A rainy day garden: often a curse in the tropics, but a rare treat in Southern California. I can honestly tell you that I have never said, “Oh, darn. It’s going to rain” while I have had my garden here in Vista, California. If you do not live in a low-rainfall Mediterranean climate, you can not really understand why rain…
Some readers may have taken note that the last few posts I have uploaded have been posts in which I am catching up on my Madagascar trip. That trip is almost a year and a half old now. Work, kids, life, etc., all got in the way of me finishing those posts back then. I can…
Welcome to the new year. Welcome to Bob’s garden. Last year I wrote a post about aloes, with a spotlight on hybrids. Those plants were all from the exceptional garden of Bob De Jong. That post received a lot of positive feedback and came with many private requests to see more. Wanting to oblige, I have waited…
Plant snobs. Any long-time gardener or plant collector has run into them. The further you dig yourself into the gardening lifestyle, the more the plant snobbery reveals itself. Sadly, what is lost in all this is the beauty that can be found in a commonly available plant. Common plants become common for a reason. After many…
This is the second post of an ongoing blog series on Married to Plants about palm tree growing tips. The first post was about palm tree mounding. This post is on the exceptional Stuewe and Sons treepots and the benefits of using their containers with palm cultivation. Because your choice of container is one of the…
I have written a few blog post over the last two years showing off some of the amazing gardens that members of the Southern California Palm Society (PSSC) have created. Recently I had the opportunity to tour what is most likely the nicest of all of them in Southern California: the beautiful “Cuesta Linda” garden estate…
As part of the second leg of the International Palm Society’s biennial group trip, Singapore was the next stop after Sarawak, Borneo. The IPS had planned three palmy locations to visit while we were in Singapore. Gardens by the Bay, Singapore Botanic Garden (topic of next week’s post) and McRitchie Reservoir. Gardens by the Bay was first up. Before…
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…