Becky Sell of Sedum Chicks plants cold-hardy succulents in repurposed wood-and-metal containers, hypertufa pots, wreaths and more. She grows the plants, too, where she lives in Turner, Oregon, near the Washington border. Becky’s compositions can overwinter outdoors in northerly climates (Zones 4 to 8), providing the potting medium drains well. Cold-hardy succulents such as stonecrops [...]
Can succulents recover from a hard frost? It depends. Let’s look at a southern California nursery’s display garden before nighttime temperatures dropped into the mid-20s F: Here’s the same Euphorbia ammak ‘Variegata, after the frost: Likelihood of recovery: Nil. Too much of the tissue was damaged. But what about the Euphorbia tirucalli ‘Sticks on Fire’ behind it? It’s hope of recovery [...]
Alan Beverly was fresh out of college and a Peace Corps volunteer when he discovered a plant that became a lifelong passion. Hiking the rugged mountains of Lesotho in central Africa, guided by “friendly, hardy Basotho people” (whose children shrieked with fear when they saw him, their first white man), he “found Aloe polyphylla perched [...]
Garden books that I enjoyed this year and highly recommend as holiday gifts include two about edibles, one in my own area of specialization, one about color and design, and a regional guide I wouldn’t be without. Grocery Gardening by Jean Ann Van Krevelen with Amanda Thomsen, Robin Ripley and Teresa O’Connor (Cool Springs Press, paperback, $19.95) [...]
When the current issue of The American Gardener from the American Horticultural Society arrived I immediately read about my friend Neil Diboll of Prairie Nursery fame and saw the You Tube interview. And then a nice story by Duncan Brine about naturalistic gardening. With apologies to fellow GG Wild blogger Debra Lee Baldwin, I did [...]