“But really as far as Ruth goes, how tall or short she was, and whether she was a woman or a man was much less of a factor than her passion… I just related to her right away. And so that was special.”

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Brian’s introduction to the Garden came in 1979, when he first visited alongside Clive Innes, a speaker for the Oakland chapter of the Cactus and Succulent Society, where Brian served as vice president. The following year, Ruth invited Brian to begin working at the Garden one day a week, tending to her extensive collection of potted plants. This marked the beginning of his long tenure, which would see him rise to the role of curator and become one of the Garden’s most influential figures. 

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Listen to Brian: Connecting with Ruth

“So we would walk around with the plant in a pot, and we would put it somewhere and then we’d stand back and look at it. ‘Oh, that doesn’t look quite right.’ And we’d try it somewhere else and try it until we found a spot that we thought, Yes, it looks right there, and then it would go in there.”

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Brian Kemble’s involvement with the Ruth Bancroft Garden deepened over time, starting with his initial role in 1980 caring for Ruth’s extensive collection of potted plants. His knowledge and shared passion for succulents soon led to his involvement in plant acquisitions and placement, particularly after Phil Bancroft stopped accompanying Ruth on her annual trips to Southern California. Brian began to travel south, using his expertise to select new agaves, echeverias, and yuccas that aligned with Ruth’s interests and the garden’s aesthetic. This marked an increasing influence on the Garden’s plant palette.

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Listen to Brian: Expanded roles at the Garden.

“When I first began here, obviously, it was Ruth’s garden, and she was doing everything as she saw fit for her own personal satisfaction. It wasn’t viewed as something facing outward to the public, but rather something facing inward for her own personal satisfaction, and to share with people that she knew who came to visit her. So when we became a public garden, that really changed the way that we look at ourselves. So now, we’re very concerned about educational aspects that weren’t the focus of the garden in the beginning. So we address that in numerous ways (having tours that people take to come visit the garden, sometimes we’ll have a tour focused on a particular plant group, or focused on a particular thing that we’re doing in the garden), and sometimes we will have classes in the garden, and so on. So those are all things that wouldn’t have taken place, back when the garden was just Ruth’s personal garden. “

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As Ruth began to withdraw from active planting, more of the planting decisions fell to Brian. Eventually, with organizational changes, Brian became the Curator, focusing on the plant collection and record-keeping, while also contributing significantly to the Garden’s educational mission through webinars, talks, and numerous publications. His deep understanding of the collection and Ruth’s original vision, coupled with his commitment to education, became central to the Garden’s ongoing development.

As Brian’s involvement grew, so did his impact.  He continued to introduce new species, spearhead hybridization projects—especially with aloes, agaves and gasterias—and meticulously document plant phenology, native habitats, and taxonomy.

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Read the 4/9/04 Contra Costa Times article  “Passing the Torch.”

“It’s really fun to see how characters are going to combine. When you’re doing the cross, you’re thinking, Oh, I’d like to get the teeth of this one and the color of this one and the flower form of this one, and so on. And it doesn’t always work out the way you thought it would. But it’s really fun to see what happens. And if it doesn’t come out the way you want it to, then you try other angles of attack and other things to cross with each other to try and get where you want to go. But it’s always an endlessly interesting process. “

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Brian Kemble has dedicated a significant portion of his work to hybridizing various plant groups, most notably aloes, agaves, and gasterias. His early work with aloes often focused on flower characteristics, but he later shifted his attention to leaf traits, seeking to create hybrids with stripes, spots, and colorful teeth. He also aimed to combine traits like the compact size of some aloes with the larger rosettes and more abundant flowers of others, exemplified by his work crossing Aloe humilis with larger species like Aloe ferox. His aloe hybrid ‘Hellskoof Bells’ gained commercial success through the Huntington.

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Links to Brian sharing more about some of his more notable hybrids

Aloe ‘Hellskloof Bells’

Aloe ‘Creamsicle’

Video of Brian sharing his hybrid – Aloe ‘Creamsicle’

Agave isthmensis x colorata

Aloe humilis hybrids

xGasteraloe ‘Luman’

“For me, it’s wonderful to grow something from a place that I’ve seen, to grow something that I’ve seen in habitat. When I walk around the Bancroft Garden, I can walk around there with somebody else and we both see the same agave and both admire that magnificence of the agave, but I am seeing something else beyond that. I’m seeing that agave in the mountain in northeastern Nuevo Leon where it came from, and the limestone rocks and the other things that grew with it, and a context that I see in my mind that they don’t see because they haven’t been there. And so to me, that makes the garden much richer than just the plant collection [if] I didn’t have all that back context to go with it.” 

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A defining aspect of Brian’s work has been his extensive field research. He embarked on his first international trip in 1981 and first overseas trip in 1990, attending the Succulent Congress in South Africa. He has traveled extensively throughout the US, Mexico, South Africa, Madagascar, Socotra, Ethiopia, and Namibia to see plants in habitat. This understanding informs his curation at the Garden, providing insights into the care and environments that will help the plants succeed in cultivation.

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Listen to Brian: Seeing plants in habitat and how this informs the Garden.

“There are just large blocks of land that are no longer able to support the plants that originally grew there. And so all those plants either are going to be kept by somebody and grown or they’ll be lost to the world. And that’s a big responsibility. And all botanic gardens have to take this into consideration, and work together to exchange plant material.”

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Brian has expanded the Garden’s focus to address the ever growing threats of habitat loss and climate change. He believes botanical gardens have a crucial role in ex situ conservation (preserving rare and endangered species outside of their habitats), actively participating in the exchange of plant material to preserve species facing habitat loss in their native environments. This involves collecting cutting and seeds of rare and threatened species (such as Aloe sheilae and Aloe suzannae) and distributing them to other botanical gardens to ensure their survival. On the home front, Brian has helped expand our mission to not only educate home gardeners about waterwise plants, but also how to create climate resilient gardens, able to withstand uncertain weather patterns.

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Listen to Brian: The role of botanical gardens in the era of climate change and what the Ruth Bancroft Garden is doing to support conservation of threatened species.