Home & Garden
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Backyard jungle
Weird-looking succulents top
Angel Ramos' list of favorites in a garden
crowded with the strange and beautiful
There are the sought-after golden tillandsias that not only send out tiny yellowish flowers but the leaves turn bronze when it is in flower. He saw one of the plants at a sale and formed an impromptu hui with his plant buddies to scrape up the $125 to buy it. His share -- $11 and a finger-sized shoot -- is now a healthy colony of more than two dozen plants.
"I was so happy when I got that one. I never thought I could get it because it was so expensive. Oh, I was so happy," Ramos says.
Several ant plants, so named for their thorny and hollow potato-like root bases favored as ant dwellings -- were nurtured from seeds.
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Also grown from seed was the black-eyed Susan vine with clusters of bright red seeds with black eyes. The seeds are prized for necklaces and hold fond memory for Ramos, who used them as blow-gun shots while growing up in the Philippines.His prize at the moment, though, is the golden baseball bat, a rare variegated succulent, that he acquired from another plant collector. It doesn't look like much, but to a succulent aficionado, the small plant with striated yellow and green colors is a real catch.
"I just got it a few months ago, and I was so happy, I almost kissed the guy," he says, adding that the yellow variety is the perfect complement to a white variegated one already in his collection.
Ramos gave up three plants from his garden to trade for the one succulent that resembles a fat and squatty mother-in-law's tongue.
"I know it doesn't look like much now, but just wait 'till it grows up. It's really going to be something," Ramos says.
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Even though he has some 4,000 plants, Ramos is always on the lookout for new additions to his North Shore garden, hoping that he'll find another show-stopper. He will be scouting for new plants at tomorrow's plant sale sponsored by the Cactus and Succulent Society of Hawaii. The sale will be held at the Diamond Head end of Ward Warehouse from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 522-7063 for more information.Ramos will be at the sale as a member and a seller. He will cart off a few hundred plants from his own collection for sale. He also will bring a few show-and-tell plants and share his expertise.
"But I don't think these sales work out for me too well. I always end up spending more money than I take home. There are always some plants I don't have that I want," he says.
The one advantage is that the sale allows the self-described plant addict to clear some space in his crammed garden. Except for tiny footpaths, his garden is covered with plants from end to end. They grow in the ground, in neatly lined-up pots, or on rocks and drift wood. They grow on trees, in numerous small water gardens and pile up on the roof of his chicken coop.
"You can see I have no room left. If I want a new plant, I have to really look for room. I don't know where, but ..." he says.
The inside of his home can't accommodate any plants. It is crammed with his other collections -- ceramic frogs, things that are blue, old posters, glass beach balls, tanks of gold fish, and boxes and boxes of vintage Hawaiian postcards and stamps, just to name a few.
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"I have boxes that I have not opened since I moved here 13 years ago," Ramos says, pointing to two of his three bedrooms that are filled with unopened boxes.A plant made its way into his house once. A vine cutting, forgotten in a kitchen bin, grew to become the family's Christmas tree one year. It wrapped itself along the wall, reaching from the kitchen through the dining room and living room to the front door.
Ramos wrote the names of all his children and their two dozen plus offspring -- a task made possible only with help from his wife, Rose -- on pieces of colored paper and tied them onto the vine.
"It was very beautiful. Very colorful and I put up lights along there. Everybody liked it," Ramos recalls. The vine eventually died but a browned remnant remains above a kitchen cabinet.
Ramos likes all kinds of plants but his heart is in succulents -- the more weird looking, the better he likes it. His interest developed some 40 years ago when he saw a bonsai plant at a plant sale. He also inherited about 100 succulents that one of his daughters left behind when she moved away for schooling.
"I've been growing succulents ever since. And I just kept buying and trading, and I make my own cuttings and grow things from seeds. Pretty soon the plants were taking over the place," Ramos said.
He grew them first on his pineapple plantation property -- a modest home with one bathroom for a family of 14. After the plantation shut down and his children left to begin their own families, the retired machinist made gardening his full-time hobby.
Everything in his garden is low tech. He works in it everyday and waters by hand. A sprinkler system would simplify the task but also would alienate him from his plants, he says.
"How am I going to visit my plants every day if there's a sprinkler system? If I water them myself every day, I see how they're doing. If there's problem, I'll know right away and I can do something."
The daily contact gives him a chance to talk to his plants, he says. But they don't talk back, which is a positive trait that puts plants above humans in his book.
Place: Diamond Head end of Ward Warehouse Cactus and Succulent Society
of Hawaii's Adenium ShowTime: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow
Call: 522-7063
Gardening Calendar
Suzanne Tswei's gardening column runs Fridays in Today.
You can write her at the Star-Bulletin,
500 Ala Moana, Suite 7-210, Honolulu, HI, 96813
or email stswei@starbulletin.com
