Jim Bishop's glorious San Diego garden

The one private garden I managed to visit during our January trip to San Diego was that of Jim Bishop and his partner Scott Borden. I was briefly on the Pacific Horticulture board of directors with Scott, but hadn't met Jim until he attended the Puget Sound Fling last summer. Jim blogs at My Life With Plants.

I pulled up in front of their home as the sun was hitting the plants and setting everything a glow.

Jim did his best to pull me along (aware the light was going to fade further into the garden), but I managed to snap a few photos as we went. Honestly I would have been thrilled if this was all I saw, but there was oh so much more to see...

What a striking dyckia!

Mangave some-somebody

Agave victoriae-reginae, grown from seed!

We're on the other side of the front wall now (the wall shown in the top photo), in a sweet courtyard space. Jim and Scott's home dates to the 1930's and sits atop hillside in the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego.

So many tillandsia!

Here we've walked thru the home and are looking down on the fist part of the garden, a terrace off the back of the house.

Standing on that terrace now...

And admiring a fabulous selection of potted agaves and other succulents.

Jim is the plant person behind the garden, and his plant passions are wide and varied. That said, he has a handsome collection of bromeliads and agaves that had me swooning!

So nice of this epiphyllum to bloom during my visit.

Ditto for this leucadendron, perhaps L. gandogeri?

If you've not toured or read about Jim's garden (Gerhard did a fabulous write-up) the most important things for you to know are:

1. It is on a very steep hillside, according to Gerhard's post the garden drops 100 feet (the equivalent of 10 stories) from the home level to the bottom of the garden. 
2. None of what you'll see in this post was here when Jim and Scott bought the property in the late 1990's. No desirable plants, no irrigation. There was however plenty of overgrown vegetation and junk to haul away.
3. All the steps and creative hardscaping was done by Jim with help from Scott and a few friends, it's all very impressive!

Let's go! (I'm going to keep the comments to a minimum so you can just soak up the beauty)

Agave attenuata 'Ray of Light'

Since I was there in January most of the aloes were in bloom. Jim knew the names of the plants (not just the aloes) and shared them with me as we toured. Since we cannot grow aloes in Portland (with just a couple exceptions) I know very little about them, and the names did not stick. Of course that didn't keep me from appreciating them.

THIS! Wowsa. Grevillea ‘Austraflora Fanfare’ looking fantastic (even though my photo is blurry).

Bottles and pebbles and terracotta tiles, everything is fair game in Jim's hardscaping artistry.

Hakea laurina

Colorful garden art from repurposed and painted chain-link fence parts.

We've made it down to the bottom of the garden now. As you'll see in the next few images the plants at the bottom of the garden are magic when backlit by the sun, but the show is over quickly, especially in January. Banksia...

Protea

This is the best I did at getting a shot of the entire hillside, it doesn't really convey the drop from top to bottom.

The plants, the hardscape... it was hard to know what to focus on!

Agave bracteosa 'Monterrey Frost'

Aloidendron 'Hercules', given pride of place.

Climbing back up the hillside...

And we're almost back up at house level.

Solandra maxima - Cup of Gold vine

And another tile fountain...

After saying goodbye to Jim and Scott I went to pick up Andrew at a nearby bookstore, the poor guy didn't know what hit him. I was high on garden beauty endorphins! Thanks for spending your afternoon touring me around your garden Jim, what a paradise!

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Bay Area Garden Extravaganza Part 1 (people & plants)

I stole the title of this post from Gerhard, nothing else I came up with quite expressed the way I felt, it was an extravaganza of the highest order. 

Let me backtrack just a bit. Andrew and I had planned a springtime Bay Area road trip twice, and it was cancelled, twice. Last fall I was going to make a trip down with my friend Eric, but that didn't work out either. Fast forward to Mid-March and I hatched a new plan; the first step was emailing Gerhard and inviting myself to fly down and stay with him and his family in Davis, CA. Then he and I would spend a long weekend garden touring. When he said yes (seriously, I invited myself... the nerve!), I reached out to our friends Max and Justin in Oakland to see if we could visit their garden and if they might be able to swing an invite to their friend Ann Nichols' garden and what the heck, Marcia Donahue's too. From there things snowballed. What a weekend! I ended up visiting seven private gardens (plus two "drive-by" front gardens), three public gardens and two nurseries. There will be future blog posts about everything I saw, but first a few people pics, and my plant haul...

We started bright and early Friday morning at Gerhard's friend Kyle's garden in Sacramento. That's Gerhard on the left and Kyle on the right.

Our next stop was at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, yes that's me with a remarkable Agave guiengola (thanks to Gerhard for the photo).

Since I'd spotted a must-have plant (a dryland fern) in Gerhard's garden, our next stop was a slight detour to East Bay Wilds, a native plant nursery in Oakland, it's only open on Fridays! After that we drove down to Livermore, CA and visited our fellow blogging friend, Tracy. Here she is with one of the ginormous staghorn ferns on her front porch.

Our first stop on Saturday morning was at Max and Justin's Oakland garden (even better than I imagined it would be!) and then we were off to Ann Nichols' Piedmont garden. I fist visited Ann's garden during the Bay Area Fling in 2013 and I was thrilled to return. Here are Ann, Max and Justin in Ann's garden...

Also in Ann's garden, Kiamara and Gerhard. It turns out Kiamara (an expert on dryland ferns) was there in 2013 too, helping Ann manage the Fling crowd.

After a quick "drive-by" stop to see a cramscaped front garden, we then visited Marcia Donahue's famous Berkeley garden. This was my third visit to Marcia's garden and there were new things to see, she's been busy.

Here Max and Gerhard are snapping images in Marcia's inspiring garden.

Our final stop of the day (well, not counting another quick front garden drive-by) was David Neumaier's garden, that's David in the yellow and black, between Max and Marcia (Ann and Justin on the right). Funny I knew we were visiting the garden of a guy named David but I had no idea it was "slow boat" David who I follow and have conversed with on Instagram.

I couldn't believe it, but Gerhard was willing to drive back down to Berkeley again on Sunday, so we met up with Janet Sluis at the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Here she is all smiles with Gerhard. 

After a few hours spent touring the UC Berkeley garden we said goodbye to Janet and drove on to the Wave Garden (another garden I first visited during 2013 Fling), and then made a quick stop at Curious Flora (formerly Annie's Annuals) in Richmond before heading back to Gerhard's home in Davis. WOWSA! I am so indebted to Gerhard for his willingness to host and adventure with me! He's a great partner in plant crime, so to speak.

Okay, the plants. You know I brought home plants! First up a nice chunky piece of bromeliad from Max and Justin's garden. This plant has special provenance for me, as they got it during the Bromeliad Summit in 2019, which we all (Max, Justin, Gerhard and I) attended.

Here's the rest of the haul...

Gerhard was kind enough to pass along this hanging (once I add wires) "plant supporting" piece of pottery he picked up in Portland a few years ago when we visited a collector who was downsizing.

Kiamara (mentioned above) generously shared sporelings of Asplenium ceterach she grew.

And Gerhard shared seed grown babies from his Echinopsis ‘Flying Saucer’...

Which was in bloom during my visit!

Such a beauty...

He also gave me a pair of Oxalis palmifrons, bulbs that go dormant when things heat up. They've been in his greenhouse and are already dormant for the season. 

Tracy sent both Gerhard and I home with a Platycerium grande (I doubt it will ever look as grand as the one on her front porch, but a girl can dream).

Next, Hechtia epigyna, a pup from Gerhard's plant.

I neglected to take a photo of my plant itself (you can see it next to the hechtia in the haul photo), but I got a Tillandsia secunda from Ann, her plant was blooming and the bloom spike develops pups! That's it on the left, leaning against the wooden support.

Here's a photo I took of another Tillandsia secunda I saw in San Diego, so you can see how the pups develop.

Gerhard also sent me home with two agave pups, Agave impressa...

Mama plant

And Agave pintilla...

Mama plant

Ferns! This is the plant we sidetracked to East Bay Wilds to purchase, Pellaea mucronata. It's native to much of California, and parts of Oregon, Nevada and Arizona, where it grows in various types of rocky habitat (source).

Here it is in Gerhard's garden.

Finally, a chunk of fern from David, a Pleopeltis sp. or hybrid whose true identity is a mystery as it was rescued from an abandoned container by a friend of his (who just happens to be Tracy's daughter's boyfriend, Ivan... it's a small world!).

Here's another piece of the same fern in David's garden...

I know this was a long post, but I wanted to include the people and the plants together in the same post, they tell the story of what a warm and generous group I spent the weekend with. When I floated the idea of a visit to Gerhard I had no idea it would turn into such an extravaganza. Plant people are the best!

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All material © 2009-2025 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.