’s best when the gardener knows their mature sizes before planting.

Designing with Succulents

An avid gardener I talked with recently mentioned that he and his wife are not at all interested in succulents. They have none in their garden and do not intend to add any.

I wasn’t advocating succulent plants at that time, but I find their preference to be puzzling. In fact all plants store moisture to some degree; those we call “succulents” just have more effective ways of managing during dry periods.

Given this perspective, we might consider the reasons why many gardeners find succulent plants to be appealing and others do not.

Some who don’t like these plants might think all succulents are cacti with sharp points, and don’t want to be harmed. We must respond with the old line that all cacti are succulents, but all succulents are not cacti. Also, a few cacti do not have sharp points, and a few succulents that are not cacti also have sharp points. With simple precautions the gardener can avoid being poked, and with study can appreciate Nature’s strategy for some plants to defend themselves from hungry predators. (Cactus spines are really modified leaves designed to minimize moisture loss.)

Other gardeners who don’t like succulent plants might just be unfamiliar with their great variety of forms, structures, colors, landscape value, and unique qualities. For these gardeners, an excellent introduction to succulent plants is Debra Lee Baldwin’s new book, Designing with Succulents (Timber Press, 2017). This book, due for release later this month, is the completely revised second edition of Baldwin’s 2007 book of the same title.

Screen Shot 2017-08-09 at 12.28.50 PM

Baldwin has organized her ideas about succulent plants in six sections: essential garden design ideas; specialty gardens; cultivation advice; descriptions of selected plants; categorized lists of plants; and drought-tolerant companion plants.

Each section includes the author’s solid information based on her own gardening knowledge and inputs from other experts, and excellent images from her own work and other photographers. Baldwin brings a strong background of garden writing and photography to this task, as well as extensive experience in gardening. She is also a popular speaker and a producer of many short YouTube video recordings on succulent gardening.

Other books provide an encyclopedic resource or a botanical analysis of succulent plants, but Designing with Succulents, as its title indicates, focuses on design ideas for landscape vignettes, plant combinations, and containers. The book shows and describes exciting examples of designs from public and private gardens in southern California, and several other parts of the United States.

Among many other ideas, Designing with Succulents demonstrates the aesthetic value of larger plants in the landscape. Familiar good advice for adding plants to the garden includes being aware of the plant’s mature size. Buying only small plants minimizes expense, but filling the garden with plants that will never grow into larger size leaves the landscape with little drama or architectural interest.

Gardeners new to these plants will find both useful information and inspiration in this book. Experienced growers of succulents also will discover motivation to explore possibilities for refining their gardens and containers, and enjoying gardening with succulents.

Succulent Dish Gardens

While the rain soaks your garden, there still good ways to explore the world of horticulture. Planning landscape improvement and browsing the Internet for ideas or answers to questions both can be rewarding.

Developing a dish garden is a third option, one that involves actual gardening, albeit on a small scale.

Dish gardening can be enjoyed at any time, but it’s well suited as a rainy-day activity: it requires little time or space, yet it invites the application of gardening knowledge and aesthetic sensibilities.

A wide range of plants could be placed in a dish garden. Generally, good choices include plants that produce small leaves, grow slowly, and will thrive in the environment intended for placement of the finished garden.

Plant selection determines the design of the project, which might emphasize foliage, color, shady setting (e.g., a moss garden), a miniature landscape (e.g., a fairy garden), a Zen garden, a rock garden, cacti, or succulents. For inspiration, browse to Pinterest and search for “dish-garden” or “succulent dish garden” or other design concepts.

Here are two very different examples

Zen Dish Garden

Zen Dish Garden

 

 

 

Succulent Dish Garden

Succulent Dish Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article focuses on succulent plants, which have good form while young, and many will either stay small or grow slowly.

Start by selecting plants. If you are already growing succulents, you will have ready access to small plants or cuttings that will root easily in a dish garden. If you don’t have sufficient succulents, small plants are readily available at garden centers. Gather plants with a specific grouping in mind.

Another important consideration is container selection. Dish gardens usually are placed in shallow containers; they provide enough root room for small plants, and they are lightweight enough to move easily. Bonsai containers work well, but any container could be pressed into service. Even actual dishes could be used, but they could be tricky to provide ample soil and to water without drainage (water lightly!)

As a practical matter, choose a container that will fit in the location intended for the finished dish garden.

Once the plants have been placed, parts of the planting surface might remain exposed. These areas could provide an aesthetically desirable context for the plant, like “white space” in graphic design. They could be covered by a top dressing that would complement the design: sand, pebbles, gravel, and decorative rocks are popular options.

Non-plant elements are optional. Some designs call for the inclusion of natural components, e.g., rocks, driftwood, shells, etc. They should be selected for their attractive character because they will be viewed close-up.

Some designs require artificial decorative items for completion or enhancement. Such items should be selected and placed as integral components of the design, rather than included merely because they are cute or colorful.

It is at this point that we note that personal preferences are of paramount importance. Dish gardens are, after all, expressions of an individual’s creative ideas, so whatever pleases the dish gardener stands as a success.

So, when weather frustrates your gardening goals, consider dish gardening as an indoor alternative.