Christmas in April
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 …
Do nothing, do good
This 2009 photo by Allen J. Schaben of the Los Angeles Times captures the dynamics of Southern California's native watersheds in one shot, from snowcapped local mountains to the Pacific.
As a spring heat wave sends the snow on LA’s mountains gushing into the storm drain system, most of us can only dream of what the county would be like if its rivers and streams had not been channelized or buried. But rather than wait for a return to Eden, there are things that we can do to protect the Pacific as the snowmelt is plated out to sea.
That is goof off. …
The Dry Garden: “Spontaneous urban vegetation”
Weeds do so much cooling, aerating and stabilizing of vacant lots and roadsides that Harvard horticulturist Peter Del Tredici has taken to celebrating them as “spontaneous urban vegetation.”
But when a mother lode of seed from these fast-breeding, water-hungry plants germinates in a garden, particularly a drought-tolerant garden in Southern California, it’s war. It’s a water war.
By weeding after winter rains, you can allocate water to the right plants and cut off the thirsty interlopers. You’ll snare the seeds of weeds before they can spread. You’ll also clear out a sweaty little under-zone of greedy greens that block air and light from the plants that you want to thrive.
Click here to keep reading The Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times. Or click here to read about Tredici’s intriguing new book “Wild urban plants of the northeast,” keeping in mind that, thanks to us, many of …
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