Brian Kemble is curator at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek. His monthly column focuses on drought tolerant plants and dry gardens. When the genus Aloe is mentioned, many people think ...

Debilitating droughts, fierce fires, water shortages — all are contributing to some people getting rid of their gardens. However, people can enjoy colorful plants while conserving water by changing ...

Most of us are fairly familiar with Aloe vera, especially during sunburn season. But did you know there are more than 400 species of these winter bloomers you can grow in your own backyard? What all ...

All the whimsy of Wonderland is here, but instead of giant mushrooms, there are rows of 12-foot aloes. Tweedledee and Tweedledum are a pair of big-bellied bottle trees squatting in the sun. Blooming ...

Last week’s column listed a Cactus & Succulent Society of America webinar, “Aloes on my Mind,” featuring plant propagator and hybridizer Karen Zimmerman from Huntington Botanical Gardens. I had heard ...

To brighten your garden from early spring through next winter, consider the cousins of the medicinal aloe plant. Aloes are rosette-forming succulents native mostly to Africa, with a handful of species ...

Hybridizing plants is an easy process: bees do it. They’re usually pollinating plants of the same species, but occasionally, they move a plant’s pollen to a different, compatible species and, without ...

Playwright Athol Fugard calls the aloe plant “one of South Africa’s most powerful, beautiful and celebratory symbols. It survives out there in the wild when everything else is dried. At the end of one ...