Posts Tagged ‘gardener’

The Gam­ble House in Pasadena

The week­end of Sep­tem­ber 23 — 26 was a gardener’s dream at the Los Ange­les Arbore­tum. Gar­den geeks galore gath­ered to see, learn and do for 4 days at the PacHort sym­po­sium: Gar­den­ing Under Mediter­ranean Skies VIII. Every­thing was beau­ti­fully orches­trated under the watch­ful eye of Susi Torre-​Bueno of the Pacific Hor­ti­cul­ture Soci­ety. On Thurs­day I enjoyed an all day bus tour in the Pasadena area encom­pass­ing archi­tec­ture and gar­dens. High­lights included the Gam­ble House (www​.gam​ble​house​.org), a Lloyd Wright house, a beau­ti­fully restored Span­ish, a mid-​century mod­ern in the hills and a deli­cious catered lunch under the trees. Fri­day, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day included fun and infor­ma­tive lec­tures in the morn­ing and air con­di­tioned bus tours in the after­noons of 3 gar­dens ( We were all thank­ful for the a/​c as the tem­per­a­ture hov­ered in the low 100’s all week­end). Some of the lec­ture top­ics: Los­ing your lawn, Sus­tain­able wildlife gar­den­ing and Sus­tain­able gar­den­ing. Each par­tic­i­pant recieved a handy brochure with notes on the gar­dens, lec­tures and lec­tur­ers, plant lists and gar­den designers.

Meadow Brook Hall, home of Matilda Dodge Wil­son, Rochester Hills, Michigan

I don’t imag­ine Matilda Dodge Wil­son of the auto­mo­tive Dodges wor­ried too much about being thrifty in her gar­den. We, how­ever, are on a dif­fer­ent planet from Matilda. There­fore I would like to sug­gest other ways to save money on plants besides mar­ry­ing up:

• Plant self-​sowing plants.
• Buy perennials..I replaced my impa­tiens with suc­cu­lents many years ago and have never looked back,
• Trade with friends or gar­den club mem­bers (I’m always try­ing to find a home for succulents).
• Buy plants that are guar­an­teed. If your plant dies you can take it back.
• Sub­scribe to the many nurs­ery web­sites that offer coupons and give noti­fi­ca­tion of sales. I give the web­site addresses on my data­base to the left.
• Buy the next size down from what you would nor­mally buy; many plants grow really fast and some­times you can find some­thing that needs to be re-​potted up to a larger size.
• Buy qual­ity from a cer­ti­fied nursery.
• Buy SoCal accli­mated and/​or native plants which have a bet­ter sur­vival rate.
• And last but not least, be a knowl­edge­able and dili­gent gardener.

You may have won­dered how I got from Los Ange­les to Rochester Hills, Michi­gan. I am for­tu­nate in that my sis­ter Mary Lynn, a won­der­ful gar­dener in her own right, lives there. I love vis­it­ing there in the sum­mer and fall. It’s very fer­tile ground for gar­den ideas. For more infor­ma­tion on Meadow Brook Hall, go to www​.oak​land​.edu/​m​bh/.

Fever­few can treat migraines

This feels like regift­ing, but in the best of pos­si­ble ways. Every few days I receive a “Heartquote” from Heart­math. The quote I received today ties into the gar­den blog­ging theme of Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com:

“Live in each sea­son as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign your­self to the influ­ences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink and botan­i­cal med­i­cines.“
Henry David Thoreau
This web­site is so uplift­ing, with a gor­geous new pic­ture of nature with each quote. To sub­scribe go here.

I also wanted to pass on another ter­rific web­site with an Herb Library. The Peo­ples Phar­macy (http//:peoplespharmacy.com/) has a weekly col­umn in the Health sec­tion of the Los Ange­les Times. Authored by Joe and Terry Grae­don, the site also includes a Drug library, Home rem­edy library, Vitamin/​herb Q & A and Phar­macy Q & A, among other sec­tions. In the Herb library you can get some pretty spe­cific infor­ma­tion on how to use fever­few for migraines (chew 2 – 3 fresh leaves daily) and echi­nacea to treat colds, influenza and other res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tions. As a gar­dener you could grow your own med­i­c­i­nals and know they are organic.

The fol­low­ing is taken from an arti­cle about my site that appeared in the Los Ange­les Times Online Home sec­tion on Tues­day, Octo­ber 20.

Octo­ber 20, 2009 | 1:13 pm

Avid gar­dener and self-​described “nurs­ery geek” Susan Hirsch has launched the new online nurs­ery direc­tory Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com to help sup­port mom-​and-​pop busi­nesses in the Los Ange­les area.

The web­site is meant to help gar­den­ers too by fea­tur­ing 56 nurs­eries in the area, list­ing what type of plants are offered, what kinds of pots or other mer­chan­dise are sold, whether land­scap­ing and main­te­nance ser­vices are offered, plus hours, loca­tions and links. Hirsch also offers inter­est­ing tid­bits such as who sup­plied plants to the Getty Center’s cac­tus gar­den (Cal­i­for­nia Cac­tus Cen­ter in Pasadena) and who offers deliv­ery as well as plant­ing (Jau­regui Nurs­ery in Gar­dena).
Hirsch says she has logged nearly 200,000 hits since the site pre­miered in August. “We’ve got to sup­port our local busi­nesses,” she says, “or they won’t be here anymore.”

– Lisa Boone

Pho­tos clock­wise from left: Mal­ibu Gar­den Cen­ter, Grow in Venice, Green Arrow Nurs­ery in Van Nuys and Cal­i­for­nia Cac­tus Cen­ter in Pasadena by Susan Hirsch

Click to link to the LA Times Home online edi­tion: http://​latimes​blogs​.latimes​.com/​h​o​m​e​_​b​l​og/

I would like to thank Lisa Boone for the great article!