I'm Debra Lee Baldwin and I'm with one of my favorite people Jim Bishop a
horticulturist garden designer past president of the San Diego Horticultural
Society and owner of one of the finest gardens in all of San Diego. Jim's
garden has been in all of my books and Jim's going to give us a tour of the garden
today. Well we've been gardening here for about 20 years a little bit more than 20
years and the succulent thing came late it was not the original intention and it
kind of took over and a little bit before people were into succulents and then
Debra showed up, for writing about our house one day I believe it was, and I
noticed she took pictures of all the potted succulents which had nothing to
do with the house, and that kind of put me off onto putting more there and then
the other issue is we have very little space out here and this space is due
south and I had traditional plants, roses and other things and they
all died in the winter because the sun was so intense against the white wall
and I stumbled into succulents doing fairly well out there and then the
courtyard and a lot of other areas around the house is
brick and tile and so everything has to be in pots. It's hard to keep other
things alive in pots and one by one all the pots became succulents. How large is the
property? It's just a little under one acre. It's 100 feet elevation from
where we're standing right now to the very bottom is a hundred feet lower yeah
so basically ten stories and there's Ten! There's well over 300 steps in the
garden which we put in all of ourselves. A significantly wonderful part of this is the setting, the architecture the
Spanish colonial architecture with Moroccan overtones, which was remodeled
by Marc Terasuck architect here in San Diego, and I think that's how we first
met yes because I did an article about
it for San Diego Home/Garden. It was a 1938 sort of a Hacienda style house
We've been very careful to keep a very strong 1930s feel. As Debra was
mentioning, she's got some ties with San Miguel de Allende. San
Miguel de Allende is our patron saint of our house and this tile is from San Miguel.
When I think of your place, Jim, I think of distinct areas of the garden, the
streetside garden, the inner courtyard patio garden where we are now, and the
deck garden. We call that the veranda that's the largest flat spot on our
property actually yeah it's surprising so when we entertain large groups that's
where we serve wine and stuff because there's not room to stand up
here, and then the casita. The casita which is the walled garden also, and the sloped or terraced garden
yeah and that has multiple rooms and it changes based on the climate because
I'm in a fog belt here, at the top a heavy fog belt, and so the northwest
corner of our property gets pretty heavy dense fog, and I have a lot of problems
with succulents actually rotting facing that. You know it's also very
sunny but things can sit in fog for a week or two at a time and drip every
night and a lot of rosettes don't like that water dripping into their centers and can
rot. Like a good gardener you are very well aware of your microclimates,
your orientation to the sun, it's more than just an aesthetic adventure
it's also where the plants are happy. Well the wall up here which has a lot of tillandsias
in it, two major reasons for that was because the fog and the air blows
through very nice in the summer it faces north so it doesn't
get full sun but it gets bright light which is exactly what they like. I've
always liked this planted brick wall. And I've always intended to get it totally
covered. This is a nice bonsai jade. You know what I never trimmed it ever. It trims itself?
It drops branches and its blooming. And the iron mariachi, there are four or
five of them in the garden. This is the veranda. This was actually here when we bought our house
it's about 1,200 square feet, it's quite large, you wouldn't guess that and
the tile was here but a lot of the tile had worn out so wherever the tile was
worn out I jackhammered it out and put in my tile samples left over from things
that never happened but it kind of worked
it's total shade for two months of the year and then the opposite problem in
the summer is total sun for two months It's a little northwest and so I have
an agave collection over here, it is about 35 species of agaves, and I've got a few
other things mixed in. Oh an interesting story, the tile over here on
the wall was in Debra's first book and she took the picture of this area and when
I saw the picture, there was a variety of succulents and other things, I
thought the star needs to be emphasized, that pattern needs to repeat more it's in this very center of your book
it's two pages and it has like some other succulents I don't remember what
they were but it really needed the repetition of the star yes it was one of my best photos for talking about repetition, cobalt blue, color
since added the cows, which I love. So on to the casita? Yes let's go down.
Balboa Park was some of the inspiration. Where the pool was? Yes, it was from about where we're standing
all the way down to the tower. 40 feet long and 11 feet deep and it was the
world's coldest swimming pool on the north side of the house with ocean
fog. We've had enough rain that it's flushed the salt out of the soil so the
moss is happy It really makes them look old, I mean
I could scrape it off but I love the old look. It's even on this. So that tells you where north is.
Somebody left this at a Rakes and Blades meeting at my house in Encinitas
30-some years ago in a three inch pot and then the woman around the corner
gave me all her rose bottles and then I got another friend who gives me the blue
Budweiser bottles that's right your garden is known for its bottles over
ten thousand. Well we'll see eventually I got all the way the bottom to get to the
sunniest spot the sunniest and warmest spot is at the very very bottom of the
garden. Years to continue terracing your way down yeah we've only been
working on the bottom of the hill for about four years but it looks like it's
been there forever