Debra Lee Baldwin gardens on "an inhospitable half acre" in Escondido, CA, near San Diego. She is an award-winning photojournalist and artist with hundreds of articles and columns to her credit. Debra's books are Designing with Succulents, Succulent Container Gardens and Succulents Simplified. www.debraleebaldwin.com.
When you think of fall color, Southern California probably doesn’t come to mind. It’s more a Berkshires kind of thing, with entire hillsides ablaze with leaves about to fall. And yet, here in the far southwestern corner of the US, we have our own ways of interpreting the autumn garden—cactus, succulents, dry gardens, fruit and pumpkins all come into play. For example, in a nursery, I saw pumpkins juxtaposed with a blue agave—a nice contrast of color, shape and texture. Continue Reading →
See the seahorse? It’s sempervivums planted in vertical panels. This was one of many lovely and unusual sights at the second annual Succulent Extravaganza at Succulent Gardens nursery in Castroville, CA last week.
A terrace at the nursery is planted with Agave ‘Blue Glow’ (foreground) and Agave ‘Blue Flame’ (background). Continue Reading →
At this month’s Succulent Extravaganza, Sept. 28 and 29 at Succulent Gardens near San Francisco, I’ll be speaking about companion plants for succulents that vary from ground covers to trees. Many grow in my own garden near San Diego. Two examples are above: orange California poppies (an annual) and blue fescue, a perennial that is low-growing, mounding and truly blue. Like all ornamental grasses, it adds great texture to gardens.
Speaking of texture, Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ has finely cut leaves and shimmers with a silvery blue comparable to Agave americana, shown here in my garden. In bloom higher up the slope are aloes with orange flowers. Continue Reading →
My husband and I had the lake in Colorado, at 11,000 feet elevation, to ourselves except for occasional hikers a mile away—colorful specks on a timberline trail whose voices carried in the thin air. While Jeff fished, although I wasn’t bored exactly, I began noticing lichens. I’m here to tell you, Rocky Mountain lichens are as impressive as lava flows.
According to Wikipedia, lichen is comprised of a fungus and a photosynthetic partner (usually green algae). Lichens occur in some of the most extreme environments on earth—arctic tundra, hot deserts, rocky coasts, and toxic slag heaps—as well as bare rock, walls and gravestones. Continue Reading →
An article I scouted and wrote for Sunset is in all regional editions of the September issue. (Most Southern CA garden articles appear in the Southern CA edition only.) One reason is Brett Gum’s gorgeous photography. These are my own photos here.
The location is a bluff-top home in the Orange County community of Corona del Mar. The designer is Joe Stead, a horticulture teacher at Orange Coast College. The amazing colors in the tide pool-themed garden resulted from a phenomenon called “stressing.” To learn more, see my YouTube video, “How to Stress Your Succulents…and Why You Should”. Continue Reading →
