Succulents and Cacti

Wrigley Memorial Garden

This botanic garden on Catalina Island is a wonderful place to spend a couple of hours.   It is a slight uphill climb on Avalon Canyon Road, but taxis or golf carts are also available for transportation.  The views from the Memorial are spectacular.  However, the real draw is the fantastic collection of succulents and cacti from all over the world.

Ada Wrigley began this project in 1935,  three years after her husband's death.  She employed a horticulturist from Pasadena to help her with the plantings.  Her son Philip continued the project, bringing in botanists to hunt for endemic plants on the island and to gather seeds from the other Channel Islands.  There is also a collection of rare plants, which are found only on Santa Catalina.  They are all protected with wire cages to prevent deer and other wild life from eating them.  (And, I suspect, over-zealous plant collectors of the human kind!)

I love botanic gardens.  They always inspire me.  On my return from this trip, I immediately bought two more succulents for my own patio.  I love the sculptural forms of these exotic plants, especially the Dragon Tree, pictured below.  It came from the Canary Islands.  Think I'm going to add this far away place to my Wish List-seeing these trees in their native environment is a good enough reason to go there, don't you think?

Dragon Tree