Garden Like A Vulcan : : Let Logic Guide You

After I've been declared Supreme Ruler of the Universe, I'm making Star Trek's Mr. Spock my Magistrate of Sustainable Gardening. He'll be in charge of a new mega-bureaucracy with far-reaching powers to bring clear, logical thinking to landscape maintenance, because so much of the work people do in gardens makes no sense.

Take raking, for example.

CRS (Compulsive Raking Syndrome)

I don't understand what's so bad about seeing fallen foliage under plants. With all the zero tolerance raking going on you'd think someone had dumped radioactive, Ebola-infested asbestos everywhere. As my buddy Owen Dell says, "Why do you think they call them leaves? You're supposed to leave them there."

Week after week you or your gardener are out there scraping away with one of those harmless looking flex rakes, rounding up every leaf that had the temerity to fall in your garden, and then having the pile hauled away.

That's quite silly, really. Not only are leaves a multifaceted resource for the garden, but excessive raking will eventually compact the soil's surface into an impenetrable, crispy, lifeless crust.

Lots more to read here...

It's Like Road Rage, Only Wetter

In my continuing negligence of this blog, I will once again "repurpose" what's going on in the rest of my blogging life. How I wish I had the time to ponder and print my ADD musings, but, alas, post-retirement life is far more complex than I had imagined.

For your reading pleasure, please pop over to my Fine Gardening Magazine blog. I've got my knickers in a bunch over folks who waste water and ranting in the first and second installments on my series on water conservation and lawn alternatives. I used the phrase "drier than a popcorn fart" and my editor let it through. It brings out the 3rd grader in me. There is also a bit of musing about making nooses out of garden hoses for those who dare to waste our most essential and limited resource.

If you'd be so kind, stop and leave a comment. It feeds my massive ego.

There's also a new(ish) post at my bi-weekly Edhat column about using succulents in the garden. I had the pleasure of lunching with one of the leading experts on the subject--Debra Lee Baldwin--while she was in Santa Barbara promoting her book, Designing With Succulents. Luscious pictures, very practical design ideas, delightful lady.

So click on a few links and see what I'm up to. Maybe someday I'll have enough brain cells and time to refloat this here blog barge.

I Don't Hate Scotts Lawn Products -- Or Do I?

I’ve been reading lots of blogs and I’ve determined that I have to do something bold to grab your attention, so here goes:

[BOLD LEAD PARAGRAPH]

Dear “The Scotts and Miracle-Gro Company”:

I don’t hate you. I’ve never even met you--not that I’m aware of. I just hate what you stand for. You’re not alone in keeping us shackled to the questionable ideal of the suburban lawn—just kinda the big target with the “kick-me” sign, so I’m picking on you because it’s easy.

Per your web site, it is heartening to see you giving a small nod to using organic materials. Of the 13 products shown on your lawn fertilizer page, the Scotts Organic Choice looks pretty lonely. At least you’re trying to build a little green “street cred”, but we know where your real profits come from and which products get all your promo bucks.

I guess my gripe is that you live and thrive by helping to sustain the myth that a “real” garden has to have “thick, lush, green turf” even if nature and the environment continually remind us that without your toxic products, copious amounts of precious water, herbicides and insecticides we might succumb to YELLOW LEAVES!, NASTY BUGS! (don’t want any of THOSE near our kids) and the silent scorn of our neighbors.

[Pretty damn bold, eh? I’m waiting for their corporate jack-booted thugs to come pound on my door.]

TRANSITION (can’t suddenly switch gears…I have to back my way into the real content)

My last two blogs have set the stage for murdering your lawn and lots of readers seem to want to take it to the next level. I’d love to help, but first a disclaimer. My 35-year experience in the green industry and landscape architecture is from a career based in the benign coastal climate of central and southern California. So when I’m asked by readers from around the country to help them with lawn alternatives the first problem that arises is finding appropriate plants for your specific locale. The environmental and cultural conditions are just too varied for me to claim to be all things to all readers.

SUBSTANCE (here’s the payoff)

So how about I just do some coaching to help you move in the right direction? It’s gonna take me a few more postings to get you there (I just moved to a new home, so writing time is a bit scarce) but keep checking in and I’ll try to get you where you’re going. I also welcome any comments based on your own experiences. Just tell us where you’re writing from.

First things first—are you REALLY going to remove every blade of grass from your current lawn? Do you really need to? Form follows function, so if you’re doing this because you’re just tired of the work and environmental impacts of being a recovering lawn owner, do you have to actually remove the lawn? What if you just tinker with it and let it revert a Darwinian approach? I think that’s still taught in some schools—Survival of the Fittest.

What if you just stopped mowing and watering? What would move in to fill the void? Nature abhors a vacuum, so something is going to find these new conditions very attractive. Yes, the weeds you’re currently keeping at bay might take advantage, but not necessarily. If the watering stops and you rely only on natural rainfall, some of those weeds that thrived on the life-support you provided for your lawn just might give up.

What if you introduce a few new non-turfgrass plants? Here in Santa Barbara, I’d be looking at things like creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum), Lippia (Phyla nodiflora), some sedges like Carex praegracillis, English daisy (Bellis perennis) or common yarrow (Achillea millefolium). My local favorite to mix in is Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum), shown in the photo at the beginning of this post. Now where you live, these might not grow, or they might become noxious weeds (Lippia is a scourge in New Zealand).

Your assignment this week: Do your homework by finding some plants that you can allow to infiltrate your current lawn, and start thinking of it as a naturalized meadow. Visit a garden, check your plant catalogs, talk to some experienced gardeners. Let me know what you find.

I’ll be back soon. Promise.

Sexy Sumptuous Color / Water-Wise Plants

We drool when we see those garden photos on the mags at the dentist’s office. Sensuous burgundy leaves, fragrant gray-leaf lavendar, delicate pink flowering shrubs. Looks like it belongs in front of Muffin Mouse's little cottage in merry old Newark. Ya just wanna take a bite out of it!

But much of the stuff we lust after in garden books doesn’t make sense in our semi-desert Santa Barbara / SoCal climate. We just can't shake that temperate climate aesthetic. So do we resign ourselves to a life of sensual deprivation or do we waste one of the most precious resources we have coaxing lush growth in a climate that’s supposed to be sporting sagebrush?

Have I got a deal for you! Call now and you can have the best of both worlds! Operators are standing by.

The key is understanding what makes a plant composition attractive to you, and “reverse engineering” it to its basic components. If your bippy gets all aroused from the combination of sky-rocketing yellow blooms framed by dark green weeping foliage, find something in your own neck of the woods that gives you that effect. Don't try to import something from another climate that needs a life-support system we can't afford!

The photo above gives the look of a lush English garden, but all the plants would survive with a monthly deep soak in the summer and no supplemental water for the rest of the year.

That dark burgundy foliage is a flowering plum with a deep root system that doesn’t need much pampering. The graceful pink flowers are bursting out of a tough-as-nails New Zealand Tea Tree. And Lavendar is a Mediterranean plant that needs no help from us, thank you very much!

So you can have it both ways—drop-dead-gorgeous garden and treading lightly on the planet. Pretty sexy, eh?