Arboretum and Public Garden volunteers John and Lynne Morgan generously shared photos of and information about their home garden. Click through the photo gallery above to see photos of the garden.

When we moved to Davis in 2015, our only experiences with gardening were in the Midwest (Wisconsin and Missouri) and the East Coast (Massachusetts and Connecticut) where we lived for 40 years.  Precipitation came from the sky as rain and snow (47” per year), and gardens slept through long, cold winters.  Things are different here!  Lynne had read a magazine article many years ago about the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek and was entranced by the photos of a garden so unlike the ones in which we had worked.  

Following our son, who moved to California for graduate school, we came to Davis.  A major factor in choosing where we moved was discovering the UC Davis Arboretum.  This was a factor that made Davis so attractive.  The Arboretum was a place where we could enjoy long, pleasant walks and begin to learn about a different way of gardening and a new palette of plants.  

Our house in Village Homes has limited gardening space so we had to learn what sort of planting would work.  We agreed to a deal: John planted the north side in fruit trees, natives, and pollinator-friendly shrubs; Lynne planted a smaller area on the south side.  Though there were plants in the ground, soon the yard filled with more plants in large pots and small, creating horticultural clutter that we disliked.  We looked for an alternative to consolidate this clutter and found the look of corten steel planters attractive, but they were too heavy for us to manage.  

Our solution was to use large shallow plastic pots in which we could gather the small and medium-sized succulents into “mini-gardens.”  We found large recycled pvc pipes at a salvage yard in Woodland where they cut them so that we could turn the pipes on end and use those as stands for the bowls.  We painted the pipes and bowls to look like corten without the expense and unmanageable weight.

It’s been interesting to plant these small gardens—new additions constantly replace plants that have “aged out” or gotten too big for their spots.  Different plants tolerate different light exposures and water.  Some fail with too much water or too much sun.  Others fail with too little.

We have a few favorite garden features:  the Shaunie Briggs metal sculpture of owls and her fence of sunbursts; a huge night-blooming cereus by the front door, the large whale’s tongue agave, and the crested Eve’s needle (in fact, any plant that is crested).  And of course, just when we think that the yard is completely full, there’s a sale at the Arboretum, Ruth Bancroft Garden, or some other nursery from San Diego to Mendocino that has something that Lynne just has to have, and the collection grows again.