A WHITE HOUSE GARDEN

This is really cool. The white house is building a white house vegetable garden. "The 1,100-square-foot garden will include 55 kinds of vegetables, including peppers, spinach and, yes, arugula. (The selection is a wish list put together by White House chefs.) There will also be berries, herbs and two hives for honey that will be tended by a White House carpenter who is also a beekeeper. The chefs will use the produce to feed the first family, as well as for state dinners and other official events. The White House will use organic seedlings, as well as organic fertilizers and organic insect repellents. The garden will be near the tennis courts and be visible to passersby on the street. The whole Obama family will be involved in tending the garden, White House spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld said."

I think that this is awesome. How cool is this. If they can do it then why can't we?

For the full article written by Jane Black at the Washington Post click here.

MR. & MRS. SUSTAINABILITY APPEARING AT THE SPRING GARDEN SHOW IN APRIL

They are brain child of Brownson Design Group, creations landscape designs & Violet E. Lawrence & Assoc with support from Tree of Life Nursery and others.

Mr. and Mrs. Sustainability were born and bread in California. They are organic, sustainable, native and very environmentally conscious. They cost less than your traditional cookie cutter design and are better for this environment. They are a combination of materials that are native, organic and just plain good for you and the health of your loved ones. The one thing they are not is boring. In fact Mr. and Mrs. Sustainability can give you the wow factor without denting your wallet.

They will be appearing at the South Coast Plaza spring garden show from April 23-April 26.

If you are interested in knowing about sustainable design then come to the show and check them out. They would love to meet with you!

http://www.springgardenshow.com/

CAL FLORA

This might be a little to technical for some but a great place for landscape designers and plant enthusiasts. It is a website called CalFlora. A giant wild California plant search database. You can use this site to search for a gazillion plants based on what you are looking for and where you live. For example I live in Orange County, CA and I can search for wild plants that are native to Orange County. How cool is that.

Cal flora is a non profit and was created as a collaborative research project to collect and re-distribute information about California's wild plants, including habitat descriptions, photographs, observations, nomenclature, and distribution maps.

The database provides:

• comprehensive habitat and distribution information for wild plants
  
• 800,000 plant location observations
• information on over 30,000 relationships between old and new plant names
• access to hundreds of thousands of photographs of California plants
  
• online tools that help users find, display, and download the information they need

You don't have to sign up for an account if you don't want to. Just you the tools as a guest to try it out. Have fun!

FAKE GRASS, REAL MONEY

If you live in Orange County, CA and are considering having lawn then may I suggest an alternative?

Synthetic Turf Rebate Program

Basically the Municipal Water District Of Orange County is making it eligible to all Orange County residence to receive a rebate towards the purchase and installation of synthetic turf.

What is synthetic turf? It is basically man made grass! For more info and forms click on the image.

Positives:

• If you live in a single family detached home then you will received a $0.30 rebate per square foot
• You don't have to water it or mow it
• You can use any manufacturer provided that you have a contractor that knows what he is doing to install it correctly - one place to try is Syn Lawn. I met them at the landscape industry show and they had cool stuff

Negatives:

• There is really only one major negative and that is that your governing agency (city or hoa) may not allow you to use synthetic lawn. So before you do anything you should check first if it is allowed in your area
  

As I have said in the past "kill your lawn". But if you must have lawn then go synthetic and take advantage of the available rebate.

ENTRANCES THAT DON'T WOW

We all know the importance of curb appeal. Aside from the fact it adds value to your property, it is also the first impression that people get of you and your house. Whether they are driving by or stopping to visit, how you design your entry will either win the sale or flop big time.

Flop is exactly what these homes do. Take the 3 toned blue driveway for example. Sure it stands out but for all the wrong reasons. It looks like a giant pool of water in between two wasted areas of lawn. If this homeowner wanted to devalue his or her property then they have done an awesome job. Clearly they did not hire a designer and clearly the contractor that installed this was just out to make a buck. The biggest problem is that if this house ever goes on the market for sale it will not get much generate profit as the potential buyer will deduct the cost of re-designing and re-installing the driveway from their bid. In this case I would have painted the house a light shade of gray and kept the blue trim and then mimicked the gray onto the driveway. Thus making the house stand out. I would also "kill the lawn" and replace it with natives and maybe an edible citrus of some kind thus further adding to the property value and curb appeal.

Another entrance design flop is the massive areas of lawn that people must have in order to waste money and water. Really? "There is no law in the state of California or in any California city that requires you to have any ounce of lawn on your property" If you are not going to actively use the lawn to play in, then why have it. If you also notice in the picture furthest to the left the plant material is too close to the house and not enough of it.



The pictures below were taking during my daily walk. One picture is clear that the weeds took over and the owner just did not care while the other is unfinished and it looks like household items spilled on to the front yard. Maybe they ran out of storage space. If the front yard is this cluttered then I wonder how bad the inside looks.

Regardless of what you do to your front yard. Whether you have a sustainably designed yard or one that wastes money and water at least I suggest that you do something. Just bare in mind that you want to increase your property value and wow people not the other way around.

NATIVE GARDENS VS. EDIBLE GARDENS VS. FRIENDLY GARDENS

I recently went to a nursery to hear a speech given and they passed out this flier that read "make your garden California friendly". I got to wondering do people understand what that is? Do people know that a California friendly garden is not the most sustainable option? What is a native garden or an edible. Perhaps friendly? Well...

Native Gardens

A native garden design is using only native plants of your region. For example a native California garden utilizes plants that were born and bread here. Like the Ray Hartman Ceanothus in the picture above. Native plants essentially...

• are naturally occurring, indigenous plants within a specific habitat of a specific bio geographic region
• are adapted to the native soil and climate
• have a higher chance of survival to many diseases, insects and pests
• significantly reduce your water bill

The picture to the right is that of a Lemonade Berry (Rhus) which is a great native alternative to the Japanese Boxwood in California.


Edible Gardens

An edible garden is just that. A garden that uses only edible plant materials. Essentially...

• you are growing non chemically treated fruits and vegetables that are ultimately better for the health of your family
• you are reducing your grocery bill
• you are creating a fun experiment for you and you family to engage in and if your neighbors are growing something then maybe you can trade off
  

The best design technique is to use natives with edibles integrated together in your landscape.


Friendly Gardens

Friendly plants are not natives but rather plants that have learned somehow to tolerate the climate of wherever they have been introduced to. Some might even consider these as cookie cutters as in the fact that they are used everywhere, which actually makes them a little unattractive. Friendly plants...

• can adapt to the native soil and climate but are not as effective as using natives
• can reduce your water bill but not as much as the natives
• are so widely used that it almost becomes boring to design with them

Another good design technique is to use all these garden types for your garden. Do not just use friendly plants. The point is to use local materials that actually belong here and were here before us.

Ultimately regardless of what you do bare in mind that using natives will cost less, use less water and require less maintenance. Do your homework and carefully research the plant that you are hoping to use. Does this plant grow in your climate zone? Just because it will grow here does not mean it belongs here. Think before you act!

DROUGHT BUSTERS

We all know that using less water is not just something to think about doing rather something we should be doing. In this economy it becomes even more necessary to do what ever we can to use less water and save the environment. Let's be honest in saying that it is our fault that we are now having to conserve water so drastically. We put ourselves here and are now trying to figure out how to get out of this mess.

The simple solution is this... Kill Your Lawn!

Replacing your lawn with California natives or natives from where ever you are from, will save you lots of money and water.

The video will explain further. All info below was taken from the kcet website.



"Southern California has long had a rocky relationship with water: To stay alive in this semi-arid piece of the planet, Angelenos have stolen it, plundered it and wasted it for nearly a hundred years now.

We've thrived off that wasted water, but now it's time to get serious. We're smack in the middle of the worst drought in thirty years and Southern Californians are fighting back. In Long Beach, citizens have gone on neighborhood watch, taking to the streets with cameras and posting videos of overindulgent sprinklers and water-wasting neighbors on YouTube. They're replacing those green lawns with drought-tolerant plants and keeping an eye on their watering habits."

LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY SHOW UPDATE

The landscape industry show was a huge success. Many product vendors showcasing a wide range of stuff from irrigation to hardscape to planting and lighting etc. If you wanted to see anything and everything about what type of landscape products were out there then this was the place for you.

As a designer I go every year to get updates on the products I use and to check out what is new. I saw some old co-workers, many product reps I knew and ran into some friends that were there as well.


You may click on any picture to see a sampling of who was there to promote their products.
As you can see there are a wide range of products to be seen and the cool part is that you could do it all under one roof. Hundreds of vendors and thousands of visitors made for a great event.



Congratulations to the California Landscape Contractors Association for an awesome event.


For a complete list of exhibitors click here.