I'm Debra Lee Baldwin author of Designing with Succulents, Succulents
Simplified, and Succulent Container Gardens. I'm going to show you my own
garden with tips and ideas you'll find useful for yours. It's a personal space
with lots of trial and error and plenty of memories. Here in the dry, rocky
foothills northeast of San Diego, it's a constant challenge to maintain a green,
weed-free, tidy yard. But those of us who see plants as fascinating and rewarding
don't just have yards, we have gardens. If you're one of us,
especially if you love succulents, this video is for you.
My own garden's challenges include frost that turns plants to mush, high heat that
burns and desiccates them, and nutrient poor, decomposed granite and clay soil.
The terrain is steep so erosion and access are issues. But all
those rocks make great terraces, compost and mulch are free for the asking, and
I'm blessed to have help with heavy lifting, pruning, hauling and digging.
Best of all, during my career as a photojournalist and author I've been
privileged to interview knowledgeable plantsmen, garden designers and
creative homeowners. I've applied a lot of what I've learned to my own garden. I
grow the plants I write about. My garden is both a sanctuary and my laboratory.
Everything is looking lush and lovely because we recently had several inches
of rainfall, which is a lot for a Southern California spring. Stealing the
show this time of the year are African daisies. So you're not just going to see
succulents, you're going to see a low water garden that's been developed over
many years, so a lot of plants are quite mature. Find labeled photos of plants on
my website's Debra's Garden page. I have many succulent container gardens
each with its own story. I think I'll make a video just about them. For this
video, I'll focus on in-ground and landscape areas where spring really shines
I have a lot of low-water ornamental shrubs that date to my pre-succulent era
If they make it, great, if they don't they get replaced, usually with succulents
Succulents make it through the year without a lot of irrigation, but they love rain as long as their roots get good drainage.
This streetside area of the garden has different layers, which I love about it
The blue of the senecio mandraliscae repeats the blue of the sky and the red
contrasts. Anytime you can incorporate primary colors in your garden you've got
something wonderful. And throughout my garden I have birdhouses I hope will be
occupied. It's always thrilling when somebody moves in. This is a wren. If you're
interested in my bird videos you can find them on my YouTube channel. Now this
is Agave 'Blue Flame', it's a cross between Agave shawii I which is native
to Baja California and Agave attenuata. I have a cluster of it here
flanking the steps which makes a nice balance
I redid this area eight years ago replacing concrete pavers with stone
Some plants haven't grown much, others I thinned out over the years. This is one of
the most important areas of my garden because it's the view from my office
window. The fountain attracts gold finches and other songbirds.
I often post photos and videos of this area on my Instagram feed with the
hashtag #thisiswhyIdon'tgetanythingdone. African daisies repeat the shape
and color of metal flowers by artist Mark Rafter. Okay let's go into the lower
garden. Most of the plants I have in my garden are quite common. They're found in
nurseries. They're not rare or unusual but they're fun to play with from a
design standpoint. Most of the hard work is done by a gardener who comes every
four weeks. I make a list before he comes. I may be unique among his clients
in that I know exactly what I want done and how I want it done. We spend a half
an hour walking through the garden discussing the list. Two areas of the
garden are by Laura Eubanks of Design for Serenity. The oak trees
drop a lot of leaves which can make it challenging to keep them tidy. But here
inland from San Diego with frost and winter and temps in the high 90s in late
summer, leafy canopies are important to moderate temperatures. They make it
possible to grow a wider range of succulents than otherwise. Many popular
succulents like aloes come from South Africa. The climate and rainfall cycles
are similar to Southern and coastal California's. Anything from South Africa
does well in our gardens, like South African bulbs, like that ice plant and
those daisies. People who visit would love a cutting of Aloe arborescens 'Variegata'
I tell them you don't really want it. It's
infested with aloe mite. I have cut out all the aloe mite, I don't see any right
now, but once in the system of a plant aloe mite is there forever. I don't want
to give someone a cutting and have it infest their plants and garden. Gravel is
a security thing because you can hear people coming, and it makes a nice
pathway. This is the only part of the garden where I can grow jade-like crassulas
They're up against a wall that radiates warmth in the winter so it
keeps it just above freezing and they're fine. And even if they get a little bit
nipped, they recover. This is my new mangave area. I'm fortunate that Walters
Gardens' Hans Hansen sends me mangaves to trial in my garden. And this is the
shade garden on the north side. That's Agave attenuata. Why all the ivy?
Well here's how the shade garden used to look. That chain link fence needed to
disappear. I have a dudleya here that has thrown up a bloom, good for it. One
of the common names for Crassula multicava is fairy crassula. It gets these long stems
and plantlets, and throws its offspring out where it roots away from
the mother plant. That's one of the wonderful things about agaves is that they really stand out
in a garden. You can look down into the garden and not see much definition
because of all the foliage. But if there are agaves they stand out like living
sculptures. We've lived here for 30 years. The property is quite steep and over the
years I've added steps and terraces. The total amount of land is half an acre. I
have a lot of cactus around the perimeter.
I love how sunlight plays with leaves and shines through them. I wish you could
smell this wisteria. No matter what time of the year, the garden is welcoming and
cool and shady once the sun passes the house. If the garden wasn't shady in the
late afternoon here in inland San Diego, it would have been way too hot
for me to garden during the summer. The north-south-east-west orientation of a
home and its outdoor living spaces are important in lots of ways, not just for
the well-being and positioning of plants, but for the people who use it too. I
learned as a scout for Sunset magazine utilitarian objects need to be concealed
because the aim is to create a sense of paradise
Maybe not quite realistic, but if you have anything plastic showing
it'll destroy that sense of Eden. You may be working like crazy in the garden to
perfect it combating weeds, gophers and bugs and
pests, but there's also this sense of drama, of theater. The reason why you're
working so hard is that you're aiming to have somebody come and see it, to immerse
them in an Edenic experience. Well sure you're immersing yourself too
But people say, "I'll bet you sit out here and write," as though I used a quill
pen. Try sitting for a little while in your own garden, especially if you're
alone. Only until you see a snail or a weed or something that would look a
little bit better if you just went after it with your clippers. It's a sort of
living theater, but it's also a three-dimensional art form. And art is
its own excuse for being. Like most gardeners I've got all kinds of excuses
"Oh you should have seen it last month when the whatever was in bloom," or "You
know, I'm gonna get around to weeding that area or replanting that
area or taking cuttings from that plant." In the meantime your guests are like
"Looks pretty good to me!" I'm a big fan of empty plots in the
garden if they're beautiful pots. Well you know that not every pot has to be
planted. That's lavender, it smells so good. When
my son was still at home, we used to do projects, and this was one of them. This
Aeonium haworthii looked so bad, I was thinking about taking it out. I
figured, well that's what aeoniums do in the summertime. Let's wait and see
what happens after the winter rains. Well this is what happened! Can you believe it?
Don't assume your aeoniums are dying in the fall. Winter rains will revive them. We
can grow well over a dozen different aeonium species and cultivars in Southern
and coastal California. Learn more about them in my books and on the aeonium page
of my website. This California iris is one of my favorite non-succulent flowers
I added California natives to the area under the
Engelmann oak to boost the health of the tree. Hummingbirds appreciate it too. This
is the arch that my son and daughter-in-law got married under. And
this area was just cleaned out. I have to decide what if anything I'm going to
plant in here. It was all this shrub euphorbia that has reseeded throughout
the garden. I planted this area for my husband because he loves ornamental
grasses. Their texture makes such a nice contrast to the succulents. This
area reminds me of a gardener I had for 15 years. I told him he could plant
whatever he wanted in this sort of pie-shaped
area, and now in spring it does him credit. You see those round barrel cactus over
there? I put ears on them and turn them into
cats. I'll have to show you sometime how to make a cactus cat. It's a lot of
trouble. It's cute, though. That's Agave 'Blue Glow'. And this is Agave
Blue Glow Variegata' It was a gift from Laura Eubanks. Isn't it
stunning? One of the things I love about having a mature, established garden is
the way things grow together. This bright chartreuse zonal geranium is popping out
through the bank of aeoniums here. The succulent sitting area is kind of a nice
destination for picnics in the garden. It has an illustrious history. It has been
photographed by several publications including Better Homes and Gardens and
Sunset. The idea is a semicircular area that's like a succulent wreath you
can sit inside. It is built into the bank at the base of the steep slope. Look!
There's a little wren. It's not much bigger than a mouse. When I see a bird I
don't move. Hopefully this is a Bewick's wren, not a house wren. Bewick's are
getting endangered because the house wrens are crowding them out
May you be a Bewick's! These chairs make a nice focal point. I painted them a pale
yellow that repeats in a lot of the plants. It stands out yet blends in at the same time. The areas of the
garden that are straight lines were installed by the previous owners
I think straight lines are unnatural. I prefer serpentine lines, curved lines,
semi-circles, irregular lines to something bone straight. The reason
is, straight lines speak to human habitation and down here in the garden I
think we want to feel like we're truly surrounded by nature, not in a place
where man has imposed himself. Even though there's nothing about this that
didn't get imposed upon. Over the years I found what does well in my garden and
the successes are far less than the failures. I have lots and lots of empty
nursery pots to show for it. But this sedum is a wonderful success. This bank
alongside a busy street used to be all ice plant, which was fine, but it got
patchy over time. I filled gaps with paddle cactus, low-water trees and shrubs,
tough succulents, and annuals. Neighbors remark how pretty this is,
little realizing how hard it is for anything to grow there because of harsh
sun, winter frost, poor soil and inefficient irrigation. Over time the trees
have really grown up, and it's become more parklike. As I get older, I'm
going to let the garden naturalize, to return to the oak canyon it once was.
I'm Debra Lee Baldwin. Thank you for coming on a tour of my spring garden.
Find labeled photos of plants on my website's Debra's Garden
page, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and if you have questions please
leave them.