A few years ago when I started my blog I had no idea that the most popular post would end up being the post about my dwarf agaves. Readers have really gravitated to those posts. In fact, the most read page on my blog is the one on the work I did to my boutique agave planter…
A first in the garden is always an exciting time. I have been fortunate to have quite a few rare firsts over the years in my garden. Some of my most memorable are when a tropical flowering tree finally reaches maturity here in my Southern Californian garden. For example, when I had a first in the garden when…
Gardeners know how easy it is to add color to their landscape. The choices nowadays are truly endless and the list expands daily. What a great time to be a gardener. Red, orange, yellow, green, white, brown, purple, pink. All easy. Getting black and blue in the garden, however, can be a different story. So why is blue…
Every so often a palm tree makes its way into cultivation and becomes the desire of all collectors. Sometimes this desire puts pressure on wild populations, like what happened with the Foxtail Palm (Wodyetia bifurcata). Poachers eventually led to Australia banning seed export of Wodyetia bifurcata. Luckily the palms grew pretty fast in cultivation and set copious amounts of…
Starting a new business is no easy task. Fellow business owners will tell you that if you want to run a successful small business and enjoy what you do at the same time, then you should turn your hobby into your business. That is exactly what happened to a friend of mine that got bitten by the palm…
Earlier today I drove up to Costa Mesa to finally visit the Southern California Spring Garden Show “At Home in The Garden.” I have heard mixed reviews over the years about the show with some years being great and others a waste of time. The biggest complaint I hear from people now is that the larger…
So if I were to ask you to guess what plant has the largest inflorescence in the world, what would you say? “Whats an inflorescence?” OK, that’s just a scientific term for a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem. Basically the stalk of the plant that is holding all those flower clusters you see on your day lilies, hydrangeas, sweet…
This post most likely won’t be overly exciting to anyone other than a cactus collector. Still, a true plant lover can’t but appreciate the flowers on my Geohintonia mexicana that just opened. Cactus are the butt of many jokes from a few of my close, fellow plant collector friends that never got into the ‘cactus craze.’ Their belief is…