Re: Dracena draco
David - Yes, quite. No substitute for personal experience. Even the
garden round the corner can be significantly different in its results
- though that may have as much to do with the *gardener* round the
corner as with the climate...!
'The combination of [relative] cold and [more or less absolute] wet'
is indeed almost always, not just in this case, the boundary-defining
problem here. It's why this whole garden is now made up of raised
sandstone-walled beds, the soil and plant contents of which are (in
theory at least)modified respectively (a) to produce and (b) to
benefit by certain specific conditions. Ie, I do try - I even
sometimes have some (equally modified) success(es).
> The book that I really
>like for subtropical succulents is compiled by the
>Huntington Botanical Garden, and is titled "Dry
>Climate Gardening with Succulents", and is part of the
>American Garden Guides series...
That was cruel. *Dry* Climate Gardening, indeed!
> the LotusLand Garden, created by Ganna Walska of Montecito, and
>now open to the public by reservation. Lotus Land and
> the Ruth Bankcroft Garden of Cactus, Aloes and
>Succulents in Walnut Creek are well worth a visit if
>you are ever in California. I think they both have
>web sites as well. They might be of interest to you.
I seem to have developed into one of the 21st century's last
non-travellers so (a) have never been to California, (b) shall
probably never go (my notion is to bring places to me, rather than
take me to places!) but, oddly or not, I know something about both
those gardens. Indeed, I've just been taking part in a discussion
about LotusLand on the BotanyBooks list - I once edited a magazine
over here which included a long piece on it and its creator by Martin
Wood, the English garden designer and garden historian (co-author with
Judith Tankard of a detailed study of Gertrude Jekyll's Munstead Wood
garden, for instance), who spends a lot of his time nowadays designing
gardens in the US - and, indeed, in California!
And so the (fascinating) merry-go-round goes round, merrily -
Best wishes -
Tim
>
Tim Longville
