We invited a small group to come out to the Loynes guerrilla garden in Long Beach to do a major replanting. The garden has been under a bit of stress the past few years because of over watering during the rainy season. But the city has turned over control of the sprinklers to SoCal Guerrilla Gardening so it was a good time to start to fill in the bare areas.

One of the new additions to the garden is this variegated Agave vilmoriniana. I can’t wait for this beautiful plant to go to flower so we can harvest the bulbils. 

Nello with some of the 30+ Aloe nobilis planted Sunday 4-30-10.  They were just a few of the well over 100 plants brought to fill in the garden.

Some of the many Agave attenuata in the garden that have been there for years.

This is the far west end of the garden that has been pretty barren for a few years but we really filled it in with a few dozen plants.

Another large plant we planted is this beautiful Aloe  (name unknown).

This huge Agave perryi is another of the very large plants we planted as well as the smaller plants like the Aloe nobilis Sabrina is planting next to it.

We also planted a few dozen aeoniums that should fill in this area in a year or so.  In a couple years we will be able to glean a ton of cuttings to root up and fill in the rest of the garden.

Jennifer next to the Euphorbia ingens we added to the garden

The largest plant in the garden is this Agave americana. It’s putting out one of the biggest blooms I ever seen on an Agave.  Unfortunately A. americana don’t produce bulbils.

Thanks to everyone that came out to replant the garden!

Thanks to Jennifer Stroup for all above photos.

What a difference 581 days, 13 hours  (or 1 year, 7 months, 4 days, 13 hours) make!

Planted Sept 20, 2008

Photo 4-25-2010

I had to work late so I missed the Rock n Crawl event yesterday. So I thought I’d finish off the week with something more for Earth Day by going up to the Van Ness guerrilla garden today to pick up the trash and pull the weeds.

I could not believe the amount of trash in the garden.  I work pretty fast so I was done picking up most the trash in about 15 minutes but I spent another 2 1/2 hours pulling the weeds.  As you can see in the before and after photos it  looks  so much better with just a little effort.

We planted 1/2 of this garden in September 2008 and the other 1/2 in November 2008. Most the plants have more than doubled in size. We’ll see if this garden can get by only on rain water this year.

There are a lot of Agave pups popping up and filling in all over in the garden. I removed the big Tequila sunrise pup to the left of the mother plant in the above photo. I’ll pot it and we’ll use it in another guerrilla garden in the fall.

Above, Two small but very nice variegated Agave Americana pups and three good sized agave pups in the below photo. I’ll leave these alone to let them fill in the garden. Well maybe I’ll pull one out from the one below as that agave is hard to come by.

We went back to the Carson st. guerrilla garden to add some more plants for Earth Day.  It was a great time gardening with friends. Bob Frint from work and Roly Polly of LAGG showed up to lend a hand.

Thanks to Ken Hada for suppling all above photos.

Nationally acclaimed travel writer and host David Keeps came out in January to join a group of SoCal Guerrilla Gardeners to plant a garden in Long Beach and shoot a segment for his new TV  show – The Scenic Route.  The show premiers this Sunday and Monday on the Ovation TV,

The show featuring David guerrilla gardening with us will air Monday April 12th 10:00pm. (and will rerun Thursday). I don’t know if the time is right for here on the west coast or for your cable or satellite provider.

With another show at 10:30pm featuring artists staking claim to the desert’s wide-open spaces in Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert.

This is the first truck load of Agave attenuata donated by our new friend Karin of LA. She said her mom watched the story about guerrilla gardening on SoCal Connected and told her to donate these plants she no longer wanted in her yard.  I think there will be at least two more truck loads of this beautiful Agave. These plants are so big I could only fit about 15 large rosettes and about a dozen medium sized plants in the trunk. The only problem is the plants are 30 steep steps up to her house and then it’s still a ways to the backyard where the plants are located. It was quite the stair stepper work out!