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.…
Going native
2008: Garden in transition to strongly native with no built-in irrigation and only occasional hose watering. Plants in image: live oaks, irises, lavender, coyote bush, native honeysuckle, ceanothus, poppies and one very hardy tea rose. Paving part of a zero runoff water-capturing design adapted in Los Angeles to City of Santa Monica standards.
Emily Green, publisher of this website and writer of the “Dry Garden” column for the Los Angeles Times, will be speaking on December 8th at the California Native Plant Society on “A Decade of killing plants and learning from the survivors.” Snapshots, left, are examples from the period, from 1998 to 2008, during which Green began chronicling for the Times the transition from conventional to native gardening.
For information, click here.…
Western datebook: Meet, learn, shop
For those staying out of the malls and in the know, here are a few good events for the upcoming week:
Tuesday December 1:
Public meeting on the proposed Los Angeles Low Impact Development Ordinance
Plant Information with Frank McDonough, Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden
LA River Revitalization Corporation meeting, via LA Creek Freak
Friday December 4:
Winter Cactus and Succulent Show and Sale, Fullerton Arboretum
Saturday December 5:
Go Wild Native Plant Sale, Malibu Creek Watershed Council / Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, Topanga Ranch
Plant Identification, Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, Arcadia
California Friendly Landscape Workshop, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Harbor City
Garden Tour, Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College, El Cajon
California Native Plant Society, Los Angeles and Santa Monica Chapter, Field trip and habitat restoration, Cold Creek Preserve
For more events …
Concrete for coral
Stocking an underwater museum in a Mexican national park off Cancun amuses people but benefits fish. BBC News reports that sculptures such as the one pictured left will be followed by hundreds more in a conservation effort to save imperiled coral reefs. From the article: “The sculptures will be made of PH-neutral concrete, which, it is hoped, will attract algae and marine life and give the local ecosystem a boost. According to the park’s director Jaime Gonzalez, one of the aims is to reduce the pressure on the natural habitat in other areas of the park by luring tourists away from existing coral reef, which has suffered damage from hurricanes and human activity.”
To keep reading, click here.
Thanks to Thirsty in Suburbia for spotting the article. Its editor Gayle Leonard says that she follows water in art precisely because she agrees with British conservationist Paul Jepson, who is …
Southwest Hydrology: the conservation issue
FITTINGLY, Thanksgiving brings a feast for those on a water diet. The new issue of Southwest Hydrology looks at all manner of conservation issues, including how to approach industrial and residential use, seemingly unstoppable population growth in a dry region, the ever-tricky business of standardization of measures, how to design savings programs and affordability. To download a free copy, click here. Via WaterWired.…
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