A Merging of Interests

A Merging of Interests

Kim recently offered our neighbor Mary to tend to her plants while she was away seeing family in the Midwest. Kim took this task very seriously and diligently went over to Mary’s house every day (usually using it as an opportunity to give Blind Betty a nice walk). One of Mary’s plants that lived on her deck was suggested to be brought over here to be looked after more easily. It was an outdoor flowering plant of considerable blooming abundance. But what started out as a lush plant, gradually withered and dried up as the last month went past. We both watched this every day as the plant sat on our side entry stoop. That way, we could not miss it as each blossom struggled to survive and faded to dust. Kim watered the plant religiously, being sure to give it just enough and not too much water (we’ve learned that lesson the hard way here in cactus country). The morning sun was tempered by the afternoon shade (the opposite pattern it had at home on Mary’s deck). For whatever reason, none of this sufficed to allow this little plant to thrive. Instead, it slowly, but surely, died a slow and painful death that very much bothered Kim. We were reminded of our friend Lennie, who, despite his best efforts, presided over the death of one of my bonsai trees while Kim and I travelled to Oregon. He felt bad, I felt bad, the bonsai was beyond feeling anything. Plants die. It is that simple.

Kim’s wards that stayed in Mary’s house fared well, but Kim felt horrible about Mary’s plant even though Mary seemed nonplused. Once Kim had removed the dead parts of the little plant there was one lonely sprig sticking up. That made her decide that she wanted to buy a new plant for Mary. We are spoiled out here with the great weather and its hard to remember that Autumn is upon us as of a few days ago. I seem to recall that in the Autumn, deciduous plants turn color, dry up and shed their leaves for the winter as they go seasonally dormant. Who knows, maybe it was just time for the little plant to dry up. But off we decided to go to our favorite nursery to look for a replacement.

The thing about nurseries is that they are more tuned in to the seasons than we are. Their offerings were seasonally appropriate, which means more autumnal than not. This particular nursery logically specializes in succulents. In fact, its called Waterwise Botanicals, which is a dead giveaway. As we walked around, we found that someone at the nursery specializes in finding unique “pots” for their plant arrangements. They went so far as to use a bathtub and an old wheelbarrow as planters for particularly large planters. For smaller ones they used every manner of container imaginable. They filled these containers with a wide array of succulents, arranged artfully by shape and color and mostly overflowing their containers in a natural, but plentiful way. In fact, these containers had the look of cornucopia overflowing with abundance. That seemed very seasonally appropriate whether it was by design or by accident.

While wandering around the pre-planted area of the nursery (as opposed to the plants in plastic buckets area), I realized that these pre-made arrangements would be perfect for several other weak spots in our landscape plan. The thing about large succulents is that if they are kept thirsting with just enough water, they grow tight to the ground, but is they are watered liberally, they get “leggy”. That can be a perfectly fine look as the plant grows and spreads, but it can also create gaps in the surface of the plant where the woody stems show themselves in an ungainly manner. I have two noticeable spots where those gaps are obvious to me and look like they need some help. Taking these older and larger succulents out would be a shame. As easy as succulents grow out here, it still takes years and years to grow as large plants as we have in our garden,

The idea I got while walking through the succulent nursery was to simply set one of these unique arrangements into the gap and voila. The trick would be twofold….to find wide flat arrangements that would fill the gaps and to find planters that had similarly drought-tolerant varieties that would not either suffer with too much or too little water. I also do not need another hand-watering chore. I have twenty-one watering zones on my irrigation system and I still am staying one step ahead of my irrigation guy by planting more and more regardless of the water needs. In other words, I’m sort of out of control in a horticultural sense.

One of the things I have done to deal with this is to hire a real horticulturalist to come here next week to advise me. He ran the largest cactus nursery in the U.S. so he seems like the right guy. I (and maybe Kim) will spend four hours here going over every inch of the property with me. I’m looking forward to hearing about all the things I’ve done right and wrong…really. I’m now into this. I have the books, but what I really need is to get specific, informed advice. Advice on watering. Advice on sun and shade. Advice on combining varieties. Advice on soil and nutrients. As you can tell, I’m quite excited to have found this horticulturalist-for-hire.

As I looked through the Waterwise Botanicals selection, with all the unique planters, I also found something that immediately doubled my interest. This nursery has created what they call succulent bonsai. Now, some of my bonsai are already succulent-like such as Chinese Elms , Boxwoods and Jade Trees (all of which I own), But these people had created some amazingly artistic Bonsai using pure succulent plants. They’re perfect with shallow root structure, elegantly long woody stems/trunks and delicate and almost windswept branches and leaves. They are magnificent. I bought one planted in an old iron cooking pot with a wooden handle. I would love to display this Bonsai anywhere; in my house, on my deck, on my patio or in my garden. I placed the pot in the gap of the leggy plant by my patio path. It looked perfectly attuned to the plant in which it sat (especially in color and leaf shape). A part of me wishes I could highlight it more, but another part of me loves the subtlety of where it dits. This impressive succulent bonsai is the merging of my growing admiration of succulents and obsession with bonsai. My horticultural advisor is not only a cactus guy, but he is also a foremost expert on bonsai. What a merging of interests Monday will be.