The Daily Dig

Last weekend my friend Beryl from Cal Hort told me about a tour of gardens designed by David Feix, sponsered by the Hortisexuals and the Bay Area Bromeliad Society. David is very involved in the Bromeliad Society and has contributed plants to the Cal Hort plant raffles. Fortunately he is also a friend of Beryl's as that got me an invite too. We started with three gardens on Alameda island. The first garden was designed for a painter. As more and more of us gathered along the sidewalk in front I noticed lots of familiar faces. Sherry M. whose garden many of us saw on the Garden Conservancy tour earlier this year was there. Bobbi Feyerband (sp) another garden designer who I had taken a class from was there. So was Ted Kipping who I know best from Cal Hort meetings and Ellen, a past Cal Hort president who drove Beryl and I. The editor of Pacific Horticulture, Richard Turner and Annie who owns Annie's annuals.

I liked this tableux of Aeonium and Sedum, which was repeated in most of the gardens.

The back yard was very small but nicer than you can tell in this photo.

The second garden, also on Alameda, was owned by the sister of the lady who owned the first garden. I wasn't as inspired by this garden but it had some good features.

Including this large headed Aeonium again.

The third garden, still on Alameda, was a much larger house. The before and after pictures of this place were striking. The lady who lives here learned how to do decorative leaded glass just to use on her own house. I could definitely have taken more photos here.

Detail of the front plantings in front.

This nearly white Cotyledon was used in many of the gardens too and it is the plant I got three cuttings of a Cal Hort meeting which David had donated.

There were many palms, succulents and bromeliads in pots along the sides of the pool in back.

The fourth garden took us off of Alameda and up into the Montclair area of Oakland. My favorite garden, well at least my favorite house, was this one where we also ate our lunch. We were told the house had been used as a speakeasy during prohibition. We actually got there first so I was able to get a few photos without any of us in the photo. The road makes a wide sweeping curve around this property, with the house at the center of that curve. From the road the land falls away steeply down to the lawn in front of the house. The hillside forms an amphitheater covered in very old, very large succulents and other drought tolerant plants.

Two staircases meet at this landing halfway down the hillside.

Nearly down to the house level, I was very taken by the agave in the lower foreground of this photo.

The texture of the leaves was not only embossed with the imprint of the neighboring leaf as it unfolded but also was knobby, looking like copper worked over with a hammer.

At the base of the stairs, just before the house, one comes to an arched breezeway leading to this open courtyard, which overlooks the lower garden still further down the hillside.

From the courtyard, this is the view over the rail to the lower garden.

A staircase leads down to the lower garden near the breezeway we came in through.

Here we're looking back up to the courtyard from the lower garden.

I was very taken by the exotic pipevine (Aristolochia gigantea I think), growing in the corner.

Beyond the heavy wooden gate below the vine were planted lots of bromeliads. (The gate leads to the hot tub which looks out over the hillside which continues to fall away.)

In the lower garden, the fountain is the nicest feature.

Finally, looking up to the house from near the fountain.

The fifth garden was a bonus, one not originally on the list but the owner (also a client of David's) suggested we could all stop in on the way to the next one if we liked. We liked.

The sixth garden was still further up in the hills above snake and shepherd canyons. It had originally planted by Planet Horticulture and David was hired to improve and update it. So there were more mature plants here than elsewhere and a much wider variety of plants too. These photos start from the street and wind through paths to a courtyard behind the house.

Well, after that garden no garden should have to follow it but we moved on to Berkeley where we saw one more client's garden before seeing David's own garden. I took a couple half hearted photos at each but I'd exceeded my capacity for garden stimulation. I took these at the client's garden.

And these are from David's own garden.

Three Alameda gardens, three Oakland gardens and two in Berkeley. Quite a day's worth of gardens!