Posts Tagged ‘garden’

Where did you say they put that garden?

One of the last fron­tiers of gar­den­ing? You guessed it, the top of a New York City bus! One of the recent arti­cles in a favorite blog of mine, Urban Gar­dens (www​.urban​gar​densweb​.com), car­ried this story about NYC designer Marco Anto­nio Cas­tro Casio. He wrote his grad­u­ate the­sis, “Nomadic Urban Archi­tec­ture” fea­tur­ing mov­ing gar­dens like the one you see here.

“If a gar­den were planted on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the city’s bus fleet,” cal­cu­lates Cosio, his busses could add 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city. That’s as much as 4 Bryant Parks. Meant for the pub­lic bus sys­tem, the first gar­den was installed on the BioBus, a mobile sci­ence library. In this photo the gar­den is 5 months old and com­prised of suc­cu­lents. Next? How about a veg­etable and herb garden..and they say there is noth­ing new under the sun!

Site for Marco Casio: www​.bus​roots​.org

On the web:

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 17

• Plant Favorites from the Hunt­ing­ton Nurs­ery with Shirley Kerins @ the Arbore­tum: A spe­cial pro­gram for plant nuts! Our guest speaker will dis­cuss and show a range of flow­er­ing and herbal flora eas­ily grown in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gar­dens. The morn­ing ends with a plant sale. Shirley, a land­scape archi­tect, is nurs­ery man­ager, man­ager of plant pro­duc­tion and plant sales and cura­tor of the Herb Gar­den at the Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens. She also designed the Kallam Peren­nial Gar­den at the Arbore­tum. 9:30 — noon, $20/​class — (626) 821‑4623 or jill.​berry@​arboretum.​org

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 19

• Ship­ley Nature Cen­ter: A Fam­ily Cel­e­bra­tion to Save the Mon­archs, 10am — noon, Pup­pet show, crafts and more @ Hunt­ing­ton Beach Cen­tral Park, free park­ing @ 17851 Gold­en­west St. near Tal­bert, info: (714) 842‑4772 or www​.ship​ley​na​ture​.org
• Square Foot Gar­den­ing Work­shop @ the Arbore­tum: 10am-​1pm; Square foot gar­den­ing uses only 20% of the land space of a con­ven­tional gar­den and saves both water and time. There is no till­ing of the soil so any­body can do it. Learn how with Jo Ann Carey. $25/$28 non­mem­bers
  Pre-​registration required, call 626.821.4623

Devi­ous and clever ways in Man­hat­tan Beach

My motto is: Get out of your area! Recently my friend Donna and I had about the most fun 2 peo­ple can have in Man­hat­tan Beach, an upscale enclave just south of Los Ange­les Inter­na­tional Air­port here in SoCal. This beau­ti­ful com­mu­nity has retained it’s iden­tity in spite of being sur­rounded by a huge city. The high­lights of our day included shop­ping in charm­ing bou­tiques, see­ing a movie (Love and Other Drugs-​GO), and din­ner at Rock­n­Fish (www​.rock​n​fishmb​.com), a hap­pen­ing restau­rant with a wild bar scene! As usual, I was on the alert for ideas for my web­site, and found some­thing pretty spe­cial: the best cam­ou­flage job on a junc­tion box I have ever seen. It looked like some­thing printed (as opposed to hand painted) had been applied to the sur­face. Part of a small rec­tan­gu­lar side plant­ing com­posed of suc­cu­lents and other drought tol­er­ant plants, this juicy lit­tle morsel of a gar­den was low main­te­nance and beau­ti­ful to boot! (Gar­den designed by Gar­den Magic Co. @ 310−218−6875)

On the web:

There are a lot of won­der­ful events upcom­ing at the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum including:

Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, Dec. 11 –12/​10am — 4:30 pm — A Clay Fes­ti­val dis­play­ing and sell­ing the work of over 40 artists.

Sun­day Dec. 12/​10am — 3 pm — An old fash­ioned hol­i­day at the Queen Anne Cot­tage: Docent tours of the dec­o­rated for Christ­mas Victorian-​era cot­tage seen in the Fan­tasy Island TV show.

Both are included in admis­sion. www​.arbore​tum​.org

On the Nile River at Aswan, Egypt

It’s 4 in the morn­ing on my first night back from my trip to Egypt — can’t sleep so I may as well write. What a splen­did, dis­turb­ing place Egypt is. It’s inde­scrib­ably dif­fer­ent from the USA — like being on another planet. I was priv­i­leged to be there for 2 weeks with my brother, his wife and our fam­ily friend. We cov­ered Alexan­dria to Abu Sim­bel — that would be Lower Egypt in the North to Upper Egypt in the South (I know it sounds wrong, has to do with the Nile). I’m always look­ing for the gar­den angles when I travel but in this arid land they were few and far between — the desert and its dust always looms in the back­ground. May be a por­tent of things to come in SoCal. I’ve wanted to go to Egypt for as long as I can remem­ber but had no idea what it would be like. Lovers of art, archi­tec­ture and his­tory will adore it — lovers of human and ani­mal rights will not. I am both, and had some dif­fi­culty on the trip. I’m so glad I went, though, and would rec­om­mend it to most trav­el­ers — the Egypt­ian peo­ple are won­der­ful. Just be pre­pared that it is not easy, but the good news is it will be worth it.

For more on the def­i­n­i­tion of Upper and Lower Egypt: http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​U​p​p​e​r​_​a​n​d​_​L​o​w​e​r​_​E​g​ypt

And on the Tem­ple Com­plex at Kar­nak: http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​K​a​r​nak

A dog naps at the Great Tem­ple Com­plex near Luxor

On the web:

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 20: 9:00 am-12:00 pm

Eyes on the Har­vest: part II : Eat the Yard! Organic Edi­ble Gar­den­ing series, with Jonathan Davis, eth­nob­otanist, gar­dener, and pas­sion­ate foodie

Fuller­ton Arboretum

1900 Asso­ci­ated Rd.
Fuller­ton, CA 92831
(714) 278‑8347

Fee $25.00; pre-​registration required

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 20: 10:00 am-12:30 pm

The Har­vest Table and Wreath Work­shop: fea­tur­ing a culi­nary demon­stra­tion, sam­ple menu tast­ing, and wreath construction

Ran­cho Los Alami­tos
6400 Bixby Hill Road
Long Beach, CA 90815
562−431−3541

Fee $55.00; pre-​registration required

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 20, 2010

City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego Founders Day

If you need an extra excuse to visit, swing by this Sat­ur­day for Founders Day! Bill started City Farm­ers Nurs­ery on Octo­ber 20th, 1972 – mak­ing this year our 38th Anniversary!

Sun­day, Novem­ber 21, 2010

Wild­WingsLA in Sher­man Oaks

Wild­WingsLA is lead­ing a fall morn­ing bird walk @ the Sepul­veda Basin Wildlife Area from 8 am — 10 am. For more info and to RSVP: WildwingsLA@​gmail.​com.

For SoCal event infor­ma­tion: www​.paci​fi​chor​ti​cul​ture​.org/​c​a​l​e​n​d​a​r​/​S​o​C​al/

Peo­ple are rais­ing chick­ens every­where. Even on the rooftops of Brook­lyn. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brook­lyn (www​.rooftop​farms​.org/) is home to a flock. Good soil is at a pre­mium in NYC, and chicken manure is the answer. Annie Novak, co-​founder of the high-​rise poul­try farm, says chick­ens are fairly self-​sufficient, mul­ti­func­tional and charm­ing. Another happy chicken farmer is Orne Fox, 13 year old owneer of 23 chick­ens and author of the “Happy Chick­ens Lay Healthy Eggs” blog (www​.Hap​py​chick​enslay​healthyeggs​.blogspot​.com). He offers some expert advice. When my daugh­ter was young we hatched chick­ens and ducks on our din­ing room table, using a sty­ro­foam incu­ba­tor and a spot­light. It was easy and fun and we had no trou­ble find­ing homes for them.

Los Ange­les County, where I live, has lenient rules for keep­ing chick­ens: www​.laan​i​malser​vices​.com/. Other web­sites include: www​.back​yard​chick​ens​.com, www​.wik​i​how​.com/​k​e​e​p​-​c​h​i​c​k​e​n​s​-​i​n​-​a​-​c​ity, and the Mad City Chick­ens DVD @ www​.tara​zod​.com.

On the web: There’s a lot of great stuff going on:

11/​13, Sat­ur­day: Native plant sale fea­tur­ing native plants for foothill gar­dens, Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety, 626−476−4163, adedwards8​@​hotmail.​com, Plan your spring gar­den, Des­canso Gar­dens, www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org/, Fall color walk, Des­canso Gar­dens, www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org/

For more SoCal events: www​.paci​fi​chor​ti​cul​ture​.org/​c​a​l​e​n​d​a​r​/​s​o​C​al/