My 1,000 mile Southern California succulent adventure

I just got back from a 5-day whirlwind road trip to Southern California. I had the pleasure of meeting up with three of my favorite garden bloggers (Hoover Boo of Piece of Eden, Denise of A Growing Obsession, and Kris of Late to the Garden Party) and was reminded again of how wonderful it is to hang out with like-minded plant nerds. I also visited some new-to-me public gardens (Sherman Library and Gardens, South Coast Botanic Garden, Getty Center, Deutsch Cactus Garden) and returned to some favorite haunts (Los Angeles County Arboretum and the Huntington). Finally, I stopped at a bunch of nurseries and loaded up the car with a treasure trove of plants. Now I need to find room for everything I bought!

I’ll be going through my 1,300 photos in the weeks to come and will have detailed posts on all my destinations. Today I want to give you a sneak peek of what I saw.

My first stop was at Hoover Boo’s Piece of Eden in Orange County. Having followed her blog for many years, I felt like I knew her garden very well, but I was still surprised by how large it is and how many separate areas there are. It truly is a paradise full of succulents, southern hemisphere shrubs, roses, citrus trees, bromeliads, and more!

Hoover Boo also took me to her friend Kay’s garden a few blocks away. It seemed even larger and is just as full of wonderful plants. Kay graciously gave me a a box and a paper bag full of tillandsias as well the largest avocado I’d ever seen—picked right off her own tree. This is Southern California, after all!

The next morning, I went to Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar with Hoover Boo and her husband Beloved. I’d heard a lot of wonderful things about this premier nursery and was not disappointed even though it wasn’t fully stocked yet (they were in the process of clearing out their Christmas stuff). The demonstration garden in front of the nursery was fabulous, as you can see in the collage below:

Our next stop was Sherman Library and Gardens just a few minutes from Roger’s where we met up with Denise (A Growing Obession). Among succulent fanatics, Sherman Gardens is well known for Matt Maggio’s stunning succulent tapestries (for details read this article in Pacific Horticulture). My personal highlight were the dozens of paper parasols suspended from the ceiling in the tropical conservatory.

After saying goodbye to Hoover Boo, Beloved and Denise, I made a quick but successful stop at Village Nurseries in Huntington Beach (hello, Leucadendron ‘Little Bit’ and Cordyline ‘Electric Flash’) and then headed to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. My destination: the garden of Kris Peterson who blogs at Late to the Garden Party. I had long admired the stunning views from her front garden and the amazing diversity of plants she grows. I was the first visitor to see her new lathe house (top right)—her talented husband had just finished it that morning.

Thursday started with a stop at the Armstrong Garden Center in Santa Monica before I headed to the first of that day’s two main destinations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles. This was my first visit, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. While the Central Garden was in winter mode, it was still a sight to see—as was the Cactus Garden on top of the South Promontory.

In the early afternoon, I braved an unexpected traffic snarl on my way to the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia. I’d stopped there briefly last March on my way home from Palm Springs. This time I wasn’t in a hurry and had the chance to explore other areas of the 125 acre site, including the amazing cycad garden. In the South African Garden, many aloes were in full bloom.

Day 4, Friday, was all about the Huntington in nearby San Marino. My previous visits had been limited to the world-famous Desert Garden. This time I also checked out the Chinese, Japanese, Australian and Subtropical Gardens. A lot of walking is required to explore the 120 acres of gardens! I was surprised by how hot and thirsty I was until I realized the temperature had climbed to 84°F (29°C) by mid-afternoon—unseasonably warm even for Southern California.

Here’s a collage of the Chinese and Japanese Gardens:

The New World section of the Desert Garden:

And the Old World section:

Most of day 5 was taken up by the drive home (just shy of 400 miles from the Huntington). I quickly visited a Lowe’s and Home Depot just to see what the big-box garden centers carry in that part of the state and picked up a beautiful Agave potatorum ‘Cameron Blue’. To break up the 6-hour drive I also stopped at a place I hadn’t even known existed until I did a Google search for “botanical gardens Fresno:” the Deutsch Cactus Garden in Fresno. This small 1-acre garden is the legacy of cactus collector Fred Deutsch who had collected many of the plants in the wild in the 1930s when such a thing was still legal. I had no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. This is a nice place to stretch your legs half way between metropolitan Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Here is my plant haul from the various nurseries I visited:

Nursery purchases:

Agave potatorum ‘Cameron Blue’ — The Home Depot, Monrovia
Aloe vanbalenii — South Coast Botanic Garden, Palos Verdes
Calylophus drummondii (2x) — Armstrong Garden Center, Santa Monica
Carex flacca ‘Blue Zinger’ — Armstrong Garden Center, Santa Monica
Crassula ovata ‘Undulata’ (6 pack) — Roger’s Gardens, Corona del Mar
Cordyline banksii ‘Electric Flash’ — Village Nurseries Landscape Center, Huntington Beach
Dicksonia antartica — Garden View Nursery, Irwindale (I wasn’t looking for another Tasmanian tree fern, but it was 50% off, so $9.50 for a 5-gallon plant)
Euphorbia ‘White Swan’ — Village Nurseries Landscape Center, Huntington Beach
Gonialoe variegata — Garden View Nursery, Irwindale
Leonotis leonurus ‘Variegatus’ — Roger’s Gardens, Corona del Mar
Leucadendron ‘Jester’ — Armstrong Garden Center, Santa Monica
Leucadendron ‘Little Bit’ — Village Nurseries Landscape Center, Huntington Beach
Pachyphytum compactum (6 pack) — Roger’s Gardens, Corona del Mar
Phylica pubescens — Armstrong Garden Center, Santa Monica
Santolina virens —Armstrong Garden Center, Santa Monica
Tagetes lemonii × lucida ‘Gold Medal’ — The Home Depot, Torrance
Yucca ‘Bright Star’ — purchased by a friend, I believe at Green Thumb Nursery, Lake Forest