What a fantastic collection, beautifully photographed, too.

Thank you. This is a public garden, viewable and accessible to all passers-by. It looks a whole lot better (as in the photo) during the winter, our rainy season.

A labor of love, and much appreciated, I'm sure. I love the curbside gardens I pass by here in town, but am always too shy to make the effort to tell the owners I appreciate their efforts.

We're having a relatively dry winter, a continuation of a lengthy period of drought, but it's nothing like as severe as in your part of the country. Hope your plants get the rain they need for another year's growth.

We get about 10 inches of rain in a typical year, and it's always bone dry during the summer months. A few years ago we had our driest year in recent recorded history, about half that much, and a bunch of tree aloes did fine that year with zero supplemental water. So I guess the choice of plant has a lot to do with its survival. Or to put it another way, the plants that can't handle drought have gone away and been replaced, so over time there's continual selection for survivors.

I have gotten comments from people passing through, and a couple people asked for cuttings, and occasionally someone takes out their phone to snap a picture. I think the neighbors enjoy the garden, especially during the winter when we get our rain, it greens up, and lots of aloes are in bloom. There's a whole series of these public gardens along the street (technically it's a median strip) and everyone has their own style in the areas they take care of.

The idea of having those gardens on a median strip sounds great, and I can see that a 'get tough or die' philosophy should prevail in them in a rain-starved environment like yours.

The idea of letting plants self-select for an environment was pretty much my Mom's philosophy. If a plant wasn't happy where she put it, there were always others to try out for the position.

Sort of off topic, but do you know any reason why people can't supply the same information for their plant combination photos (date taken, location, caption if desired) that they can provide for database photos? Or do you know, at least, the proper place to pose such a question? I find myself wondering these very things when viewing the plant combinations of others, regardless of whether they've tagged plants or not.

The plant combination section (formerly known as landscape photos) was developed after the individual plant picture pages for the database. It does lack those other fields, but the comment area is still a totally valid place to add additional details. People have asked for various changes to that section, including what you brought up, but I get the sense that it's not going to undergo any major improvements or renovations for a while. Lots of other stuff to maintain on the site. In any case, a comment often sparks a bit of banter, and that may reveal more than a form with specific fields will.

I would think the Site Talk forum would be the best place to bring up these issues. They've come up before, and you can probably find that with the right kind of forum search, but you may find the clarity you seek by inquiring there.

https://garden.org/forums/view...

Thanks for the feedback on my question. I'll bookmark the page. I really am still learning my way around the site.