Local gardens showcase spectacular succulents

Barbara Wollner’s garden has a primordial enchantment. Masses of massive Agave weberi, some more than six feet wide and sporting long, toothy gray-green strappy leaves, completely cover an embankment on the approach to her home. Flowering stalks up to 20-feet tall that didn’t even exist several months ago, tower up from the centers of the Agave ‘Sharkskin’ outside her artist’s studio.

It is nature writ large, leaving a visitor feeling very small, as if they have just entered “The Land of the Lost.”

But this otherworld landscape, a showcase of spectacular succulents in all their many forms, textures and colors, is not imaginary, primeval or located in some remote place in the Southwest. It is only several miles from the Healdsburg Plaza. More remarkably, considering the scale of many of the plants, it’s hard to believe that only six years ago, there was very little on this sloping hillside save for a few bottlebrush, some cypress and oaks.

At a time when lawns are receding and water-conserving landscapes are taking their place, succulents, with their many shapes, sizes and textures, from rippled and ridged to knobby and lumpy, continue to rule. They’ve even gone refined, are showing up in floral arrangements. The Succulents Fantatics page on Facebook has swelled to more than 13,000 followers.

“We wanted a very dramatic landscape that was drought resistant because it’s a big property, an acre and a half. So to cover so much property we wanted as many drought resistant plants as we could,” said Wollner, an artist specializing in mixed media and collage.

The Dolce Villa Garden is an example of how succulents can enhance a Northern California landscape without giving it the arid look. More lush oasis than desert, if features Olive trees, lavender, and citrus that share the land with Giant Feather Grass and succulents like Cordyline ‘Red Sensation,’ Yucca ‘Bright Star’ and various Aoenium.

Succulents are part of a set of plants called xerophytes, which have evolved to survive in climates where water is extremely scarce. They are equipped with the ability to store water; some can even store up to a year’s worth in their stems, roots or leaves. But most need at least a few inches of good hard rain annually to thrive.

In selecting succulents for the Wollner’s Dolce Villa Garden,” Heléne Morneau & Kris Sunderlage of Exteriors Landscape Architecture in Santa Rosa, considered more than water efficiency. The contemporary lines of the architecture of the house and detached art/studio and office, designed by Michael Cobb of Studio Ecesis in Healdsburg, lent themselves to large, sculptural plants.

“The architecture is clean. It’s strong,” Moreau said. “We didn’t want the garden to be fussy with roses. It didn’t lend itself to that. The succulent are such a strong element in the garden. They offer texture and a bold statement that goes so well with the stucco walls. They’re artistic.”

One of the many virtues of succulents is that they are easy to grow and share. Outside her front door is a bed of quickly spreading finger aloes that soften the hard edges of the walkway.

“You just snap them off and put them in the ground. I can’t tell you how many I’ve given to friends,” Wollner said.

Many of them, such as the Agave, produce offsets or “pups.” This is a sign the plant is reaching the end of its life. But the pups can be replanted. So over the years the Wollners have been able to keep their landscape full and alive by replanting.

Among those that produce pups are Agaves, part of the family of so-called Century Plants. For several months Wollner has been watching in wonder, the intriguing Agave ‘Sharkskin’ outside her studio. Only a few months ago they grew short and muscular beside a tree-like Cordyline ‘Red Sensation’ with its spikey burgundy foliage which had grown as tall as the roof and had to be cut back. But in February, stalks starting emerging from the Agave, and it was a sight to behold.

“The stalks grow about six inches a day. You can almost watch them grow,” she marveled. Like Jack’s beanstalk they have soared far past the roof of her studio and now are probably 20 feet tall with the look of giant asparagus. They will bloom well into summer and then the entire plant will die.

Just as one would not expect to furnish every room in the house the same way, Morneau and Sunderlage chose different groupings to set off each “room” in the landscape.

One of the most striking is a long bed along a lower terrace - home to a neat row of raised beds for veggies, herbs and flowers -- that is planted in a long row of striking Aloe striata ( Coral Aloe) and Aloe ‘Johnsons’s Hybrid.’ The Coral Aloe blooms bright orange on tall stalks with shorter more delicate YJohnson’s at its feet.

A terrace that stretches beyond the main house is a visual ambrosia of popping colors and textures and shapes from the Aloe ‘Blue Elf’ with its orange flowers irresistible to humming birds to the low growing Aoenium ‘Zwartkop’ sporting deep burgundy rosettes.

Everywhere there are large bed and tall pots of intriguing succulent eye candy, along with softening grasses and palms.

When selecting succulents be careful about climate. Some can be more sensitive to cold and Sonoma County has many microclimates. The Wollner garden is in more of a banana belt, however

“People are starting to see that succulents can be architectural and artistic and have beautiful flowers,” Morneau said. “And they can be used in a more user-friendly way than what they have pictured in the common cactus garden.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.