The Huntington Gardens, Part 2 The Desert Garden

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California…Well finally! My last post on our California vacation. I didn’t mean to stretch it out for so long, thank you for sticking with me.

The Huntington Desert Garden is a fitting place to end. This garden was stunning; wonderful plants in well designed gardens. You should definitely put it on your list of places to visit! The Desert Garden features more than 5,000 species of succulents and desert plants in 60 landscaped beds!

An Encephalartos

Cyphostemma juttae from SW Africa…

Andrew spotted the Boojum tree from a way back. It looked so furry! From their website: “It is said that when the first English botanist saw the Fouquieria columnaris, he thought it resembled the fantasy creature from Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark and dubbed it “Boojum.” After a rain this Baja California native sprouts small leaves, which are soon lost if the weather turns dry.”

We were lucky to see one shortly after the rains!

I think this is a Echium wildpretii? I could be wrong.

Blue senecio…be still my beating heart.

Alluaudia procera

I believe these are Echeveria agavoides? On the left and right above the Barrel Cactus.

The Huntington has about 200 of the world’s 300 Aloes species! These beauties were blooming when we visited…

But just as pretty were these buds...

This one looks very very angry...

Dasylirion in bloom? Correct me please!There were so many fabulous Agaves in the garden. Evidently some of them are quite rare and threatened with extinction. If you are curious I found an interesting article on their website about propagating rare agave in The Huntington’s Tissue Culture Lab.

Whales tongue Agave?Agave bloom spikes…Dyckia fosterianaSo…are you planning a visit?

The Huntington Gardens, Part 1

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California...

This is it! The last focus of my October vacation posts, I can't believe it’s taken me five months to get here! The Huntington Gardens were amazing. I learned of the gardens by accident, I ran across a book called “Desert Plants, A Curators Introduction to the Huntington Desert Gardens” and while reading it fell in love with the gardens.When we started planning our vacation this was one of my must-see destinations. Of course the gardens are much more than “just” the Desert Gardens; there are more than a dozen different gardens that cover 120 acres on the 207-acre grounds.

I’m saving the best for last and taking you through the Desert Gardens tomorrow. Today, everything else (well, everything else that we saw in the 4.5 hours they were open, we could have stayed for at least another couple of hours)…the Lily Ponds, the Jungle Gardens, Subtropical Gardens, Palm Gardens, and the Australian Garden. Unfortunately I only got the name of just a few of these fabulous plants; I’ll share the name when I can.

For starters…why do people have to be so rude? This huge bamboo grove had names carved into almost every one. There were several signs asking people not to do it, obviously the temptation was just to much for some.

This little guy greeted us as we approached the Lily Pond garden.

I was blown away by the size of this Melianthus major...

And the Papyrus too! (that’s the Melianthus peaking out on the ride side)

These Philodendron leaves were amazing! They were at least 2.5-3ft wide.

I’m sure this will make me sound super dumb but…I always thought these flowers grew the other direction, heading down not up.We found this huge fruit on the ground, several of them actually. But strangely we couldn’t tell where they came from.

Crotalaria Agatiflora ssp. Imperialis

The Sonchus acaulis...a relative of…can you guess?

The dandelion!…the flowers give it away

Finishing with the regal Bismarckia nobilis..

Tomorrow…the Desert Garden!!!!!!!! (I get all excited just thinking about it!)