Sumptuous Succulents
Once quarantined in the cactus patch, succulents have lately broken free from the stigma of the tough, dry and uncomplaining and joined the ranks of cherished garden plants. Why? Because they’re not just sporting. They can be delicate and sculptural, with gemstone hues from pale jades to corals and carnelians. Take aeoniums, those fat rosettes on long or stubby stems that flock like daisies among perennials. Or echeveria hybrids, ruffled, pink-flushed cabbages that shine amid their quieter silver cousins. Then there are the blue agaves, the fleshy aloes, the red-rimmed, disk-shaped Kalanchoe thyrsifolia. Use them alone or mix into cool mosaics. They demand little beyond sun and good drainage, but they serve mightily--especially in Southern California, where they have ridden waves of trendiness and neglect for generations.
At the moment, says Reseda nurseryman David Bernstein, who has sold succulents for 25 years, “They’re amazingly hot--and people are working them into borders, along with flax, grasses and other foliage plants.” Contrast this with the English-gardening 1980s, when succulents rarely surfaced in mixed beds, partly because their needs were incompatible with the thirsty foxgloves and delphiniums. Succulents, on the other hand, may bloom quietly in winter, when most perennials are asleep, but they’re valued most for their juicy, dramatic foliage, a water-storing adaptation to dry conditions.
In fact, even before their use as ornamentals, succulents were prized throughout history for practical applications: Aloe veras for medicinal salves, agaves for fermented drinks, sedums for their purported power to ward off danger when tucked into crevices on cottage roofs. In California, their use as cultivated plants dates back at least to the 1790s, when the Spanish padres chose opuntias and other thick-skinned survivors for mission gardens. By the late 1800s, a full-blown succulent mania had seized Californians, who packed gardens with sedums, echeverias and agaves they saw in catalogs and nurseries such as Lyon & Cobbe of Los Angeles. Though interest died down, it was revived with a vengeance during the 1920s, with the rise of Spanish Colonial-style architecture, and later, in the 1950s, when Modernism took hold.
Recently, a renewed fascination with mid-century Modernism--and the lower-maintenance gardening that comes with it--has brought succulents back in vogue.
