Hi! I'm Debra Lee Baldwin in Nancy Dalton's garden in North San Diego
County. Nancy was just awarded first prize for her garden in the San Diego
drought-tolerant landscaping contest. Nancy wanted a drought-tolerant garden of
beautiful, sculptural, architectural plants, so she went with succulents. Let's have a
closer look at the garden and see all the great things to explore, discover and
learn from!
Repetition is really important in your landscape. Subtle textural things
really make a difference in a garden and
emphasize how interesting it is than just an ordinary lawn. Have a couple of different
kinds of filamented agaves with Yucca rostrata, that big blue silvery pin cushion.
So you see groupings of plants with a high plant like the 'Sticks on Fire'
offering contrast with the blue Senecio mandraliscae. So the blue and the orange
give you contrast. Variegated elephant's food
repeats the yellow of the barrel cactus. The cactus are atop the mounds. They need
really good drainage, so water drains away from their roots. Yuccas are the same.
Now these are two plants that get by on rainfall alone when established. Some of the
other succulents, the smaller, finer leaved ones will need, oh, probably once a week
water, a pretty good thorough watering in the summertime. Planting on mounds not
only is good for the health of the plants, but it also enhances the look of
the landscape. You can vary the terrain with elevations and valleys, you're
going to have a more interesting landscape than if you simply had a flat
one. So imagine it all grass and now it's an inviting destination, much more
interesting than simply a rectangle of green.
Let's see what Nancy has in her backyard. Now this is something you could do
regardless of where you live. Have an
herb garden just in pots. Really nice grouping.
Leaves of Kalanchoe orgyalis are brown on top and gray underneath. I don't think you're going to
see that in too many plants. And it's in a cobalt blue pot which contrasts very
effectively with the orange of the coppertone sedum (or stonecrop). Sedum nussbaumerianum.
Repeating the cobalt, looking good up against a white wall, a columnar cactus,
some small euphorbias, and at lower right, Agave lophantha 'Quadricolor'.
Now, when I see a creek bed that's got stones in it like
that I think immediately of Michael Buckner, one of San Diego's top designers
specializing in succulents, because that's a keynote of his style. Placing the cobbles on
their sides enhances the suggestion of moving water. A finer textured gravel
lends a finished look and also is practical because it holds moisture in
the soil. Such a simple thing, and not expensive at all, to buy a few bags of pea
gravel.
This is a small leaved jade, a very tough plant.
See that striped line that's translucent?
This lovely big artichoke is Agave potatorum.
Big red kangaroo paws. The bottle brush 'Little John', a nice low mounding shrub.
Dymondia you can walk on it. It's very tough. It forms a dense mat
underfoot. You can even park on it.