A Plea for Plastic Vegetables

...se let me know if you carry any of the following: 1. Purple Bulb Shaped Eggplants and Eggplant plants 2. Green and yellow squash (zucchini) 3. Cucumbers 4. Red Hot chilly Pepper Plants 5. Red Cherry Bomb Plants 6. Yellow Banana Pepper Plants 7. Green bean (string bean and lima bean) plant that is vine-like that I can weave onto a trellis or a vine that looks like the leaves of a string bean plant 8. Tomatoes and Tomato plants (All Varieties) 9. Gr...

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Reader Favorite California Native: Ceanothus

...meet my “bombproof” criteria, at least in our garden. It’s one of the many plants we’ve managed to kill. It’s true that once you get it going, other than yearly pruning, you can retire to the nearest bar and rest on your gardening laurels. But getting it established can be tricky. The most common mistake is over-watering during the summer months and planting in overly fertile soil. We didn’t over-water, so how we manged to kill three of them is a...

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Leave Your Leaves Alone

...an plant dialectic here, perhaps? Are we on the cusp of a synthesis in the native/non-native plant debate? This is a complicated question, but I think that Eisenstein makes some good points in this provocative interview. Props to David Newsom at the Wild Yards Project to allowing this conversation go where it went. Eisenstein goes on to talk about what she considers most important for attracting birds and insects to our gardens. Spoiler: it’s more...

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Our new front yard: history

...ng guides and determined that we should plant the slope with Mediterranean plants. Through this process we began to learn the common names of plants, as as well as their exotic, hard to pronounce scientific names, and we began to pick up on basic vocabulary: terms like root ball and perennial and massing. We planted tough, shrubby plants like lavender and Mexican sage and lantana. We planted these around a couple of young prickly pear cactus (Ficu...

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Our new front yard, part 4: a digression on the new paradigm

...ginal idea of the kinship of all things is that we should be humble before plants. As Fukuoko-san said, we know nothing. Starting from a place of humility, I’m trying to find a new path. I’m trying to develop a new relationship with plants, and as a result, a new approach to landscaping. This is the path of the post-wild. New paths often run rough. Meanwhile, the lawn n’ shrub is a path worn into smoothness. In fact, it is a rut. So yes, learning...

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