Motel Landscaping with a Santa Barbara Vibe

Got guests visiting the Central Coast for the first time this holiday season? If they hail from the land of the ice and snow, are you hoping for 80-degree days just so you can get your smirk on? I can only imagine what it's like for visitors who just spent their upstate Michigan morning flame-throwing through the glacier blocking their driveway, and a few hours later, being greeted by sky-scraping palm trees, luxuriant birds of paradise, and exotic succulents dotting the landscape.

Santa Barbara is a tourist-oriented town, and as you'd expect, lots of hotels and inns cultivate that Santa Barbara look: whitewashed stucco walls and red tile roofs, wrought iron grills and polychromatic Moorish tile patterns. Sadly though, very few hotels have carried that look into their landscaping. I see lots of sickly rose bushes poked here and there, clots of misshapen junipers abound, and for that little splash of color, a pot with decades-old geraniums wheezing their last hurrah. But very few seem to embrace our rich plant palette and used it to enhance the ambiance of their grounds. I can't think of a better way to make a long-lasting impression on their guests.

I've thought about writing about hotel gardens ever since the Lemon Tree Inn (treeinns.com) reinvented themselves a few years back. They enlisted the adventurous landscape design talents of Eric Nagelmann, the creative force behind Ganna Walska Lotusland's extraordinary cactus garden. Eric has a great eye for dramatic, high contrast design and an encyclopedic knowledge of some out-of-left-field plants we generally don't see in commercial landscapes.

See the botanical fun some Santa Barbara lodgings are having at Edhat.com...

Trinity Gardens – Open Hearts & Dirty Fingernails

Something wonderful happens when people who care about other people meet in a garden. In this case, a handful of Trinity Lutheran Church members are plowing forward with their vision to grow food for the needy, teach kids about healthy eating, and provide a space where locals learn to cultivate hand-grown food.

Earlier this week, I was standing at the south end of the church's parking lot at 909 North La Cumbre Road, getting the grand tour from Judy Sims -- a legend in Santa Barbara's school gardening movement -- and Linda Vogel, two of the dynamos behind Trinity Gardens.

According to their map of the future garden, this flat, stubbly, gopher-pocked plateau will house a varmint-proofed one-acre vegetable garden divided into 33 plots. Other features include a fishpond, tool shed, shade structure, propagation bed, and composting station. Just down the east-facing slope, fruit will blossom and ripen in the orchard. Along the perimeter, they envision a buffer of California native plants used by the Chumash who lived off this land.

Read on to find out how to get involved in Trinity Garden's local efforts...

Sustainable Landscaping: 1830s La Huerta Style

Jerry Sortomme has done more to promote sustainable landscaping in the Santa Barbara area than anyone I can think of. As the chair for the Environmental Horticulture Department at Santa Barbara City College for twenty-two years, Jerry taught, mentored, and regaled thousands of students. Many of "Jerry's Kids," as some affectionately call themselves, have moved on to careers in environmental science, horticulture, contracting, design, and other green professions.

I met Jerry not long after I started working for Parks and Rec in ‘87. From the start, I knew he was a force to be reckoned with. Aside from his bottomless storehouse of horticultural and environmental knowledge, his sense of advocacy for his horticulture program made him and his students frequent partners on City projects, with a double bonus of having his classes get their hands dirty in real- world projects while doing a good turn for their town.

Well, Jerry might have retired from SBCC in 2003, but he's still eyebrow-deep in very historic, very local dirt. He stepped out the door of room A-162 and right into a volunteer position as project manager and consultant for La Huerta Historic Garden at the Old Mission Santa Barbara. The goal of this unique project is to "exhibit era-specific plant materials, revealing horticulture art forms, techniques, and the science of the Spanish mission-era."

Huatza Huerta?

Simply put, La Huerta (Spanish for ‘orchard') is an extension of the Old Mission's museum (under the direction of Tina Foss) but moved outdoors. This project, begun in 2003, is literally bringing back to life a side of California's Mission era many people don't know about, especially visiting third- and fourth-graders studying California history. (This is the year when their parents pull an all-nighter, finishing the Mission San Juan Capistrano model - complete with a holographic projection of returning swallows - that's due tomorrow.)

Travel back in time via Edhat.com

2011 Santa Barbara Not So Beautiful Awards

Well, plant lovers, it's time to take a slug from your pretty, pink, Pepto-Bismol pitcher and turn your attention to this year's installment of all things awful in the local garden world.

Last weekend the generous, good-doing folks at Santa Barbara Beautiful bestowed their annual honors on designers, property owners, and big-hearted community members. The recipients are locals who lend their talent, time, and support to making our area a place of horticultural and artistic beauty.

But now it's time to turn our attention to The Dark Side, and share the goofy, "What were they thinking?" examples that have earned their own 15 minutes of shame. It's not my intent to just point a finger and say, "Ewwwwwwwwwwww". My hope is that by tossing these perpetrators into my Cuisineart of criticism, I can prevent readers from committing their own crimes against horticulture, and quite possibly become proud honorees at future award events.

This time around I'm sharing tales of bondage, cartoon character simulations, math-challenged manglers, and will explain why I think the City of Santa Barbara has some ‘splainin' to do.

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (with apologies to Pedro Almodovar)

One of my favorite go-to plants is Myer's Asparagus (Asparagus densiflora ‘Myers'). I love its soft texture, cheery chartreuse color, and eerie resemblance to Sideshow Bob's hair. It grows in partial shade or full sun, and en masse, creates a softly sculptural effect. Place it near dark, broadleaf foliage, like this pairing with bear's breech (Acanthus mollis), below, at Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden, and you've got a study in subtle contrasting foliage.

So what were they thinking over at Ahi Restaurant on upper State Street? Who came up with the clever idea of using the nylon string the delivery guy uses to keep the LA Times from scattering to put these plants in kinky S&M restraints? Kudos to Ahi for trying to enhance a boring white wall, but do they think we wouldn't notice the passive restraints? I'm sad to announce that the horsetail reed (Equisetum hyemale) that played a central role in this threesome has since passed on (probably forgot the safe word). Dudes, if some of the frilly fronds are in your way, it's a simple snip to cut them at soil level and let the rest of this delightful plant dance its graceful dance.

Brace yourself. There's plenty more at my Edhat.com blog...

Stay Classy Santa Barbara

I'm posting this upbeat, gushing article about the beauty of Santa Barbara as an advanced karmic vaccination for the likely effect of my next post, two weeks hence. That will be my annual Santa Barbara Not So Beautiful Awards, where I shine a snarky, searing light on the boneheaded things people do in the name of horticulture.

I always catch some heat from the "look for the good and praise it" crowd. Yes, I've heard the old adage, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," but I don't live in Smurfville, and I DO get a lot of entertainment and educational mileage out of looking for bad examples and poking at them.

In the meantime, I'm posting this gallery of enchanting imagery to prove that I don't just walk around looking for warts and blemishes, when it's obvious that we're blessed with a bounty of beauty that is Santa Barbara. Perhaps by shining a golden light on the vignettes that thrill me, you'll see that I'm not just a one- dimensional curmudgeon flailing his shillaly in the darkness.

Enjoy the beauty of Santa Barbara with one quick click.

Owen Dell Wants To SLAP Your Garden Around

Abraham Maslow probably wasn't aware of it, but when he wrote his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, he was talking about sustainable landscaping.

Now hold on a second. He didn't SPECIFICALLY mention murdering your lawn, setting an egg timer when you turn on the sprinklers, unleashing badass carnivorous bugs in your pumpkin plot, or luring slugs to a drunken death in a saucer of Rolling Rock. He didn't have to. It's obvious.

Starting from the bottom of his triangle, he describes the human animal's needs. I'll connect the green dots.

Level 1: Food, water, warmth, and rest: If he'd planned ahead (and left more room at the bottom of his chart) he would have also included "plucking fresh-laid eggs from your Double Breasted Pin Striped Bantam Appenzeller's coop, keeping toxic lawn sprays out of groundwater, planting deciduous trees to invite morning sunlight into the breakfast nook, and stringing an authentic Guatemalan Kaqchikel hammock between your Quercus agrifolia trunks.

Pick up the trail at Edhat.com

Exquisite Little Jewel Boxes

Two very talented landscape designers invited me to Eye of the Day Garden Design Center in Carpinteria last week - something about "new demonstration gardens." I smelled a story. Gas prices and carbon footprint be damned, I drove the 12.8 miles from my downtown SB pad and liked what I saw.

If you're yearning for inspiration for your own garden, or in the market for a focal point to nestle in a flowerbed, you might want to pop down to Eye of the Day, too.

Shining in a chain-link fenced, jumbled storage yard chock full of owner Brent Frietas's garden wares, sit four exquisite little jewel boxes - mini-gardens created from a seemingly limitless selection of pots, statuary, fountains, and garden ornaments.

And, oh, the plants! Santa Barbara landscape designers Arianna Jansma and Jennifer Voss, each with an impressive background in botany and art, have a gift for combining form, flowers, foliage, and texture to create stunning compositions.

Since the earliest manifestation of Eye of the Day in Santa Ynez, Brent has been a fusion reactor of design and marketing ideas. He told me years ago about his vision for an outdoor showroom that would display his merchandise "in real garden situations" while offering a local designer an opportunity to strut their stuff. After a long gestation period, the idea has hatched.

Continued at Edhat.com

Imagine: No Lawns (but maybe a free book?)

If you've been lounging in the Garden of Ed(en) for any time, you know that I'm vehemently anti-lawn (Keywords: wasteful, boring, destructive, sterile). So, this week I'm sharing a great book that like-minded, lawn-averse California gardeners should find inspirational and instructive. But first, let me take you back to this morning, when my button got pushed in a big way.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

I learned in design school that it's good form to start by saying something positive when critiquing a classmate's design. It makes them more amenable to the pending evisceration, so here goes…

The Encina Lodge and Suites, near Cottage Hospital, is to be commended for having their gardeners sweep the pavement with palm fronds instead of gas-powered blowers.

There.

Today isn't the first time this otherwise lovely guest lodge put my boxers in a bunch. The identical scenario caught my attention two years ago, leading to a water conservation diatribe (It's Like Road Rage, Only Wetter) at my Fine Gardening blog. Sadly, not much has improved. No, I take that back: They've replaced the 1950s-era sprinklers with a shiny new, but just-as-poorly designed system: sprinklers showering me and Biff as we waded up the sidewalk; streams of water smacking into shrubs, then overflowing the beds; over-pressurized pop-ups sending clouds of mist drifting far from their intended target.


Now I can share the anger and frustration I felt this morning, triggered by the sight of a fast-moving stream of water coursing down the gutter on, ironically, Bath Street. The only thing missing was a Tidy Bowl man rafting the surge. This gusher's source was the motel's irresponsibly designed, poorly managed sprinklers sheeting off the grassy parkways three blocks upstream.

Read on at Edhat.com

I'll Give Myself a C+

Did you ever find something in a long-forgotten box that zaps you back in time? My trigger was an old landscape plan I ran across last week, from my early school days. Like the goat herder at the Qumran Caves, I knew I held a piece of history in my hands. Gingerly, and with reverence, I liberated the scroll from a crusty, desiccated rubber band, carefully unfurling it.

The title block said 1975, so imagine my relief as I scanned this barely familiar drawing and did not wince.

In the early 70s, I wasn't sure what I would do with an ornamental horticulture education, but the music industry's flake factor had claimed another victim, and I realized I'd better find something new to do. I thought about my hobbies and passions.

I had become enchanted by the exquisite art of bonsai (gateway drug to Japanese gardens and culture), fascinated by the way nature's forces and raw beauty could be captured and stylized at a human scale. My crush on chlorophyll didn't stop there. Like a Days of Our Lives junkie, I found myself deeply and emotionally invested in the turbulent lives of my 50 houseplants.

Off to school I skipped, and after two years of study, earned my associate's degree from Pierce College in LA, memorizing hundreds of multisyllabic botanical names and deciphering the mysterious sand-silt-clay triangle. I learned how to flocculate, which has nothing to do with bodily functions or puberty.

Click over to Edhat.com for the rest of the story... http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=60594

Plants I'll Never Use, Redux

I'm sure the Pulitzer Prize committee frowns on cheating, but what can I do? It's noon Wednesday, my deadline is noon Thursday, and I'm sitting at a tiny table at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, shoving an overly mustardy ham sandwich into my yap, downloading photos, and praying Ed forgets he's already published this story. This is my week to post, but the conference is all consuming and there's no way I can write a new article worthy of you fine, loyal readers. So I'm dusting off one of my favorite stories from a 2008 (with a few edits, cuz I cringed rereading it) and adding new pictures. Enjoy my thoughts about plants I'd never, ever, ever use in anyone's garden.

That's just the start of it. Read the rest at Edhat.com

Insidious Tendrils of Crimes Against Horticulture

Santa Barbara is an incubator. We're the home of many important firsts: Motel 6, Herb Peterson's Egg McMuffin, Deckers sandals, and Seymour Duncan's sublime guitar pick-ups. We've been a launch pad in entertainment, offering the world Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dishwalla, and the bearded dude with the dead bongos on State Street. And where would the sports world be without legendary spiker Karch Kirali, wavemeister Rennie Yater, and concrete commandos, George Powell and Stacy Peralta?

So it doesn't surprise me that what started locally as my Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful-Awards has found fertile roots beyond our crappy adobe and sandstone-riddled soil. What was borne of my dark delight - posting pictures and taking cheap shots at the stupid, ugly things people do in the name of gardening - has found fertile fields beyond this sleepy beach town. I'm talking about Crimes Against Horticulture (CAH), a collection of images intended to awe, amuse, and elucidate. It's an expression of my teaching philosophy: "A poke in the eye with a silly stick gets people's attention."

It just gets weirder at Edhat.com. Read on...

Gloomy Days, Cheery Gardens

It seemed like a fun play on words - riff on the Bermuda Triangle by writing about the "Carpinteria Pentangle." I'd simply plot the locations of five fun gardening destinations, connect to dots, and voila - a five-pointed geometric shape!

‘Cept it looks pretty weird, and I'm probably the only person on the planet who can make out the form.

Come to think of it, it looks more like an egret sleeping off a night of beer bonging. Despite my artistic shortcomings, I can still write about the garden adventures that beckon along the laid-back coastline just south of Santa Barbara.

Logic dictates that I start at an end and work my way across. So we'll begin in the middle, along Santa Claus-less Lane, ‘cuz that's where I'll be giving a talk next weekend, and I never pass up a chance for shameless self-promotion.

Lots more to read at Edhat.com

When Software Meets Sorrel: Brave New Garden?

I think it would be cool to have my name spoken in the same breath as brilliant futurists like Stephen Hawking, Alvin Toffler, and Buckminster Fuller.

Futurists predict global trends, emerging markets, and plausible scenarios that will affect everyone on the planet. They show up on cool PBS science shows, and school kids write reports about them. If they're smart, they make predictions with 200-year lead times, so their critics can't beat up on them for getting it bass-ackward.

I might well be a futurist too! Consider this exchange with my soul brother, Owen Dell. We were talking about the fabulous food exchange networks sprouting up around Santa Barbara, like pre-germinated radish seeds.

The idea is simple: People who grow food at home exchange their surplus with neighbors, sharing eggs, fruits, veggies, flowers, herbs, recipes, seeds, seedlings and secret potions. At the same time, they build community by meeting their neighbors. There are twelve exchanges in our area, under the umbrella of Santa Barbara Food Not Lawns.

What does this have to do with me becoming a legend? Well, as Owen and I were praising the value of food exchanges, I wondered aloud what would happen to them if there were no surplus. "What if everyone's garden provided exactly the amount of produce they needed, exactly when they wanted it?"

A good question to ponder, don'tcha think? Well, let's see how this ends up at my Edhat.com blog, shall we?

Me, Version 2.0

It's close to my two-year anniversary of being laid off by the City of Santa Barbara. Good time to reflect and look forward. I reread my May 11, 2009 blog post, Laid Off: the big career opportunity. It was one of those "one door closes and another opens" meets "glass half-full" essays where I went light on the jokes and heavy on philosophication. I mentioned that I usually don't write about my life here at Edhat, and I don't, so please indulge me in this bi-annual puff piece.

(And being the kind of guy who never misses an opportunity to pimp his stuff, be on the alert for specks of shameless self-promotion.)

Terminology

When I run into people I worked with at the city, they always ask, "So how's retirement?"

My retort: "Define retirement. If it includes any of the following: sleeping past sunrise, whacking the snot out of a little white ball, impaling red wigglers, Macarena lessons, making goat cheese (I'm sure that's a euphemism for something nasty), tapping my inner goddess in a sweat lodge (oooo, that could be even nastier), or eating bon-bons while watching Ellen, you've got the wrong guy."

There's plenty more of this at my Edhat.com blog.

Sprechen sie San Luis Obispo?

Sometimes I think Ed is just out to make me feel guilty. It's not enough that every two weeks since 2008 I've had to come up with a thousand Pulitzer-worthy words and images to educate, entertain and transform the lives of my Santa Barbara readers. (Note to award committee - I've had my mantle reinforced, so there's no need to put off your decision for 2011.)
To add to my burden, Ed the Intrepid recently expanded his cyber-reach into new territories, where denizens practice their mysterious rituals. So now I feel pressured to investigate topics that Santa Lewis Obispites and Venturinians will find interesting.

So a few weeks ago, after finding a handy English to SLO phrase book and suffering through the battery of inoculations, I set off to points north on a sunny Friday morning, slowed only by the occasional border crossing check point. Two days later, I'd put on a few hundred miles (I made it to where the Bering Strait land bridge once connected Cambria with Asia), and crammed my notebook and camera with lots o' groovy stuff. I'll write about all of my adventures, eventually, but for now, let me tell you about Transitions Mental Health Association and the great work they're doing for folks in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

As described at their website, Transitions is "a non-profit organization committed to reducing the stigma of mental illnesses, maximizing personal potential and providing innovative mental health services to individuals and families in need."

There's lots more to see at the rest of this article...

Lotusland: All Those Smarts (And Pretty, Too!)

You probably went to high school with someone like her: Cover girl looks, aced every exam with her frontal lobe tied behind her back, and tales of her "interesting" past.

That's a lot like what I found when I visited the Ganna Walska Lotusland new and improved website - beauty, smarts, and a tantalizing back-story. Just in time for spring, their on-line makeover has a snappy fresh look, alluring garden scenes, easy-to-drive navigation, and is bubbling over with sustainable landscaping ideas you can use in your own garden.

Lotusland, a non-profit foundation established after Madame Ganna Walska's 1984 death, at age 97, is must-see bucket-list material, so don't make any excuses for denying yourself another season without a visit. The docents are charming and well informed, sometimes entertaining visitors with Madame Ganna Walskas's intriguing biography - a Polish opera singer with larger-than-life garden ambitions, and who married well and often.

See what Lotusland's website has in store...

SJKRAIGYTAQ: AKA Botanic Where Is It

Ed's got WWII (Wednesday Where Is It?), his weekly schtick, posting brain-baffling photos for readers to locate and identify. And as the month draws to a close, we congratulate the two-time winner of the 2011 March Edness: Holazola did it again, with Penelope805 and Camster receiving honorable mention. [Esoteric Factoid: My wife, Lin, took first place in 2007, and I finished a close second!]

I thought it would be fun to have my own contest, stealing the format that Ed uses. So I'm posting obscure photos from a botanical perspective, then having y'all try to guess where the photo was taken. ‘Cept Ed has mastered the bits, bytes and blops of web programming needed to pull this seemingly simple formatting together, and I don't know squat. What to do?

So instead, behold my simplified, slightly less challenging version, SJKRAIGYTAQ (Sunday Just Keep Reading And I'll Give You The Answers Quiz). The tricky thing is that all the answers are at the end, printed upside down, just like in a kid's puzzle book. You'll have your choice of hanging upside down from a trapeze and reading the answer, or flipping your monitor upside down.

Nine photos to entice and mystify at the rest of this article, at Edhat.com.

Alice By Morning Light: Rays of Optimism

Predawn, Tuesday, April 12, 2011: Eyes open, pulse elevates. Fifty-two hours until I'll click the SEND button.

Topic. I need something to write about. I summon my muse; crickets. Evel Knievel couldn't jump a fresh story idea across my synaptic chasms. Last resort - grab the camera, run over to Alice and write something informative about plants. People like that.

But before I entertain, edify, and enthrall you with the charms of Alice Keck Park's lovely legacy, fast-forward a few hours. Just as I finish my photo-shoot, in comes a text message from Nancy Rapp, my former boss and Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Department Director: "We confirmed for this morning?" Crap! That's right.

8:45 AM, Tuesday, April 12, 20011: Peet's downtown back patio, trusty Biff the Wonder Spaniel in tow, decaf (don't wanna fool with that restraining order). Nancy and I get caught up on personal and P&R stuff, then get down to the morning's agenda...

As you might imagine, I figured out what to write about, or I wouldn't be posting this. Lots of gorgeous pictures and enticing plant info lies ahead...

Really Fine On-Line Garden Design

I'm not sure I should be sharing this with you. Besides writing, I earn some my income designing residential gardens. And here I am, about to hand you a great, free tool for doing it yourself. But I'm also a teacher and a generous kinda guy, so what the hell?

The local water agencies have shelled out some pretty serious coin to fund a goodie-filled website with lots of water conservation ideas. Follow their advice and you'll save money while helping preserve the planet's most essential natural resource - clean drinking water. You've read my rants ripping folks who let water run down the gutter, or squander it washing sidewalks. (If you want your concrete clean enough to eat off of, toss it in the dishwasher.)

Smart water use in the garden has two key components: Wise water management is important, but putting the right plant in the right placeis where sustainable landscaping begins. Growing conditions can vary widely on a small residential lot: The same plant that thrives in cool morning sun on the east side of your place turns into oven-roasted ‘tater skins when subjected to the summer scorch of afternoon sun. A mounded bed in one part of your yard might provide ideal drainage for natives, while clay deposits in the parkway usually mean the same plant's kiss of death.

With thousands of plants to choose from, how do you decide what to plant? I've got nothing against everyone's go-to garden encyclopedia, the Sunset Western Garden Book (actually, I do… check the link at the end of this article), but what if you could take an on-line tour of LOCAL gardens, click on plants that turn you on, then read everything you'd ever want to know about how to use each one flawlessly, and print out a shopping list?

Then step right up, ladies and gents, for the rip-roaringest, easy-peasy, life-changing garden design website in the whole world. (I'm holding off on giving you the link, cowgirls and stud-muffins, so hold your horses and don't scroll down just yet.)

Get the rest of the scoop at Edhat.com

Make Room On Your Garden Bookshelf

I slid into the soon-to-be-shuttered State Street Border's store a few weeks ago looking for sweet close-out deals on garden books. What was I thinking? I've never purchased a garden book at Border's. Apparently, their buyer thought we garden in the Pisgah National Forest, or have an insatiable urge to provide habitat for double-breasted pinstriped warblers.

Regardless, I optimistically raked through the dregs, recalling that my own garden library is a mess. (When I'm working, books fly off the shelves like startled bats.) I didn't reshelve everything - I wanted to let you in on a few of my faves. Spring is just around the corner - be prepared.

If You Only Buy One Garden Book…

Back at my office, while struggling to impose a little discipline on the teetering stacks threatening my desk, I ran across my very first copy of the Sunset Western Garden Book. Nostalgia welled up. This was the book I bought after deciding to hang up my drumming career in the early 70s, having been seduced by bonsai and all things chlorophyll.

This book is old, I tell you, OLD! I thumbed through tattered pages with outdated plant lists like "Pterydon-proof Plants" and "Primordial Ferns That Will Eventually Be Refined Into High Octane Fossil Fuel."

My newest edition of Sunset is already showing signs of abuse, and for good reason. "Sunset", as it's expediently called by its loyal readers, features the most comprehensive encyclopedia of plants for western gardens (over 8000 listings), informative explanations of 29 climate zones, and a massive encyclopedia filled with practical gardening information - a book unto itself. (Not sure whether your lawn is infested with cutworms, or about to burst open, spewing forth monsters from the bowels of Hell? It's probably in there.)

Mooooooooooore Booooooooks at Edhat.com!!!!