April is Earth Month
Earth Day is April 22nd, but you can celebrate and focus on our big blue planet all month.
Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase is FREE!
7th Annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase
It's garden tour time, folks, and this year Gardenerd HQ is on the Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase. We'll be opening up the backyard vegetable garden for all to see. We'll be sharing helpful tips and tidbits on how to grow just about anything edible in a small space. The Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase is on Saturday, April 25th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This self-guided tour offers over 50 homes to inspire you toward a more sustainable…
Always room for the homeowners' cute pelican watering can.
Bye, Bye Turf!
It's time to highlight another turf removal project we've just completed. This one is primarily non-edible, but we were excited to transform another front lawn into a water catchment basin, and make it a home for native and drought-tolerant plants. The family wanted colorful plants that gave them a little privacy while taking advantage of the city's rebate program, which covered the cost of plants and hardscape materials. Let's take a look: Before The homeowner wanted a path next to…
Sage Wisdom from Rosemary
How to deal with fruit flies using rosemary and homemade fruit fly traps
Perennial milkweeds grow back year after year. They provide habitat for traveling Monarch butterflies.
Native Milkweed Only, Please.
I've been hearing it for awhile, especially from the native plant enthusiasts and experts among us: pull out non-native milkweeds, it's making our Monarchs sick. What? Aren't we supposed to be growing milkweed for Monarch butterflies, you ask. The answer is yes, but it's more complicated than that. Nobody ever really explained to me why we need to stop growing non-native milkweeds, just that we need to stop. But finally something came across my desk to explain it succinctly. Recent…
Prettily wrapped packages would rouse any gardener, eager to unwrap these gifts.
Minnie and Moon Unboxing
Gardenerds love gardening toys, especially in spring. There's something very satisfying about a fresh new ball of jute twine or a well-made hand tool. As if spring wasn't exciting enough, we recently received a gift certificate to go crazy at Minnie and Moon, a great new online garden store that imports well-made British tools and goodies to the US. If you read our November, 2014 newsletter about Minnie and Moon, you'll get the story behind the products, (In the interest…
Books for Spring Reading
The Urban Soil Summit we recently attended left us with tons of information and even more resources to follow up on later.
What we need to design our gardens to deal with our storm water
Urban Soil Summit Review – Part 2
It's time for more details from the Urban Soil Summit, following Part 1 of our review of the event. Day 2 was just as mind-blowing as Day 1, but the focus was on ideas that could be labeled as fringe or even controversial. Still, all the speakers were enlightening and we came away with more inspiration to share. The day also proved to be more emotional than the day before. It all started with Finian Makepeace of Kiss the Ground.…
Clockwise from upper left (2 of each plant): Renee's Mrs. Burns, Native Seed's Mrs. Burns (1 just sprouted), Salad Leaf Basil, Aurelia Basil, Opal Basil.
Experimental Spring: New Basils and More
Gardeners get bored, so we keep trying new varieties to keep things interesting. This spring at Gardenerd HQ, we're trying out several new seeds for 2015. We planted seeds a week or so ago, and now those seeds are sprouting and the excitement is really kicking in. Let's take a look: 4 types of basil (and 2 different strains of 1 cultivar) sit beautifully in their seed tray. Basil Every year we grow Renee's Garden Seeds Salad Leaf Basil. It's…