Saturday, November 21, 2009

Use An Agapanthus - Go To Jail


Santa Barbara, my beautiful home town, has A LOT of rules and regs for homeowners. I did a bit of research into those strictures that govern plants in peoples' front yards. It's pretty amazing. Here's an excerpt from my Edhat.com column for this week....

Those Agapanthus in your parkway strip could land you in jail for a year. No, I don't mean your plants are going to rat you out for falling behind on your child support. But aiding and abetting a plant that can grow more than eight inches tall in your parkway is a crime.

That ten-foot tall, bright pink oleander hedge that keeps your front yard nice and private? Add your attorney's number to your speed dial. I see a possible perp-walk in your future.

And I pity da foo' whose juniper inches over the curb into the street right-of-way. But not to worry, you'll get to see the sun when you're released into the County jail exercise yard from 9:12 - 9:18 every other Tuesday morning.

Anything like this in YOUR town?

Read the rest here.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Easy Garden Simulations - No New Software Required! - Fine Gardening


Here's a fun, new, useful post at my Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening magazine. I've used this easy technique to experiment with plant composition ideas, then present them to my clients.

All you need is a computer with an internet connection and a word processing program--though PowerPoint makes it a bit simpler.

When you're stuck in the house on a winter day, longing to be out in the garden, use your time to play with all your favorite plants without spending a dime or getting your hands dirty!

Click on the link below, learn this easy peasy technique and find out how to win a great book - Planting: The Design Book for the 21st Century, by Diarmuid Gavin and Terence Conran.

Easy Garden Simulations - No New Software Required! - Fine Gardening

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Time To Unite In The Name of Ugly


The Hague prosecutes heinous acts like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Though the plant mutilations and acts of aesthetic idiocy I've uploaded to my Flickr site don't rise to that level, they at least deserve to be ridiculed.

Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some of you might look at the images and say "What's so bad about that?" I resort to my mom's dictum: "You have your opinion and I'll have the right one."

Thanks mom.

Brace yourself, ask the children to leave the room and click here.