America In Bloom: Rebuilding Communities a Shovelful at a Time

I've got a project I'd like you to consider as 2012 gets rolling. It'll get you into gardening mode long before freeze warnings are a distant memory, and quite possibly make you and your gardening pals local heroes. Let me explain.

Anthropologists tell us that agriculture is the basis of civilization. Instead of full-time hunting and gathering, humans literally put down roots, opening the way for cultivation of crops and domestication of animals. This fundamental shift led to spare time for specialists like bakers, animal-skin tanners, and video game designers.

I'll bet it wasn't long before native plant species were appreciated not only for their practical uses, but also as a splash of color to complement the throw pillows. I should probably look this up, but I'm guessing it didn't take long for community minded folks to propose, "Why don't we spruce up Main Street with some hanging baskets?! We'll create a sense of community pride, attract more tourists to our shops, and feel compelled to invent electricity for street lights so we can hang flowering baskets."

Plenty more to read about this America In Bloom at my December 28, 2011 Fine Gardening blog.

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...

Groovy Zoo Gardens

If you love gardening, want to discover some new plants, and make new friends who understand why you have dirt under your fingernails, how about volunteering at your local zoo? More about tapping this mother lode of horticultural fun in a second, but first, a quick detour...

I was always grateful my former neighbor Janie, the elephant tender at the Santa Barbara Zoo, didn't bring her work home with her. The steps to her second story apartment were not up to her "co-workers" popping in for an after-hours beer.

I was thinking about Janie - who has since moved up the food chain to the San Diego Wild Animal Park - the other day while researching a story on zoo landscaping. I was admiring the Santa Barbara Zoo's Asian elephants as they reached for stalks of bamboo and giant bird of paradise leaves, suspended from a towering umbrella-covered support system. Their meal hadn't traveled far. Called "browse" in zoo parlance, these munchies were harvested from landscaped areas around the grounds, doing double duty not only as a staple in the diets of zoo inhabitants (gorillas and giraffes get second "dibs"), but also as ornamental plants simulating of each animal's native habitat.

Wanna see penguins and palm trees? Follow this link...

Gift Idea? Give the Hippest Garden Photos on the Planet

Last time I posted here, I spilled the beans regarding all the green and not-so-green options for Christmas trees. So I thought it might be a good idea to forge ahead with an idea for a gift to put under the tree for the garden lover in your life. No, you can't dig holes and plant bulbs with it, but you can make some magical moments when you combine a new iPhone with the hippest photography app on the planet.

I saw my first Hipstamatic image a couple of years ago, posted at a Flickr page for aficionados. The image that caught my eye was a fairly mundane composition - the exterior of a 1930s era office building. But it looked like someone had dug it out of an old shoebox in the attic: grainy, tired colors, and lighting irregularities that gave it a dreamy feeling.

To my delight, I found out that Hipstamatic is an app created for iPhones, and for $1.99, I thought I'd splurge. (Biff the Wonder Spaniel can go a day without a rawhide chew.)

Hipstamatic is photo enhancement software that digitally simulates different types of lenses, films, and flashes to create an almost endless array of sometimes hauntingly unpredictable effects. Launch the app and you'll see what appears to be an old pocket camera, complete with textured, matte black case, a small view window, and a big yellow button that triggers the shutter.

See lots more cool pics at FineGardening.com

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.

Christmas Trees Should Smell Good

The headline pretty much sums up my argument. But my boss would not be happy with a five-word blog post, so allow me to share a few more reasons why I'd never let an artificial Christmas tree through my front door.

I make no claims of being a Christmas tree maven, a Yiddish word meaning expert, or connoisseur (a French word meaning maven). I'm from a middle-class Jewish upbringing and I only knew Christmas trees from the homes of my non-gefilte-fish-eating buddies. I remember Jay's metallic silver contraption with the rotating multicolor floodlight. Better, but still pretty bizarre, was Terry's cut tree encrusted in robin's egg blue flocking -- but at least it smelled like a plant.

Christmas trees started appearing in my living room after moving out of my folks' place and setting up housekeeping with a girlfriend from a more Norman Rockwell upbringing. Over the years, I've refined my criteria for the perfect tree:

• Douglas Fir, because it has more space between the branches for ornaments than the Michelin Man morphology of Noble Firs.
• A strong leader to hold the cone-shaped, copper wire-haired, red pipe-cleaner winged angel my son made when he was little.
• The enlivening, fresh aroma of resinous conifer needles (overpowered for a day or two by the lingering fragrance of volatilized peanut oil, potatoes, and onions from our annual Potato Latke Gorging Night).

It's only in recent years that I've thought about where these trees come from and how they arrive in tree lots around the country. I've wondered whether cutting down live trees for a few weeks of tradition is at odds with my professed stance regarding sustainable living.

So I did a little sleuthing and, for me, I can emphatically state that real trees win the enviro-battle, hands down.