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.…
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, …
Sober from lawn
KILLING grass is relatively easy. Don’t water it. However, creating a beautiful, low-maintenance garden in its stead is the hard part. Help is at hand. From a large selection of dry gardening courses offered this summer, the theme that dominates is how to transition from lawn to a drought tolerant garden, one step at a time.
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How does your garden grow?
WHILE this could be seen as a case of the dry polling the dry, when Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden asks the gardeners it serves about how it may serve them better, it is incumbent on the dry gardening community to respond.
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After the lawn
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