Can our landscapes model a vibrant future? Not according to the LA DWP.

...t with nature to be too much trouble. No doubt they’d replace those sickly plants with synthetics if they didn’t suspect they’d all get stolen in the night. This is not the kind of model we need, DWP. Next time you change up your landscaping, consider consulting one or more of the many brilliant plant people and designers in this city. Call us if you need numbers. Consider using permeable surfaces and contoured landscaping to capture every drop of...

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The Miraculous Lavender

...re getting no irrigation. There’s no plumbing beneath the staircase, either. Yet the lavender keeps getting bigger. I’m going to have to pull it soon, before it ruins our stairs. But I don’t want to, because it’s so determined to live. And this goes to show that when a plant wants to grow somewhere, when it establishes itself according to its own rules, it is unstoppable. Soil type, recommended water, sun exposure– all these things mean little in...

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A Plea for Plastic Vegetables

...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. Green and Purple...

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Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

...n background material. Our ancestors could distinguish between hundreds of plants, but that ancestral memory has been hijacked by commercial interests. Now, instead of plant identification skills, we name and distinguish things like cars and mobile devices. If there was a kind of car rebate program that inadvertently replaced BMWs with Pontiac Azteks I would guarantee you that there would be blood in the streets. We need a new cultural narrative a...

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Nuts!

...hat big corporate chain, because they bought the nuts for a fraction of what quality fresh nuts would cost. The other moral here is to incorporate nut trees into your landscaping. Why plant a useless ficus tree when you can plant something that will provide food? And come harvest time you wont need to mix in any racing fuel....

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