The Dry Garden: Mar Vista is groovy, too
Posted on | April 22, 2011 | No Comments
The Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase turns 3 on April 30. More than 80 homes will be open to the public. Twenty garden designers will be on hand to discuss landscapes that save water and power. Thirteen homes will have their solar power installers there to explain the ins and outs of leasing or buying panels. It’s a safe bet that there will be some young capitalists seizing on the influx of an estimated 2,000 people to sell lemonade. Also expect a few glad-handers, because this project of the Mar Vista Community Council is a honey pot for politicians. It’s genuine community action and it’s insanely popular. Click here to keep reading The Dry Garden column on a miracle of community organizing in Los Angeles.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase > The Los Angeles Times
Long Beach is groovy
Posted on | April 20, 2011 | No Comments
If Los Angeles Department of Water & Power buildings were landscaped like the people inside believed in water conservation, Southern California would be a far better place. We residents have a way to go for that, unless you live in a city as progressive as Long Beach, whose water department, headquarters pictured above, walks its talk about outdoor water conservation.
As if further proof were needed that Long Beach is groovy, this week the City College is holding a sale of many drought tolerant plants, co-sponsored by the Water Department. Add to this, the Los Angeles Times has a dispatch from Jeff Spurrier about a thriving urban garden there.
Maybe it’s the city’s proximity to the Pacific, or simply that Long Beach selects for sanity, but unlike just about every other water agency in the region, Long Beach Water Department also gives a damn about fish.
That is reflected in ways fish can appreciate by the department’s moving a year before the City of Los Angeles to relax pressure on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta when emergency pumping restrictions were put in place to protect migrating smelt, sturgeon and salmon. It’s reflected in ways that people can appreciate in its lobby. See the framed drawing above.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > landscaping > Long Beach Water Department
Just say, “Hell, no.”
Posted on | April 18, 2011 | No Comments
Pampas grass invades Encinas Creek in San Diego County. Source: California Invasive Plant Council. Click on the image to the taken to Cal IPC's "Don't Plant a Pest" site.
The environment writer’s environment writer, Ilsa Setziol, has this piece on invasive plants in the new edition of High Country News.
To everyone who ever admired Mexican feather grass, read it.
To Ilsa, who in addition to producing Rambling LA also contributes to this site, the Los Angeles Times, KQED’s Climate Watch and public radio, how nice to see you in HCN.
End of days and weeks
Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 1 Comment
As we enter Native Plant Week in California and approach Earth Day world-wide, this advocate of native plants and appreciator of the Earth will observe them exactly the same way that I observe World Water Day. I won’t. Chronological gimmicks don’t work. Worthwhile goings on in April packaged up by others as part of Native Plant week are in this blog part of the normal run of Dry Garden Events.
Edible empire
Posted on | April 15, 2011 | No Comments
If you are considering converting part of your yard, patio or even the edges of your front steps into a kitchen garden this spring, it merits checking Rosalind Creasy’s “Edible Landscaping” (Sierra Club, 2010) out of the library. While you’re at it, consider looking up its nearly 30-year-old forerunner “The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping,” also by Creasy, and the Sunset Western Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2007).
Click here to keep reading about the 2010 update of Creasy’s classic in this week’s “The Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times.
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