Category Archives: garden ornament
Bold Succulents at the Seashore
Out for a walk at the beach with the corgi today, these imposingly tall jars of succulents on a porch caught my eye across four lanes of traffic. (There’s always ample opportunity to survey the surrounding area when walking Ein, … Continue reading
Extraordinary Pots for Extraordinary Plants
I was in the area for work-related business so decided to pay a late-afternoon visit to the California Cactus Center in Pasadena. I’ve had aloes on the brain since visiting the Huntington and wanted to check on the CCC’s aloe … Continue reading
Dustin’s Ballsy Totems
These stacked spheres are currently the stony exclamation points embellishing Dustin Gimbel’s Southern California garden/design laboratory/plant nursery. Dustin has described his fascination with the geologic anomaly of concretions on his blog non-secateur and how his obsession with them led him … Continue reading
Jeffrey Bale’s Permeable Road to Paradise
Is it just me, or has all subtlety been suddenly drained from the world? All sense of nuance seems lost. (In addition to lethargy, extreme heat occasionally brings on irritable, sweeping generalizations.) Here in Southern California, record cool temps all … Continue reading
Rust Never Sleeps: Recent Work by Dustin Gimbel
Congratulations to Dustin Gimbel of Second Nature Garden Design for the recent write-up in The Orange County Register on his landscape design work at a Huntington Harbor, California, home. If pets are chewing or foot traffic stomping your prize succulents, … Continue reading
Home Again
The termite control crews have left, the gas is turned back on, and very little damage to plants has occurred. An enormous, ruffly echeveria as big as a cabbage was one of the few casualties, even though it seemed in … Continue reading
Up On A Pedestal
Which is where I place plants, figuratively and literally, as in this plinth of glass blocks for a frosty astelia. If something is laying around here long enough, it will eventually be recruited to combine with plants in some form … Continue reading
Small Moves
“Small moves, Ellie.” No, I didn’t read the book Contact by Carl Sagan but am quoting from the movie, where Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway is advised as a child by her father to take it slow when scanning … Continue reading