A Book That Fattens Your Wallet

I don't think I've ever started my blog with a joke, so here goes.

Scene: A dark, cold bedroom, 3:27 AM.

Margie, bundled in layers of blankets, startles Mort with a loving elbow jab to the ribs. "Honey, shut the window. It's cold outside."

Mort, ever the logical and snarky one, mumbles, "So if I shut the window it's going to be warmer outside?"

---

Okay, it's a pretty lame joke, but there's a point to be made. What if you could improve the comfort of your home without opening and closing windows, piling on and peeling off layers of blankets, or fumbling the thermostat with freeze-dried fingertips?

Better yet, what if you could combine your love of gardening with your environmentally keen attitude, AND reduce your energy bill?

Well, here comes Massachusetts-based landscape architect Sue Reed's book, Energy-Wise Landscape Design - A New Approach for Your Home and Garden, with a whole lot of smart advice. The book's back cover promises that you can "Save money and energy while adding natural beauty to your home." Sue delivers on that promise.

The first four sections of the book address ideas for designing landscapes with energy in mind, like arranging plants to make the interior of the house more comfortable in summer and winter. Other chapters are packed with strategies for making outdoor spaces around the house more usable.

Lots more to learn at my Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening

Please Stop Landscaping! Pt. II

On January 11, 2011, I will stand before Santa Barbara's City Council and respectfully ask them to stop all new landscaping projects, at least until they can get their, ahem, organic fertilizer together.

They're heading in the wrong direction.

Tip of the Iceberg

An unpredictable chain of events began a few weeks ago when I saw the disturbing new planting at a public building. It got my blood flowing, not in a happy sort of way. Initially, I was elated that I had something to rant about here at Edhat, but I ended up writing about the sorry condition of our once-glorious parks. (Read my last article) I promised to let you in on the location.

The new planting in front of the Louise Lowry Davis Center (corner of De la Vina and W. Victoria) misses the mark on several levels. The big thing is that it just doesn't make sense with this building.

The Davis Center -- a small, stately, not-very-Santa-Barbara civic building -- is now fronted by a visually noisy collection of plants that might make sense in someone's back yard, but looks absurdly out of place here -- an example of "one-of-each-itis."

Plants that will grow six-feet across are planted one-foot from their neighbors. Freestanding Pyracantha (able to eat tall buildings in a single bite) are lashed to stakes, biding their time. Sun-loving, low-water-using plants intermix with others that would be happier in the understory of a cool forest somewhere outside of Seattle. Partly funded by the Water Conservation Division as a low-water-using demonstration garden, it's nothing I want home gardeners to learn from. If it survives, the Parks crews will have their hands full, taming the chaos.

Hearts were in the right place. On the heels of the very successful butterfly garden at Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, a crop of Master Gardeners came looking for another project site, knocking at the Parks Division's door. "Oh boy! A free design for a building recently spiffed up, but in need of horticultural TLC," they must have thought. The weak link, as I wrote in my last article, was that there was no one at Parks to scrutinize the design. And it somehow skirted the normal design review process, which might have improved the outcome.

Okay, I'm done flinging nasty bombs. It's fixable. Unfortunately, the Davis Center is just one symptom of a malady requiring immediate action.

Now read my heartfelt plea...

Billy's Lament to Santa Barbara's Parks - Pt I

Good thing I saw the cute pink Vespa in my rear view mirror or I would have locked up the brakes. I had just driven past a new landscape installation by the City of Santa Barbara and even at 24 miles an hour I knew something was wrong.

The good news was I'd solved my bi-weekly Edhat dilemma, "What the *#%$ am I going to write about THIS time?" Once again, something to snark about.

I parked, approached on foot and took it all in - too visually "noisy", too crowded with plants that will get really big, too stylistically disconnected from the building… That was just my warm-up.

My first instinct was to launch another diatribe in my Crimes Against Horticulture campaign. But what if I'm off base? What if I'm just being an ass?

So I emailed some of my more levelheaded, cucumber cool landscape designer friends, asking them to visit the landscape. I thought they'd recommend that I chill out and take my meds. Nah, they all agreed with me.

So big deal. It's not the end of the world that someone planted a bad landscape, but this is a symptom of a bigger problem I've been meaning to write about for a few years. This time, the scale tipped, so I'm putting it in words.

Here's what I wrote about...

Pickin' Up Pawpaws

Picture a 14-year old Ohio kid and a thrown-together fruit stand built from two-by-fours and canvas. His name is Norman Beard. Now fast forward a bunch of decades and see how Norm has exemplified the adage, "As the Asimina triloba twig is bent, so grows the tree."

The Asimina genus is where you'll find the largest edible fruit that's indigenous to the North American continent. It goes by the common name of pawpaw and it helped pioneers stay healthy by providing fresh fruit during their explorations.

Though Norm wasn't optimistic that we'd find any ripe pawpaws this time of the year, he hit the jackpot as we reached the lower end of his 5-acre home, greenhouse (roofed with photovoltaic solar collectors) and orchard.

We split open the smooth-skinned, light green, egg-shaped pawpaws with our fingers and bit into the creamy, sweet flesh. Mouthgasm...

Wait! There's more...

Fruity Street Trees? No Free Lunch!

Imagine that you're walking down the street and get an urge for a triple-scoop cone of Everybody Loves Rhubarb, Lumpy Gravy, and Cioppino Siciliano. The saliva floodgates burst. A nano-second later, in a voice oddly reminiscent of dear old mom, your macrobiotic-hi-fiber-omega-3 conscience interjects: "Have a piece of fruit. It's good for you."

As luck would have it, growing right there in the parkway is a Magical Fruit Cocktail Palm (Phoenix delmonteana). Clusters of familiarly labeled cans hang within reach. Why, there's even a hollow in the trunk containing a handy can opener!

"What an enlightened and generous place I live in," you think to yourself. "Which forward-thinking civic leaders had the foresight to use fruit trees as street trees? Not only are these trees doing their part cooling the urban heat-sink effect (which, in turn, reduces ambient temperatures and lessens our dependence on energy-hogging cooling systems), but I can also increase my fruit intake!"

[For the sake of brevity I will agree that canned fruit is inferior to real live stuff. But it was cuter and quicker to produce a graphic with cans of fruit cocktail than to futz around in Photoshop all day.]

Better yet, what if instead of magical palms, your community planted trees that actually bear life-giving, palate-tickling, colorful fruit? It stands to reason: If you're going to invest resources in planting, watering and pruning trees anyway, why not get something back?

Not Such A Peachy Idea

I called Ron Combs, City Arborist for the San Luis Obispo, inquiring if SLO had fruit trees in their public places. Aside from the pavement staining olives in Mission Plaza, Ron couldn't think of any fruit trees in his inventory. He did, however, use words like rotten, messy, slip and fall, gnats and rats. "The concept of edible street trees sounds great, but they come with problems," he said.

(I'm imagining the sidewalks during persimmon season.)

Get the rest of the scoop at Edhat.com

Let's Give Me Something To Write About

I love my readers - you folks rock. I ended last week's post with a plea for new blog topics and I wasn't disappointed. Well, that's not 100% right. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure many readers would find them interesting, but what these well-intentioned people don't realize is that some of their ideas require actual journalistic investigative reporting.

Which leads to the logical response "What the hell to you want from me? Professionalism?"

Here's the sitch: My typical month includes my bread-and-butter work as a landscape architect - you've probably seen my banner ad pop up here at Edhat from time to time. (Veiled threat: If you don't call about my design services soon, I'll drive past your house, take grainy black and white pictures and write terrible things about your garden in my next Crimes Against Horticulture article).

I'm also swamped with teaching, magazines writing, speaking gigs, the Garden Wise Guys TV show, playing drums with King Bee (the most fun I have without disrobing), family time, watching helplessly as my life get sucked into the Black Hole of Facebook, and following Biff the Wonder Spaniel's debris trail with a little blue bag.

I'm a busy guy - I've considering hiring a personal sleeper - so when my calendar reminds me that my Edhat deadline is barreling down and the wave of cold sweats subside, I spring into action and start writing.

Happily, there were quite a few doable story ideas in last week's comments. I'm excerpting them and responding below. Fortunately, this will be an easy column to write and I won't have to interview sources, travel or burn too many brain cells to meet my Thursday noon deadline, so here we go…

Mitzie ("I loved this article!") is new to Edhat and enjoyed the travelogue aspect of the last piece. "How about special botanical things to see…such as the best autumn leaves, succulent gardens in winter or wildflowers in spring." I'm up for the travelogues. I've pitched the idea of borrowing Ed's corporate jet and shadowing Anthony Bourdain No Reservations around the world, eating his leftovers, then breaking away for a garden visit in suburban Ouagadougou. I wrote about fall color last year (Keebler Elves and Chlorophyl), and have a few great sources for succulent gardens (this calls for a visit with my buddy Virginia Hayes, curator at Lotusland and columnist at the Independent and decades-long buddy).

Lots more great story ideas and comments at Edhat.com

Let Mr. Spock Choose Your Plants

Close your eyes. (Bad move - now you can't read this. Change of plans...OPEN your eyes. Drat! What if you don't see that I just typed "open your eyes"?)

Sorry, let's start over. Imagine that you're looking out the breakfast nook window when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer jumps the curb, it's back-up beeper piercing the early morning calm. Air brakes hiss and the engine revs. The bed tilts skyward. As the tailgate creaks, a river of ping-pong balls floods your front yard.

"What the...?!?"

You spring from the breakfast table as the truck pulls away. Tying your robe, you and your bunny slippers shuffle outside to inspect this curious cargo. Words are printed on each shiny orb: Miscanthus 'Morning Light' reads one, Cotoneaster dammeri, Artemisia schmidtiana 'Silver Mound', on and on, each sphere bearing the name of a different plant that grows in your region.

I don't know about you, but that's what it seems like when I start a new design project for a client - the realm of all possibilities. My Sunset Western Garden Book boasts "Over 8,000 Plants".

That's a smidge too much variety for the average residential lot. So how on Earth does an adventurous but rational gardener winnow all those tempting choices down to a manageable palette?

The Logic of Logic

Simple. Pop an old episode of Star Trek into the Blu-ray and unleash your uber-logical Mr. Spock. Shut down the "oh-but-it's-so-cute-with-its-sexy-maroon-leaf-bordered-with-a-darling-crinkly-chartreuse-leaf-margin" lobe of your brain. Delay your aesthetic gratification.

There's more to read at Fine Gardening...