Front Slope: A work in progress

I've been working on the moderate slope on the southwest corner of our garden off and on since late November.  Once our annual tree pruning exercise was complete, it was time to clean up and clear out many of the overgrown succulents.

This is a view of the area in question in late June.  Aeoniums of various kinds had largely taken over, eclipsing almost everything around them.

These 2 photos were taken in November immediately before I got started.  Removing the Aeoniums, Euphorbia 'Sticks on Fire', and Senecio vitalis that obscured the base of the low stacked-stone wall was my first objective as I felt they made the area look cluttered.

In addition to removing the succulents in front of the stacked-stone ledge, stage one of the project extended to removing the majority of the oversized Aeonium arboreum and the leggy Aeonium haworthii.

View of the area at the end of November

The same area from another angle.  There are 3 'Platinum Beauty' Lomandras in this photo, although the one in the foreground hides the one behind it in this and the previous photo.

Stage two involved adding some rock, removing one massive Lomandra 'Platinum Beauty', and supplementing the soil.

I added 5 good-sized rocks to the slope, including the big one shown here.  Getting it in position of my own felt like a hazardous job but I managed without falling and cracking my head.  The smaller stones (still heavy!) were easier to position.  The latter were saved when we had our living room chimney rebuilt in July.  The original, leaky chimney had been faced with native stone when the house was built in the early 1950s.

I'd barely remembered that there was a nice Mangave 'Kaleidoscope' buried under the Lomandra at the bottom of the bed

I'd originally intended to dig up that Lomandra intact but I decided it might be easier to transplant if I divided it.  I potted up 3 pieces of the plant and threw about 2/3rds of it away.  I also chopped off the top half of the repotted plants to give them a better chance of surviving.

This is the view when most of the new rocks were in and the Lomandra was out.  I'd just started replanting at this point.

Stage three focused on replanting.  I used cuttings of existing plants, pups of other plants, and some recent purchases.

I harvested pups of the Aloe striata x maculata shown on the left to add to my collection of agave pups.  I got 30 pups from this one aloe alone.  I threw 4 tiny ones away and planted 5 of the larger ones in my renovated bed.  I plan to pot up the rest as future giveaways.

This is a view of the renovated bed on December 25th looking north

This shows the east end of the same bed

Here's a closer look at the newly planted areas.

At the lowest level of the slope on the west end are 2 Agave desmettiana (originally planted as bulbils in 2020, a Mangave 'Pineapple Express' and 2 (of 4) Agave bracteosa pups pulled from another area of my garden.  On the right are several cuttings of overgrown Graptoveria 'Fred Ives' previously in this bed.

Moving along the lowest level of the slope on the left are the now visible Mangave 'Kaleidoscope' and 2 of the 3 Pelargonium peltatum I recently added.  On the right are 3 of the new Graptoveria 'Fred Ives' I obtained by mail order.

At he lowest level on the far right are the rejuvenated Kumara plicatilis (aka fan aloe) I received from a friend years ago, as well as pups harvested from the Aloe striata x maculata.

On the next level of the slope are 2 pups of Agave 'Mateo' collected earlier this year, as well as 3 Echeveria 'Princess' and 3 Echeveria 'Lotus'.  I left some of the original succulents in place at the base of the pineapple guava (upper right), including 2 small Aeoniums, 3 cuttings of Crassula falcata (aka airplane plants), and a noID Cotyledon.

A little higher up, I installed one of the 3 Lomandra divisions (shown in the top 2 photos.  I left an Agave gypsophila and 2 Aloe striata in place next to that Lomandra, inserted just a handful of Aeonium arboreum and Aeonium haworthii 'Kiwi Verde', and added the Agave titanota 'White Ice' I received from a blogger friend some time ago.  The photo on the lower left shows the Agave in situ between the 2 larger 'Platinum Beauty' Lomandras.  The level above those plants includes the Aloe striata x maculata and 2 'Moonglow' Aloes that were already in place.

There's still a lot to do.

The gangly Echium handiense at the top level of the slope needs to be replaced but, as it's about to flower, I'll wait to take cuttings

The Pyracantha stump shows no sign of dying back yet so, as an interim measure, I may fill in the empty area shown here with Aeoniums

On the west end of bed, I still need to pull overgrown Aeoniums, which I'll probably replace with Aeonium cuttings until the Agave desmettianas bloom

In the long run, the entire wall of succulents (mostly Aeoniums) extending along this path to the lath house area needs renovation

At least I've made a start!  Working on a slope, even a relatively moderate one, challenged my bad knee so I'm giving myself a break and shifting my focus to pruning required in other, flatter areas of my garden.  There's currently no rain in the ten-day forecast and the Christmas Eve "storm" yielded only one hundredth of a inch of precipitation here so we'll be starting the calendar year off with less than a quarter of an inch of rain in total for the 2025 "water year" thus far, which is abysmal.

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party