The Dry Garden: A novel place
Posted on | April 23, 2010 | No Comments
Read the novel “Blame” and it comes as no surprise that author Michelle Huneven gardens, or that she is Southern Californian. There is no inventing the familiarity in the descriptions of buckwheat “drying to a dark iron red,” the hurl-me weight after a rain of a clump of freshly pulled long grass, or how wildfire embers fly “like fat, radiant insects.”
The surprise comes on seeing her foothill garden for the first time, and realizing that such an overwhelmingly sensuous world is so accessible — that we all could all fill the land around our homes with scents, textures, flowers, fruit and vegetables if only we gave up lawn. Click here to keep reading The Dry Garden interview with Michelle Huneven in the Los Angeles Times.
And click here for information about this Sunday’s Mar Vista tour of 80 gardens that have all forsaken turf for food and flowers. It’s fabulous and free.
Glen Canyon Dam and the pill from MIT
Posted on | April 22, 2010 | 7 Comments
This one is strictly for water wonks. Now that I’ve cleared the room, Richard Spotts of the Great Basin Water Network alerted me to this paper from the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. “Collaborative Planning and Adaptive Management in Glen Canyon: A Cautionary Tale” looks at the impact of changing environmental regulation on the operations of the second largest dam on the Colorado River. It then wades through the on-going efforts to resolve the succession of shit storms that followed the 1956 construction of Glen Canyon Dam.
The authors, two from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the third from the University of California, Irvine write, “The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program should not be considered a success because it has failed to address effectively the concerns that led to its creation in the first place, including: (1) developing a stakeholder-supported operating plan responsive to increased understanding; (2) averting litigation and other attempts to resolve conflict outside of the AMP context; and (3) protecting the downstream ecology, including endangered species.”
Strong stuff in the dullest possible terms. But bear with me/them.
Click here to be scandalized, I mean informed
From turf to teaching campus
Posted on | April 22, 2010 | No Comments
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County today unveiled plans to convert former lawn into a 3.5 acre living wilderness exhibit. According to the press release, eleven thematic zones—Urban Edge, Transition Garden, Car Park, Living Wall, Entrance Plaza, Urban Wilderness, Pollinator Garden, Shadow Garden, Get Dirty Zone, Home Garden and 1913 Garden—will be interwoven with landscape features such as a pond and dry creek, groves of trees, and walking paths. Click here for more information on the gardens, which are expected to open next year.
The pond is one of the North Campus’ centerpieces, where visitors and school groups can engage in living habitat filled with animals ranging from Western Pond Turtles to dragonflies. Rendering by Mia Lehrer + Associates. Courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Tags: chance of rain > Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County > North Campus > teaching gardens
Phantom boxing with faceless bureaucrats
Posted on | April 22, 2010 | No Comments
The Los Angeles Times reports today that the Mayor is lashing out at “unidentified high-level bureaucrats” within the city’s Department of Water and Power.
It is these mandarin civil servants, we are to believe, who are to blame for thwarting reform, for the mixed messaging about our City finances and for failure of clean energy initiatives.
Did he mention how they run around at night and purposefully cause water main breaks?
Click here to keep reading
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles Department of Water and Power > Mayor Villaraigosa
Christmas in April
Posted on | April 21, 2010 | 2 Comments
Homeowners unite for water conservation and environmental quality. This garden on Redwood Avenue in Los Angeles is one of the 80 on the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase tour this Sunday, April 25, from 2-6pm. Admission Free. Click on the image for more information.
Poppies and artichokes at a Redwood Avenue garden in Los Angeles, part of Sunday's Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase. "What says California better?" asks homeowner-designer Marilee Kuhlmann. Photo: Leigh Curran. Click on the image for a map to the Kuhlmann-Curran garden.
Regular readers of this site know its aversion to chronological gimmicks. Water Day. Ride Your Bike to Work Day. Ignore the Days Day. But this Earth Day event is so damn impressive, so much more than an empty hoorah by self-styled goodniks, that it amounts to Christmas in April. Every year residents of Mar Vista invite the public into their gardens to help anyone who is interested learn how to convert turf into gardens that are spilling over with food and flowers.
“This free, self-guided garden tour is all about water conservation,” write the organizers. “These homeowners have all made choices to eliminate or reduce turf lawns and have created gardens that thrive in our Southern California climate while using minimal water … There are 80 gardens, all in Mar Vista, and the homeowners will open their gardens to you on Sunday April 25th from 2 to 6. They will be there to answer your questions and share their passion and their resources.”
Click here for more information, on Sunday just go to the sign-in booth at 3972 Coolidge Avenue in Los Angeles.
This is a wonderful project. If every neighborhood had one, if every community dreamed aloud quite so brilliantly, and quite so beautifully, think of the possibilities: Instead of the roar of lawnmowers and stories of water crisis on the news, it would be salad days. Click here for more information. See you on the tour.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > gardening > Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase
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