Lagerstroemia Celebration & Some Fine Local Gardens

 

Around the neighborhood, Lagerstroemias (Crape Myrtles) defy August heat and bloom lavishly

Local strip mall chose these beauties for the parking lot rather than the typical trash palms.  Thank you!

One thing about Lagerstroemias:  their bark is thin.  As a result, the trunks are more easily damaged than other trees, which happens in parking lots. 

One more photo of little 'Cherry Mocha' here at home:

And one of the black-foliaged cultivars, this one in the kitchen/cutting garden:

I and a garden-buddy drove out one morning in search of more Lagerstroemias in the neighborhood. 

Oh, there's a well grown version of Senecio 'Mount Everest', what my little one can become:

This one got hacked to avoid the power lines above it. 

This one isn't getting watered enough:

This one is.

This one looks happy, too:

The white on white flowered cultivars is a muted white, not an intense pure white that jumps out at you:

While driving around hunting Lagerstroemias in flower, we also saw some quite nice, or at least interesting front gardens.  Not all of them were the typical too-large-shrubs-sheared-into-submission surrounded-by-tired-browning-lawn kind. 

A small home with a small front yard had an exceptionally tidy, well maintained garden and unexpectedly, some tidy sculptures, too.

The hellstrip had Myoporum groundcover, tufts of Stipa grass, and some small boulders:

To the right of the walkway...

To the left of the walkway:

Very tidy.  The neat orderliness of it was part of the charm.

This next one had an interesting variety of plants, and too many trees.  Two Ginkgos in the hellstrip...

A corner planter had a Yucca, a Leucadendron, a grass--not sure which one, a very stressed Adananthos cuneatus, and a tropical/subtropical flowering plant I forget the name of--Ixora, maybe.  A real heat lover, it was doing well.  There was also an empty spot that used to have something.  I wonder what. 

Another Ginkgo was planted two feet from the house, also a 'Forest Pansy' Cercis, also too close to the house. 

A wide variety of interesting plants that all seemed to work pretty well together.   Too bad about the trees. 

Then,  a xeric type garden of the somewhat neglected type of xeric type gardens.

Time for new Santolina.  A large but desperately dry Leucadendron on the left.  A Cercis occidentalis crammed in a small planter a foot from the house. 

There was a happy 'Desert Museum' Palo Verde, and some healthy Aloe striatas, though.  A homeowner came out and chatted.  No, the previous owners did the garden, though the new owners have added a few plants.  Lots and lots of birds come, and they enjoy watching them.  So--it's working for them, and the birds. 

There was one specific garden I wanted to show my friend, one I'd never gotten a good look at it myself.  I see it out of the corner of my eye now and then.  It's a house with an impressively large and beautiful Aloidendron (Aloe) barberae.  

A few years ago I was horrified to see the Aloidendron had been pruned back hard.  Were they in the process of removing it?  The next time I passed that way--a happy surprise.  Aloidendron cuttings from the original tree were stuck all along the property's hellstrip.  Finally, time for a closeup look.  

One of three cuttings growing along the front of the property:

Nine growing strongly along the side.  The original tree that caught my eye is in the upper right of the photo:

One had a flower stalk.  The color on this species is pastel.

Big sturdy trunks already on these.  All day intense heat and sun seemed to agree with them.

One oddity:  this Furcraea had multi-rosettes on a thick tall trunk.  Have not seen one growing like this before.

My favorite two gardens of the day were just around the corner from the Aloidendron garden.  A succulent garden and a shrubby cramscape.    We chatted with the gardener/owner of the succulent garden, who loved his plants and spent a lot of time enjoying and maintaining his property.  I actually chatted more than I took photos of this one. 

The garden and the gardener:  

Gorgeous flower clusters the size of basketballs on the Pachypodiums.  This Pachypodium was a birthday present from his daughter some years previous.  He'd pulled off three stems from this one and planted them on the other side of the driveway. 

I now wish I'd taken more photos, but sometimes its best to enjoy the moment as it happened, and heck with pictures.  Here's the hellstrip:  Verbena bonariensis, Senecio, Kalanchloe, Aloe, Agave and suchlike.  No dead leaves, litter, or dead plants anywhere. 

Tradescantia pallida, with a Kalanchoe in the background. 

Shrubby Euphorbia of some sort:

Isn't it always the case that the guy with the neatest cleanest garden on the street is right next to the guy with the messiest overgrown one?   True on this street.  

Next door: 

But back at the succulent garden...

 The owner invited us to see the back garden as well.  It was a swimming pool surrounded by concrete, with a narrow planting bed running all the way around it, planted with mostly flowering tropicals or subtropicals classics like Hibiscus, Canna, Plumeria, Bougainvillea, and Mandevilla.  All as meticulously cared for as the front garden. 

Canna:

 

He'd trained the multiple Bougainvilleas on arches made of PVC irrigation pipes.

Wonderful.  He took great joy in talking about his garden. 

He said his wife didn't like the front garden much--she didn't like the rock mulch.  She preferred the garden across the street...

...which we went to have a look at next.  An exuberant  shrubby cramscape, complete with Lagerstroemia. 

Agave 'Blue Flame', Rosemary, Leucadendrons, Gaura, Stipa tenuissima...

Seeing new sights, chatting with people I did not know, a vacation a few miles from home. 

 Do you go wandering around looking at other people's gardens?