Posts Tagged ‘gardening’

A cac­tus vignette

My first night in New Mex­ico was spent at the home of col­lege friends Tom and Betsy. They live in Albu­querque, in a charm­ing area called Cor­ralles. Betsy is an artist and the vignette above is a great exam­ple of her artis­tic eye.

New Mex­i­cans can teach us a lot about los­ing the lawn! This is their front yard; the back is sim­i­lar. It’s a whole dif­fer­ent world of gar­den­ing there.

I really covet this big boy! He sur­vived a hel­la­cious light­en­ing and thun­der­storm the night before. I have never been so fright­ened in my life! It sounded like War of the Worlds out there. (We never get thun­der­storms where I live.)

On the web:

• Des­canso Gardens/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₁₇: Organic Veg­etable Gar­den­ing (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
• The Theodore Payne Foundation/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄17: Gar­den­ing with Cal­i­for­nia Native Bulbs @ 10am, Chu­mash Heal­ing with Native Plants @ 12pm (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Los Ange­les Arboretum/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₁₅: New Roots talk with Emily Green and 9/17:Organic fruit and veg­etable gar­den­ing (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
• City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego: ⁹⁄₁₈: Grow­ing and pre­serv­ing herbs (www​.city​farm​er​snurs​ery​.com)
• San Diego Fall Home and Gar­den Show: 9/​16 — 18 (www​.fall​home​gar​den​show​.com)

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

Pro­duce cal­en­dar from Krank Press

No one is going to be sorry to see the back of 2010! What bet­ter way to wel­come the New Year than with a new cal­en­dar with a gar­den­ing theme. For instance, the produce/​planting cal­en­dar by Krank Press in Sil­ver­lake. This lit­tle gem gives plant­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for each month and tells what is in sea­son at the Farm­ers Mar­kets. The let­ter­press cal­en­dar, a tidy 5 1/​2″ X 8 1/​2″, are avail­able for South­ern and North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and the Pacific North­west. They are not dated and are reusable year after year. It dou­bles as a great birthday/​anniversary cal­en­dar. Order through www​.reform​school​rules​.com at $23.00 each.

Another inter­est­ing site is www​.gar​den​ing​bythe​moon​.com. As you might have guessed, the authors espouse gar­den­ing by the phases of the moon, a tech­nique that can speed the ger­mi­na­tion of seeds. Tests have proven that seeds will absorb the most water at the time of the full moon.

A site with dozens of gar­den related cal­en­dars, www​.zaz​zle​.com/​2​0​1​1​+​f​l​o​w​e​r​s​+​c​a​l​e​n​d​ars has over 1200 theme cal­en­dars devoted to gar­den­ing includ­ing Van Gogh’s flow­ers, koi, New Eng­land wild flow­ers, dahlias and car­niv­o­rous plants.

How­ever you choose to keep track of the days, I wish you a healthy, happy and pros­per­ous 2011!

On The Web:

Jan. 3/​Monday: Choice Cal­i­for­nia Native Plants for the Home Gar­den/​Speaker: Gene Rad­cliff of the Tree of Life Nurs­ery and Hor­ti­cul­ture instruc­tor at Sad­dle­back College/

Pacific Pal­isades Gar­den Club, 7:30 PM @ the Pacific Pal­isades Woman’s Club, 901 Haver­ford Avenue, Pacific Pal­isades 90272

Trey Rat­cliff works his magic

It’s funny how top­ics can be found to blog about. I was lis­ten­ing to a radio show about com­put­ers and elec­tron­ics a few weeks ago. They had a guest on, Trey Rat­cliff, a pho­tog­ra­pher who is an expert on HDR pho­tog­ra­phy, a sub­ject I had never heard of. I was very excited when I went to his web­site and learned what HDR pho­tog­ra­phy is. I saw the most gor­geous pho­tog­ra­phy I have ever seen. The fol­low­ing is a sum­mary from Trey’s web­site about HDR:

In image pro­cess­ing, com­puter graph­ics and pho­tog­ra­phy, high dynamic range imag­ing HDRI or just HDR) is a set of tech­niques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance

Trey’s land­scapes from his trav­els really grab me on a vis­ceral level. I feel like I’m there, and since I’m crazy about trav­el­ing, it’s an easy web­site to love. Go to: Stuck​in​cus​toms​.com.

Gul­foss, a frozen water­fall in Iceland

On the Web:

Sat­ur­day, Dec. ⁴⁄₁:00 – 3:00 pm
Gar­den­ing in the Shade: From Trade-​offs to Pay-​offs: a class with hor­ti­cul­tur­ist Carol Bornstein

Thurs­day, Dec. 9 7:30 pm
Hol­i­day Greens & Flo­ral Dec­o­ra­tions:
a demon­stra­tion with Chris­tine Saunders