True, I have moved to Zone 5.  True, Zone 5 is often freezing cold and holds a possibility of snowing seven months out of the year.  True, the first snow this fall was in October and the most recent was April 1.  But that doesn't mean I never get to see succulents outside of my abode, thank goodness.

It might not be Stanford's Arizona Garden, but the Morrill Greenhouses at UMass Amherst are just a short walk from my office and house some really cool plants.  Last month when I was lamenting the cold weather, I took a walk across campus to the Peet's (we have Peet's here!), got a cup of coffee, and spent some quality time in the greenhouses.  It's not an enormous collection, but it's a rather nice, well-labeled, and thoughtfully-curated one.  (I love saying that things are "thoughtfully curated," because it makes it seem as if I have a refined and generous aesthetic).  Anyhow, observe:

...Pretty cool, right?  Especially those echeveria lutea (that's the oddly-shaped, thin-leaved echeveria that looks as if its leaves were outlined in white.

Stay tuned as I share more of my Zone 5 environs with you. It may take a little more work to find the plants I love, but I'm up for the challenge and I'll be sharing it with you every step of the way.  It's so good to be back on Gardening Succs, my dear succ-ers!

Last August, I did a little post about guerilla gardening--that is, planting plants on public or pseudo-public property.  Many of my guerilla gardening attempts failed--frost killed off my haworthias in front of the post office, and overaggressive pedestrians demolished the crassulas I stuck into a planter bed.  But one of my efforts paid off particularly well.  I hadn't thought about this little echeveria for some time, but I remembered it today and dropped by.

On the left is a photo from the day I planted it last August.  On the right is a photo I took today.  Doesn't it look happy?  Seeing the pictures side by side totally made my day:

For good measure, here's a closer-up shot:

Fall has descended on Northern California, and recently we had the rain to prove it.  Although this marks the inception of my annual worry that my succulents are going to get too much water outside (which precedes my annual worry that my succulents will freeze, or else get terribly leggy indoors), I have to admit that they look absolutely gorgeous after a rain.  Here are some of my favorites:

Yesterday I received the following email from a fellow succ-er, and thought I'd share the Q&A.

Q: I'm an avid follower of your blog, and like you, I love succulents. But I need a little help! I have only just been getting into propagating from cuttings and leaf cuttings.  I have managed to grow some Graptoveria 'Fred Ives' leaf cuttings by laying on soil, out of direct sunlight. They have grown new plants and have roots, but I don't know when to pot them? Every time I have done this in the past - they have shriveled up and died. What do I do with the mother leaf as well? [Photo at right.]

A: I am happy to help!  First, the Fred Ives leaves.  My guess is that when you have planted them in the past, you might not have watered them enough. I find that people (myself included) tend to under water young plants. The pictures you showed me seem like they are at a great stage to plant in their own pots. For now, I would continue to keep them out of direct sunlight.  Since you have so many, and since they look so healthy, it might be cool to try a little experiment — having slightly different conditions for each one. Example, you might have one in more light than another, or use a higher perlite-to-soil ratio in one than another.  If you do this, I'd love to know the results!

As far as the mother leaf, I used to pick off the mother leaf as soon as I could get it to come off. I am convinced that this was not the healthiest thing for my plants, though, because sometimes the young plants' growth seemed to wane once the mother leaf was removed. Now I leave the mother leaf on until it is shriveled and brown and breaks off with a light touch. This way, I can be sure that it is done passing its nutrients along to its baby.

I think you are correct that your aunt's mystery plant is a sedum — and good for you, because I think a lot of people would have mistaken it for an echeveria!  Sedum clavatum is my guess.

Finally, you're quite right that the rosettes (the rosettes only, though — be sure not to mistake flower buds for rosette runners, which is something I've done in the past) can be used to start new plants.  Your Perle von Nurnberg looks great!  To start a new plant with a rosette, cut the rosette from the mother plant, leaving about half a centimeter of stem on the rosette.  Allow the rosette to dry in the open for a few days, or you can plant it in (completely dry, not-too-compact) soil, which is what I usually do.  Basically, you treat the rosette much as you'd treat a leaf from which you're hoping to propagate a new plant (as you did with the Fred Ives).  Before long, the rosette will start to sprout roots.  At that point, plant it if you haven't already.  To avoid rot, let it sit in the soil for at least a few days before watering it.

Best of all, you'll see that the mother plant will begin to create new rosettes where you trimmed off the old one!  I usually cut the empty stems back so that they're only an inch or so long, simply because long empty stems can make a plant look kind of scraggly and weak.

Awesome job--let me know if you have any questions, and keep me up on how the propagation goes.  It's quite addictive, isn't it??

I'm not going to pretend that my photos are as cool as Liz's, but I thought I'd share them nonetheless.  (And, hey, not bad for iPhone photos, eh?)  The Ruth Bancroft Garden is also featured, I just discovered, in a book that came out less than a year ago: Succulent Paradise.

Let's start with a few agaves, shall we?

Next, a few aloes.  It's tough to capture the grandeur of the aloes here.  There were really some amazing specimens, including huge aloe nobilis and aloe striata, of which I have no decent pictures.  My favorite aloe, though, was the one immediately below this text, and to the right.

As regular readers of this blog are already aware, I am a bit of a haworthia geek.  I may or may not have squealed aloud with glee when I saw a whole bunch of gorgeous haworthia truncata of various types, shades, and sizes growing among the rocks in a shaded area.  Observe:

Although I wasn't always the world's biggest gasteria fan, I have to admit that they've grown on me more and more...  particularly en masse and variegated!

And sempervivums (doesn't it seem like it should be "semperviva?") abounded:

Can we talk about terrestrial bromeliads for a moment?  ...Actually, I don't have much to say about them; I just love the phrase "terrestrial bromeliad"--though these dyckia look extraterrestrial to me.  I love the combinations of purples and greens.

Onto echeverias.  Like (nearly) everything else in the Ruth Bancroft Garden, most of the echeverias weren't labeled.  Ruth Bancroft (who is alive and kicking at over 100 years old!) doesn't like the way labels can detract from plants in a garden, which I can understand.

Last but not least...  cacti!  The RBG is home to dozens, maybe hundreds, of cacti varieties.  It's a great time to visit the garden, because many of them are in bloom right now.  A few favorites:

Bottom line: if you're anywhere in Northern California, it's worth the drive to Walnut Creek to check out the Ruth Bancroft Garden!  (Especially if you're meeting your awesome parents for sushi.)  And be sure to check out their nursery, too--they had several hard-to-find plants at pretty reasonable prices.  Ta ta for now, succ-ers!