Urban Homestead Trademarks Cancelled!

After six years of legal wrangling, “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” belong to us all. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has cancelled the trademarks thanks to the hard work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm of Winston & Strawn. Here’s the press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Urban Homesteaders Win Cancellation of Bogus Trademarks Global Community Had Faced Baseless Legal Claims and Content Remo...

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How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

...oxton/Clark garden: Or one of the many fantastic sheds in the Loxton/Clark garden: Or this inventive bit of garden art from the Hessing/Bonfigli garden in Altadena: Kelly and I both have mixed feelings about using found materials in a garden. I think the focus is often too much on telling a kind of visual joke, like when you, say put googly eyes on a old muffler and paint it purple. What works about the found art examples below and above from the...

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Our new front yard, part 3: design

...s what gardening is all about. This makes for boring gardens, and for weak gardens. Gardens are given character, given a strong sense of place, by their limitations: a dry garden, a beach garden, a rock garden, a wetland. Don’t fight the site, embrace it. Let the plants work it out themselves. Principle 3: Cover the ground densely by vertically layering plants Bare soil is uncommon in nature, being found only in deserts and a few other extreme env...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Organic Mechanic’s Garden in San Francisco I’m an idiot when it comes to garden design. To up my skills in this department I attended the annual Garden Blogger’s Fling last week, which took place this year in San Francisco. Thankfully the Fling did not involve sitting in a sterile hotel conference room. Instead, we boarded two buses and took a look at fifteen spectacular gardens in the bay area over three days. I’ll share the gardening lessons I...

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Permaculture Design Course at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

...ng practices, agroecology, fruit tree care, planting, guild assembly, home garden design/consideration, fruit trees and food forests, orchard design workshop APRIL 27 / FOOD OFF-SITE – Guided tour of various farms in Vista, Tour of permaculture plant nursery, build plant lists MAY 10 / WASTE – Composting methods, nutrient cycle overview (nitrogen, carbon cycles), soil science overview, building biomass- focus in permaculture, keeping backyard chic...

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