See a Thrifty Homeowner s Wow Garden

Hi, I'm Debra Lee Baldwin. I'm in the garden of Carol and Patrick in Claremont, California. It's a, it's actually a part of San Diego near downtown. And this, this whole neighborhood, Carol, she, she's been here 40 years. But this, this whole area is so delightful with its climate and its canyon top views. So there are all these ridgelines along the canyons of Claremont and that pulls in the marine air. So it turns it into a kind of Eden. It's beautiful to live here. Yeah. We call it the center of the universe. Patrick came up with that, my husband. But what you have accomplished in terms of design and plant selection and just continuing to propagate plants and put them in the ground and clever tips for getting freebies. Wait till you see this place. And there's a Laura Eubanks connection too. Definitely. A few years ago, Patrick gave me this book for Christmas and I just love it. The pictures and the information in it have really been so helpful. And I love this picture of this wonderful spiral. It's just a fabulous book. Well, thank you. It's my magnum opus and I'm very proud of it. So that whole property, a quarter of an acre. Right. So that's bigger than most. You got estimates from two landscapers. One was for the back, $150,000 to $200,000. And it cost me $5,000 to do it. And the front, it was an estimate from somebody else for $66,000. I've put in $3,600 into it so doing it all yourself. Yeah. So that's with the soil. The soil is a big part of it because I want quality soil. That's the reason. And then the irrigation and the lighting and some plants and some rock, some rock, some, a lot of this rock I got from Craigslist for free, but you have to shovel it and bring it home. So some of these are from neighbors and there's a lot of different kinds of rocks. Patrick's grandkids, they live in Italy and they come out once a year and visit for three to four weeks. So it's fun that they'll draw something on the rocks. When we wanted to do the front yard, Patrick said, where's the plan? And I said, well, I want a dry river bed and I want three statement plants. And that's all I knew. And we had the soil brought in. I swear it was up to here. We had 15 cubic yards dumped off here. And I thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do with all this? And ended up bringing probably five cubic yards of it out to the back. And then we had a big rain and it all went down. We brought a few more cubic yards back again. So it ended up being just the right amount. It took me exactly two months to do it from the time the dirt came in to do the irrigation and the lighting and the plants and the top dressing. I finished this 10 months ago. Great soils. That's where all the soil came from. And they will make any combination of soil you want. They have some rock and stuff too. And they're so nice. This is our truck. We can't have anybody dump anything into it. So they'll let me shovel into garbage cans, put it in the back and bring it. I asked for their succulent potting mix. They have a ground mix for succulents. I like their potting mix for succulents. It has more pumice in it. The design is influenced by Lori Eubanks, but it also has your spin on it. One of the differences, she doesn't dig down and she just mounds. But I dug down a little bit. I had to get further because I really like the deep. The one in the back was a lot of work to get down. This one wasn't quite as hard because of the mounding. I've learned lots of things from both of you on your website about plant care. What specifically harkens to her design aesthetic? Making sure that you have a lot of rock, putting plants close together, and then having space, which is hard for me to do. Negative space. Because I have so many plants, I just want to put them in everywhere. There are the three R's. Rock, restraint, and repetition. And you've said that a lot too. I have no restraint. Because I have so many plants, I just put them in. There's not as much repetition because I'm trying to see what plants do well. I think you do a phenomenal job with repetition. And just the very fact that you're using succulents is a repetition of a type. This is a brand new plant for me. The Kaleidoscope. Mangave. The Kaleidoscope colors echo the colors of the Echeverias. Sahara. Sahara will go anywhere. It's very happy in any garden. Where do you shop when you do shop for succulents? Waterwise. Oasis. Home Depot once in a while. Most inexpensive place is Vista Succulents. I bought a flat of this because I didn't have any of it. It looks like Azulita, but there's so many. Yeah, it's unfortunate that some come without a name. I think this is brilliant. The way you've incorporated the blue rock to suggest water. A little puddling of water. So you've got the combination of a dry creek bed with pockets of water. It feels better to have a little water even though it's not real water. This is a little more Laura Eubanks. Packed plants all in a movement instead of a straight line. It's a great blue herring. It kind of gives you a sense of habitation like there's something actually using this area. It's not just a static landscape. Driftwood is from northwest Oregon. Patrick's aunt, she's 96 years old. We visit her a couple times a year. She's right on the water and we're allowed to take some driftwood. So I look at this and I think of her. Isn't it wonderful how garden can remind you of people? Yeah. And you've met so many interesting people on Craigslist. Oh, that have continued to be friends. Plant people are the best. Carol is a former captain of a scuba diving boat here in San Diego. So she's a scuba diver and a surfer and so is Patrick. So they have this love of the ocean which is so close and Patrick is the muscle behind a lot of the heavy lifting and a lot of the help that Carol's gotten over the years. I know we all wanted Patrick. The plumbing and the electrical, that's the man. I've been surfing since I was 13. To me, succulents were just like colorless jade and then to have all this color is amazing. There's a ship's wheel in the back. There's an anchor over here. There's a lot of tchotchkes. There's a lot of shells. It's kind of overdone with shells because people keep giving them to me which I love. Teacher retired and she had a bunch of shells that she'd use in her classroom and so she gave them to me and those are really the extra extra pretty ones that she had. A lot of kids come through here so I try to tuck things away that they might think is fun. I always wanted to do some kind of really special themed garden but I never really got around to it. It was sod and fruit trees and the typical and roses but I was working so I couldn't do anything too intricate. I just love the ocean so this was just really nice for me to be thinking about the ocean all the time. Did you see the lobster? Yes, I did. Oh look at your treasure chest. This is filled with things from people that have passed away. It's just costume jewelry from my mom, from Patrick's mom, from a few friends of mine, a few girlfriends that have passed away and it is so special because I think about them every day when I'm out here. When I was doing this probably about three or four times a day I would bring up Craigslist and see what's new. All kinds of free items also for sale. I was having trouble finding big lava boulders. These three boulders here it was a great find. How we got these it was in front of somebody's house that was being redone and they didn't want them anymore. We had a two inch thick by I think it was 12 inch wide board that we rolled them up into the truck. There was somebody else to help us, the three of us just barely and then the board started cracking so we ended up bracing the board with something else to be able to get them up before it just broke the board completely. We pulled the truck up to the back here and we just rolled them over here and then the mound was here at that time. These were the first things to go in. We just rolled it up and wherever it was going to sit that's where it was going because there it was just so hard to move. But I was so excited about the little dolphin. What are you made out of? Plastic. Looks like the undersea eelgrass. So that's a little sea lion. Somebody had dumped Christmas reindeer frames in the back canyon. I looked at the head that looks like a sea lion. I stuffed it with a bunch of moss inside and then added a little bit more frame to it, added the ghosties to it, wire for the whiskers. How long ago did you do this? Six months. And the same with the jellyfish, the hanging jellyfish. They looked pretty good for about nine months. I needed something that could stay in the sun. Hung them from a cable. Perfect for hanging jellyfish. My newest one won't last the summer. It'll just dry out. It needs some shade. What did you make the cap out of? So that's a small hanging basket, an eight inch hanging basket. I just turned upside down. Okay. And then I filled it with moss. This was easy because I was just able to glue the moss to it. Glue gun. The other ones are harder with a string of bananas. Those are growing, you know, and they need to be rooted. So I take them down and water them in the summer. I water them twice a week. So this is the aloe cameronii. They're green when they're not stressed. But what I do to keep it red is I just pull it out of the ground. What? And I keep it. Oh no. And then I'll chop it off and then I put it back again and then that keeps it red. Let me see that again. And it's a perfectly healthy plant but you're stressing it by doing that. And another thing that I do, I'll put it in a little bitty pot. I plant it in the pot. You can't see the pot and then it makes it really easy to pull out again. I probably do that three or four times a year to keep it colored. And here you have another cameronii. There's about three different colors that they turn a red, chocolatey, and then sometimes they're orangey. That cameronii, it's a little harder to get to so it needs to be pulled out and turn red. That glass ball was a freebie on Craigslist. I like how you have the blue with the orange. I really like the complementary colors. Something like this, Carol, can you say, oh that looks like... Sometimes. Brittle stars. Brittle stars are something we have locally and I got all these from little, just a few little cuttings. Take off a little end of this. It's amazing. It's just a straight little pencil. You cut it off. How many years does it take for a Euphorbia flanaganii to go from a piece the size of your little finger to a... To that size? Two or three? It's so easy. So these remind me of anemones. Anemones. I can't say it. And look at this crest you have right behind them. The eaves needle crest. Yeah. Piece of coral that's not coral behind there. Plaster. And this was a Craigslist? Yeah. The paint stayed on pretty good. What'd you use? Just recently. Just regular spray paint from Home Depot. A whole bunch of different colors. And look at how you repeated the Echeveria with that. A little turtle family. Bought those for full price. One of the things. Boy, it's really starting to take off again. Oh, look what it's doing. Yeah. Three years ago, it's tripled inside, I think. Craigslist. You've got a lot of crests here. This is purple. So Euphorbia lactea. And look at the sun's dress you're getting on now. Yeah. We're snorkeling now. All your little sea creatures. And look at that. Is that real brain coral? Yeah. I've never seen the two together. That crest looks like a brain, of course. I think it's ironwood, actually. What's its story? Craigslist for free. It was in the back of their yard and he didn't want it anymore. But it's really heavy. There must be a pretty good pocket. So Patrick dug holes out. And that's why we know it's ironwood. It was really hard to drill that out. The two different kinds of blue chalk stick. This is serpens. The smaller one. I'm trying to switch from the big one to the little one. Serpens is generally more desirable, especially in a smaller landscape, because mandrelissae just gets longer and longer and then it loses its lower leaves. So you get those denuded stems. And like you said, you have to keep cutting it back. Serpens gives you a much tighter, more compact. The downside is it's harder to come by. Yeah, I've never found any for free. Once you have it, though, you can keep propagating it. This is a beautiful mangove. Jaguar. They really pup prolifically. I cut off the top of the spike, but just left it on the plant. That little part that was left put all kinds of babies off, too. So it had lots to give away. This is all crested. Started out with a non-crested form in here. It was really intensive for care because it grew so high and grew so fast. And then I noticed that I had a little crest, and I decided to just plant crests here. And this has lasted a couple years that I haven't had to do anything with it. Boy, is that desirable. Girlfriend of mine gave me that. She gave me one little piece from her garden, and I've got a lot of that. It's a sea lion head. Some people might not like it, but a friend of mine had it for decades in his garage. He thought it would fit the theme here. I love it. It reminds me of the cow's skull that you see sometimes in desert-themed gardens. And I thought that that was odd, but it looked different from a cow's skull. So when you explained it, my gosh, this is the undersea version of the desert garden with a cow's skull. Where did these come from? The originals came from Vista Succulent Nursery. I just keep propagating them. Yeah, we need to have a look at your propagation area because you've got thousands of dollars worth of plants that you have propagated, thereby getting them for free. What are your biggest challenges gardening here in Eden? The animals. Since I'm on a canyon, everybody's got animals, but on a canyon you get extra animals. So the rabbits, the squirrels, probably rats. Eating everything. Raccoons, too, because they're so big. At one point I had some other plants under the tree and I woke up in the morning and it was like a deer had been in it and it just squished everything. Yesterday morning there was a family of raccoons that came. We heard them. They were fighting and we heard them and they knocked a bunch of talansias out of the tree. Any suggestions for people who would like to avoid having issues like that? So I have a couple things that obviously it's not working all that well because the raccoons didn't care, but maybe I forgot to put it on. I have some motion detectors that bark like a dog and I have a humane trap. Oh, I have a heart trap. You don't have skunks yet, huh? I caught one one time. I had a whole hazmat gear on. I was pretty funny looking, so I was prepared if you sprayed me. Yeah. With all plants, sometimes they get sick and die. Sometimes they bloom out and die and instead of having to go out and buy some, I can just pick something from here and put it in without having to go to the store. A messy area just like an artist studio. You have a staging area for the main event. Area of perfection is your canvas. As you cut back or remove and replace, you come into your studio here and insert what you've started from cuttings. And as I learn what I like and what I don't like and what goes together better, then I can replace without spending a lot of money. Because that's hard if you bought a twenty, thirty dollar plant and then you don't like it there. It's really hard to get rid of. Oh, and it's hard if it dies or something. Yeah. I'm trying to get the perfect whale's tail. How much time do you put into your garden? Every day. Three to five hours a day. But I'm growing the plants myself for the most part. That actually takes me more time than just keeping up the garden. You have a nursery area in the back, the area that you said was too messy for me to see. And I was lucky enough to have this property to use. I asked them if I could do it. I had blue tarps all over it and somebody complained, one of the neighbors complained and thought they were people living here under the blue tarps. It was really just the soil. I probably have fifteen hundred pots of plants to hand water. The problem with living in a perfect climate is that things do tend to get too big. I'm going to remove some of the plants and replace them with more rock because it is too much work. Some people think that, oh, you just put these plants in and then you don't have to do anything. You have to trim, you have to replace. You have to weed, of course. I did grow up in New Jersey, so I do know a harsher climate. A really nice PB. He didn't want it in his backyard. He put it on Craigslist. I had to walk through his house to carry all these pebbles out. And he would just sit there and work. I felt terrible that he said, no, don't worry about it. No other way to get around to where the back was. Were they in bags? No. Buckets and buckets, three days. Walking through his house while he was working? He was so nice. I've given a lot of stuff away. You can imagine the cuttings that come out of here. About once a month, I give away about a truckload of succulents. I just put it on Craigslist. People that have come over and over again know it's me. They can tell. I have a list of people that need more plants so I can call them first. Are you thinking about making it more commercial and actually selling plants? It's too much work. Yeah, you're retired. I don't blame you. Yeah. You got a job for him? Yeah, lots. There's always more to do. Well, it looks perfect right now. I know nothing perfect ever lasts. I just see everything that needs to get done. That's what Laura Eubanks always says in hers. She goes, every time you look at it, you see something that needs to get done. We are at the Cactus and Succulent Society meeting, which I suggested that Carol might enjoy. So I surprised her and came. We were talking about the video, which was in the editing process. And she said, you know, there was one other thing that I thought about. So what are your steps in going from nothing to an amazing finished, gorgeous garden? Start with bringing in a lot of good quality soil and mounding it so you have dimensions. The main half inch irrigation went in after the soil. And then the next step are the big boulders that you put in and you bury them a little bit, at least a little bit, if not sometimes halfway. And then some statement plants. So your big statement plants go in next. And then maybe some smaller boulders and some smaller plants, not small ones yet, but medium sized plants. And then just keep going down. And then then you would do smaller rock and smaller plants. Quarter inch irrigation was done after all the plants were in. I waited. Lighting was done, yeah, just before the top dressing. Second to last thing. And at the very end, do the top dressing. Learn all about succulent garden installation, hands-on and start to finish on Laura Eubanks' YouTube channel. Find more about Carol's Garden and its DIY installation on the corresponding page of my site, which includes a gallery of plants, all I did, and links to sources. Please let me know if you found this video helpful and do ask questions if you like. My goal is to inspire you to enjoy using succulents in fun and creative ways in your own garden and outdoor living spaces. Do subscribe to my channel, enjoy my past videos, and visit my ad-free site for extensive illustrated info on every aspect of succulents. I'm Debra Lee Baldwin. Thank you for joining me.