Rain barrels

“Thanks to relentless marketing, rain barrels are enjoying a potent dose of moral buzz that is fast turning them into a 21st century version of the Great Tulip Mania,” writes Owen Dell.

To see what else the author of “Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies” has to say about saving our water supply 55 gallons at a time, click here.

The Dry Garden: Boxy

Natalie Saavedra (3rd grader) at San Jose-Edison Academy School Garden in Covina, CA. Photo: Emily Green

Most people, save Atlantic magazine’s resident contrarian Caitlin Flanagan, agree that school gardens are a good thing. They encourage experimentation, critical thinking and healthful eating. Done right, they raise parental participation in schools. At their best, they’re as cute as a third-grader grubbing for worms.

Too often, however, teachers are defeated from the outset by the burden of installing and then maintaining a garden in addition to a classroom.

Click here to keep reading about a workable new model for schools in “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times.

Japan quake, fifth strongest in world since 1900, leads to a Pacific-wide tsunami

Click here for estimated arrival times on the North American coast of a Pacific-wide tsunami generated by an 8.9* magnitude earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan. Click here for warnings and advisories for the US Pacific Coast. The highest surges are predicted for north of Point Concepcion. However, in Southern California, stay away from the ocean. Most importantly, click here for the Red Cross as it readies to send aid to Japan, and here, if you can bear it, to be taken to a photo essay in the Los Angeles Times revealing the scale of the Japanese catastrophe the morning after what now ranks as the fifth strongest* quake recorded since 1900.

*Updated post. 3/14/2011: The US Geological Survey joined its Japanese opposite number in recalibrating the quake as having been magnitude 9.0. Click here for the announcement. The recalibration makes it a tie for the

Unpaving paradise

This photo essay tells the story of a successful effort between 2003 and 2007 to intercept a re-paving project at 24th Street School in West Adams, Los Angeles. The bid: stop replacement of old asphalt with new asphalt and instead seize the opportunity to introduce teaching gardens, shade, play equipment and freeway buffering into the schoolyard. What military strategists call “mission drift” led to it also involving a full-blown garden teaching program.

The Dry Garden: Streetwise

It was spotting a pumpkin identified as a gourd that prompted Leigh Adams to write John Lyons. She was (and is) an expert in gourd-craft as well as the artist-in-residence at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Lyons, whose website carried the photo of the pumpkin, was (and is) a garden designer and regular lecturer at the Arboretum. Yet until Adams wrote, they had never met. That was two years ago. They now joke that they are “as much in love as a non-couple could be.” And they have a baby, a four-month-old garden that is brimming with art, native sages, fruit trees and irrigated by rainwater harvested from the street.

Click here to keep reading “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times.

 

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