Stopped by the desert garden at the Huntington Library last weekend and noticed the agaves looked way more organized than I remember

Whoever replanted that section must have used a tape measure because every single rosette was spaced exactly three feet apart and it felt like walking through a succulent parking lot, has anyone else seen public gardens that feel overplanned?

2 comments

2 Comments

sullivan.elliot1mo ago

Found a wild grassy mess in Golden Gate Park that actually felt right.

patricia_king231mo ago

That line about "walking through a succulent parking lot" really got me. I once visited a botanical garden in Arizona that had replanted their entire desert section with identical barrel cactuses all in perfect rows, like they were growing carrots or something. It totally killed the natural chaos that makes deserts feel alive to begin with. What worked for me was finding a smaller garden run by a local cactus society that had no plan at all - plants were just randomly placed wherever they looked like they wanted to go, some overlapping, some dead, some spreading naturally. The volunteer who showed me around said they purposely don't do measurement or spacing, they just let the plants find their own spots and move things if they look too cramped. That place felt real and wild, and I actually learned more about how agaves grow from watching them struggle and spread than from any tidy display. You might try looking for a community-run desert garden or a native plant restoration area instead of the fancy public ones.