Made for California: A Succulent Hillside Garden That Wowed Christopher Lloyd

When British horticulturist Christopher Lloyd visited Southern California, he dismissed Japanese gardens ("I'd go to Japan") and endless lawns with evergreen shrubs ("Astonishing you do so little with what you've got"). Then he saw Patrick Anderson and Les Olson's ½-acre Fallbrook hillside garden—packed with aloes, agaves, aeoniums, euphorbias, crassulas, African daisies, Mexican blue palms, golden barrel cactus, organpipe cactus, pindo palms, pride of Madeira, Mexican bush sage, and brittlebush. In midwinter, 200+ aloes blaze with candelabras of red, yellow, orange, cream. It's a garden perfectly suited to the arid, summer-dry climate—plants need little water once established.

Sculpting the Land

Five years prior, they terraced a former lime orchard with a tractor, amended soil with decomposed granite for drainage, built dry streambeds, pea-gravel paths, redwood bridges, and a white stucco pavilion with orange tile roof echoing aloe blooms. Planted lacy, drought-tolerant trees (Acacia karroo, Cassia nemophila, mesquite) for shade.

Not for the Faint of Heart

Giant succulents are the stars—and the thugs. Spikes, points, serrated edges. "Wear goggles and leather gloves," Anderson advises. But their otherworldly beauty captivates: sun-warmed Aloe striata feels like a human arm; gray-green skin striped cream, edges translucent crimson, blooms like scarlet feather dusters. A single aloe or agave may be all a patio needs.