Dormancy in the southern California garden
sustainable
Happy Earth Day
What better way to mark Earth Day than to give thanks for the lovely bit of habitat in our neighborhood that we call the South Pasadena nature park?
Gardening to help save the monarch butterfly
Get your free native milkweed seed packet for the monarch butterfly at the South Pasadena Farmer’s Market. Save the Monarch!
What to do with green waste in the garden
Learn to use your garden green waste sustainably without power machines or sending it to the landfill. And for everyone’s health: NO BLOWERS!
Theodore Payne Virtual Garden Tour
Virtual Native Plant Garden Tour, Garden 28, South Pasadena. Tour this South Pasadena native plant garden: front yard wildflowers, backyard flannel bush, flagstone paths, sustainable gardening practices.
Keep It Messy for Nature
Native plants are only one element of a good native garden. Banish all leafblowers and machinary to make your garden hospitable to birds and other critters.
WISPPA: The Natural Side of South Pasadena
February 2, 2019. Expert panel and Q & A. Some things everyone can do to improve our natural environment in the time of climate change.
After the flowers
Wildflower season is “past peak” and I’d like to remind you that the glorious, youthful, bright flowers now enter the very important stage of making and dispersing seed. Though my camera is still drawn to brightly colored flowers, I try to point it at the broken stems, brown seed pods, and graying leaves that are […]
Lawn-less Sustainable Garden Finale
The work on the front yard patios is completed. I planted some grasses and other perennials but am waiting until next winter to plant a few shrubs. As promised in the previous blog post, here is a slideshow containing pictures from late February, when work started, to early April, after it was completed. I’m loving […]
Lawn-less Sustainable Garden (continued)
We are making big changes to our yard. As you may remember from earlier posts, I was not happy with the burned out lawn in the front yard. Years of drought left much of the lawn brown. With city water restrictions, I watered for the large deodar cedar – deeply and infrequently – allowing the […]