Category Archives: driveby gardens

a Mission Revival garden

I wasn’t exactly lost in Beverly Hills today, but traffic was terrible enough that I left the main arteries like San Vicente and dove into surrounding neighborhood streets, looking for a less congested way home. Around Sweetzer I found this … Continue reading

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terraced gardens and the Cow Horn agave

I love terraced gardens, with their multiple shifting perspectives from up, down, side to side. I can probably trace this appreciation to an aunt’s hilltop home in the harbor town of San Pedro, Calif. My dad’s sister had a house … Continue reading

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streetside with grasses and succulents

Because of this house, I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon trying to source a flat of Sesleria autumnalis or Sesleria ‘Greenlee.’ No luck yet, but I will not be deterred.

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backdrops for plants

Some interesting backdrops I found around town, some intentional, some borrowed, some just sheer serendipity. I’m wondering what came first here, the choice of color for the house and then the Lion’s Tail? Or did the Leonotis leonurus start the … Continue reading

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streetside; your own personal prairie

When my job canceled today, I knew exactly where I wanted to go before breakfast, before even the first cup of coffee. The local neighborhood prairie. It’s something you don’t see everyday in my coastal neighborhood in Los Angeles County, … Continue reading

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Old California Style

“Yeah, the architecture is really consistent, isn’t it? French next to Spanish, next to Tudor, next to Japanese.” Alvy Singer musing on Los Angeles architecture in “Annie Hall.” Adobe-style house in a polyglot landscape. California pepper tree, Schinus molle (from … Continue reading

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streetside: succulent garden 6/24/14

Another gem of a garden found via a traffic shortcut.* I’ve been admiring it for some time and stopped by last night for photos. Driving by, the tall succulents, a Furcraea macdougalii about the size of mine, Euphorbia ammak and … Continue reading

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driveby agave garden details

Some details from Jud’s garden. It was this beet red crassula and Coppertone Stonecrop (Sedum nussbaumerianum) that first drew my attention to this bit of detailed planting. The crassula looks like C. pubescens ssp. radicans. The longer I looked, the … Continue reading

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driveby agave garden revisited

I’ve been thinking of Jud’s garden. Did the recent unseasonal heat waves bruise any agaves? I didn’t memorize the address, so it took a while to find again, which seems to be a recurring theme with this garden. Was it … Continue reading

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on the tour; chasing variegated chimeras

A garden I visited on Saturday decidedly belonged to a devotee of the variegated leaf. (It takes one to know one.) The infatuation wasn’t apparent at first glance. This was a mature garden, well-treed, bambooed and shrubbed. But after every … Continue reading

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