Ruth Bancroft Garden Visit

The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA is the land of giant succulents. Planted 40 years ago after the walnut trees died in a working orchard, today’s specimens span many varieties and ages. Handy tables underneath the expansive shade, winding paths around islands of cacti, and human-scale sculptures hidden everywhere make this garden far more private and intimate than other similar undertakings.

If I was a good tour guide I would show you photos of the grounds for a sense of scale and the variety of the cacti. Garden Bloggers Fling and Far Out Flora have done a great job of the first. Master Gardner Betty Holmer and Danger Garden show you the second.

What I’m really excited about is how incredible these plants look in a variety of patterns and elements of form:

Cacti from the Ruth Bancroft Garden by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013
Cacti from the Ruth Bancroft Garden by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

And what I love even more is how amazingly tender and delicate these ferociously spiny and tenacious plants look:

Agave Regina by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013
Agave Regina by Jennifer Hartnett-Henderson ©2013

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