At the corner of Napa Street and Bridgeway, you can see that Bolinar Plaza is back in bloom for the winter!  Just when many plants are taking a rest or going dormant, succulents such as the spider aloe above burst into bloom with spires of fiery color.

If you’d like to include water-wise succulents in your garden, Tom Wilhite (Bolinar Plaza’s garden designer) suggests these three from Bolinar Plaza:

• Spider Aloe (Aloe x spinosissima) is the red-blooming plant
• Blue Chalksticks (Senecio mandraliscae) is the lower-growing blue plant
• Foxtail Agave (Agave attenuata) is the large leafed plant

 

In 2015, Sausalito Beautiful partnered with the City of Sausalito to lead the renovation of the landscape surrounding the John Libberton sculpture called Bolinar, which means “close to the wind” in Portuguese. The sail-shaped sculpture commemorates Sausalito’s 1993 Centennial while celebrating our city’s Portuguese heritage.

Plants for the plaza’s original 1993 succulent garden were donated by the late Dr. Herman Schwartz, the famed plant collector and succulent specialist who made his home in Marin County. The plants from the 2015 renovation were started from cuttings Tom took from Dr. Schwartz’s original Bolinas garden.

Next time you drive along Bridgeway be on the look out for this the small, triangular garden—even better, take a stroll down Caledonia and make it your destination for a picnic lunch. On drier days you might even see bees harvesting the pollen from the winter-blooming aloes.