By now, everyone must know that having a lawn is one of the biggest environmental no-no's ... especially in the warm, dry areas of the country. If you have loads of natural rainfall - go for it, but if you have to supplement your lawn with irrigation to keep it lush and green, think hard on what kind of a price you're paying for that green carpet. Researchers agree that the depletion of fresh water due to global warming will be an extremely serious problem in the very near future. So why are we using SO MUCH of it to grow grass? As if that wasn't bad enough, having a good looking lawn (in the traditional sense) takes liberal applications of herbicide, pesticide, and chemical fertilizers. Think about that when you let your toddler roll around on that swath of green in your neighborhood park

We at Elysian Landscapes are hot on fake lawn ... we use Syn Lawn, but other varieties are out and about. The installation isn't cheap, but you save money on putting in an irrigation system and you save on the water bills! When it rains, synthetic lawn drains; you don't have to worry about puddles and low spots. And it's soft - it even has that coolness that lawn gives you when you sit or lay on it. Another plus is that it looks just as perfect in the shade as it does in the sun - you can't say that about sod.

I have never had lawn... to me, it reeks of homogeneity,conformity, and suburban cliches. What I would love to see in neighborhoods (urban and suburban alike) would be a front yard planting evocative of the climate, the culture, or the personality of the owner of the home - no lawn! The backyard would be dominated by spaces for entertaining, playing, and planting (and some of that planting should be vegetables). I can accept a small patch of lawn in the backyard, especially if the family has young kids - and now that patch of lawn can be eco-friendly. That makes me so happy - and every time a client goes with out suggestion to use synthetic lawn, it feels like a victory.

Unfortunately, most still desire the real thing, no matter how damaging to our planet. WHY?

Okay - I'll get off my soapbox now. Forgive me for being shrill or preachy. Thus endeth the lesson.

As my dear readers very well know, I have a deep horticultural passion for agaves. ALL agaves. I do have my favorites, however, and Agave medio-picta 'Alba' is right there at the top of the list. I consider it a very feminine agave ... it looks girly to me, like it wears perfume and likes make-up.

You all must think I'm crazy. I have arguements with my gardens and I assign my plants gender. I think it's because I was an actor for most of my life. I started gardening when I made the decision to quit - I realized I had to stop when I actually dreaded getting an acting job. But even though it was the right choice for me, it was painful, and I turned to the life affirming activity of gardening to replenish what I'd lost during those years of work in 'the business'. In the garden I began to play again, the kind of playing I did when I was in the theatre, in rehearsals, and the knot that had formed in the pit of my stomach relaxed. I only know one way to work - so I used my acting tools in the garden, staging scenes, creating relationships, finding the 'dramatic action' ... and I still work that way.

I see plants as actors, playing their parts - and in my front garden, Agave medio-picta 'Alba' is my leading lady. She holds the stage firmly, yet effortlessly; she lets her supporting players have their moments, but even when the main focus isn't on her, she remains compelling. She can be a ham, but I forgive her - I have also been known to be a bit of a ham.

She's been giving wonderful performances lately, and I wanted to let her have her moment in the spotlight.

Take a bow, Agave...

I LOVE my purple smoke tree - Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' - I wait breathlessly for it to leaf out every spring. It has the most beautifully shaped leaves that emerge the deepest, velvety purple - and the veins are bright red! Magnifico!

I have one dilemma, however. You see, I grow this shrub for it's foliage, but the raison d'etre of the tree is to smoke - to bloom with pannicles of tiny flowers that look like puffs of smoke once the flowers are spent. But the leaves are bigger and darker if the branches are cut back to a basic framework - which sacrifices the bloom for that season. If the tree/shrub isn't cut, the branches tend to be bare at the base, with leaves and flowers toward the tips - a gawky look, but charming. What to do, what to do?

I pride myself on always trying to have my cake and eat it too. It practically never works, but I try! So with my Cotinus, I decided to cut back part of it to produce big leaves, and leave the rest of it to blossom and smoke. I know this won't be too kosher with my gardening bretheren, but I am here to play and discover. I may have discovered the perfect way to deal with smoke trees. This technique may come to be known in the future an 'Soler-izing'!

(- okay so I'm still a little off my game from the trauma of the toyon. Forgive my bad garden pun.)

I am so upset I can't even post a picture. I came home yesterday with a flat of corn starts to plant in my vegetable beds, and as I walked by my ornamental pomegranite (why couldn't the original owner of the house have put in a fruiting one instead? Sigh...) I noticed something was different. It took me a little while to figure out what it was - everything was off, though. Suddenly, I realized that the toyon that hangs over my fence and mingles beautifully with my pomegranite was gone. As in GONE - chopped down! My neighbors are building a fence, and instead of figuring out how to accommodate the beautiful California native tree, they killed it.

Now I know it was their tree, but it was a very important part of what gardeners call my "borrowed view". I even posted about it last year! Is it wrong for me to be hating on my neighbors right now? I know this isn't a big deal to them, what do they care about one tree or another? But they know I loved that tree. Just like they knew I hated the birches they planted in their front yards, feet away from my garden. (She asked me for suggestions on what trees to plant, but I was ignored) Whenever someone comes to look at my plantings, I always have to tell them that the sickly birch is my neighbor's, not mine. Silver birches in Southern California? Please!

I am so frustrated, because I can't hate on them too hard. The reason they are building that fence is to keep their crazy dog from attacking my fence and inciting Sadie and Dexter to riot. I do appreciate that. But there was a way to save that tree. I saved my pomegranite when my fence was built ... it cost a little more, it took some planning and brain power, but it was doable. Now we have a fence that keeps the peace between the dogs, but the lovely native tree with the deep green leaves that covered itself with berries in the winter, and was a source of food and shelter for our neighborhood birds, is nothing but kindling.

I am so, so sad.

A week ago I was in San Diego, and while having a grand ole time I stumbled across this building absolutely covered in Black Eyed Susan Vine. It was right in the middle of downtown, and it was for sale. I wanted it. I have no use for old bungalow apartments in San Diego ... but that vine! How exquisite! How extravagant!

I have Black Eyed Susan Vine (Thunbergia alata) on my fence, but it isn't anywhere near as luxurious. Of course, this San Diego vine has probably been growing for decades upon decades, while mine is but a babe. And while I love my orange one, the yellow looks so much fresher, cleaner, prettier ... I think I need to add a yellow Thunbergia to my fence.

When you garden, inspiration is everywhere; I often find it in plants still flourishing in abandoned buildings or houses in older parts of town. Sometimes you'll see something that was lovingly planted and tended by someone generations ago growing wild, truly expressing itself ... really going for broke. I love seeing things like that. One of the gardens I've made that is closest to my heart was for a dear friend, and we decided that we wanted the garden to look like it was left alone for a hundred years. This vine would look perfect in that garden.

Many gardeners really like their plants to behave, to stay in bounds - and I understand why ... invasives are a big problem. But I am always seduced by an exhuberant plant that takes it to the limit. I mean think about it, what could be tougher than a plant that kicks ass with no help at all - one that thrives on whatever nature feels like giving it?

That is a plant I want in my corner!

A monster Aloe named Willard in my back garden. A plant that sprouted an alien beast as it's bloom spike in my front. And now, on the fence above my baby vegetable garden - the biggest grasshopper I have ever seen. And we know that grasshoppers are evil denizens of gardens and yards everywhere - descending like marauding hoardes, devouring every desirable plant in sight. And this one has the gall, the temerity to just sit there on my fence, chewing lazily on my Passiflora 'Coral Seas'.

This grasshopper is a female, because they are bigger ... the biggest one on record is 11cm, and this one is easily 9cm... so I'll bet you anything she has laid a grip of eggs all over my gardens and they'll hatch in June, just when the salvias are looking their best and the roses are hitting their stride and those little hopper nymphs will eat up everything. So how do I get rid of these things? Yes, I have adopted a live- and- let- live approach to gardening, but sometimes a gardener has to draw a line in the compost and say ENOUGH! You can push me this far and no farther! (or is it further?)

So I did a little research on killing grasshoppers and was horrified to find out that arsenic was the accepted method of execution not so long ago. Not very organic, that arsenic stuff. What else... horticultural oils and insecticidal soaps? I don't know - I've never had much luck with that stuff. My preferred way of killing varmints is with a strong jet of water.

I did read about this stuff called Nolo Bait. It's some kind of demon spore that you mix with bran flakes (like cereal? Kellog's All Bran? Yuk.) and spread around where the hoppers congregate. They'll gobble it up, and the spore will activate and kill the grasshoppers from the inside out. The females pass the spores on to their eggs, and that way the next generation becomes Nolo'd, too. And as a bonus, the grasshoppers that live cannibalize the dead and become infected, and more death ensues! A slaughter!

This genocidal stuff is supposed to be completely benign to all the other things that eat grasshoppers - mice and owls and hawks and others... but I'm not convinced, so it's a big NO on the Nolo for me. I'll have to stick with the strong jet of water, or I could do what an acquaintance of mine does - when she sees one, she whips forward with her pruners and chops them in half.

EEEEEEWWWW!

Here's a better image of my Passiflora 'Coral Seas', for Pam of Digging. If you haven't stopped by to check out her marvelous spring blooms, what are you waiting for?

YIKES!
Lock all your doors and windows! The Beschornia is in it's final stages of bloom and it is freaking out my whole neighborhood. Someone rang my doorbell to ask 'what on earth that thing' was. Sadie barks at it every time she sees it. I saw some neighborhood teenage hooligans giving it the hairy eyeball - I hope they don't cut down the bloom stalks and smoke them or something!

Next week I'll post the final images of the Beast, in it's fully expanded glory. And then - Off with it's head!

I haven't been peeking in on my front garden for a few days, not wanting to start some hair-brained dialog - but today I took a moment to dawdle there and see what's new. And what do I see but the most beautiful irises with their ruffled petals spread out like the petticoats of dancing cowgirls.

Like I said last year when these beauties popped up, I don't remember planting them. I might have been the lucky victim of a guerilla gardner.

I sometimes think about sneaking in to people's yards and planting what I think would look good - but more often I threaten my gardening friends with late night garden sabotage. I tell Michael, who works with me at Elysian Landscapes, that one morning he will wake up and his entire garden will be underplanted with pink alyssum. Judy fears the day I break into her back yard and dig up the Dracena draco I covet so very much, only to replace it with a pom pom boxwood topiary. One of my neighbor has perfect, tidy front borders - I have fantasies of replanting everything upside down and backwards.

Thank goodness I don't have the energy for guerilla gardening forays (I can barely keep up with my regular, everyday plant chores) or I would be a marked woman. I am glad that others aren't as ornery as I, and that they'd think enough about my garden to collaborate with me in secret.

They even picked my favorite color!

(In the interest of full disclosure, Jan thinks he remembers me planting the irises... but I truly, truly don't! I'm positive it was a guerilla, or maybe elves - pixies, even. Gardeners are supposed to believe in magic, right?)

For months I have been trying so hard to capture a hummingbird on camera. There is the most beautiful hummer that has recently set up shop ... it is obvious he considers himself the mayor of my garden. He has the brightest red throat, and he seems to have tinges of orange here and there, with an iridescent bluish strip down his feathery green back. He's a looker, this guy is! And what an attitude! He will fly so close to me and taunt me - posing on an aloe blossom, sitting ever so fetchingly on the tip of an agave - he dares me to photograph him! I swear he even winked at me once! But I never have my camera when I see him, and if I go to get it, off he flits. Once I did happen to have my camera on me when he came at me with his antics, and as soon as I rased it up to shoot, he screeched to a full mid-air stop, turned on a dime, and raced off as fast as those tiny furious wings could take him. Then he turned to stick out his tongue at me. What a tease.

I was in San Diego for a few days this week, and I spent an afternoon in lovely Balboa Park, one of my very favorite places. In the parking lots, they have enormous sweeps of one of a plant we've discussed recently - Pride of Madeira, and they look absolutely sublime. I was snapping away, trying to get some good close-ups to post, when what do I see before me but a lovely hummer, one who was so kind as to hang around for a picture. My first hummer photo! No, this isn't my garden's Bad-Ass Hummingbird Mayor, but now that I've caught one of these little birdies on film, I have a renewed self confidence. I will have a picture of tiny Bad-Ass soon. Mark my words.

The Beschornia is growing. And growing. Every day it stretches out a little more, and I must admit to being a little frightened of it. If there is a plant that will one day come alive and announce to the world tht it is really an alien beast from another universe, it would be a blooming Beschornia. I mean, it acutally has a face!

Yikes! I think I am going to give myself nightmares. But look - it has all the attributes of a classic Sci-Fi monster! I really want to do a 'Monster' Garden one day, using really scary plants. Only the most hardcore would qualify. Definitely Willard the Aloe will be there. And Proteas - a Monster Garden must have proteas. What else?
Hmmmm... now this is going to be a fun garden to design - even if I don't have a place to plant it yet.

What would you put in my Monster Garden?