Monthly Archives: October 2015

Landscaping with Succulents

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As we await El Niño rains, the Monterey Bay area’s familiar rainy season is already late in starting, and we feel the pull of long-term perspectives on gardening.

Let’s consider landscaping with succulents plants, which are gaining appeal for their interesting foliage forms and colors, ease of cultivation and propagation and of course drought tolerance.

Many succulent plants can hold their own in the garden as specimens or aesthetic statements, but when we group several plants, they relate to one another in various ways and we have a landscape, either by design or by chance.

Tiered Succulent Display

Tiered Display of Succulents in Sidney, Australia

Landscaping by chance is often popular, but with a little planning, gardeners can succeed with more deliberate methods.

Designing with plants involves individual preferences and styles, which we always respect. There are, however, a few broad guidelines to consider.

The first of these is “taller plants in back,” which is about visibility. Take the time to learn the mature height of each plant. Here is information sheet from succulent expert Debra Lee Baldwin, listing popular succulent plants by height: Instant Gardens.

Another organizing guideline is to group plants by their watering needs. This technique, called hydrozoning, works with nature (always a good idea!) and makes garden maintenance easier.

Using this technique requires knowing the watering needs of the succulent plants in your landscape. All succulent plants need some water, particularly during their growth periods. They need much less during dormancy.

The two broad categories of succulent plants are the “winter dormant,” i.e., plants that grow during the spring and summer, and the “summer dormant,” i.e., those that grow mostly during the fall through early spring. Here is a link to winter dormant and summer dormant succulent plants.

The landscape designer also could group plants by county of origin. Such grouping is a step toward creating plant communities, which are combinations of plants that are found in natural settings. Such combinations reflect the plants’ common needs for soil, exposure, climate and other factors. Gardening in this way involves detailed cultivation methods. Grouping plants by country of origin is relatively easy, while respecting nature and developing an interesting landscape. The avid gardener can discover a plant’s country of origin from some books and plant labels, or by entering the plant’s botanical name in wikipedia.org.

Finally, consider combining succulent plants with grasses, which are another category of drought-tolerant plants. Grasses typically respond to severely dry conditions by going dormant, rather than by storing moisture, and grass-succulent combinations are seen in natural settings. The benefit of combining succulents and grasses is primarily in the aesthetic effect of contrasting the succulent’s fleshiness with the grass’s wispiness. To learn more about grasses, see the book, The American Meadow Garden (2009), by John Greenlee and Saxon Holt.

For more comprehensive guidance, Debra Lee Baldwin’s book, Designing with Succulents (2007), provides inspiring ideas for planning your own succulent garden area.

Preparing for long-term water shortages certainly includes defensive strategies, but your preparations can include landscaping with succulents as an absorbing and creative exercise.

Positive Actions, Large and Small

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I’ve written recently about ways in which gardeners could work toward reducing the impacts of climate change. For example, they could avoid uses of synthetic chemicals, cover the surface of soil with garden plants, mulch or cover crops, minimize tilling, and, most recently, avoid uses of gas-powered leaf blowers and other garden tools.

These practices, which generally align with organic gardening methods, could have beneficial, if small, effects on sequestering atmospheric carbon, cleaning up the atmosphere, improving soil health, retaining moisture, and other factors.

Such initiatives are important in slowing and eventually reversing the current disruption of nature’s carbon cycle: industrial-age agricultural methods have been causing about 40% of the climate change phenomenon, according to some reports.

We need those in commercial agriculture to pursue the large-scale work in these areas.

It is gratifying to know that California is providing leadership in this connection. A recent example, is the legislation to direct the Environmental Farming Science Advisory Panel to “provide incentives, including loans, grants, research, technical assistance, or educational materials and outreach, to farmers whose practices promote the well-being of ecosystems, air quality, and wildlife and their habitat, and reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions or increase carbon storage in agricultural soils and woody biomass, or both.”

The legislation (Senate Bill 357) also would fund these new incentives by drawing from a $2 billion fund already received from existing sources of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), as part of a “cap and-trade” strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This fund also supports other programs.

California Senate’s Agriculture and Environmental Quality Committees have approved this bill, and it seems poised for adoption by the full legislature, which returns in January from the current legislative recess.

Numerous agricultural and environmental organizations and land trusts are supporting this bill and similar actions. Supporting groups include the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and California Climate and Agriculture Network (CALCAN; http://calclimateag.org/.)

An important turning point for California’s leadership in this area was the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which the state has since updated and complemented with a legislative actions and executive orders.

California’s encouraging work in the climate change arena continues in the midst of other significant and urgent challenges: drought, wild fires, water supplies, transportation systems and others.

Returning to our primary focus on gardens and gardeners, we note that these statewide programs provide research, inspiration and practical demonstrations that we can as individual actors, draw upon in adopting ecologically sound practices. We enjoy our gardens more when we know we are managing them responsibly.

Evolution of the Community Garden

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I never expected to be impressed by a housing development in the San Jose area, but late in September of 2015, the City of Santa Clara launched an extraordinary project that City Council member Lisa Gilmor said is“…the first of its kind for Santa Clara. I don’t think we’ve done anything like this in the past.”

The Council selected a developer, The Core Companies, to lead master planning and development of a six-acre site on Winchester Boulevard, near the Valley Fair and Santana Row shopping centers.

Win6 Project - conceptual

Core/CNGF Project – Conceptual

The project concept combines housing with several familiar elements: a small organic farm, community gardens, a children’s garden, California native plant edible landscaping, roof gardens, solar energy production, a farmer’s market, a rainwater garden, an outdoor kitchen, and much more.

Overall, the project qualifies as an “agrihood,” a newer idea that focuses residential housing on a working farm, rather than a pool, tennis court or golf course. An agrihood also engages the residents in creating a sustainable food system for the entire community.

This concept could be appealing to people of all ages, but the United States has only a short list of existing agrihoods (for examples: http://tinyurl.com/ox4to7h). The Santa Clara project appears to be the only agrihood in an intensely urban environment, and an exceptional showcase of several ideas in sustainable gardening.

The City of Santa Clara selected this project among eight competing proposals because of its creativity, vigorous community support and the history of the site, which had been part of an agricultural research station operated by the University of California, beginning in the last 1950s.

A visionary neighbor, Kirk Vartan, galvanized community support for this project. He found a creative and knowledgeable ally in Alrie Middlebrook, a landscape designer and leader of the California Native Garden Foundation, a non-profit group that demonstrates innovative gardening ideas and supports the development of school gardens. Middlebrook’s ideas are evident in the rich array of gardens in this agrihood, which has been called the Core/CNGF project.

The California Native Garden Foundation will be involved in managing the project’s urban agriculture open space. (Full disclosure: as a long-time member of the CNGF’s board of directors, I have had both opportunities to monitor this project’s development during the past several months, and a very limited role in its creation. The CNGF board’s primary role is to review schools’ applications for the planning and development of learning gardens.)

Agrihoods could become the evolutionary next step beyond community gardens and community-supported agriculture. Through this project in nearby Santa Clara, we can see the leading edge of innovative strategies for relating research-based gardening and community relationships.

Leaf Blowers

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In recent columns, I have addressed soil health as an emerging issue in global climate change, and described ways in which residential gardeners could participate in solutions to this high-level priority. The most important strategies for home gardeners in this connection include using mulches and cover crops to protect the soil from the elements; avoiding uses of synthetic chemicals, which attack the soil microbiome, and favoring regionally appropriate plants, including (for the Monterey Bay area) plants that are native to California and other dry-summer climate regions.

Today’s column focuses on uses of gasoline-powered garden equipment: leaf blowers, lawnmowers, lawn edgers and chain saws.

This equipment contributes to climate change and air pollution. The typical device uses a two-stroke engine, which, by design, does not burn the fuel efficiently, and instead emits large quantities of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons. These emissions contribute to smog formation, climate change and acid rain, and hydrocarbons in particular can be carcinogenic.

Small trucks and passenger cars also produce worrisome emissions, but gasoline-powered garden equipment emit them at much greater rates. For example, leaf blowers produce 100 to 300 times as many hydrocarbons as does a small truck or passenger vehicle. Garden equipment with four-stroke engines perform significantly better, but still far worse than car engines.

In terms of environmental pollution, these are very dirty devices.

The California Air Resources Board has stated, “Potential health effects from exhaust emissions, fugitive dust, and noise range from mild to serious.”

Fugitive dust includes organic debris and “particulate matter,” which can include a variety of potentially nasty organic and chemical stuff that people should not breathe.

Noise pollution effects include annoyance, hearing loss (particularly by equipment operators), and a range of psychological impacts.

For more information, visit the website of Zero Air Pollution (www.zapla.org). This southern California organization details the range of health hazards associated with this garden equipment, wherever it is used.

Leaf blowers sometimes are used to clear organic materials, and leave bare soil. Making nature “tidy” in this way exposes the soil to the damaging effects of the sun and wind. The regeneration of healthy soil requires maintaining cover of vegetation or mulch materials.

Here are recommendations for ecologically appropriate uses of garden equipment.

  1. Minimize or eliminate the use of gasoline-powered devices in favor of manual equipment. Use rakes and brooms to clear leaves, a push lawnmower to cut grass, a long-handled edger to trim lawns, and a handsaw to prune limbs. These tools are consistent with a contemplative approach to gardening, and provide desirable exercise.
  2. When the task requires too much time and effort for manual equipment, use electrical devices. Battery technology is advancing to enable longer operation of small garden equipment; corded devices, although cumbersome, work quite well. (My corded leaf blower moves leaves nicely.)
  3. Negotiate with your “mow, blow & go” garden maintenance contractor to use manual equipment whenever possible. This might require a small rate increase, but everyone will be better for the effort.

Continue reading →

Right Time, Right Plants

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Tom Karwin

Each spring, many gardeners seek new plants for their gardens. That’s understandable, since that is when gardens spring into new life (sorry about that!).

The spring can be a good time to plant seeds for annuals, but the fall is by far the better time to plant perennials because our rainy season, beginning historically around mid-October, hydrates the plants while they establish roots and prepare for the following spring.

For this reason, we have excellent plant sales during the fall, offered by non-profit garden groups that support your gardening success, and of course want to earn money for their activities.

These sales offer California natives and other plants that thrive in the Monterey Bay area’s summer-dry climate and that align very nicely with your plans to build soil health in your garden.

Two early sales happen Saturday, October 3rd.

  • The Monterey Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will have its annual plant sale from 10:00 to 1:00 at the Hilton Bialek Habitat at Carmel Middle School. Info: http://montereybay.cnps.org/
  • Watsonville Wetlands Watch will host its 3rd annual Pajaro Valley Backyard Habitat Festival and Native Plant Sale from 9:00 to 4:00 at the Fitz Wetlands Educational Recourse Center, at Pajaro Valley High School. Info: http://watsonvillewetlandswatch.org .

Two more sales have been announced for the following Saturday, October 10th.

The Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and the UCSC Arboretum will hold their sales together at the UCSC Arboretum’s Eucalyptus Grove. The entrance to the sale is on High Street, is across from Western Drive, on the edge of the UC Santa Cruz campus.

Both sales are open for members from 10:00 – 12:00, and for the public from 12:00 – 4:00. Memberships for both organizations will be available at the gate on the day of the sale.

Info for the CNPS sale: http://www.cruzcnps.org/

Info for the Arboretum sale: http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/ (click on “Events/Recurring Events”)

The Arboretum’s sale includes selections from dry-summer climate regions in California, South Africa and Australia, offering opportunities for venturesome gardeners to add exotic plants to their landscapes. As one example, Melinda Kranj, Curator of the Australian Collections, has shared her knowledge of an iconic Australian plant in “Banksias Breath New Life for a Fall Garden” (click on “News” on the Arboretum website). She wrote, “The UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is currently growing about 50 species, and many different varieties and cultivars” and will have several Banksias available at the sale.

Banksia victoriae

Banksia victoriae

Incidentally, the generic name of this plant honors English botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who collected the first Banksia specimens in 1770, while on Captain James Cook’s first expedition into the south Pacific.

These plant sales are scheduled at the right time, and they offer plants that are right for our regional climate. As always, the gardener should install new plants in the right place in the landscape. Consider mature size and sun exposure, as well as garden aesthetics.