Summer in the garden

I will head up to Vancouver BC next weekend for the Hardy Plant Study Weekend. We've been busy in the garden continuing to push the crazy plant person theme. Here's a quick shot of the front garden.

My husband is a recent palm tree convert and drove down to Raintree Tropical to buy more expensive compost, specifically a second Butia eriospatha and a Brahea armata (he is not deterred by common sense). He did raise up the palm trees to improve drainage but good luck. The first Butia eriospatha did sail through last winter.

Here's the new, much larger Butia. It barely fit in the car. Ignore the other plants in the photo, the mushroom-shaped maples are living on borrowed time. We are only just starting to tackle the back garden; there is a slope behind the Butia that I would like to rework into a hardy xeriscape.

And lastly the Brahea. Rock crevices will all be planted with hardy cactus and succulents, and I'm thinking of an oversized Sempervivum or a spiral aloe in the biggest sloped area between the two rocks. We planted a spiral aloe last summer, and it survived the winter and has grown substantially.