Piet Oudolf’s Enhanced Nature

May 13, 2013

...o 30% primary plant ratio. Lastly, Oudolf introduces “scatter” plants, sometimes by literally scattering seeds that will pop up seasonally and introduce spontaneity and wildness. Oudolf and Kingsbury favor perennials both for environmental reasons (popping in annuals every year supports a energy intensive nursery industry) and for aesthetics (perennials are more prevalent in the natural landscapes Oudolf is mimicking). Winter on the High Line. The...

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Watering 101

Mrs. Homegrown

July 2, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...ctually slows absorption. At any rate, I’d been watering this bed for some time with a sprinkler hose, waving it back and forth until I got bored. The water sunk in at first, then started to pool on the surface, and the pool lasted for a long time. At this point, a beginner might think she’d watered enough, but I’ve been fooled often enough before. I reached down into the bed and scraped at the soil. A fraction of an inch beneath the wettest area,...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

13 Comments

...More than half of the families in the Los Angeles Study spent zero leisure time (none for kids, none for parents) in their back yards during our filming. In quite a few of these cases, no family member so much as stepped into the back yard for any purpose. For another 25 percent of the families, the parents did not carve out any back yard leisure time (relax, play, eat, read, drink, or swim) despite the presence of pricey features such as built-in...

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Getting Hardscaping Right

Mr. Homegrown

July 18, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening, Mistakes

14 Comments

...do it right the first time, rather than re-do badly done projects multiple times. Go where contractors get materials not the big box stores. A recent trip to Home Depot reminded me about how ugly most of their stuff is. Get materials delivered. I once dropped a very heavy load of Trex on a steep hill near our home and watched, in horror, as it slid a hundred feet down the road. Thankfully no one got hurt. But it was not fun to reload the car on a...

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LA’s Parkway Garden Dilemma: Not Fixed Yet

Mr. Homegrown

August 20, 2013

Gardening, Urban Farming

9 Comments

...non-profits and individuals like Ron Finley. If you had done this the last time we would not be wasting time and money to re-craft the parkway regulations. Throw out your plant lists. There are a lot of species of plants on the planet! Why can I plant Achillea millefolium but not Danthonia californica? Avoiding plant lists also goes for using the word “edible.” Most “weeds” are edible. Marijuana is edible (but would probably not last long in the p...

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