The Beauty of – Believe It or Not – Desert Plants
February 13th, 2018
The desert doesn’t come to mind first (or usually second, third or 10th) when you think of settings for beautiful plants.
A backlit cactus in the Huntington Library Desert Garden.
Most people probably think of fat, green, spiny barrel cactuses and tumbleweed, and that’s about it.
I was never that enamored with the whole concept of desert plants either – that is, until I saw the surprisingly amazing and diverse desert garden at California’s Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.
The variety of plants that grows in the world’s most arid spots is way more than cactus and tumbleweed. The Huntington collection features more than 5,000 species of creeping succulents, agaves, aloes, euphorbia, cactuses, yuccas, and a whole lot of plants that most people have never heard of.
The garden looks nothing like what we’re used to seeing. Plants grow there into tall columns, paddle-leafed trees, rosettes of fleshy upright blades, puffy/fluffy balls that bloom, and even creations that look more like stones than plants (i.e. the South African lithops species).
Most of the Huntington plants look like something Dr. Seuss concocted.
Some of my favorites were the purple-padded cactus, the steroidal orange spikes of blooming aloes, the shiny black leaves of Aeonium ‘Swartkop,’ and the garden of hundreds of golden barrel cactus paired with Mammillaria geminispina, which look like a pile of prickly silvery-gray pin-cushions.
I could try to describe this garden – which famed Brazilian landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx once called “the most extraordinary garden in the world” – but I thought you’d appreciate it more by seeing a photo gallery of pictures I took there.
The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens is a 120-acre gem attraction built in the early 1900s by California infrastructure tycoon Henry Huntington.
The Japanese Garden and the 12-acre Chinese Garden are two other spectacular theme gardens on the Huntington grounds, located in San Marino, about 12 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
Legend has it that Huntington really didn’t like the idea of a desert garden when his original plant curator suggested it. He apparently had some not-so-pleasant experiences with the native and very spiny prickly pear cactus while clearing land to build railroads.
The curator convinced Huntington to give this under-appreciated group of plants a shot, and so Huntington went ahead in his usual no-holds-barred zeal.
Train-car loads of rocks and gravelly soil were trucked in from Arizona, and staff scoured the globe for xerophytic specimens (the botanic name for dry-adapted plants).
The result is one of the biggest, oldest and what many say is the best desert garden on the planet.
If you ever get to California, add the Huntington to your must-see list.
The gardens are just one of three major attractions there – the other two being the Huntington Library, with specimens including a Gutenberg Vellum Bible and one of Isaac Newton’s math books, and the priceless collection of 1600 to mid-1900 European and American art.