Rewilding My Lot

Agave plants are spectacular members of the Century Plant family that can grow up to 6 feet across. After approximately 10-30 years of growth they produce a single bloom spike up to 25 feet tall, and then the plant dies! During a plant’s life, however, it produces small pups to continue the family line, and a friend has gifted me some of her babies. I can’t be certain, but I think it might be a variegated variety of Agave americana.

In a small, tightly packed garden like mine, I don’t want to set aside space for these plants at their full size when they are only a few inches across at the moment. So I’ve decided to place the Agaves near their Red Yucca friends who live in a rock pile, and to define a circle for each Agave with similar rocks. The plants in the area currently are native annual wildflowers so they can be cleared back as needed, and I won’t plant any shrubs nearby. As the Agave plants grow, their circles can be made larger to stake out more ground. Agave leaves are seriously spiky, so it will be important to make it very clear where they are.

Here’s how I planted them:

I was able to locate some gaps among the wildflower neighbors that were big enough to plant the Agaves at their current size. At the moment, the agaves are rather hidden among those larger plants, but once the surrounding flowers have finished blooming and seeding, they can be cut back to create more space around the Agaves (and allow more light).

I defined circle-ish shapes, cut down a little into the ground at the edges, lined the circles with two layers of stones to add some height (for soil drainage), added a little root stimulant, watered, added the baby Agave plants with soil from the pot they were living in, pushed everything down, and added a little mulch to the top. They got a good watering at this point, but I probably won’t give them much more. They should do fine with only natural rainfalls, but I’ll keep an eye on them in case they want some extra help in the beginning.

Here are some photos of the process:

And here are all three of them, nestled among their wildflower neighbors for now. The biggest one is at the top of this image and the two tiniest are near the bottom.