Posts Tagged ‘SoCal’

Wild Wings slo­gan: We can help you make your back yard come alive!

My friends Tom and Jamie recently took me to a killer store: Wild Wings. It’s their source for some pretty exotic bird seed. Started by part­ners Bon­nie and Scott a year ago, Wild Wings is a beau­ti­fully designed and thought­ful store. “Scott has loved birds his entire life” reveals Bon­nie. “We wanted a busi­ness that would recon­nect peo­ple to nature.” They also focus on chil­dren, hop­ing to inspire them to go out­side instead of being glued to their elec­tron­ics. “Kids espe­cially enjoy our but­ter­fly habi­tat” Bon­nie says. “We also carry frog and ant habi­tats.” They are very knowl­edgable about ways to attract all sorts of wildlife to your city back­yard. Other offer­ings include :

• cus­tom blended bird seed
• bird feed­ers, houses and baths
• toys, unique gifts and gar­den accents
• field trail guides and books

We are so lucky to have this store in SoCal! They are located at 4337 Wood­man Avenue in Sher­man Oaks (91423) near Ven­tura Blvd with easy park­ing in the back. Phone @ 818−995−0022. Hours are Tues — Fri­day 10 — 6, Sat 10 — 5, Sun 12 — 4, closed Mon­day. www​.Wild​wingsLA​.com.

An announce­ment from Sheri­dan Gar­dens in Bur­bank: This Sat­ur­day, August 28th at 9:30am, is our Plant­ing Now for Fall, Win­ter and Spring color class. It is being hosted by Chris Van Deusen. Also our sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Kel­logg Gar­den Prod­ucts will be talk­ing about ways to improve soil prepa­ra­tion. 818−841−8845  www​.sheri​dan​gar​dens​.com

Cal­i­for­nia native plants

I recently toured Matil­ija Nurs­ery with owner Bob Suss­man, who started his grow­ing busi­ness about 16 years ago. Nes­tled among the orchards of Moor­park, this SoCal nurs­ery car­ries a choice vari­ety of native plants, and  native and hybridized irises. Bob has pro­vided Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com with the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion about native plant growing:

What to do now???  The end of the sum­mer dog days.……

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the most chal­leng­ing and demor­al­iz­ing time for a native gar­den, espe­cially a new native gar­den. The rea­son for this is that a native gar­den, or any gar­den for that mat­ter, always has a com­po­nent of trial and error.  Most of us tend to focus on the “error”,  what didn’t work and what died?  This was indeed the case at a recent con­sul­ta­tion I went to last week where the new gar­den was going through its rough first year.

Most native plants flower intensely in spring but by sum­mer things are going the other way.  There are non-​​violent solu­tions to all of this and things to do like main­te­nance and planning.

You can start cut­ting back things that “need it”. Things that need it are salvia’s, sphear­al­cea, encelia, grasses and even matil­ija pop­pies but not cean­othus or man­zanita. Clear out leaf lit­ter except under oaks — my pref­er­ence. Weed and spread mulch. That will give every­thing a much neater and cleaner look while keep­ing the ground cooler and plants greener.

Plan­ning! What croaked and what didn’t? What looks good dur­ing the sum­mer heat? Most casu­al­ties occur in the first year.  While there are many rea­sons for plant casu­al­ties, it’s gen­er­ally “wrong plant, wrong place”, but you may not know this until the first sum­mer. Then you find out.  What to do?

Repeat the suc­cesses and not the fail­ures. Look at those things that did well and plant more of those. Go to the native plant nurs­ery (Matil­ija Nurs­ery) or botan­i­cal gar­den in summer/​fall and see what looks nice and in flower!!!!.  Then, plant the plants that are both flow­er­ing and/​or look nice.

Flow­er­ing plants put the focus of your eye on the flow­ers and not the part of the land­scape going to seed or in to dor­mancy.   Here’s a par­tial list of what is flow­er­ing now: lessin­gia, ero­gonum grande rubescens ie red buck­wheat (fin­ish­ing now), Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, chilop­sis lin­earus (desert wil­low), mala­cotham­nus nutalii (bush mal­low) and abu­tilon palmeri.

Matil­ija Bob will now do con­sults for about $100 per visit depend­ing on where you live and you get a 20% dis­count cer­tifi­cate good for 60 days on nurs­ery plants to boot. Way bet­ter and cheaper than a psychologist!

Go to www​.matil​i​ja​nurs​ery​.com for more arti­cles like the one above.

Con­di­tions in the Pacific Ocean seem to be shift­ing toward the return of the La Niña weather phe­nom­e­non, the lesser-​​known rel­a­tive of the El Niño weather anom­aly, accord­ing to fore­cast­ers at the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­tory in Pasadena. What does that mean for SoCal gar­den­ers? Experts say a lot less rain in an area already plagued by drought conditions.

“Right now, I’d say the dice seem loaded for an immi­nent La Niña,” Bill Patzert, a long-​​range fore­caster at the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­tory in Pasadena told the San Diego Tri­bune. “It’s not a good sign. La Niña is what I call the diva of drought for the Southwest.”

The U.S. Cli­mate Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter said a large num­ber of com­puter mod­els indi­cates “the onset of La Niña conditions.”

La Niña is char­ac­ter­ized by unusu­ally cold ocean tem­per­a­tures in the Equa­to­r­ial Pacific, com­pared to El Niño, which is char­ac­ter­ized by unusu­ally warm ocean temperatures.

In the past sev­eral weeks, ocean tem­per­a­tures have dropped significantly. And from Bill Patzert,  “For those who think in terms of “nor­mal” rain­fall for Los Ange­les: “Nor­mal is a cycle on a wash­ing machine.”

The pre­dic­tion map below is from the National Weather Ser­vice site. The first map is for Sep-​​Oct-​​Nov/​2010 and the last map is for Aug-​​Sept-​​Oct/​2011. The white areas are nor­mal rain­fall, the green above nor­mal, and the brown areas are below nor­mal. I’m tear­ing out my lawn as soon as I can afford it.

“Huge Sude­ley Bench” by Pablo Reinoso at Sude­ley Castle

I came across this work of art on a favorite web­site and stopped in my tracks! What a per­fect set­ting for this glo­ri­ous piece of out­door sculpture!

From the catalog:

As impres­sive in scale and ambi­tion as its name sug­gests, Huge Sude­ley Bench was com­mis­sioned espe­cially for the Sotheby’s at Sude­ley Cas­tle exhi­bi­tion. It rep­re­sents the first time that Reinoso has worked on this mon­u­men­tal scale, over­see­ing a team of foundry tech­ni­cians who employed hydraulic machin­ery to manip­u­late lengths of steel girder into exu­ber­ant and free flow­ing forms. Reinoso refers to this process as ‘breath­ing sculp­ture’, ref­er­enc­ing the man­ner in which Calder adapted his mobiles while at the same time acknowl­edg­ing its archi­tec­tural prop­er­ties. Com­ment­ing on his early train­ing as a sculp­tor, Reinoso has stated his will to go beyond pre­scribed bound­aries, ‘bound­aries you need to know but you don’t need to respect’. Huge Sude­ley Bench was cre­ated in three indi­vid­ual sec­tions and treated with black auto­body paint, a deci­sion made to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions could refresh its sur­faces and appre­ci­ate the work in the pris­tine state it first left the foundry. It also sees the intro­duc­tion of Reinoso’s new artist’s mono­gram which he intends to apply to all his future creations.

“Spaghetti chair” is actu­ally a bench.

To learn more about Pablo Reinoso and his work, go to:  www​.pablor​einoso​.com, www​.chair​blog​.eu/, and to see more of this Sotheby’s exhi­bi­tion:www​.sothe​bys​.com/​m​i​n​i​s​i​t​e​/​s​u​d​e​l​ey/.

A Socal com­pany that car­ries beau­ti­ful gar­den art and foun­tains on a smaller scale is Gar­den Tem­ple (818 – 783-0079) in Stu­dio City,www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com.