Jodi's Grand Garden of Rescued Succulents

I'm Debra Lee Baldwin, author of three books about using succulents in landscapes, gardens, and containers. This is the latest in my series on great gardens and knowledgeable gardeners who offer clever, doable ideas and tips. Today we're at Jody and John Visosky's garden in Spring Valley, California. It showcases thousands of mature succulents on nearly an acre. Although the landscaping looks decades old, the large plants have been there fewer than five years. How's that possible? The couple rescue and rehome cacti and succulents that are up for grabs. Most have become too big for their former locations. Jody often finds out about them through fellow members of the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society. She also gets unique, rare, and unusual plants at the clubs, sales, and events. Rick Jorklund, who you may remember from the video I did on the Palomar Garden. We are super excited as members of the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society. Jody's garden is one of the tours for the big convention of Cactus and Succulent Society of America. And Rick's garden. And Rick's garden, yes. I'm just an enabler, okay. She likes what I do and I like what she does. I just help when I can. He helps with the boulders and the stairs. There you go. That's it. It's Jody does it all herself really. All the plants. It's a Jody thing. I've seen you in action a few times in some of your posts about how you go to the location, dig up the plant, somehow haul it into your truck, secure it, haul it home. And then you have these ways of how you get it to the planting hole. I mean there's a lot to that. They go out in their truck and they'll rescue big mature plants that people don't want anymore. Dig them up and move them and plant them. It's just incredible. Jody posted this on the San Diego Cactus and Succulent Society's Facebook page. She calls herself a crazy cactus lady. And I have not met a golden barrel that I didn't love. So I probably have 50 to 60 golden barrels. Those are heavy to rescue. They are heavy. This is how it all started. One of our neighbors moved to Texas and they said before we leave would you like to come take some cactus cuttings? That was the beginning of our love of cactus and our love of rescuing actually. So a lot of the cactus including that gorgeous hairy blue cactus that you love Rick. The Pilosocereus. Right. Came from the neighbor just a quarter mile away. She has several forms of Pilosocereus which are from Brazil. They're South American. Some of the forms get this wonderful white fur on them. I don't know if you can see this funky ponytail palm. I rescued that from under a pine tree bent over by the weight of the pine tree branches reaching for the sun. It will forever have that 90 degree bend but you can see now it's starting to straighten out. This hill behind us is the first place Jodi ever planted and it is a steep hill. So she planted stuff. Big stuff, small stuff and then she planted some more and now you can't get in between all those big plants. It's a jungle. So she learned from that hill to make pathways to different places so she can get to them to do maintenance. And who does the pathways? Well I do some of the pathways but she does them too because I say you have to have a pathway now amongst all your great plants so that you can do maintenance and people can see them. So Jodi this section of the garden is about three years old. It looks like it's been here for a long time. It's filled in which is the beauty of succulents. You plant them, they grow, they get big, you have to trim them, you give them away. So a lot of people are going to be benefiting from me trimming my jungle because there's a lot of plants that I need to trim and give away cuttings. So do tell like oh oh I see some. You can't have too many agave hairy eyed truncata. Shopping now and this looks like it needs trimming back. That's right. Tefral cactus, spruce cone one. What else does she need to cut back? Oh this. It would be great for grafting your tefral cactus on. Lots of aeoniums that are interfering with the pathway. This is a nice aeonium. Is that the one with the big pinky rose flower? Yeah. Oh want. Vilmoriniana, the octopus agave. Yes undulating. Probably have the variegated one stained glass somewhere too. Somewhere. Hey there's a nice one Queen for the day. Queen for a day. Usually we walk around with clippers. Wingola. Yes that's it. One of Kelly Griffin's favorites. His hybrid is called chainsaw. Moda Sierra. Yes that one. Moda Sierra has teeth that look like the edges of a chainsaw. And when it gets old it can lose those teeth. Oh no. We don't want that. Just like us it can lose its teeth. Rescue. A euphorbia that was just massive and a lady just thought it was too big for her yard. John always wanted a water feature. And we had a terrible problem with rabbits this year. White chicken wire. Most of the precious plants. Some that I never expected them to eat like this aloe jumped up on top and left their calling card so I knew it was a rabbit. So I've had to replace a lot of plants or protect them. I've tried a repellent but I haven't gone saunic yet. You can see that the rabbits prune our lemon trees. Rabbits, ground squirrels. This is the only shade I have so it's the only place I can have rhipsalis and epitheliums. We call this the garden of misfits and rescues because almost everything in this garden that we're coming to was either given to us as a mature specimen or dug up from someone's yard because they didn't want it. From the friendships and connections to the San Diego Cactus and Second Society, great people. Also plants that I've bought at some of the shows. The majority of the plants there came from friends that didn't want them or that I dug up from estate sales or whatnot. Very few of that was anything purchased. That's what's so great about meeting folks that like cactus. It's like they're always sharing and trading. Deborah, did you see this spiral Sirius? So you've got all three forms of the Sirius right here. The regular form, the monstrose over there, and the spiral here. Just look at the the sun lighting on the the spines of that cactus. Isn't that just gorgeous? Kleistel cactus with the red blooms. Yeah, now you can see it from this side, Deborah. Mission to Mars Mangave. Agave. Bova cornuta? Yes. That's the big one you moved. Everybody said don't move it because it's going to bloom, but I had to because it was just so crowded over. It was just jammed in there. It looks fine now and it's got plenty of room. And Bova cornuta is kind of fun because if you look closely at some of the spines, some of them will pair up like this and that's where it gets the name cow's horn. Bovine Bova cornuta. A grevillea pruned by a rabbit. That worked out. It worked out. That time. Deborah, which came first, the wheelbarrow or the cactus? Had to be the cactus. So was that one of your rescues and it was too heavy and fell through the wheelbarrow? Sure, that's a good story, Rick. From the 15 inches of rain that we got last year, it just took up too much water and the cells couldn't hold it all and it split, but luckily it scarred over. Looks a little top heavy. Hope we don't get a big wind. So when cacti have vertical ribs, when they get dry, they kind of fold up like an accordion and those ribs become more prominent. And then when it gets more water, they open out like the accordion opens out and it looks more like this. But as Jodi was saying, if it gets too much water and the cells can't handle all of it, you sometimes get these splits like this. I don't fertilize a lot of the cactus and succulents. That's why the protea do well with the succulents. What is the concern that the protea is going to get too much? The protea, the roots can't have phosphorus because it just takes it in too fast and kills the plant. For the Australian plants. Yes. I love rocks and the motto that I have is if I can lift it, I can have it. I go all over looking for rocks. I also get rocks that people don't want. Did you find a ladybug yet? No. There's one. That's the first one. Let's see how many more you can find. It's a rock ladybug. Yes. So you have a two-year-old neighbor who likes to come and hunt ladybugs. Yes, he's a sweetheart. You have a lot of found objects. Found objects, yes. We love everything rusty. Rusty relics, such as the old whiskey barrels made into an orb. I wouldn't have guessed an old whiskey barrel. Yeah, those are the rings. There's a lot of things you can stick mosaic on. So if it's round, I'll mosaic it. If it's something I can put in the garden that adds some color or bling, I'll try to do it. This was a beat-up lizard that I found. That was difficult because of all the angles in three dimensions, but it was my first attempt. From a distance, I thought it was talavera. Oh, that is broken Mexican tile used in the body. That's a bowling ball with broken talavera. Sometimes the pro shops have no use for them anymore, and they'll sell them to you really cheap. Now, is there anything that you collect, or when you see it, you just have to have it? I love all Mangaves. I was introduced to Hans Hansen, who was the great hybridizer from Walter's Nursery in Michigan. He was generous enough to send me boxes of new hybrids that he has created, some not even in production yet, to test in my garden. I think all he really wanted in return was pictures, and I fled his web pages with pictures of the Mangaves that he sent me, and lots of people have really started to love them. That one is outgrowing the rabbit damage. Those oddly bent over tips, Jody. It's called Tooth Fairy, and I haven't seen one that doesn't grow that way. Where does one obtain a Tooth Fairy? Tooth Fairy is in the Mad About Mangave series that Hans Hansen created from Walter's garden. I think it's in production, mail order. Some nurseries are carrying them more and more. It is a Mangave. I'm not seeing all the characteristic dots. Yes, if you zoom in in the back, see the speckles? Now you can see it. It looks like it doesn't get these bent over tips until it gets more mature. See, the older leaves don't really have it. Yeah, you're right. But these newer leaves do. So the color mostly comes from the filaments that are sticking out. So that's where this gets mostly that orange color. Let this grow. It'll be big and shrubby. There'll be multiple heads. It's the shrub form, which this is. See the pups? It's gorgeous. And if you see the bees, their little pollen sacs are bright orange. And this is a maculate aloe. You're right, maculate meaning the spotted aloes. They have the best flowers. This one is a pale peach, a huge candelabra. It's gorgeous. How much acreage do you have, Jody? We have two and three quarters, but that's actually, landscape is probably a third of it. We need a lot of it native. There's so much more to come for this garden. Well, considering if you'll notice, there's no irrigation. This is all Jody and John with water buckets. I don't think I want to grow too much more. Now we don't always succeed in what we try to rescue. This cardone was by a pool and couldn't have it there anymore, so we enlisted Carl from Exotic Gardens to help us plant it with his crane. At the last second, it hit the ground and it cracked. Nothing else to do but to cut the top off and hope for the best. It started growing an arm off the top, so we call it the headless horseman, but that one was one we tried with six guys and we didn't really succeed. And there's the top of it. We suck it in the ground just in case. The backside of it is all scarred up. It does have roots, but I don't know if it will ever grow. They won't tolerate more than like a 45 degree angle, so you need to kind of transport them more upright or attach them to something like a sturdy board, a two by four or a two by six. There's all this information, I think, online about how to go about that. I would rather not even try it than to risk it not surviving, but that was in our younger days. That cost me a lot of beer and pizza. Cassia? I was complaining to John that I was running out of space to plant things. We call it the point, and he chipped off all the brush and stuff and then turned it, well, he didn't really officially turn it over to me, but he made, because I had a cactus I needed to plant. So John chose this area because of all the natural rocky outcroppings. Put the pathways in before I was allowed to plant, because I am notorious for planting and then trying to figure out how we're going to walk through it. It's only about a year old, so you'll see there's a lot of little plants still, but there's a lot of mature things too. I've always loved gabion walls. I got those rocks free off Facebook Marketplace, and next thing I know, John created those two columns. Eventually he's going to build steps, and that will be the entrance into the area that I call the point. I want to go down there. This aloe came from Rick's garden. It took us, I think, three people to get it into the back of my truck, but doesn't it look good? It does. Excelsa, isn't it? It is. That's a good spot for it, huh? Probably gets 15 feet, maybe more. It's these big heads of flowers. They can be red, orange, and there's even, I think, yellow ones. It just seems much happier here than it would be in my place, which is smaller. It's a two-way street. Jodi has shared great plants with me. Some of your buddies would go out shopping at all these nurseries and home growers around San Diego, and I think that's how we met. Right. There are so many good nurseries in San Diego. It's just amazing what you can find here. Rare, common. One of the members had passed away, and his wife was overwhelmed with his collection and not knowing what to do, so one of our members facilitated a sale at his home, and that's one that I picked up from his collection. It has been blooming straight for probably two months. Every day I come out here, there's a new set of blooms. They're new blooms because you can see the spent ones. Unbelievable how happy that cactus is. Mark Fryer told me what it was, but I have forgotten. I'll make a name for it when I learn again. The fire department sent us a letter that we needed to clear the property line, so we spent almost two months hauling brush out of here. Vermilion Society let our president know that her collection was being sold. That was one of the things I purchased. He's looking over toward his former home. That's right, where he came from. We can't see Mexico, but that is the furthest peak that you can see is El Cajon Mountain. Palomar, with the snow on it, is not really a peak. That's Black Mountain, I believe, over there. Mount Helix with coals behind it. Find a gallery of Jodi's plants, all ID'd, on my site, along with a Q&A in which she talks soil, watering, weeds, critters, and more, plus advice for anyone planning a garden amid chaparral. Links are there and in the video description as well. Please let us 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 more than 300 videos, and visit my ad-free site for info on every aspect of succulents. I'm Debra Lee Baldwin. Thank you for joining me.