I'm Debra Lee Baldwin
and this is Kelly Griffin
a world-renowned expert
on growing succulents
He's an agave and aloe hybridizer
Kelly is the plant development
director, is that correct?
Succulent Plant Development Manager
At Altman Plants
A long title
The largest grower of cactus
and succulents in the country.
We want things that are
more garden-friendly
which means fewer spines
that's one of the things we're doing
And plants that will stay
within bounds. People plant
Agave americana in a space
and in three or four or five years
it's taken more than its space.
Solitary agaves are a good pick
Because they stay put.
The agaves that Kelly's about
to show you are readily available
or soon will be.
All are beautiful, low-water,
slow to bloom, easy to grow,
safer than most to garden around,
and seldom produce pups.
This is ovatifolia, which means
oval foliage. It's also sometimes
called the whale's tongue.
It gets much wider than it gets tall,
so you can put it in the foreground
in the garden as a centerpiece.
The other thing is
When something normally gets
4 or 5 feet wide,
it usually gets 4 or 5 feet tall.
This thing stays about
waist-high or smaller.
People, you know, are drawn to it
But it doesn't dominate
everything behind it.
Those plants look like nothing
when you buy them in a gallon.
People think they're buying a
parryi or something, and they
have no idea. So a lot of this
is knowledge and working with
the material, knowing what
ultimately it's going to do.
It's not easy for even people
who are in the landscape
business to know this material
that's relatively new, they haven't
experienced what it does.
'Blue Glow' has a good look about it.
It's solitary. They planted this many.
There are not extra pups coming up here.
You put a large agave this close to a
walkway, and it will be in the walkway.
That thing's never going to do it.
It takes quite a bit of cold because
of its Sonoran parentage. It also
is fairly long-lived. It's not one of
the early bloomers. They bloom out
about maybe 7 to 11 years,
depending on how hard their life's
been. Whereas some agaves
can bloom out in three or four years.
When agaves bloom, it's a
beautiful flower, often, but
that's the swan song.
Victoria-reginae looks like a
little artichoke. We found it in
Mexico over four different states.
They don't get out of bounds.
They don't flower prematurely,
so you don't lose them,
and you can have them as
least as long as you have a pet.
I've had this now for, what, ten
years. It's a nice sized plant.
They're slow growing. You can
keep it around for a long time
and it looks pretty.
How large will it get?
About the size of a large
beach ball.
Oh, that big?
This particular one.
That's the clone that
we want to go with.
It's kind of a rounded leaf,
a more open leaf arrangement
and the white lines, which
you can compare to the other
ones I showed you, are
easily five times as wide.
Titanotas are nice because
they're fairly controlled growth
they're fairly slow.
There are 28 different varieties
of titanota in my yard.
That one that we call
'Lotus' is a titanota.
This is a variegated titanota,
a beautiful creamy yellow
variegation on it.
The leaf bud as it unfurls
leaves the imprint of the
previous one on there.
This is impressa, wonderful
bud imprint, and that's a
really nice clone of it.
Is this commercially available?
Yeah, it's in tissue culture
at a couple of labs.
Easy to grow, coastal areas
of California you'd probably
be fine. If you're on the inland
valleys where it drops down
into the 20s, you're out of luck.
These are selections of
guiengola. There's one, two,
thee, and there's a fourth one
back there. And I selected them
for difference of color, and
difference of leaf margin.
This one was released in ISI
as 'Motosierra' or 'Chainsaw'.
Like a goldfish in a bowl,
it's only going to get as big
as you let it. Now, you stick
the same plant, the same
exact plant, in the ground,
give it water and fertilizer,
and it can reach its full potential.
This is what 'Chainsaw' does,
that's what it does when it grows up.
It's a stunning plant
and it's not difficult to grow.
This one has these nice
wide leaves with this interesting
banding pattern on it.
And that one's kind of a real
platinum blue. Every one
of them's an individual,
they're like people.
I guess you could call them
my adopted children.
Learn more from Kelly
in my videos.