Mark Fryer

"A View From the Bench - trials and tribulations in succulent horticulture"

I started growing cactus and succulent plants as a young boy in the mid-Willamette valley area of Oregon. My Grandfather was a farmer and my parents always had a passionate interest in gardening and planting interesting shrubs and trees, so the appreciation of flora was one that was instilled over and over in the course of my formative years. My first cactus garden died in the family attic during it's first year of growth (I dehydrated everything in it), I remember clearly the every other day jaunts up the ladder in the garage to check on my little mini-desert up under the eaves.

20 years later I found myself surrounded by 1000's of living things that were constant companions and inspiration over the years, things that offered more questions than answers and that I couldn't seem to shake. While my various education paths were never really agriculturally oriented, there were always elements of the natural sciences involved with summer jobs and other activities. I accidentally flowered some cactus one spring and wanted to learn more, which is when and where I was first exposed to the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, and the Oregon Cactus and Succulent Society.

Several years later I was obsessed with studying north American cacti in habitat and growing as many different plants as possible. As luck or fate had it, one of my neighbors at the time had a little business called Banana Gardens that was an overgrown backyard nursery operation, and was soon to be moving into new quarters on some acreage, called "Rare Plant Research" which was specializing in Lewisias, cold-hardy succulents, and rare tender succulents. I had a part-time job that was feeding the obsession. I tried to launch my own backyard nursery and actually got very close to success with it.

I was very dedicated to the Oregon C&S Society, and served officially for several years. Fast forward another decade or two and time finds me working in a good corporate job, relegating my passion to "well-developed hobby", and still devoted to study and experimentation. The "dot-com burst" of 2000 placed me in a challenging position after having relocated to San Diego where I married the girl of my dreams and settled down a bit. Moving to southern California after almost 4 decades in the Pacific Northwest, I got to relearn everything I thought I knew about growing plants, especially succulents. In between consulting gigs and chewing on the notion of buying a nursery, I struck a deal with the owner of C&J Cactus Nursery to do some temporary grafting work. After a month or so of working there, they made me an offer to come on as a manager of sorts, a propagator of sorts, someone to potentially buy the place and learn the ropes. Now in my 5th year there, this program will be an overview of what it's like to bring several hundred species of cacti and succulent plants from seed-production into plant-production, some of the successes and failures, and some of the neat anomalies we encounter along the way. I look forward to meeting with you all on January 3rd!

Be sure to come and welcome Mark to our first meeting of 2008!