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

April 5, 2016

...ive chaparral. Spacing can be tricky. You have to pay attention to nursery labels and not plant too far apart or too close together. Not that plants always perform predictably. You have to go back and edit: fill gaps in or take stuff out. The best gardens on the tour got the massing right like the Hessing/Bonfigli garden in Altadena shown in the photo above. Outdoor Rooms My favorite garden on the tour is the Loxton/Clark garden in Pasadena. It’s...

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Live Like a Stoic for a Week

Mr. Homegrown

November 25, 2013

Thoughtstylings

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...e to lead better and happier lives. Stoic Week participants can download a series of exercises, reflections, and meditations to complete each day, prepared by academics and psychotherapists, which draw on ideas from ancient Stoicism. They will complete well-being questionnaires before and after the week and the data from these will be used to assess the effectiveness of the Stoic ideas when they are put into practice today. Dr John Sellars of Birk...

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Stoicism as a Toolkit for Modern Life

Mr. Homegrown

June 6, 2013

Age of Limits, Thoughtstylings

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Lucius Annaeus Seneca ca. 4 BC – AD 65. This is the first in a series of posts focusing on positive techniques for keeping our heads screwed on straight in troubled times. Growing food, doing stuff with your hands, drinking homebrew with friends–all these kinds of things help keep us grounded and hopeful. But sometimes you need a little more help. Maybe we’ll call these posts “When chickens aren’t enough.” Whether the world is ending or not, it’s...

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Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder

Mrs. Homegrown

March 25, 2014

Animals

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Bird feeder in the LA Natural History Museum garden. One of a series of posts inspired by our recent tour of the new gardens at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. The Nature Gardens at the NHM are not large by the usual standards of botanical gardens, and they are only about a year old, but they are already rich with bird and insect life. (A poorwill even visited, which apparently caused quite a bit of excitement in the birding community.) T...

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Self-Irrigating Gutter Update

Mr. Homegrown

June 5, 2013

Gardening, Self Watering Containers

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...ll just posted in the video above. This improvement on the design replaces the lower gutter with a 4-inch drain pipe. The drain pipe is easier to keep water-tight. And instead of using a gutter filled with soil I might use a series of pots (an idea that’s also in the video)–gutters are too shallow for most plants. Despite the problems, I would call the project a success. In fact, I may expand my gutter system out onto the rest of the garage roo....

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