Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles’

Matil­ija poppy, a Cal­i­for­nia native, is avail­able at the VA native nursery.

There is a new native plant nurs­ery in West Los Ange­les. As recently reported in my local news­pa­per, the Palisadian-​Post, it is oper­ated in con­junc­tion with the Ran­cho Santa Ana Botanic Gar­den. The nurs­ery is on the cam­pus of the Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion com­plex in West Los Ange­les near the 405 Free­way and Wilshire Blvd. The man­ager, Kata­rina Eriks­son, will be train­ing the vets in the pro­poga­tion, care and main­te­nance of Cal­i­for­nia native plants. The train­ing will offer them the oppor­tu­nity to con­tinue in this field once they leave the VA. The nurs­ery will ini­tially be stocked with 10,000 plants. They will also be sell­ing roses and cym­bid­i­ums left over from a prior pro­gram. Palisadian-​Post writer Sue Pas­coe writes “Adja­cent to the pro­gram is the first ani­mal ther­apy pro­gram on VA grounds in North Amer­ica. Res­cued exotic birds are cared for by vet­er­ans in a mutual ther­apy pro­gram, which involves vets feed­ing, talk­ing and work­ing with the col­or­ful, noisy avians.” Bot­tom line: West Los Ange­les gar­den­ers don’t have to drive as far to find native plants, while con­tribut­ing to a very worth­while pro­gram. Who wouldn’t want to do that!

The nurs­ery is located at Con­sti­tu­tion Avenue where it inter­sects with Sepul­veda Blvd, just north of Wilshire Blvd and next to the 405 free­way. Hours: opened on week­ends, Wedns­days to Sun­days 9am to 5pm. The man­ager, Kata­rina Eriks­son, can be reached by email at keriksson@​rsabg.​org.

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/.

The Getty Cen­tral Garden

I am priv­i­leged to live near the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Ange­les. Set on a promon­tory above the city with a view to Catalina Island, the Getty Museum is a repos­i­tory of art and archi­tec­ture. The gar­dens there could be con­sid­ered a uniquely home grown piece of art. The cre­ator, Robert Irwin, is actu­ally an artist, not a land­scape archi­tect. He chose to look at the design of the gar­dens as an ever chang­ing liv­ing sea­sonal sculp­ture, cre­at­ing some­thing very spe­cial in the world of landscapes.

My sense is that this gar­den is unique in the world. The plant­i­ngs seem very slap­dash but actu­ally meld seam­lessly. It’s dif­fi­cult to describe and even harder to pho­to­graph. A gar­den of con­trast and a gar­den of con­tra­dic­tions, most of the plants would never be near each other in nature, yet some­how it all works beau­ti­fully. If this post whets your appetite, I hope you will be able to visit some­time. See­ing this gar­den really loos­ened me up and made me want to exper­i­ment with tex­tures, col­ors and unusual combinations.

I need your help as I really want to list every nurs­ery in the coun­ties of Los Ange­les, Ven­tura, Orange County and San Diego on my web­site. Please use my form on the left side of this post to Sub­mit a nurs­ery that have been missed! The first per­son to sub­mit a nurs­ery I haven’t listed will receive the book Plants in the Getty’s Cen­tral Gar­den, by Jim Dug­gan. It con­tains four hun­dred descrip­tions of the grow­ing habits and char­ac­ter­is­tics of some of the fan­tas­tic, unusual plants planted by Robert Irwin in the Getty Museum’s Gar­den, all of which can be used in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

Indian Mal­low, a Cal­i­for­nia native in my garden

Want to get rid of your water-​gobbling lawn? Inter­ested in exotic look­ing plant­i­ngs? Want to sup­port our native plants? You will get great ideas on how to do this at the 7th Annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Gar­den Tour. Tak­ing place this week­end, Sat­ur­day April 10 and Sun­day April 11, 50 of the best native plant gar­dens from all over Los Ange­les and envi­rons will be open to the pub­lic. The web­site (www.Theodore payne.org>Special Events>Garden tour) has pho­tos of every gar­den on the tour. Many peo­ple plan their tour route based on gar­den sit­u­a­tions most sim­i­lar to their own. The plants are labeled, and each gar­den has a plant list avail­able at both the gar­den and online. The cost of this won­der­ful tour is $20.00 — you really get your money’s worth, just like you do with native plants!