New Zealand Flax for Foundation Planting
With new Los Angeles Department of Water & Power water restrictions starting Monday, people are creating gardens that only need watering twice a week, since Mondays and Thursdays are the only da...
Category Archives: Garden Design
Creating a Tropical Paradise
Ironically enough, you may solve the problem of creating a tropical microclimate by the positioning of tropical palm trees overhead. It may also be helpful to live in a densely built or densely plant...
Michael Kappel’s Miracle Garden
Gardening is often described as therapeutic, but such a description just begins to tell the story of Michael Kappel or, more precisely, his recovery. Five years ago, Michael was in an accident that l...
Trellis Gardening
If you have limited gardening space, you really should consider going vertical. And even if you have enough room to grow whatever you want, you are still entitled to experiment with and experience th...
Arborvitae and Geraniums
Two weeks ago, I purchased several 3-foot tall arborvitae. I want to transplant them into 24-inch square containers. Is this a good time to do so? What soil mix and fertilizer should I use? I also ha...
Winter Wonderland of Silvery Foliage
Although frost is encountered in the Valley on no more than a few nights each winter, and the possibility of snow falling here is virtually nil, there are plants which, either through silver foliage ...
New Zealand Flax
Today, nearly every garden that is water-wise or water-thrifty includes New Zealand flax. Yet, unlike many drought-tolerant species, New Zealand flax is not adversely affected by an abundance of wate...
Repetition Makes Memorable Gardens
The number of memorable gardens encountered in the course of one’s life is small. The gardens you remember will most likely be public ones, such as the Getty Center garden in Los Angeles or the...
Garden Ornaments
Garden ornaments are no longer limited to plastic pink flamingos. Nowadays, you can find a somewhat more refined-looking plastic heron, and even a plastic egret. Not that plastic pink flamingos are n...
Think “Hydrozones” When Designing a Garden
Within a few days of that meteorological analysis that determined that we are in the first years of a 20-year drought, we received our most significant rain of the winter. Although no heavy rains hav...
