Posts Tagged ‘lawn’

Thanks to my friend Joan, this vista is one of count­less I saw in the Ghost Ranch area north­west of Santa Fe. I pho­tographed it from the park­ing lot of the Echo Canyon Amphithe­atre, below. Talk about an embarass­ment of riches!

Echo Canyon

One aspect I love about these areas is that they are not domes­ti­cated at all. There are plenty of rat­tlesnake and cougar warn­ing signs every­where. And one expects to come around the cor­ner and see the Lone Ranger and Tonto (he was my crush).

Way off topic, if you go to Santa Fe, you must go to Terre, the gor­geous restau­rant at Encan­tado Resort. They have these things called cheese tots — seri­ously one of the best things ever, and worth a trip to Santa Fe on their own. If you need any more incen­tive, the Albu­querque air­port is totally user friendly, has free wifi, and there is a train you can take from Albu­querque to Santa Fe (and back!).

We sim­ply need that wild coun­try avail­able to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reas­sur­ing our­selves of our san­ity as crea­tures, a part of the geog­ra­phy of hope.
 – Wal­lace Stegner

On the web:

• Aus­tralian Native Plant Nursery/​Ventura: Plant of the week: Gre­vil­lia “Peaches and cream” — click on but­ton on right.
• Des­canso Gardens/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₁₀: Har­vest Basics, Leave your lawn talks (www​.des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org)
• The Theodore Payne Foundation/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₁₀ and 17: Chu­mash Heal­ing with Native Plants (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Water­wise Botanicals/​Escondido: See coupon on web­site at www​.water​wise​b​otan​i​cals​.com
• Deep Roots Gar­den Cen­ter, Man­hat­tan Beach offers dis­counts to var­i­ous gar­den clubs (www.deep-roots,net)
• Los Ange­les Arboretum/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₁₀: Rain Bar­rels and Rain Gar­dens (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
• Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gardens/​East Val­ley: ⁹⁄₇ Chi­nese and Japan­ese Gar­dens and ⁹⁄₈ Hawaii’s Trop­i­cal Gardens
• City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego: Get­ting Started on Yeast Breads (www​.city​farm​er​snurs​ery​.com)

Denise’s front yard
Try as I may my pho­tos can­not do jus­tice to Denise Crosby’s lovely front yard! As crowded as it seems it actu­ally looks much larger than it did as a lawn. The play­ful shapes and col­ors belong to mostly drought tol­er­ant plants: sta­t­ice, laven­der and suc­cu­lents. My friend Denise is not a land­scape designer, at least pro­fes­sion­ally. She is an actor (www​.denise​crosby​.net) well known for her role on Star Trek as Natasha (Tasha) Yar (www​.startrek​.com/​Denise Crosby). She is also star­ring in a play at the Odyssey The­atre in Los Ange­les July 8 — July 31. Costar­ring Jamie Rose, the play is called Revis­it­ing Wild­fire (www​.revis​it​ing​wild​fire​.com).

From the driveway

On Sun­day, June 12, 1:00 pm — 3:30pm, the G2 Gallery will host a talk, Reimag­in­ing the Cal­i­for­nia Lawn, by Bart O’Brien and Carol Born­stein spon­sored by the Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild Flow­ers and Native Plants (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org). They are native plant experts who have writ­ten the book Reimag­in­ing the Cal­i­for­nia Lawn. G2 Gallery, 1503 Abbot Kin­ney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291 $25 members/$35 non­mem­bers. call (818) 768‑1802 to register.

Casa La Paz at Tree of Life Nursery

Tree of Life Nurs­ery in Orange County has been a leader in encour­ag­ing home­own­ers to lose their lawns. The infor­ma­tion below is taken directly from their web­site. It’s a fan­tas­tic des­ti­na­tion nurs­ery to visit any­way and now they are giv­ing away a ter­rific sem­i­nar, plus a bar­beque lunch on the 18th:

Replace Your Lawn Work­shops this June — Our Four-​Part Series con­densed to Two!

Our Replace Your Lawn Series designed to help you learn how to replace your lawn with beau­ti­ful and sus­tain­able Cal­i­for­nia native plants will be pre­sented in its entirety this June on two Sat­ur­days, June 11 and June 18th, 9:30 – 11 am. Each Sat­ur­day will cover two parts of our pop­u­lar Replace Your Lawn Work­shops. Please join us and get twice as much infor­ma­tion in almost the same amount of time. Longer-​distance cus­tomers, these work­shops are for you! Sat­ur­day June 11, 2011 — Replace Your Lawn I and II — 9:30 am — 11:00 am

9:30 am — 10:10 am — Kill the Grass!
Learn the basics of how to kill your lawn. We’ll cover the basic steps of iden­ti­fy­ing the grass and plants you have, fol­lowed by appro­pri­ate mea­sures for removal of the exist­ing land­scape to make way for a sus­tain­able native plant gar­den.

10:10 am — 11:00 am — Design Ele­ments.
Guest speaker and land­scape designer Rob Moore will return to Tree of Life to lead the Design Ele­ments ses­sion. This will be struc­tured as a dis­cus­sion for­mat address­ing var­i­ous issues you may have with your prop­erty (come ready to dis­cuss!). Rob will address some design para­me­ters and cri­te­ria by pro­vid­ing ideas on plant selec­tion, hard­scape, and how to orga­nize your thoughts around a theme!

Sat­ur­day June 18, 2011 — Replace Your Lawn III and IV — 9:30 am — 11:00 am

9:30 am — 10:10 am — Cre­at­ing and Car­ing
Come learn more about how to ini­tially install and care for your plants and how to plan for the long term well-​being of your native gar­den. We will intro­duce plant selec­tion by dis­cussing the impor­tance of struc­ture and bal­ance using our “Thirty Plants” plant list as the pal­lette.

10:10 am — 11:00 am — Plant Selec­tion: Thirty Plants
We’ll dis­cuss foun­da­tion plants, trees, shrubs, flow­er­ing peren­ni­als, accents, and ground­cov­ers with plenty of plant com­bi­na­tion ideas. There is a lot to con­sider when pick­ing out your plants, but we’ll keep it sim­ple and help you break it down to what you need to know! Join us!

Sat­ur­day June 18, 2011

12:00 noon — Stick around for our Cus­tomer Appre­ci­a­tion BBQ also known as, “Yes Vir­ginia, there IS a Free Lunch (just not very often)!”

Tree of Life web­site: www​.cal​i​for​ni​a​na​tive​plants​.com or go to Tree of Life Nurs­ery under Orange County Nurs­eries to the left of this post.

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.