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.

The Third-Annual Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards

For the past few years, I've taken it upon myself to peel back the fetid cloak of darkness and draw your attention to a parallel alternate universe of hideous and paralyzingly misguided landscapes ... a realm so evil and disturbing that parents rush to protect their children from the Boschian vision. Despite the personal joy I get from ripping to shreds these misguided landscapes, my intent is to give my readers useful information-I just like to spew a little bile while getting there.

Read the whole, hideous mess here...

Ugly Is In The Eyes of the Beholder

The Second Annual Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards

It came and went. Unless you stay involved with local architecture and landscape happenings, you might have missed the September 28 Santa Barbara Beautiful Awards at the Granada Theater. The hard working folks at SBB are “doers.” They raise money for planting park and street trees, educating youngsters, and recognizing quality design through their monthly awards.

When your out-of-town guests enviously effuse about the beauty of this little slice of the coast, you can pass a bit of credit to SBB. Their annual awards event is all about shining a well-deserved spotlight on the property owners, designers, contractors and care-givers who care enough to nurture beautiful projects to enhance our community.
Out of necessity—but more likely to preserve their ability to fund worthy projects—Santa Barbara Beautiful does not have an evil twin who rants and spews about the aesthetic blight perpetrated upon the community. If they did, I’d certainly lobby to be the prez—make that benevolent dictator.

This secret cabal would root out and expose those who plant and tend the landscapes we are daily subjected to. Whether through innocent ignorance or utter lack of appreciation for quality design and maintenance, there are those whose gardens, trees, and commercial landscapes deserve to be pilloried. My first act as Fearless Leader would be initiating public stockades at Plaza de la Guerra—tastefully landscaped, of course. But I digress.

At my blog last year, I initiated the first Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards. It’s time for round two. I’d love to say this diatribe is offered tongue-in-cheek, but the images you are about to see truly put my knickers in a bunch.
My criteria to enter the panoply of past recipients are simple: Offensive to the eye, and/or flying in the face of resource conserving/sustainable principles.

My comments, though cheeky, are intended to be instructional.

Category One – Most Bone-headed Location to Plant Ivy

I’ve been in the green biz for years. I don’t think I’ve seen a more ridiculous place to plant, and then spend years trimming into submission, an uglier patch of Algerian Ivy (Hedera canariensis). Imagine the hours spent keeping this potential monster at bay. This is the plant that can assault and devour a hundred-foot tall palm tree. I’m not a fan of paving the planet, but ridding us of this chlorophyllic insult and setting a couple of well-placed stepping stones sure would make it safer to get out of your car. Time to call Point Mugu Naval Air Station for the precision napalm strike.



Category Two – Most Artistic Pruning

Step one: Find a plant that is genetically predisposed to grow twenty feet tall and ten feet across.
Step two: Plant it under the roof overhang, two feet from your wall, and a foot from your walkway.
Step three: Prune to reveal the graceful inner branches (forever).
I give you Hollywood Twisted Juniper (Juniperus chinensis ‘Torulosa’). It might cost a few bucks to have it removed and replaced with a right-sized plant, but I wouldn’t have to stifle my gag reflex while I walk Biff the Wonder Spaniel.



Category Three – Most Serious Underestimation of the Power of Bougainvillea

Look it up in your Sunset Western Garden Book. Bougies get huge. You put it in a tiny location and you have to hack the hell out of it. It blooms at the tips. You just whacked it back to Hackensack and cut off the tips to keep it from eating your pet badger. Now it can’t bloom. Remember—you bought it for the pretty flowers, “Mmmmmm, pretty flowers!” Now it’s ugly. Rip it out and throw it in your greenwaste container. Get something smaller that will look nice and fit in the space allowed.
[bougie hack job]




Category Four – You’re Dead; Time to Move to the Next Plane
I couldn’t make up my mind, so let’s use the buck-shot approach. Some plants go dormant and lose their leaves, which sometimes turn brown first. That does not apply to these neighborhood eyesores. How’d you like to live across the street? Really, once a plant is dead, it’s not particularly pretty and does not enhance your home.

Second runner-up: Damn near dead…














First runner-up: Damn near deader…














And the winner is: Damn near deadest…














Category Five: New Member of the National Juniper Preserve

When I lived in the San Fernando Valley in the 60s, thousands of homes addressed their landscape needs by carpet bombing their landscapes with cheap junipers. Plants that grow fifteen feet across were placed three feet from their neighbors in five-foot wide parkways. Do the math.

Again, there were countless worthy candidates around our neighborhoods. This front yard oozed to the top of the mound. Judging from the laser-like precision of the pruning, I’d guess fume-belching gas-powered hedge trimmers are the weapon of choice. At least it doesn’t need irrigation. Perhaps some gray blocks of Styrofoam would reduce the maintenance and produce the same effect?

Category Six: The Other Man’s Grass is Always Browner


I expend a lot of keystrokes ranting about lawns. I’m not 100% anti-lawn. If it serves some recreational purpose, is conscientiously tended – push-mower, organic fertilizer, efficient irrigation system – there’s really no substitute. Then there’s this one. Too steep to irrigate or mow, it inexorably submits to Darwin’s laws. [Business name pixilated to protect the innocent tenant]

Tune in next year. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more worthwhile candidates.

Rated R - Horticultural Chain Saw Massacres

This blog is rated for Mature Audiences. Send the little ones out to play.

There are people out there who must hate plants and live to see their demise. There's no other explanation I can think of for the hideous photos you are about to see. Perhaps they were startled by a swaying willow tree when they were a child, or told gruesome stories about a mean thorny rose bush that eats little children. Why else would people do things like this to perfectly innocent plants?

I posit a few explanations...

No. 1: People who get paid to garden are actually plant janitors who feel that if they own pruning tools, they are obliged to use them regardless of the aesthetic results.

Fer instance...

(stub cuts, cylinders and blobs, oh my!)

...or this...

(started life as a birch tree, but something went terribly wrong)

No. 2: Rather than install plants after first considering their ultimate size, then placing them so they can grow unfettered as nature intended, someone thinks it would be fun to indiscriminately plant them into any spot in the garden, only later to be "modified" to fit the space (again ignoring the aesthetic result).

For example...

(Algerian Ivy in its natural habitat)

No. 3: On their planet, this is a form of humor...

(Doctor, can you do something about this lump in my throat?)

No. 4: There wasn't a big enough block of styrofoam to paint green and place at the Jack-In-The-Box drive-thru lane, so they were forced to do this to a real plant. Ah, nature!

(This is bound to bring in more burger fans)

So you see, there's always a perfectly good explanation for the visual blight we are continually subjected to. I hope this clarifies it for some of you. Just doing my part.

Nominations for Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards

It’s about time for Santa Barbara Beautiful to issue their awards for all the great commercial building, residential, and landscape projects that continue to make our hometown such a fabulous place to live. SBB is all about shining a well-deserved spotlight on the property owners, designers, contractors and maintenance personnel who make the extra effort. We owe SBB a debt of gratitude for continually raising the bar and for providing funding to worthy beautification projects.

Out of necessity, or maybe kindness, they do not have an evil twin organization to rant about the aesthetic blight perpetrated upon the community by folks who plant and tend some of the landscapes we are daily subjected to. These are the tortured trees, chaotic colors, and hacked hedges that make me want to fly over with a napalm drop and put us out of our collective misery.

Here are my two main beefs…

1) People (out of ignorance, not malice) put plants in places they have no business being planted. If a plant is genetically imprinted to grow twenty feet high and twenty feet across, don’t put it in a 6” deep window box. That casts the die and assures unnecessary butchery for the live of the plant. Worse, some folks consider the pruning of a plant to be an artistic endeavor on par with avant garde sculpture.

2) Just ‘cause you own a smelly, obnoxious, gas-powered, pollution-belching hedge trimmer doesn’t mean you have to use it on every plant in the garden. And if you do whip it out, how about creating a somewhat natural form out of the plants you assault?

So permit me to offer the 1st Annual Santa Barbara Not-So-Beautiful Awards for Absurd Horticulture. I’m seeking your nominations. Here are the guidelines and a few pictorial examples to get you started. Leave your nominations as comments at the end of this post…

Category: Best Use of Inappropriate Technology To Perform Needless Work

This award will go to the Plant Janitor who has apparently never visited a real garden or ventured into the natural environment. Note the avoidance of the term “gardener” as this lofty title is reserved for those who recognize that plants are living things, that each has its own particular growth habits and cultural needs, and that, when properly selected and placed, can exist quite well with no reshaping from anyone, thank you very much.

Example...


Category: Most Absurd Location To Plant A Bougainvillea

Most Bougies fall into the category of aggressive, thorny, don’t-mess-with-me brambles that will take over a football field if left alone. Their allure, however, is their delightful color, imparted by bracts (not actually flowers) that range from purest white to copper, red, purple, and pink. It’s that beautiful color that makes folks plant them anywhere, regardless of the torturous abuse needed to subdue them in the ridiculous spaces we force them to occupy. It’s NOT a freakin’ petunia folks! Furthermore, when you slice them and dice them, you’re cutting off the tips that produce the color. Smooth move! So lemme know where the most absurd examples reside.

Example...


Category: Abused Plant Most Likely To Be Featured In A Dr. Seuss Illustration

How far can a plant janitor stray from the inherent form of a plant before we lose all connection with Mother Nature? How misguided and unobservant does one need to be to create the Twilight-Zone tableaus we find dotting the landscapes of Santa Barbara. When does it make more sense to throw some plastic coat hangers in a furnace, pull them out and shove them in the ground? You know they're out there—now go find them.

Example...


I think that’s enough to get you started. If you think of other categories, send them along and maybe we’ll try another round. In the meantime, while you’re looking for candidates, keep your eyes on the road—wouldn’t want to lose a REAL gardener.