The Dry Garden: ‘Canyon Prince’
OF ALL the creatures that disperse plants in nature, we humans may be the quirkiest. Take how we distribute New Zealand flax. We fight back its blades along what seems like every other front walk.
This column is to commend an indigenous alternative to New Zealand flax for the gardens of greater Los Angeles: a type of giant wild rye called Canyon Prince. Ninety-nine percent of the time that flax is used in California, this cultivar of Leymus condensatus could perform the same function, but better.
To keep reading the lastest installment of the Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
The Dry Garden: ‘Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies’
The idea that suburban gardens might be “sustainable” came late to Southern California. Modern Los Angeles was sold on the promise that anything grows. Exotic plants were status symbols. Sunshine was constant, and the only worry about water was finding plants best suited to go next to the swimming pool. More than a century later, the fantasy style is out. Sustainable is in. There’s only one problem. What does sustainable mean?
Landscape architect Owen Dell has cut through the eco-babble to offer not just a definition, but also a how-to book. The Santa Barbara-based author of “Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies,” published by Wiley this year, begins by defining sustainability.
Click here to keep reading this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times.
The Dry Garden: On sage and size
MANY gardens go without sage in California but at the cost of soul. Sage is to the West what lavender is to France.
Sage, or in botanical terms salvia, has it all: Its pungent aromas contain the signature scent of the Western chaparral. The silvers, grays and greens of its foliage anchor the local Craftsman color wheel, and the long-running show of flowers come in a spectrum of white to pink to mauve to scarlet to purple to indigo to sky blue.
Many sages have long had medicinal and culinary applications, but for modern Californians it’s a balm to the eyes. A felt-like quality to the foliage, combined with a loose-branching habit, allows sage to diffuse the harshest midday sunshine rather than reflect it. Sages do not need fertilizer, and in fact they shrivel at the suggestion. Few other plants attract more pollinators…
The Dry Garden: Harvesting rain
IT STANDS to reason that some of the most progressive environmentalists in Los Angeles work for the Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Sanitation. They are the front line between what we discard and the environment.
Last week we looked at their fight to triage our system for recycling food scraps. This week the subject is their battle to capture rainfall before it enters L.A.’s massive storm drain system.
The bureau, along with a leading Southland water agency, the state Legislature and environmental nonprofit groups such as TreePeople and the Green LA Coalition are all moving to make harvesting rainwater as routine as recycling. To keep reading The Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
For the agenda of a November 13, 2009 public meeting on the draft Low Impact Development ordinance due to go before the City Council soon, click here.
From Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, this report from the…
The Dry Garden: How green is your green bin?
Jorge Santiesteban estimates that food scraps constitute roughly 15% to 25% of what goes into black garbage bins in Los Angeles. The city’s solid resources manager has been struck by the seasonal changes in how much food we throw away since 1997, when, in the week after Thanksgiving, he had a garbage truck empty its contents for him. Santiesteban picked through the trash, putting like objects with like until a clear picture emerged. This is what is known in recycling circles as “waste characterization.”
As bad as it must have been for Santiesteban during that November audit of rotting giblets and pie crusts, his San Francisco counterpart might have had it worse. Waste characterizations done there show that as much as 30% of San Francisco’s garbage has been composed of food scraps.
Now the race is on to see which of the two cities can divert more kitchen waste from garbage trucks to…
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