News you can use

If it’s pictures of lovely native plants you’re after, go to the website of the Theodore Payne Foundation, which last weekend hosted a garden tour across greater Los Angeles. However, here and now, the story is about numbers. The City of Santa Monica has updated figures comparing the water consumption, labor requirements and green waste production of two side-by-side test gardens, one stocked with native plants and irrigated by drip and the other planted with a conventional complement of lawn and shrubs and watered with sprinklers. According to the project’s landscape designer Susanne Jett, since the two gardens were planted in 2004, the native one has used 81 percent less water, required 71 percent fewer hours of labor and produced 38 percent less green waste. Extrapolate those results across LA County’s roughly 1.6 million privately owned homes and it’s clear that one of…

Long Beach is groovy

If Los Angeles Department of Water & Power buildings were landscaped like the people inside believed in water conservation, Southern California would be a far better place. We residents have a way to go for that, unless you live in a city as progressive as Long Beach, whose water department, headquarters pictured above, walks its talk about outdoor water conservation.

As if further proof were needed that Long Beach is groovy, this week the City College is holding a sale of many drought tolerant plants, co-sponsored by the Water Department. Add to this, the Los Angeles Times has a dispatch from Jeff Spurrier about a thriving urban garden there.

Maybe it’s the city’s proximity to the Pacific, or simply that Long Beach selects for sanity, but unlike just about every other water agency in the region, Long Beach Water Department also…

Here it is. Take it.

Map showing Metropolitan's service area and aqueducts. MWD's announcement comes on the back of the state Department of Water Resources reporting snowpack in the California mountains to be 165% of the April 1 average. Single click on the map for the DWR release.

“We anticipate residential consumers and businesses throughout the Southland will continue to use water efficiently,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in a press release signaling that the giant wholesaler will be resuming full deliveries of water to 26 member agencies after several years of shortages. The shortages triggered region-wide conservation programs, whose fates and continued effectiveness are unclear in the momentary face of plenty. Click here for the full release.

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.

Half of February, all of March

The bad news is that almost half of February is missing from the newly updated Dry Garden Events. I was busy and compiling is time-consuming. The good news is what remains of this short month is there. So is March. The programs are first class. If you have an event that is not included that you would like to be noted, do leave a message in the comment box or send details by e-mail to: emily.green [@] mac.com.