While away from work and home, and tending to errands downtown, I got these pictures from my downtown planter, which inadvertently became something of a Memorial.

1. Cuphea hyssopifolia, Mexican heather is not my favorite component of the downtown planter, but remains because it was installed by someone who was here prior to my time. A uniquely confined colony of montrebia that I will discuss on Wednesday also remains.

2. Senecio cineraria, dusty miller and the stonecrop below are from the garden of a now deceased client so can only be removed if a bit of it gets established in my home garden. It and the Mexican heather above are the only two of these six which are not succulents.

3. Sedum reflexum ‘Blue Spruce’ stonecrop is being displaced by the unidentified species of Aeonium below, but is also already established in my home garden. I expected it to be displaced eventually when I put it here several years ago. It is gratifying to see remnants.

4. Aloe, as the Aeonium at the bottom of this list, is unidentified. It and both of the last six are from the garden of the deceased mother of a deceased friend who happened to be a direct descendant of Spanish explorers who were the first to arrive where Monterey is.

5. Aeonium arboreum, tree houseleek is the most striking vegetation within the planter, but is also occasionally disfigured by theft of its most sculptural stems. A darkly bronzed cultivar from the same special origin was taken piece by piece until none of it remained.

6. Aeonium is as unidentified as the Aloe above. It initially resembles the tree houseleek, also above, but remains low, dense and mounding. It is the most abundant vegetation of the planter, so was the primary culprit of the displacement of the stonecrop, also above.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

9 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Downtown Planter”

  1. I’ve been thinking about you and your fellows this week, I am pretty sure you are way north of the fires and you and Rhody are safe, but still the dreadful events are much closer to home for you.

    As for your Six, love all the succulents, looking fine and healthy, and the cuphea is very pretty.

    Stay safe x

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    1. Rhody is hundreds of miles from the fires, and I am with him. However, many of Brent’s clients lost their homes. Brent graduated from Palisades High School, which partially burned near where the Palisades Fire started.
      That Cuphea annoys me because it is too pretty for me to remove it. Even if it were not so pretty, I can not bear to remove something that was important to someone else. I work around them. There are three. Later this year, I ‘may’ try to shear them into denser mounds, but I do not want to damage them.

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    1. We are hundreds of miles away from the fires. Because the fires have been in the news so prominently, people in other regions are more concerned about the situation here than when the CZU Fire actually burned around two of my properties and came within a mile of a few nearby towns. Of course, the CZU Fire, although larger than the Palisades Fire, and VERY devastating to those of us here, was not nearly as destructive as the Palisades fire is within its more densely populated region.

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    1. Yes, all is well here, although, like others in the World, we can see what is going on in Southern California. I write for the Canyon News, which serves some of the areas that are burning.
      The succulents were not planned, but worked out very nicely. Years ago, I felt obligated to grow bedding plants. None of them were ever happy though. Eventually, the succulents migrated over the space that the bedding plants needed, and I did nothing about it. That was about the time that succulents became a fad (again) because they (supposedly) use less water, although the automated irrigation has not changed.

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