My dispersed garden

I do the grocery pick-up once a week. Back in early June Andrew happened to be with me, I warned him that I planned to drive by a couple plants on the way, you know, as one does. I mean, you keep a running map in your head of the distinctive plants in your area, and if you're going to be near them then a detour of a few blocks is warranted, right? Right.

First stop that afternoon was a trunking Yucca rostrata that I'd noticed was sending up a bloom. My timing was perfect to see the flowers all open.

I was a little surprised at the (lack of) height of the bloom, for some reason I thought it would be taller, more clearance between the leaves and the flowers. Maybe because my Yucca filamentosa have such tall bloom stalks?

The blooming yucca is accompanied in the hellstrip planting with a fine Arctostaphylos and another Y. rostrata.

So what seemed perfectly natural to me, became a point of discussion that day. Andrew dubbed this visiting of plants around town my "dispersed garden". In addition to plants that I grow, but were behaving in a way that wanted to track (blooming for instance), there's also a collection of plants I visit that wish I were growing, but for one reason or another I am not. Like this Fremontodendron californicum...

It gets way too big to shoehorn into my garden, but since there's one growing at McMenamins Kennedy School (just 5 blocks from home) I feel like I don't have to grow it here, I can just visit it there.

Another example, I love Rhus typhina, the staghorn sumac and my next door neighbor grows it, so I can enjoy her plant(s) and don't need my own. Or Nolina hibernica 'La Siberica', which I no longer have growing in my garden, but Kennedy School to the rescue again. They have a couple of huge specimens I can admire any time I want to go for a short walk.

Photos from the next stop on my dispersed garden tour span the time frame of May 10th to June 14th. 

I first wrote about this fabulous garden back in 2021.

I was visiting again because I got a text from the garden owner (Scott) letting me know that his Agave ovatifolia in the hellstrip was blooming, and doing so with two bloom spikes. Perhaps it had been damaged (winter?) and had developed two growing points...

So nice with the orange poppies and orange truck...

I stopped back by on June 1st.

It was so hard to photograph only the blooming agave, of course my camera strayed again from focusing on just the star.

June 14th. This was the closest I got to actually seeing it in bloom.

The next time I drove by it was way past its prime so I took no photos that day.

This Agave ovatifolia is part of what once was a trio. The first one bloomed last summer, and now...

Doesn't that photo above look like the spike is coming from the grass? Here's a better shot.

Sadly I didn't make it back by this one to see any more of it's development.

This one however, it's been a regular stop on my drives about town. In fact it started to send up it's spike last fall, and then paused for the winter. Agave parrasana, photo taken June 1st.

And full bloom on July 22nd.

Wrapping up with a stop at what I call the desert on Ainsworth St. This is another hellstrip garden (a very wide hellstrip) that erupts in cactus flower every June.

It's a spectacle of beauty.

Back home I look at my large Agave ovatifolia 'Frosty Blue' and wonder how much longer I've got with them...

So do you have a dispersed garden? If not I highly recommend getting started...

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All material © 2009-2026 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude. 

A stop at Doug and Bruce's garden (it was the agave)

The first text from Doug came in on May 6th, he’d noticed his Agave ovatifolia ‘Frosty Blue’ was looking a little odd. Then the bloom spike started to grow, and grow. This photo is from June 27th. I kept meaning to stop by to see it for myself.

Sadly, that didn’t actually happen until the last week in July, and when I texted Doug about stopping by, he told me he and his husband Bruce were out of town, but I should feel free to look around anyway. So I did, and I couldn’t resist snapping photos.

I’ve been by this garden a few times, and wrote about it back in 2021 (here), but things have definitely grown in the 5 years since that post. The front garden…

Purple prickly pear in the hellstrip.

I couldn’t resist getting the Hesperaloe parviflora in the foreground of this shot. It’s growing in both the hellstrip and next to the driveway.

Standing in the driveway now.

That’s a people and dog-friendly agave…

That is the largest Senecio candicans I’ve ever seen. Notice the stepped down platforms (stages?) for the pots, what a nice touch (Bruce is a landscape designer).

The private side of the front garden…

At first glance I thought the plant on the table was a begonia. It most definitely is not. It looks like a Euphorbia milii (crown of thorns) to me.

Maybe a Euphorbia milii hybrid, ‘Sunset Splendor’?

The riser for the agave didn’t catch my eye at first glance…

But then I realized it was a piece of diamond plate metal, like something you’d use in a car repair shop. So cool!

On the opposite side of the driveway (still in the front garden)…

Aloe and a smaller Senecio candicans.

Starting down the walkway to the back garden and the reason I’m there becomes visible. Wowsa…

Great match up of container and plant.

Getting closer…

It’s a thing of beauty, even though of course it means the end of this agave (there might be bulbils, tiny agave babies that form on the bloom stem, or seeds).

Doug had warned me that the bloom was starting to wind down. There were dozens of these “ovaries” that had fallen to the ground and were caught in the plants leaves. 

I suppose these are the ones that were not successfully pollinated?

There was still a lot going on up there.

Looking around the rest of the back garden... (the containers were grouped to make watering easier for the house-sitter)...

Melianthus and Nandina? It’s a great color combination.

Tiny palm (Trachycarpus sp.)

And big big palm (also a Trachycarpus)

Yucca rostrata

And a final shot of the main attraction. Thanks for letting me poke around the garden you guys!

The Bit at the End

Did you notice the fabulous understated metal sculpture in the front garden (13th image)? To my eye it was perfectly placed and looked right at home in Doug and Bruce’s garden. That got me thinking about a story I read on Garden Rant a few weeks back; Right Piece. Right Place: Ornaments in the Garden. What a hot-button topic, I’m surprised there were only 28 comments.

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All material © 2009-2026 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.