The Dry Garden: ‘American Meadow’
CALIFORNIA nurseryman John Greenlee has a new book, “The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn.”
Yay?
It should be yay. In 1987, he created what is now the oldest specialty grass nursery on the West Coast. Greenlee Nursery, first in Pomona and now in Chino, is where artist Robert Irwin went when landscaping the grounds of the Getty Center. During the last 22 years, as a nurseryman, garden designer and writer, Greenlee has emerged as the single most recognizable voice of the Western anti-lawn movement.
Click here to keep reading this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times.…
Workshops explain new statewide landscape irrigation ordinance
Use of lawn will be reduced indirectly in AB 1881 by a reduction in allowed evapotranspiration rates. Photo: Florian's photostream on Flickr.
CALIFORNIA’S new ordinance on water use in landscapes, AB 1881, became law in September. Counties and cities will be required to comply with it, or stricter local standards, by January 1, 2010. Starting tomorrow (Tuesday October 20th) in Los Angeles, Wednesday in San Diego and Thursday in Chino, workshops will be held around the state to explain what this involves. Click here for details and a state-wide schedule, along with information on how to register by e-mail. Admission is free.
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Color me stupid
Infrared aerial photographs help the Southern Nevada Water Authority identify lawn during a water crisis in the Mojave Desert city. Computer treatment of the photographs pinpoints the most wasteful use of water on grass -- on front lawns -- shown here in yellow. Back lawns are shown in green, trees in red and the pools in blue. Photo: Southern Nevada Water Authority via the Las Vegas Sun
TODAY’S Las Vegas Sun has an interesting story on the forced retirement of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s aerial landscape conservation program.
The gist of it is that Las Vegas wants to save water by aerial identification of water wasters, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority can’t afford to keep the program going.
The SNWA skint? Since when? A Friday story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the Authority had just spent $4m …
The Dry Garden: Weeding in the rain
With the first rain of the season fast evaporating from the tree leaves outside the window, it feels as if I may never again enjoy perfect gloom. So much rain in Los Angeles fails to come at all; other times it comes down too hard, and so often it falls at night. By contrast, this week water met daylight. From morning till night, the atmosphere was like gray milk, making visibility down among the plants incomparably good. Without its normal cover of glare, the garden stood for inspection … By Wednesday afternoon, it was time to admit a knuckle-scraping truth. The job that needed doing was weeding.
To keep reading the Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times, click here.…
The Dry Garden: Irises happen
IN THE fleeting scheme of nature, irises happen. This story is about a concentration of them in Moorpark.
Part of a larger family of that includes lilies, crocuses and gladiolas, irises are native to many parts of the world. The fire-prone hills of southern Ventura County are not one of them, nurseryman Bob Sussman says. It’s too hot. He reckons that their native range in California ends roughly in Santa Barbara.
Yet irises started appearing in Moorpark in numbers when Sussman began breeding them here five years ago.
To keep reading this week’s Los Angeles Times column “The Dry Garden” click here…
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