succulents

Sedum palmeri 'Mendoza'

Winter with Mendoza

The rosettes of pale green leaves of Sedum palmeri ‘Mendoza’ are exquisitely beautiful year-round, as beautiful as flowers, especially so in winter when the leaves become tipped with red. The early spring floral display is more like a well-worn piece of jewelry, a bonus of gold stars of five-petaled flowers repeating the form of the

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Don’t Miss the Stones latest show

Putting on a show this week in the garden are the Living Stones. No, not Mick, Keith, and Ronnie, but the horticultural Living Stones, Lithops aucampiae. Our oldest patch starts flowering in early to mid November each year, growing beautifully under an overhanging rock. For all the articles about how difficult they are to grow,

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Euphorbia Hanky Panky

A couple of years ago, we were thrilled to acquire seed of Euphorbia ‘Rubicund’ from the Hardy Plant Society seed exchange. That little-known clone is a selection from a cross of Euphorbia myrsinites x E. rigida made by Rhode Island’s Issima Nursery. While the clone doesn’t come true from seed, we love our offspring and

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If at first you don’t suceed, plant and plant again

One of my most lustful plants has been the super cute Euphorbia clavarioides var. truncata. I first ran into this fascinating poinsettia cousin at the Denver Botanic Gardens in the 1990s, and have subsequently killed it 5 times, prior to the construction of our crevice garden. Now, our specimen below is 2.5 years old and

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Cow Tongue Takes a Lickin’

The gigantic, winter hardy, North American native, cow tongue cactus, Opuntia lindheimeri ‘Linguiformis’ is looking wonderful in the fall garden. We planted our original plant back in 2000, but when reworking a bed, needed to move it about 4 years ago. We took a couple of pad cuttings which languished, laying bare root on a

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Cat Whiskers Cactus

Our planting of Glandulicactus wrightii is looking quite lovely as we head into fall. Sadly, few folks take time to closely examine the fascinating and intricate arrangements of cactus spines. Glandulicactus wrightii, which is native to Texas and adjacent Mexico has amazingly long, hooked spines that resemble cat whiskers. Long term winter hardiness is hopeful

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Are you a Stones Fan?

Just like the rock group of the same name, these fascinating living stones also look quite old and wrinkled. The genus Lithops are tiny succulent plants native to the deserts of South Africa. Despite virtually all references on-line, they make great garden plants…as long as you have a crevice garden, and grow them when they

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Crazy Eddie’s Dunce Cap

In our cold frames, some plants will occasionally flower out of season, and that’s the case this week when one of our Orostachys ‘Crazy Eddie’ plants decided to flower out of season…fall is it’s normal time. The offseason timing won’t adversely affect the plant, and it did give us an unexpected photo moment. Because of

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