Rambling LA: From fire, flowers

Posted on | October 24, 2009 | 1 Comment

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Detail from the cover of "California's Fading Wildflowers" by Richard A. Minnich, UC Press. For more information, click on the hillsides.

By Ilsa Setziol

“WE GET excited after fires,” admits Ileene Anderson, a Los Angeles-based public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “In the chaparral in Southern California, fires burn down all that thick impenetrable shrubbiness. With that over-story cleared out, it allows for terrific blooms of annuals or short-lived perennials that only show up after fires.”

Click here to keep reading about fire-following flowers and for a link to a November 7th public meeting on local chaparral after the fire sponsored by the City of Glendale and the Theodore Payne Foundation

Western datebook: Chance of plants

Posted on | October 21, 2009 | No Comments


IF YOU MISSED THE Theodore Payne Foundation’s plant sale earlier this month, or couldn’t face the 5 Freeway to get out to Sun Valley, no worry. Phone the Foundation, tell them what you want, and pick it up from TPF’s Sunday stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

Elsewhere around Southern California, native plant sales are in full swing.

October 24: California Native Plant Society, Orange County Chapter, San Juan Capistrano

October 24: California Native Plant Sale, El Dorado Nature Center, Long Beach

November 7: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont

Click here for listings of dry garden events through December. If you have an event that you would like listed, please e-mail me at: emily.green [@] mac.com


Western datebook: Chance of food

Posted on | October 20, 2009 | No Comments

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Urban farmers. Most garden tours happen in the spring, but the Los Angeles Community Gardening Council is staging a two day event this weekend with workshops and garden tours. It starts downtown at FarmLab, then wends all over town. For information, click on the kiwi.

Image of the day: Beautiful Blighty

Posted on | October 19, 2009 | No Comments

Food-for-thought-Aberdeen-002-1-1IT’S not surprising that more than half of the winning images in the Guardian newspaper’s UK-wide landscape photography competition involved water. Another name for the place is the British Isles. What is striking is a creeping urban edge in a normally pastoral style of photography. While the winner featuring sunrise over the Isle of Skye was a lyrical ideal, this image by John Parminter, “Food for thought,” finds beauty and horror in its image of an abandoned shopping cart in the harbor of Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland.

For the full series, click here. The images will be on exhibit at London’s National Theatre after December 5th.

Workshops explain new statewide landscape irrigation ordinance

Posted on | October 19, 2009 | 1 Comment

Use of lawn will be reduced indirectly in AB 1881 by a reduction in allowed evapotranspiration rates.

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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