My Favorite Plants
Cacti and succulents, herbs, native plants of the West.
Plants Currently in My Garden
My garden here in Palm Springs lives in a tropical desert and I strive to grow as wide a diversity of species as will tolerate our extreme summer heat. It was influenced by my mentor, Clark Moorten of Moorten Botanical Garden in town here. He is a collector of cacti and succulents. I maintain a huge collection of my own cacti and succulents, many rare and propagated from Clark's world class collection. But I also grow desert perennials in a cottage garden.
I love to garden, because....
Gardening and the plant kingdom roots us into the earth. Plants also define locale more than anything else, and they have history with every culture, linking me in my little piece of ground with humanity around the globe.
Biggest Gardening Challenge
Here in Palm Springs it is unquestionably the extreme desert heat which can reach 120 degrees in the summer but averages about 110 for July and August.
If I'm not gardening, I can be found:
Riding my quarter horse Sassy out into the wildlands of the desert outside town, whhere trails go on FOREVER. I also escape the heat by going horse camping in the mountains during the summer.
Other Hobbies
I have always been creative and though my time is split between garden, horse and work, when there is leftover time I love to create glass mosaics which adorn my garden.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 11:32 AM CST
[General]
It's the middle of January and our desert is in the 80s, which explains why so many snow birds winter here from Chicago and Canada! This is high season in Palm Springs and it's busy, but come summer and this place becomes a ghost town. Only we hardy souls managed to stick it out during the furnace months. But for gardeners, that's the only way to to create a garden like mine.
This is my home when I bought it in 2002
My home last year...
My specialty is cacti and succulents of all kinds. I bring this knowledge to the Learn2Grow community and I write much of the plant database information on them too. They are a big part of my new book, Palm Springs-Style Gardening just released. The cover is shown in my Photo Gallery.
I'm also an authority on western natives, having lived and gardened in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills for eighteen years priror to coming to the desert. At 2000 feet we had three plant communities interesect, offering me the opportunity to study our native species in detail during dry years and wet, hot and cool. That's the only way to really learn.
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