June is the month when agave and yucca plants flower and the phone and e-mail messages pile up as these succulents bloom across the county. There is much confusion about agave and yucca – which is ...

In the hills of Templeton a unique and rare garden has been sown that really should be growing somewhere in the desert. Jim Harlow has created a wonderland of over 100 species of agave — and that ...

While you might be under the impression you need to live in a tropical climate to grow a yucca plant, they actually make for excellent indoor companions. A genus of more than 40 perennial plants, ...

A rose is a rose is a rose, but an agave? It might not smell as sweet as a rose, but that bad boy with the steely blue leaves can stand out like a piece of sculpture in the landscape. And when its ...

Joshua Trees (Yucca brevifolia) are the largest of the yucca plants that grow naturally in the desert areas of southwestern California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. They prefer the dry, sandy soil of ...

Gunilla and Michel Hamaoui, who live in Woodland Hills, sent me a photo of a tree whose identity they did not know. They also wanted to know how often it flowered. I did not know what kind of tree ...

There are counterfeit yuccas in our midst and they are not Joshua trees. Not all plants that have spine-tipped leaves and whorled leaf arrangements are Joshua trees. In fact, some plants with these ...

The milder weather through late October and early November has certainly caused the plants to react. Right at the very top of ...

My plants are choking. My rain barrel is bone dry, and I do not want to spend hours watering individual plants, plus it wastes what little water we have. What can I plant that doesn’t need a lot of ...

Have you ever noticed how the emerging flower stalk of an agave resembles an asparagus spear? It turns out that both agave and asparagus are in the same botanical family (Asparagaceae). Agave, however ...