In Los Angeles, February is known as the month when winter merges into spring. The Super Bowl, in early February, coincides with a major botanical event: the onset of flowering — known scient...
Rainy weather is a welcome sight to anyone who lives in a Mediterranean climate such as our own, where gardening is a year-round pursuit. But a good downpour is not only an opportunity to rest from t...
In Los Angeles, plants that bloom in winter, although recurring, remain somehow surprising annual delights. In the midst of winter’s pale, they arrive as unexpectedly as an undeserved new year&...
Despite the overcast skies of January, winter landscapes in the Valley need not be drab and gray. Through judicious plant selection for your garden, you will witness a variety of flowers adorning you...
To see Fourth of July colors in January, we need only take a hike in the hills and canyons around us. The red berries of toyon together with the white and blue flowers of ceanothus comprise the patri...
The bright flowers of a few select perennials and annuals are called upon this time of year as an antidote to slate gray skies and assorted winter doldrums. “Border” is a word with specia...
In Los Angeles, January and February are the months for pruning most trees, shrubs, vines and roses. If you are not really the gardening type (and even if you are), you might wonder why pruning shoul...
As time passes, I have come to regard the euryops daisy as an ornamental plant that no Southern California garden should be without – and not only because the euryops is one of my wife...
Silhouettes of leafless trees impart an ethereal quality to the winter landscape. Leafless trees go well with wet and chilly days. They make you want to curl up and hibernate or, alternatively...
Note: The following was written shortly after a major earthquake in January, 1994. Whenever I walk my dog, I see a microcosm of Los Angeles at the end of the block. In the ruins of an ...