The Dry Garden: Gravel is so much more than a way to cover up dirt
David Fross's garden at Native Sons Nursery in Arroyo Grande, CA
WHEN the son of friends began using his mother’s cellphone to photograph the ground at a Sunday lunch in the garden, we grown-ups laughed. “Look at Leon.” But when Leon’s mother began looking at her son’s photographs, then showed them to me, Leon had the last laugh. There, frame after frame, were abstract compositions of mesmerizing beauty. Were Leon’s downward-looking portraits to have a title, it might have been: “Dappled Sunlight on Gravel and Fallen Leaves.”
Gravel is so much more than a way to cover up dirt. As Leon noticed, its ability to catch light makes the garden floor a dancing field of shadows. Gravel also transforms the way heat, coolness and water are retained. Then, as powerfully as anything, gravel brings music to the garden. There is nothing at once so pleasant and intriguing as the sound …
Metropolitan board votes to resume rebate program
YOU CAN be too popular. The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California last month suspended payments for its conservation rebate program after being told that that the program might be $24m in the red. Today, after hearing from auditors that the backlog was only $14.2m and that the cost of water saved through conservation was still cheaper than buying supplemental new water, the board concluded that its main failure was success. It subsequently voted to cover the rebate backlog.…
The week that was, 7/6-12/2009
“El Nino arrives.” Click on the map of sea surface temperature anomalies to be taken to the July 9 announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
”If I was a water manager in southern Utah, I’d be paying attention.” Larry Dunn, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office on the prospect of an El Nino. Salt Lake Tribune
“A Christmas gift in July?” The Redding Record Searchlight on the prospect of an El Nino, via Aquafornia
“If next year is average or below average in water, we’ll have very serious problems.” Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, Wall Street Journal via Aquafornia…
Barrel cactuses admired
Photo: Debra Lee Baldwin via the Los Angeles Times. Click on the cactus to be taken to Baldwin's article.
THE MOST stylish advocate of succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin, turns her eye to barrel cactuses in this week’s Los Angeles Times Home Section. To read, (do read), click here.…
Why the crisis at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden affects all Californians
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Photo: Marilee Kuhlmann
FOR THOSE who missed it, last weekend the LA Times followed up on the troubles at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. A very capable round up it was too. Yet, roughly three months since crisis gripped one of California’s most important botanic gardens, there remains a great unsaid. That is: As a matter of urgency, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden must reinstate Carol Bornstein.
The April decision to dismiss the former director of horticulture, a 28-year veteran of the garden, is described as a matter of cost efficiency. But if the garden can afford a highly paid PR to gloss over the crisis that has driven half of its volunteers from service, then there is no conceivable rationale for sacking a woman who is the living embodiment of the garden’s mission to foster stewardship of the natural world through inspired learning, rigorous scholarship, …
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