Not only do I love gardening, I love garden tools and accessories. Nonetheless, for quite a while I have been using inexpensive latex-coated polyester gloves that I buy at Costco […]
books and tools
Wild Suburbia – native plant gardening
After many years, lots of writing and rewriting, and tons of rejections, it is finally out! In August, Heyday Books released my book, Wild Suburbia – Learning to Garden with […]
Warning: For plant geeks only
Way back in 1993 a large, imposing and impressive book was published by UC Press. The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California, edited by James Hickman, was a revision of Jepson’s […]
In the beginning
In the heat of the summer of 1999 I take pieces of scrap paper and sketch the long, narrow parkway bed on the east side of our corner lot. It […]
Keeping cats out of the veggie garden
This post is not about cats or vegetable gardens, but I will get to that later. It is about an old fashioned tool, a scythe. Yes, scythe, like in Grim […]
And the good news is….
…my son is getting married. He and his fiancee would like to have a simple backyard wedding… in our backyard. And the deck that I have mentioned in previous posts […]
Selection and Care of California Native Plants Slide Presentation
I totally cannot believe I didn’t see this before, but here is the slide show in full, without me having to upload each and every slide. Phew! As a reminder […]
Native Grasses, Sedges and Rush for the Garden
From Grass_090618 While working at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden I wanted to order lots of native grasses for our native plant nursery and annual sales. I love their texture […]
12 Favorite Native Plant & Gardening Books
From FavoriteBooks Back in February I posted a piece on my favorite gardening tools. Today I am going to list my favorite of favorite garden and plant books (alphabetically by […]
My Favorite Tools
If I had to limit myself to just a few gardening tools, these would be the ones. The spade was given to me by my mother-in-law and is probably my […]