Posts Tagged ‘planting’

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

Altadena gar­den tour, 2009

More web­sites worth click­ing on, con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous post…

San Diego:

• www​.daylily​hill​.com: a sec­tion show­cas­ing “real gar­dens”, book reviews, recipes
• www​.Cedros​gar​dens​.com: They offer a vari­ety of classes, notes from past classes, offer a sharp­en­ing service.
• www​.Laspili​tas​.com: Chock full of plant­ing, design and main­te­nance infor­ma­tion for native plants; Cal­i­for­nia cli­mate info.
• www​.Mis​sion​hill​snurs​ery​.com: Really nice blog
• www​.Simp​son​snurs​ery​.com: If you like to com­bine gar­den­ing with vin­tage cars, this is your website!
• www​.wal​teran​der​son​.com: classes, events, newsletter
• www​.MBnurs​ery​.com: A fun web­site to expe­ri­ence and see what is possible.

Ven­tura County:

• www​.Aus​tralian​plants​.com: in depth infor­ma­tion on Aus­tralian plants, pho­tos of design projects using Aus­tralian plants, resources for Aus­tralian plants, cus­tom plant lists
• www​.nopali​tonurs​ery​.com: classes offered on Cal­i­for­nia native and drought tol­er­ant plants
• www​.ottoand​sons​.com: for all things rose!

On the Web: Thurs­day, Sept. 16, 9:30am — noon: Great plants for fall plant­ing with Matthew Roberts. Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum in Arca­dia, call (626) 821‑4623.

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.

Patrick Blanc’s Marche des Halles/​Avignon, France

Is there any­one out there who doesn’t love ver­ti­cal gar­den­ing? It makes me swoon!!!! Such a sim­ple but bril­liant con­cept, espe­cially as inter­preted by the French botanist Patrick Blanc (http://​ping​mag​.jp/​2​0​0​6​/​1​2​/​0​8​/​v​e​r​t​i​c​a​l​-​g​a​r​d​e​n​-​t​h​e​-​a​r​t​-​o​f​-​o​r​g​a​n​i​c​-​a​r​c​h​i​t​e​c​t​ure/​). If you want to see an incred­i­ble “gown” made entirely from plants, go on this web­site. And the lovely Patrick is work­ing on a San Fran­cisco school instal­la­tion that he plans to exe­cute in Cal­i­for­nia natives.

It is not so chal­leng­ing to cre­ate a ver­ti­cal gar­den at home if you avail your­self of WOOLLY POCKETS from Woolly Pocket Gar­den Com­pany (www​.Wool​lypocket​.com). Woolly Pock­ets are wall hung pouches that have two main com­po­nents: a breath­able felt exte­rior, and a built-​in mois­ture bar­rier on the inte­rior. The breath­able por­tion is made of 100% recy­cled plas­tic bot­tles that have been indus­tri­ally felted. The mois­ture bar­rier is made accord­ing to mil­i­tary stan­dards for imper­me­abil­ity. The web­site details sizes, instruc­tions and prices. The com­pany has 2 major instal­la­tions, both in Los Ange­les, on their web­site: Mar­vi­mom and SmogShoppe.

As far as plant­ing these pup­pies, suc­cu­lents seem like the per­fect solu­tion. Two excel­lent Los Ange­les nurs­ery resources for suc­cu­lents are Cosentino’s Nurs­ery in Mal­ibu (see Mal­ibu nurs­eries) and the Cal­i­for­nia Cac­tus Cen­ter (see East Val­ley nurseries).

Smogshoppe instal­la­tion using Wool­ley Pockets