Showing posts with label evil lawn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil lawn. Show all posts
2015-02-12
...perhaps that's why they call it frog fruit
This is Phyla nodiflora, (frog fruit, sawtooth fogfruit, turkey tangle, Lippia) but you can also find it called fogfruit (without the "r"). Perhaps the fogfruit camp never saw the green color and flipper-like growths that remind me of frog's feet.
2014-05-29
Turf Terminators -
"A new company, Turf Terminators, will replace high water usage yards
with low water, drought tolerant yards at no cost to homeowners, " according to the LA Daily News.
The plan is to use rebates from the water company to fund the conversion. OK so far, and a reasonable way forward for many homeowners. However, looking through the photos the design and plant selection don't seem that inspired. Plant materials seem to be exotics (I noted oleander, kangaroo paw, a flax and perhaps one California native, Giant Wild Rye) all crowded too close together in a field of decomposed granite in this photo. A Facebook photo shows shrubs with ground cover mulch around their bases. Since their web site doesn't give me an easy way to see the details of their process without "getting started", I don't know if their landscapes always look like that. They do say, "Turf Terminators' landscapers will replace your lawn with California Friendly plants and ground cover over the course of 1-2 days" which begs the question of exactly how well the lawn is removed.
Given the attention that many homeowners give to their gardens, this company might have a success on their hands.
Turf Terminators has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/turfterminators and a web site at http://www.turfterminators.com/.
The plan is to use rebates from the water company to fund the conversion. OK so far, and a reasonable way forward for many homeowners. However, looking through the photos the design and plant selection don't seem that inspired. Plant materials seem to be exotics (I noted oleander, kangaroo paw, a flax and perhaps one California native, Giant Wild Rye) all crowded too close together in a field of decomposed granite in this photo. A Facebook photo shows shrubs with ground cover mulch around their bases. Since their web site doesn't give me an easy way to see the details of their process without "getting started", I don't know if their landscapes always look like that. They do say, "Turf Terminators' landscapers will replace your lawn with California Friendly plants and ground cover over the course of 1-2 days" which begs the question of exactly how well the lawn is removed.
Given the attention that many homeowners give to their gardens, this company might have a success on their hands.
Turf Terminators has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/turfterminators and a web site at http://www.turfterminators.com/.
2012-02-15
Mother Nature's back yard
The Friends of the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve are installing a water-wise native plant garden at the Willows
Preserve. This one has an interesting twist since it's clear that they are building a demonstration back yard garden that could be implemented in the surrounding community, complete with back yard patio / shade structure. Their blog has lots of photos of the infrastructure going in and now they are ready to plant. I'm pretty sure they won't have any evil lawn.
There's an upcoming planting event that you can find out about by emailing Connie Vadheim or sending a message through their blog's contact.
There's an upcoming planting event that you can find out about by emailing Connie Vadheim or sending a message through their blog's contact.
2010-12-15
Let's play Global Warming
Found in a store today.
I used OCR on the back side of the package:
Global warming -— the steady
increase in Earth’s air and ocean temperatures since the mid-20th century - is one ofthe most discussed and studied topics in the scientific community today. This kit introduces you to Earth': climate and the issue of global warming with 23 hands-on experiments. Since Earth's formation, its
climate has been constantly changing. Periods ol warmer climate have alternated with ice ages. These changes happen over long periods of time. During the last few decades, a warming in the climate has been
observed everywhere on Earth. While some warming may be due to natural phenomena, scientists predominantly attribute global warming to human influence. This kit gives you the basic knowledge you need to understand the chmate, wlry it changes, and how our actions affect it.
First, learn about Earth's climate
system, weather, and atmosphere by conducting experiments with a model
Earth and atmosphere. Explore the hydrological cycle to learn about humidity, clouds, and precipitation. Model Earth’s heat reservoirs, thermals, global and local winds, and ocean currents.
Next, learn how human activity
influences the climate with experiments involving carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Measure the effects that increased levels of carbon
dioxide have on air temperature.
Finally, investigate the potential
consequences of global warming on humans, ecosystems, and the world's economies. Learn what we can do to protect the climate.
I used OCR on the back side of the package:
Global warming -— the steady
increase in Earth’s air and ocean temperatures since the mid-20th century - is one ofthe most discussed and studied topics in the scientific community today. This kit introduces you to Earth': climate and the issue of global warming with 23 hands-on experiments. Since Earth's formation, its
climate has been constantly changing. Periods ol warmer climate have alternated with ice ages. These changes happen over long periods of time. During the last few decades, a warming in the climate has been
observed everywhere on Earth. While some warming may be due to natural phenomena, scientists predominantly attribute global warming to human influence. This kit gives you the basic knowledge you need to understand the chmate, wlry it changes, and how our actions affect it.
First, learn about Earth's climate
system, weather, and atmosphere by conducting experiments with a model
Earth and atmosphere. Explore the hydrological cycle to learn about humidity, clouds, and precipitation. Model Earth’s heat reservoirs, thermals, global and local winds, and ocean currents.
Next, learn how human activity
influences the climate with experiments involving carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Measure the effects that increased levels of carbon
dioxide have on air temperature.
Finally, investigate the potential
consequences of global warming on humans, ecosystems, and the world's economies. Learn what we can do to protect the climate.
2010-11-15
Rain barrel vs. soil
You are a rain barrel stud, but you're beginning to feel a slight unease. Your sense of equanimity is a little disturbed because you've been reading this blog. You figured out that tap water costs next to nothing, so the $500 you spent on rain barrels is beginning to chafe in your tender areas - not only is there no benefit during the majority of the year when we have no rain in our Mediterranean climate, but the barrels aren't the most aesthetic or space-efficient addition to your yard. You want to do the right thing for the environment and a casual survey of your yard during the last rain storm suggested that next to the quantity of rain running off your driveway and out to the street, your rain barrels were looking a little...paltry.
2009-09-29
The grass is greener on the other side?
An article in the LA Times talks about turf scientists' quest for non-thirsty green lawns.
In a parched experimental plot at the edge of UC Riverside, several dozen mounds of grass poke out of the powdery soil.
These plants have the soft, narrow leaf blades and dark-green hue that would make them a welcome addition to any American lawn. Most important, they lack the feature that threatens to doom today's turf -- an unsustainable thirst for water.
With mandatory watering restrictions turning grass brown from California to Florida to Massachusetts, a small but dedicated cadre of turf scientists is on a mission to engineer a drought-proof superlawn.
They are acutely aware of the technical challenges. Millions of years of evolution have failed to devise a turf that thrives in dry, hot summers and cool, damp winters, and trying to one-up Mother Nature certainly is an exercise in horticultural hubris.
read more at the LA Times.
Of course University of California already has a low water turf grass named UC Verde. When I last looked at it, it seemed more targeted at the Southwest, than Coastal California, but a Google search last night showed that there are many more prominent providers of it now than 1+ years ago. It is a variety of Buffalo Grass, native to North America, but not to California. Shirley Bovshow, S. California "garden personality" has a test plot of UC Verde and several blog posts about it:
More from the LA Times article:
Most Californians plant tall fescue varieties, such as Marathon, in their yards. They are the most water-efficient of the cool-season grasses, but that still leaves plenty of room for improvement.
Simply switching to warm-season varieties would reduce water needs by 20%, Baird said. However, these species go dormant in the winter, and even during their active months they never reach the deep green hues of their cool-season cousins.
"We could go a long ways in terms of our drought if more people used those grasses," he said. "But the color issue is the major limiting factor."
I suppose they could always plant it on the other side of the street.
In a parched experimental plot at the edge of UC Riverside, several dozen mounds of grass poke out of the powdery soil.
These plants have the soft, narrow leaf blades and dark-green hue that would make them a welcome addition to any American lawn. Most important, they lack the feature that threatens to doom today's turf -- an unsustainable thirst for water.
With mandatory watering restrictions turning grass brown from California to Florida to Massachusetts, a small but dedicated cadre of turf scientists is on a mission to engineer a drought-proof superlawn.
They are acutely aware of the technical challenges. Millions of years of evolution have failed to devise a turf that thrives in dry, hot summers and cool, damp winters, and trying to one-up Mother Nature certainly is an exercise in horticultural hubris.
read more at the LA Times.
Of course University of California already has a low water turf grass named UC Verde. When I last looked at it, it seemed more targeted at the Southwest, than Coastal California, but a Google search last night showed that there are many more prominent providers of it now than 1+ years ago. It is a variety of Buffalo Grass, native to North America, but not to California. Shirley Bovshow, S. California "garden personality" has a test plot of UC Verde and several blog posts about it:
UC Verde Lawn Test in Los Angeles: Part 1
UC Verde Lawn Test in Los Angeles: Part 2
UC Verde Lawn Test in Los Angeles: Part 3
UC Verde Lawn Test in Los Angeles: Part 4
More from the LA Times article:
Most Californians plant tall fescue varieties, such as Marathon, in their yards. They are the most water-efficient of the cool-season grasses, but that still leaves plenty of room for improvement.
Simply switching to warm-season varieties would reduce water needs by 20%, Baird said. However, these species go dormant in the winter, and even during their active months they never reach the deep green hues of their cool-season cousins.
"We could go a long ways in terms of our drought if more people used those grasses," he said. "But the color issue is the major limiting factor."
I suppose they could always plant it on the other side of the street.
2009-06-17
Ecological restoration
There's a nice article on ecological restoration in the Christian Science Monitor. I'll leave you with a teaser quote that caught my eye, but there's more to the article than just "kill your lawn".
Asphalt...is not the only surface that creates a boundary between people and the environment. “Mowed lawns surround most factories, schools, churches, and other buildings,” he says, “and they give nothing back to people or the environment.”
Even on a small scale, meadows and open wooded areas do much more than lawns to improve the quality of human life, he says. They are also cheaper to maintain, a concept that has special appeal in hard economic times.
link
Asphalt...is not the only surface that creates a boundary between people and the environment. “Mowed lawns surround most factories, schools, churches, and other buildings,” he says, “and they give nothing back to people or the environment.”
Even on a small scale, meadows and open wooded areas do much more than lawns to improve the quality of human life, he says. They are also cheaper to maintain, a concept that has special appeal in hard economic times.
link
2009-01-27
Margaret's Mallow
I gave my friend Margaret a couple tree mallows (Lavatera assurgentiflora) while back. I've written about her California wildflower yard before. Here's what she wrote to me recently.
Hi Brent,
The top photo is from the first day of planting. The bottom photo was taken today. The mallow has been in the ground for one month. As you can see it is growing nicely. BTW, the plant is not as close to the wall as it appears. The other mallow I planted this past weekend at my parent's house. My mom was very excited to receive it. I told her the back story.
In other news, a lady walked by my yard and told me she makes it a point to walk down my street to see the progress. She told me she is letting her lawn go and will replace it with drought resistant plants. I gave her a bag of seeds harvested from my yard. She was so thrilled. Slowly, but surely, lawns will be a thing of the past!
Margaret
Hi Brent,
The top photo is from the first day of planting. The bottom photo was taken today. The mallow has been in the ground for one month. As you can see it is growing nicely. BTW, the plant is not as close to the wall as it appears. The other mallow I planted this past weekend at my parent's house. My mom was very excited to receive it. I told her the back story.
In other news, a lady walked by my yard and told me she makes it a point to walk down my street to see the progress. She told me she is letting her lawn go and will replace it with drought resistant plants. I gave her a bag of seeds harvested from my yard. She was so thrilled. Slowly, but surely, lawns will be a thing of the past!
Margaret
2008-11-24
How near is the end?
The end of lawns as we know them.
I'm violating a self-imposed blog vacation to bring you a link from MSNBC about fake lawns sent to me by Margaret. They give lip service to native plant lawns, but it's mostly about astroturf (one woman spent $10k on hers! Amazing.) and clashes with city ordinances requiring green lawns.
Some cities are weighing whether to lift bans on artificial turf that date back to the days when phony grass looked like fluorescent plastic. A few communities are also encouraging the use of native plants once derided as shaggy weeds.
It ends with the following paragraph:
How near is the end?
John Rossi, general manager at Western Municipal Water District, which services cities including Riverside, Corona and Temecula, agrees that the end is near for the traditional lawn.His district recently adopted the slogan "redefining green" — meaning planting water-efficient gardens, not necessarily green ones. Rossi said he tried to sell the concept of "brown is beautiful" with little success.When it comes to the disappearance of real lawns, Rossi said, "the only question is the time frame. When we talk about 8 million more people coming into California in the next 20 years and there's no new water supply, it's not a matter of if, but when."
One can only hope.
I'm violating a self-imposed blog vacation to bring you a link from MSNBC about fake lawns sent to me by Margaret. They give lip service to native plant lawns, but it's mostly about astroturf (one woman spent $10k on hers! Amazing.) and clashes with city ordinances requiring green lawns.
Some cities are weighing whether to lift bans on artificial turf that date back to the days when phony grass looked like fluorescent plastic. A few communities are also encouraging the use of native plants once derided as shaggy weeds.
Advocates of natural alternatives are not sold on fake grass, saying it's a petroleum product that can heat up too much in the region's searing summer weather and can harbor germs.
"This is just like putting a carpet outside," said Betsey Landis with the California Native Plant Society in Los Angeles.
Some water districts are offering customers $1 rebates for each square foot of lawn they remove and 30 cents per square foot of fake grass they install.
I absolutely hate the idea of fake grass for home use. Keep it on the playing fields, I say.It ends with the following paragraph:
How near is the end?
John Rossi, general manager at Western Municipal Water District, which services cities including Riverside, Corona and Temecula, agrees that the end is near for the traditional lawn.His district recently adopted the slogan "redefining green" — meaning planting water-efficient gardens, not necessarily green ones. Rossi said he tried to sell the concept of "brown is beautiful" with little success.When it comes to the disappearance of real lawns, Rossi said, "the only question is the time frame. When we talk about 8 million more people coming into California in the next 20 years and there's no new water supply, it's not a matter of if, but when."
One can only hope.
2008-09-09
LA Times on lawn
The LA Times has a series of articles in last week's Home and Garden section on lawn alternatives. The main article,
Landscape rules on how much lawn is enough differ by city
, highlights the potential legal pitfalls when homeowners who change their lawns run afoul of out of date city laws. I've mentioned this possibility before on this blog.
...before yanking out the Marathon and replacing it with concrete or AstroTurf, it's best to check out the myriad landscaping rules, regulations and ordinances individual municipalities enforce. Just because Los Angeles homeowners can put, pour or plant nearly anything in their frontyards doesn't mean Long Beach residents can too.
Equally confounding is that some cities are promoting water conservation, while still requiring that yards be at least half grass. Officials are scrambling to catch up with a conservation movement that many of its residents already have embraced.
"It's hard, because changing the zoning ordinances is a long process," said Jesse Brown, assistant planner for Burbank. "It can take a year and needs City Council approval."
Add to that the different philosophies among city planning departments, and headaches are born.
The article summarizes S. Ca zoning laws for single family residences for seven local communities. The rules vary from vague (Riverside - "requiring that the space be maintained at a quality at least equal to that of the rest of the neighborhood") to specific (Santa Barbara - "Owners submit landscape plans to the city. Yards of single-family homes must be designed with no more than 20% of the landscaped area planted with grass or plants that are not drought-tolerant. Grass is not allowed on slopes with 20% or greater grades within landscaped areas.").
In Lawnbusters: turf alternatives the Times does something that it now seems to be doing more and more frequently, reprints stories from its archives. I guess their troubles have seriously impacted their ability to produce new materials. Still, it's a nice gathering of lawn-related stories all in one place. Typically pictures are linked from within each story, and sometimes those are the most inspirational.
Apparently idea of using yarrow as lawn still has currency:
From the article Ways to lighten up on watering, "Less lawn. Or simply try a smaller lawn. Skip grass and get a flat green carpet with yarrow, thyme or juniper." [emphasis added]
Landscape rules on how much lawn is enough differ by city
, highlights the potential legal pitfalls when homeowners who change their lawns run afoul of out of date city laws. I've mentioned this possibility before on this blog.
...before yanking out the Marathon and replacing it with concrete or AstroTurf, it's best to check out the myriad landscaping rules, regulations and ordinances individual municipalities enforce. Just because Los Angeles homeowners can put, pour or plant nearly anything in their frontyards doesn't mean Long Beach residents can too.
Equally confounding is that some cities are promoting water conservation, while still requiring that yards be at least half grass. Officials are scrambling to catch up with a conservation movement that many of its residents already have embraced.
"It's hard, because changing the zoning ordinances is a long process," said Jesse Brown, assistant planner for Burbank. "It can take a year and needs City Council approval."
Add to that the different philosophies among city planning departments, and headaches are born.
The article summarizes S. Ca zoning laws for single family residences for seven local communities. The rules vary from vague (Riverside - "requiring that the space be maintained at a quality at least equal to that of the rest of the neighborhood") to specific (Santa Barbara - "Owners submit landscape plans to the city. Yards of single-family homes must be designed with no more than 20% of the landscaped area planted with grass or plants that are not drought-tolerant. Grass is not allowed on slopes with 20% or greater grades within landscaped areas.").
In Lawnbusters: turf alternatives the Times does something that it now seems to be doing more and more frequently, reprints stories from its archives. I guess their troubles have seriously impacted their ability to produce new materials. Still, it's a nice gathering of lawn-related stories all in one place. Typically pictures are linked from within each story, and sometimes those are the most inspirational.
Apparently idea of using yarrow as lawn still has currency:
From the article Ways to lighten up on watering, "Less lawn. Or simply try a smaller lawn. Skip grass and get a flat green carpet with yarrow, thyme or juniper." [emphasis added]
2008-08-06
Back to water
BadMomGoodMom often writes on weather issues, and an email from her reminded me that I hadn't written about water or rainfall in some time. We didn't have our hoped-for rainfall this year, so we're back to drought. This blog post started off with the goal of talking about the rainy season just past, but quickly veered into policy issues.
While we're in the long, dry, summer months it's useful to look back on the year in water. California's water year does not coincide with the calendar year. Our water year is offset to start and end during our dry season, in order to capture an entire winter's rainfall.
Progress in reducing water consumption seems glacially slow, but governments work at that sort of pace. Conservation efforts are targeted at outdoor water usage.
A key [Los Angeles] City Council committee voted Tuesday to approve Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new crackdown on excessive water usage, doubling fines for residents and quadrupling them for businesses.
The "drought buster" plan crafted by the Department of Water and Power seeks to punish people who water their lawns between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., or wash their cars without "shut-off devices" on their hoses and restaurants that serve water without being asked.
Because of questions from the council's Energy and the Environment Committee over the last few weeks, the plan probably won't go into effect until September.
...
The proposal is expected to reach the full council later this month. link
LA's reform pace can be contrasted to the nearby City of Long Beach, which has had drought rules in place for at least six months, even prior to the failure of the 07-08 wet season to replenish reservoirs, and my hometown of Hawthorne which is currently considering a "green yards" ordinance and has no plan in place. Why the difference?
Some of the difference in how Cities approach water use and regulation may be driven by the fact that large municipalities tend to have their own water districts. Rising costs at the LA Dept of Water and Power, the largest municipal water district in the nation, have an effect on the bottom line of the city's budget. Los Angeles City is therefore incentivized to reduce costs if, for example, their water district has to purchase expensive water from outside.
My water comes from American States Water Company which is not associated solely with one municipality.
Furthermore, there is an intrinsic conflict between conservation and the fact that AS Water is a publicly traded company; revenue is linked to consumption through the rates we pay. If conservation is successful, revenues fall. Officers of a publicly traded company have a duty not to drive their company out of business. For this reason, AS Water has taken as its first conservation action the action of decoupling revenue from sales. They note that other companies have done so successfully with a WRAM, or water revenue adjustment mechanism. What this appears to mean is that although you might use less water due to successful conservation efforts, you won't see a savings from it. There are already "water service charges" which are a fixed part of my current monthly bill. Expect those to increase.
Simultaneously, they also want to provide a greater level of distinction between the current rate structure (fairly flat no matter how much water you use) and a conservation-oriented rate structure which would charge significantly more money for higher levels of water usage and do so with a finer-grained approach than is currently used. Since this change in the rate structure is expected to reduce consumption at the high end and they want to stay "revenue neutral" it has to be implemented at the same time as the previously described change. link
Rate changes have to go through the one or more Commissions for approval, a slow process, which might be one reason why these changes, publicly released in July 2006, haven't yet been felt. They also don't have much of an idea of how elastic demand is for water, so the ultimate pricing structure is going to be determined by a process of successive iterations.
Lawn Alternatives
According to conservation advocates, the place to look for water savings in 2008 is outside. This is in comparison to the last drought, when the push was for low flow toilets and low flow faucets which were deemed broadly successful in reducing per capita demand. These are still the primary conservation recommendations of my water company, but they do list behavioral changes (navy showers, water off when brushing teeth, etc) and a few landscaping changes as viable conservation measures.
Among other conservation measures my water company advises, "When landscaping, use plants that require little water. You can decorate creatively with interesting objects that need no water at all, such as rocks, bricks, benches, gravel, and deck areas."
Our free market has spawned solutions too. This blurb is interesting in that it quotes some consumption figures for typical and atypical lawns:
Miriam Goldberger, the president of Wildflower Farm says, "Eco-Lawn produces a thick, handsome turf, and it requires minimal effort and resources to maintain. It's the right lawn for an environmentally stressed world."
A standard Kentucky bluegrass or perennial rye lawn requires one to two inches of water a week. For a 1,000 square foot lawn, that amounts to more than 100,000 thousand gallons of water a year. Eco-Lawn, however, requires minimal watering. In central and southern California, no more than 17,500 gallons of water are necessary for a 1,000 square foot Eco-Lawn from April through October, and only 25,600 gallons for the whole year. link
Another Kentucy bluegrass alternative is UC Verde, developed by the University of California. This is a cultivar of a north American native grass, Buffalo Grass, which I do not believe is native to California.
I've written elsewhere at length in this blog about lawn alternatives.
This has been a somewhat meandering blog post and didn't end up where I thought it would. I'll follow up in another post with some locally pertinent water data. Unanswered questions from this post: Total water consumption versus per capita water consumption: How are we doing?, Are water consumption figures quoted in the Eco-lawn blurb reasonable?
While we're in the long, dry, summer months it's useful to look back on the year in water. California's water year does not coincide with the calendar year. Our water year is offset to start and end during our dry season, in order to capture an entire winter's rainfall.
Progress in reducing water consumption seems glacially slow, but governments work at that sort of pace. Conservation efforts are targeted at outdoor water usage.
A key [Los Angeles] City Council committee voted Tuesday to approve Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new crackdown on excessive water usage, doubling fines for residents and quadrupling them for businesses.
The "drought buster" plan crafted by the Department of Water and Power seeks to punish people who water their lawns between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., or wash their cars without "shut-off devices" on their hoses and restaurants that serve water without being asked.
Because of questions from the council's Energy and the Environment Committee over the last few weeks, the plan probably won't go into effect until September.
...
The proposal is expected to reach the full council later this month. link
LA's reform pace can be contrasted to the nearby City of Long Beach, which has had drought rules in place for at least six months, even prior to the failure of the 07-08 wet season to replenish reservoirs, and my hometown of Hawthorne which is currently considering a "green yards" ordinance and has no plan in place. Why the difference?
Some of the difference in how Cities approach water use and regulation may be driven by the fact that large municipalities tend to have their own water districts. Rising costs at the LA Dept of Water and Power, the largest municipal water district in the nation, have an effect on the bottom line of the city's budget. Los Angeles City is therefore incentivized to reduce costs if, for example, their water district has to purchase expensive water from outside.
My water comes from American States Water Company which is not associated solely with one municipality.
Furthermore, there is an intrinsic conflict between conservation and the fact that AS Water is a publicly traded company; revenue is linked to consumption through the rates we pay. If conservation is successful, revenues fall. Officers of a publicly traded company have a duty not to drive their company out of business. For this reason, AS Water has taken as its first conservation action the action of decoupling revenue from sales. They note that other companies have done so successfully with a WRAM, or water revenue adjustment mechanism. What this appears to mean is that although you might use less water due to successful conservation efforts, you won't see a savings from it. There are already "water service charges" which are a fixed part of my current monthly bill. Expect those to increase.
Simultaneously, they also want to provide a greater level of distinction between the current rate structure (fairly flat no matter how much water you use) and a conservation-oriented rate structure which would charge significantly more money for higher levels of water usage and do so with a finer-grained approach than is currently used. Since this change in the rate structure is expected to reduce consumption at the high end and they want to stay "revenue neutral" it has to be implemented at the same time as the previously described change. link
Rate changes have to go through the one or more Commissions for approval, a slow process, which might be one reason why these changes, publicly released in July 2006, haven't yet been felt. They also don't have much of an idea of how elastic demand is for water, so the ultimate pricing structure is going to be determined by a process of successive iterations.
Lawn Alternatives
According to conservation advocates, the place to look for water savings in 2008 is outside. This is in comparison to the last drought, when the push was for low flow toilets and low flow faucets which were deemed broadly successful in reducing per capita demand. These are still the primary conservation recommendations of my water company, but they do list behavioral changes (navy showers, water off when brushing teeth, etc) and a few landscaping changes as viable conservation measures.
Among other conservation measures my water company advises, "When landscaping, use plants that require little water. You can decorate creatively with interesting objects that need no water at all, such as rocks, bricks, benches, gravel, and deck areas."
Our free market has spawned solutions too. This blurb is interesting in that it quotes some consumption figures for typical and atypical lawns:
Miriam Goldberger, the president of Wildflower Farm says, "Eco-Lawn produces a thick, handsome turf, and it requires minimal effort and resources to maintain. It's the right lawn for an environmentally stressed world."
A standard Kentucky bluegrass or perennial rye lawn requires one to two inches of water a week. For a 1,000 square foot lawn, that amounts to more than 100,000 thousand gallons of water a year. Eco-Lawn, however, requires minimal watering. In central and southern California, no more than 17,500 gallons of water are necessary for a 1,000 square foot Eco-Lawn from April through October, and only 25,600 gallons for the whole year. link
Another Kentucy bluegrass alternative is UC Verde, developed by the University of California. This is a cultivar of a north American native grass, Buffalo Grass, which I do not believe is native to California.
I've written elsewhere at length in this blog about lawn alternatives.
This has been a somewhat meandering blog post and didn't end up where I thought it would. I'll follow up in another post with some locally pertinent water data. Unanswered questions from this post: Total water consumption versus per capita water consumption: How are we doing?, Are water consumption figures quoted in the Eco-lawn blurb reasonable?
2008-07-30
Water, parks, lawns
Water and waterways are in the news recently.
A recent journey by kayak down the LA River was designed to show the Army Corps of Engineers that the LA River is navigable, thereby qualifying it for protections greater than non-navigable waterways. The best photos I've seen are on the LAist blog, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The LA Daily News has some too.
The LA Times spouts off about desalination in the opinion pages back on April 10 and more recently in a July 28th opinion piece entitled Oceans of water.
Jessica Hall and Joe Linton, long time sustainable use advocates, have a new blog, L.A. Creek Freak, about waterways in Los Angeles. There's a permanent link over in the right hand column.
Meanwhile the LA Weekly is keeping up on the sad state of LA's parks which I have mentioned previously with a short article on the planned downtown Civic Park. Rolling Out L.A.'s Cement Carpet laments the lack of greenery in the "park" and points out that the long concrete-lined space, as-designed, is suited more for commercial ventures with opportunities for "programmable spaces" and "branding opportunities". Some experts believe that no amount of taxpayer money will make Civic Park work because it sits on a very difficult land site, and its true beneficiaries were never intended to be Angelenos but egotistical politicians and rich developers who needed it as a fig leaf for the massive Grand Avenue project.
Meanwhile back in my small town, an ordinance is being planned for review by the City Council on Aug 12th to address what they see as a growing problem. From an email I received, "If it passes, Code Enforcement will be able to cite people for yards with to much dirt, weeds or dead grass and plants. I saw the council talked about it on channel 22 this weekend; they talked about all the dried lawns in front of houses and the weeds and unkempt lawns. First time offenders will get a fix-it ticket, after that there will be fines, starting at 100 dollars up to 500 dollars. They want home owner to take care of their lawns, watering and weeding."
Of course I'm personally concerned given the summer dormant time for many of the native plants in my garden. Come by at the wrong time of year and the currently GLORIOUS buckwheat in full flower will have faded to rust brown - not a problem in my book, but of course it will be brown and look dead / unkempt to most city employees. Bien sur, I'll water my remaining turf lawn to stay on the good side of John Law, but I really don't like the implicit assumption that only a green lawn is a sign of good care-taking.
I guess my local city decided that with everybody's lawn greening up that it didn't need to spend $300k to purchase a long-vacant lot in an area of town that has needed more park space for years. This was covered in the Daily Breeze. Even though there's about $9 million in City reserves, it seems that the City is unwilling to touch it in the face of a declining revenue stream and potential layoffs, even for a park that might eventually pay them back.
How could it pay them back? Decreased costs of crime related to the attractive nuisance of the abandoned lot, increased property taxes from the improved value of local homes, no immediate cost of maintenance due to a maintenance grant that is already in place. See also From Lot to Spot.
Hawthorne group loses fight for park
By Sandy Mazza, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/23/2008 11:25:35 PM PDT
A Hawthorne community group lost its years-long battle to convert a blighted, vacant lot into a park this week when the City Council voted not to support the effort.
The group, From Lot to Spot, secured more than $300,000 for the city to buy the Caltrans-owned property, which abuts the Century (105) Freeway at 118th Street and Doty Avenue. Since the group could not legally purchase the property itself, its members wanted Hawthorne to buy it and allow the group to develop and maintain it with grant funds.
On Tuesday night, the plan failed to get three votes needed for passage, leaving the door open for a business owner and longtime campaign contributor of Mayor Larry Guidi and his allies to buy the lot.
Guidi and Councilwoman Ginny Lambert were against the plan, while Councilmen Gary Parsons and Danny Juarez supported it. Councilman Pablo Catano, who is recuperating from a stroke, was absent.
Guidi said he is skeptical that the groups - including the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Los Angeles Conservation Corps - that promised to pay for the park and its maintenance would actually do so.
"Have all these organizations guarantee it and I'll personally bring the item back," Guidi said. "Have them write you a letter."
Viviana Franco, executive director of FLTS, said the group has an approaching deadline to buy the property, and that the council's decision effectively blocks its path to securing the funding.
"This lot has been vacant for 20 years," Franco said. "This property has created a blighted neighborhood."
Parsons and Juarez argued the open space area is needed in the densely built, park-poor city. "Our risk is zero," Parsons said. "Give them a chance to succeed. If they do, we get some green space. If they don't get the money, we won't support it."
Juarez suggested that the city conditionally support the park, as long as the money is donated, so FLTS can meet its approaching deadline to secure the property. Guidi and Lambert disagreed.
"We don't know what kind of a park you're going to put there," Guidi said. Franco said that the park would have been designed based on community input.
The 0.3-acre lot is owned by the California Department of Transportation, which had left the land vacant until Franco started asking questions in 2006.
Having grown up a few houses away from it, Franco wanted to know why the lot had been allowed to deteriorate into a trash dumping ground and a workplace for prostitutes.
Caltrans responded by putting the property up for sale.
Franco tried to convince Caltrans to sell or lease the lot to FLTS to build a park for a lowered price. Caltrans refused, saying state law forced the agency to sell it at market price.
In April, Hawthorne business owner Ali Awad placed a deposit on the $300,000 property at a Caltrans auction. Awad owns Repossess Auto Sales and is a longtime campaign contributor to Guidi and his allies.
After Awad put down the deposit, Franco took her fight to the California Transportation Commission, which approves the sale of Caltrans-owned land, in May. The commission granted a stay on the sale and gave FLTS 90 days to raise $300,000 to buy the property.
Awad told the Daily Breeze that he had no plans to develop the lot, and instead was interested in it as a tax deduction and investment. He was firmly against the group's effort to take it over.
"I bought it," he said when asked about the issue in June. "(Franco) gave wrong information to the (CTC). She said the city wants to buy it. If the city wants to buy it, I can't do nothing about it."
Guidi expressed Awad's position at the Tuesday meeting, saying that he believed Franco lied to the California Transportation Committee in May, claiming the city wanted to purchase the lot.
"The stay you won was based on you misrepresenting the city's position," Guidi told Franco.
Franco said that was not true: "I have the transcripts, and in no way did I say the city would pony up the money."
In a letter, Caltrans District Director Douglas Failing confirmed that Franco said she was working with governmental agencies to buy the property, rather than saying the city wanted to buy it.
Franco secured a $300,000 grant from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and an agreement with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to maintain it and employ local, at-risk youths. The park would have also been used as an educational space for high school students to do service learning projects, Franco said.
Despite the rejection, Franco said the group has another plan to turn the lot into a park, perhaps by working with Los Angeles County.
"It was up to the city last night, and their decision has tremendously put an obstacle in the way, but we are moving onward and upward," Franco said. "We feel it's an opportunity they're passing up."
A recent journey by kayak down the LA River was designed to show the Army Corps of Engineers that the LA River is navigable, thereby qualifying it for protections greater than non-navigable waterways. The best photos I've seen are on the LAist blog, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The LA Daily News has some too.
The LA Times spouts off about desalination in the opinion pages back on April 10 and more recently in a July 28th opinion piece entitled Oceans of water.
Jessica Hall and Joe Linton, long time sustainable use advocates, have a new blog, L.A. Creek Freak, about waterways in Los Angeles. There's a permanent link over in the right hand column.
Meanwhile the LA Weekly is keeping up on the sad state of LA's parks which I have mentioned previously with a short article on the planned downtown Civic Park. Rolling Out L.A.'s Cement Carpet laments the lack of greenery in the "park" and points out that the long concrete-lined space, as-designed, is suited more for commercial ventures with opportunities for "programmable spaces" and "branding opportunities". Some experts believe that no amount of taxpayer money will make Civic Park work because it sits on a very difficult land site, and its true beneficiaries were never intended to be Angelenos but egotistical politicians and rich developers who needed it as a fig leaf for the massive Grand Avenue project.
Meanwhile back in my small town, an ordinance is being planned for review by the City Council on Aug 12th to address what they see as a growing problem. From an email I received, "If it passes, Code Enforcement will be able to cite people for yards with to much dirt, weeds or dead grass and plants. I saw the council talked about it on channel 22 this weekend; they talked about all the dried lawns in front of houses and the weeds and unkempt lawns. First time offenders will get a fix-it ticket, after that there will be fines, starting at 100 dollars up to 500 dollars. They want home owner to take care of their lawns, watering and weeding."
Of course I'm personally concerned given the summer dormant time for many of the native plants in my garden. Come by at the wrong time of year and the currently GLORIOUS buckwheat in full flower will have faded to rust brown - not a problem in my book, but of course it will be brown and look dead / unkempt to most city employees. Bien sur, I'll water my remaining turf lawn to stay on the good side of John Law, but I really don't like the implicit assumption that only a green lawn is a sign of good care-taking.
I guess my local city decided that with everybody's lawn greening up that it didn't need to spend $300k to purchase a long-vacant lot in an area of town that has needed more park space for years. This was covered in the Daily Breeze. Even though there's about $9 million in City reserves, it seems that the City is unwilling to touch it in the face of a declining revenue stream and potential layoffs, even for a park that might eventually pay them back.
How could it pay them back? Decreased costs of crime related to the attractive nuisance of the abandoned lot, increased property taxes from the improved value of local homes, no immediate cost of maintenance due to a maintenance grant that is already in place. See also From Lot to Spot.
Hawthorne group loses fight for park
By Sandy Mazza, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/23/2008 11:25:35 PM PDT
A Hawthorne community group lost its years-long battle to convert a blighted, vacant lot into a park this week when the City Council voted not to support the effort.
The group, From Lot to Spot, secured more than $300,000 for the city to buy the Caltrans-owned property, which abuts the Century (105) Freeway at 118th Street and Doty Avenue. Since the group could not legally purchase the property itself, its members wanted Hawthorne to buy it and allow the group to develop and maintain it with grant funds.
On Tuesday night, the plan failed to get three votes needed for passage, leaving the door open for a business owner and longtime campaign contributor of Mayor Larry Guidi and his allies to buy the lot.
Guidi and Councilwoman Ginny Lambert were against the plan, while Councilmen Gary Parsons and Danny Juarez supported it. Councilman Pablo Catano, who is recuperating from a stroke, was absent.
Guidi said he is skeptical that the groups - including the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Los Angeles Conservation Corps - that promised to pay for the park and its maintenance would actually do so.
"Have all these organizations guarantee it and I'll personally bring the item back," Guidi said. "Have them write you a letter."
Viviana Franco, executive director of FLTS, said the group has an approaching deadline to buy the property, and that the council's decision effectively blocks its path to securing the funding.
"This lot has been vacant for 20 years," Franco said. "This property has created a blighted neighborhood."
Parsons and Juarez argued the open space area is needed in the densely built, park-poor city. "Our risk is zero," Parsons said. "Give them a chance to succeed. If they do, we get some green space. If they don't get the money, we won't support it."
Juarez suggested that the city conditionally support the park, as long as the money is donated, so FLTS can meet its approaching deadline to secure the property. Guidi and Lambert disagreed.
"We don't know what kind of a park you're going to put there," Guidi said. Franco said that the park would have been designed based on community input.
The 0.3-acre lot is owned by the California Department of Transportation, which had left the land vacant until Franco started asking questions in 2006.
Having grown up a few houses away from it, Franco wanted to know why the lot had been allowed to deteriorate into a trash dumping ground and a workplace for prostitutes.
Caltrans responded by putting the property up for sale.
Franco tried to convince Caltrans to sell or lease the lot to FLTS to build a park for a lowered price. Caltrans refused, saying state law forced the agency to sell it at market price.
In April, Hawthorne business owner Ali Awad placed a deposit on the $300,000 property at a Caltrans auction. Awad owns Repossess Auto Sales and is a longtime campaign contributor to Guidi and his allies.
After Awad put down the deposit, Franco took her fight to the California Transportation Commission, which approves the sale of Caltrans-owned land, in May. The commission granted a stay on the sale and gave FLTS 90 days to raise $300,000 to buy the property.
Awad told the Daily Breeze that he had no plans to develop the lot, and instead was interested in it as a tax deduction and investment. He was firmly against the group's effort to take it over.
"I bought it," he said when asked about the issue in June. "(Franco) gave wrong information to the (CTC). She said the city wants to buy it. If the city wants to buy it, I can't do nothing about it."
Guidi expressed Awad's position at the Tuesday meeting, saying that he believed Franco lied to the California Transportation Committee in May, claiming the city wanted to purchase the lot.
"The stay you won was based on you misrepresenting the city's position," Guidi told Franco.
Franco said that was not true: "I have the transcripts, and in no way did I say the city would pony up the money."
In a letter, Caltrans District Director Douglas Failing confirmed that Franco said she was working with governmental agencies to buy the property, rather than saying the city wanted to buy it.
Franco secured a $300,000 grant from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and an agreement with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to maintain it and employ local, at-risk youths. The park would have also been used as an educational space for high school students to do service learning projects, Franco said.
Despite the rejection, Franco said the group has another plan to turn the lot into a park, perhaps by working with Los Angeles County.
"It was up to the city last night, and their decision has tremendously put an obstacle in the way, but we are moving onward and upward," Franco said. "We feel it's an opportunity they're passing up."
2008-05-08
Water rationing this summer?
A May 2 article in the LA Times predicts another water shortage this summer in California. Apparently our nice amount of rain this winter didn't persist for very long as snowpack in the Sierras: In March, we were at 97% of normal snowpack thanks to a nice series of storms that rolled through California. However, since then we haven't had any of our normally anticipated later March, April, or May showers. Add to this recent court decisions to divert water for ecological reasons, and you have a convergence of factors that will probably result in a water shortage (even rationing is possible) this summer.
If my records are correct, at the end of February we had our last good storm here in LA. We had no rain in March, and early April brought only a light sprinkle. Nonetheless, in early April I stated that we were more likely than not to get another rainfall. I was wrong. Northern California has been suffering with a similar problem along with unusually warm weather that has melted snowpack more rapidly than usual.
Peoples' lawns will be the first to go, of course.
...After a record-dry 2006-07 snow year, water managers had hoped this year would bring ample snow and rainfall to fill reservoirs and ease worries about water shortages. Those concerns have been exacerbated by a long drought in the Colorado River Basin and a federal court ruling curbing water deliveries from Northern California.
Cities throughout Southern California supplement their own local supplies with two major sources outside the region: Sierra water pumped south through the State Water Project, and water transported west from the Colorado River.
Los Angeles traditionally has gotten 30% to 60% of its water from the Eastern Sierra via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, but it still buys water imported from the north and east.
"I think we're all facing a worrisome water picture," said H. David Nahai, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Statewide, early hopes of a wet year faltered when snowfall in some areas of the Sierra -- the source of much of the state's water -- virtually stopped in early March. The months of March and April combined were the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921....
...State meteorologist Elissa Lin fell short of officially declaring a drought. "It's been a very tough two years for water supply in California," Lin said. "All of these things are pointing in that direction. . . . Certainly, if we go into a third year, we're looking at some critical situations."
Further tightening water supplies, state deliveries to Southern California were slashed in December after a federal court decision last summer aimed at protecting endangered smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who ordered those restrictions, is scheduled to hold hearings in June to decide whether to impose further cutbacks to protect chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout.
LA Times article on Sierra snowpack.
There's discussion of what motivates people to NOT conserve in the present climate:
"Water is too cheap, until they get the prices right to encourage wise use of water by hitting people in the wallets, they will be pi$$ing in the wind to get people to conserve.
Which gives rise to the sentiment previously expressed of if I conserve they will just route the "saved" water to the profligate user." -Sunsetbeachguy
To which I respond:
I think you have it slightly wrong. What motivates my sentiment is that in previous rationing years, water allocations have been based on historic consumption.
So why should I take extraordinary measures to conserve now when that makes my water allocation during drought unlivable? Furthermore, there is an established history of early adopters of conservation measures being screwed for their investment when later widespread adoption is encouraged by rebate programs.
I do the sensible things right now to save water because I'm a responsible adult, but if were the type who already lived with buckets in my shower what could I do to further reduce consumption when I'm allocated down in a rationing year?
The bottom line is that I'm not in a mode of "If I don't use it someone else will". I'm in a mode of "Don't make my life unlivable when I have to cut back further."
Note: After only a nanosecond more additional thought I think that raising prices more dramatically as you consume more water really would get to the heart of the aggregate water consumption problem. Nonetheless, history has shown that water allocations ARE based on previous consumption, so even if water were priced aggressively and progressively the thought process holds for those anticipating either rationing or rebate.
If my records are correct, at the end of February we had our last good storm here in LA. We had no rain in March, and early April brought only a light sprinkle. Nonetheless, in early April I stated that we were more likely than not to get another rainfall. I was wrong. Northern California has been suffering with a similar problem along with unusually warm weather that has melted snowpack more rapidly than usual.
Peoples' lawns will be the first to go, of course.
...After a record-dry 2006-07 snow year, water managers had hoped this year would bring ample snow and rainfall to fill reservoirs and ease worries about water shortages. Those concerns have been exacerbated by a long drought in the Colorado River Basin and a federal court ruling curbing water deliveries from Northern California.
Cities throughout Southern California supplement their own local supplies with two major sources outside the region: Sierra water pumped south through the State Water Project, and water transported west from the Colorado River.
Los Angeles traditionally has gotten 30% to 60% of its water from the Eastern Sierra via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, but it still buys water imported from the north and east.
"I think we're all facing a worrisome water picture," said H. David Nahai, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Statewide, early hopes of a wet year faltered when snowfall in some areas of the Sierra -- the source of much of the state's water -- virtually stopped in early March. The months of March and April combined were the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921....
...State meteorologist Elissa Lin fell short of officially declaring a drought. "It's been a very tough two years for water supply in California," Lin said. "All of these things are pointing in that direction. . . . Certainly, if we go into a third year, we're looking at some critical situations."
Further tightening water supplies, state deliveries to Southern California were slashed in December after a federal court decision last summer aimed at protecting endangered smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who ordered those restrictions, is scheduled to hold hearings in June to decide whether to impose further cutbacks to protect chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout.
LA Times article on Sierra snowpack.
There's discussion of what motivates people to NOT conserve in the present climate:
"Water is too cheap, until they get the prices right to encourage wise use of water by hitting people in the wallets, they will be pi$$ing in the wind to get people to conserve.
Which gives rise to the sentiment previously expressed of if I conserve they will just route the "saved" water to the profligate user." -Sunsetbeachguy
To which I respond:
I think you have it slightly wrong. What motivates my sentiment is that in previous rationing years, water allocations have been based on historic consumption.
So why should I take extraordinary measures to conserve now when that makes my water allocation during drought unlivable? Furthermore, there is an established history of early adopters of conservation measures being screwed for their investment when later widespread adoption is encouraged by rebate programs.
I do the sensible things right now to save water because I'm a responsible adult, but if were the type who already lived with buckets in my shower what could I do to further reduce consumption when I'm allocated down in a rationing year?
The bottom line is that I'm not in a mode of "If I don't use it someone else will". I'm in a mode of "Don't make my life unlivable when I have to cut back further."
Note: After only a nanosecond more additional thought I think that raising prices more dramatically as you consume more water really would get to the heart of the aggregate water consumption problem. Nonetheless, history has shown that water allocations ARE based on previous consumption, so even if water were priced aggressively and progressively the thought process holds for those anticipating either rationing or rebate.
2008-03-24
Book review and notes - Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens
Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens by Douglas Tallamy has been next to my bed for a while. It's been out since 2007, so it's not exactly fresh off the presses. Slow starter that I am, I finished it only recently and thought I'd post a quick review and brief notes, since it has occasionally been the subject of controversy.
The bottom line is that I like and recommend the book. It's written in an approachable manner, with many fascinating color pictures that amplify on the text and the topic is timely given the increase of green thinking that is sweeping the nation.
The first half of the book is valuable to all gardeners. But starting around chapter 10, the book becomes much more focussed on east coast flora, and therefore of less interest to those outside that area. The opinions in the book are supported by citations from scientific literature and personal anecdote, though Tallamy admits that the data are incomplete and much work remains to be done. Nonetheless, he convincingly makes the case that extrapolation from the knowledge that we presently have suggests that urban and suburban gardeners can remediate the damage that human presence has had on the wild food web. (The food web is an extension of the grade school concept of the food chain, but with multiple redundant paths up and down. This concept and current understanding that we have of "keystone species" - species that are essential to preserving the food web, are covered early in his book. It's interesting to note that I'm confining this to a parenthetical side note and considering not even mentioning it at all because of its obviousness, but apparently until somewhat recently these concepts were not commonly understood.) The tone of the book is not preachy or histrionic. He makes his case calmly, with facts, anecdotes, and extrapolation: From Tallamy's point of view, it's not too late to do something that makes an essential difference.
Tallamy is an entomologist at the University of Delaware in Newark, so he takes a look at how humans have altered the historically longstanding food web as we've expanded into previously wild areas from the standpoint of disruption at the insect level. Looking one level up and down the food chain from herbivorous insects (by total tonnage the largest group of herbivores in the world and whose predation accounts for the most abundant source of food energy in the world) he pieces together an argument supporting the expanded use of natives as follows:
Tallamy takes as his definition of native plants as species "having a historical evolutionary relationship" with their environs. This definition does away with arguments, for example, that one can take a plant from anywhere in North America and plant it anywhere else, so long as the USDA hardiness zones are the same, and call it a native. By contrast, alien species do not have a historical evolutionary relationship with their environs and therefore do not participate completely in their local ecosystems. In fact, the nursery trade has made a virtue out of "pest free" plants, in other words, aliens which won't support significant amounts of indigenous insect life.
Because native insects have a common evolutionary history with native plants, the insects have a preferred diet of native plants and in some cases exist only on certain natives. Alien plants nourish far fewer (in number and in diversity) insects than natives, even those that have been here for 100s of years. (100s of years is quite short in terms of evolutionary adaptation.) Because insects feed on plants and in turn are fed upon by higher trophic levels (mostly birds), reducing the number of natives will proportionately reduce the number of higher higher trophic levels supported.
As remedy, Tallamy proposes that urban and suburban gardens favor native plants over aliens in order to take the place of the diverse woods and wildlands that they have displaced. As a corollary, we must actively guard (or garden) remaining "wild" areas to prevent intrusion of aliens. These steps, he argues, are essential if we are to preserve the next higher link in the food chain - birds, mostly, as well as other small mammals that eat insects.
In addition to native plant species, Tallamy recommends high diversity both in species and in structure. Structural complexity means having varied types of plants (grasses to trees and everything in between). This is logical from the standpoint of replicating the diversity of native habitats which provide for the habitat needs at many more cycles of life: The insect herbivores need both larval and adult food which are often completely different plants.
Finally, he points out that the beneficial insect predators that you want in your garden (such as ladybugs) need populations of prey insects (such as aphids) to sustain them or they will abandon your garden. Therefore the co-existence of small numbers of "pest" insects is necessary to ensure that the beneficial ones are there when you need them. Your garden won't be perfect, but he cites a study showing that even the most gardeners won't notice or perhaps care about 10% leaf damage, so there's the possibility of peaceful coexistence of a variety of insects, in balanced numbers, with peoples' requirements for nice looking plants. As for where to put these plants: He suggests shrinking your monoculture lawn and expanding your hedgerows to incorporate natives and increase diversity in a subtle way.
Here's an illustrative quote from the book on the topic of diversity.
In the East, the number one pest of ornamental gardens is the azalea lace bug (Raupp & Noland, 1984). This bug was introduced along with evergreen azaleas from Asia and now sucks the chlorophyll from alien azalea leaves wherever the plants are massed in a sunny setting, although the bugs won't touch our native azalea species. Why don't natural enemies, the insect predators and parasites native to North America, control this pest? Because the community structure of most of our gardens is far too simple to support the numbers and diversity of natural enemies required to keep the azalea lace bug in check. Picture a classic suburban foundation planting: a row of Asian azaleas along the front of the house, bookended by two arborvitaes. Just where are the natural enemies needed to control the lace bug supposed to come from? Ladybird beetles, assassin bugs, damsel bugs, and parasitic wasps can only live in a garden if there are enough types of prey available to support them at all stages of their life cycle. Because our classic suburban foundation planting is dominated by alien plants, the only insect available to support a community of predators is the azalea lace bug. When the lace bug population is small, which is the critical time for predators and parasites to prevent an outbreak, there simply is not enough [other] prey biomass in the garden to attract and support populations of natural enemies. And so the lace bug population explodes, the homeowner runs for the insecticide, and the goal of having an undamaged garden is lost.
One of the areas where Tallamy has come in for criticism is in his recommendation of trees as primary insect habitat. Of course, for habitats that didn't originally have a lot of trees, such as the California coastal prairie habitat originally around my house, this makes little sense. However, a reasonably careful reader of his book will note that in chapter 12 he writes, "I am also forced to slight western North America and focus on...eight states of the easter deciduous forest biome.... I restrict my discussion to this region because it is the only area for which we have done an exhaustive literature search for host plant relationships." So casual readers may misunderstand his writings, but the disclaimer is there for all to see, and the results are still quite interesting.
Working with moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) as representative of all insect herbivores (apparently they represent over 50% of all insect herbivores in this country, so this is a good first choice) he then sets forth some interesting findings: Among woody plants, Oaks support the most Lepidoptera with 517 species, willows are next with 456, and Walnut, Beech, and Chestnut trees bring up the bottom of the list with 130, 126, and 125 each, respectively.
It's probably zeroth or first order correct to pull the tree genus' native to California directly from his list and assign them that relative rank in terms of insect value. However, there is no mention of the contributions of other plant types (groundcover, vines, shrubs, cactus, etc) so for areas of historically sparse woody plants, like California coastal scrub or prairie, there's no equivalent starting point to make most effective use of California's other plants.
Read an interview with Tallamy on Garden Rant.
A related link to BUGS - Biodiversity in Urban Gardens.
The bottom line is that I like and recommend the book. It's written in an approachable manner, with many fascinating color pictures that amplify on the text and the topic is timely given the increase of green thinking that is sweeping the nation.
The first half of the book is valuable to all gardeners. But starting around chapter 10, the book becomes much more focussed on east coast flora, and therefore of less interest to those outside that area. The opinions in the book are supported by citations from scientific literature and personal anecdote, though Tallamy admits that the data are incomplete and much work remains to be done. Nonetheless, he convincingly makes the case that extrapolation from the knowledge that we presently have suggests that urban and suburban gardeners can remediate the damage that human presence has had on the wild food web. (The food web is an extension of the grade school concept of the food chain, but with multiple redundant paths up and down. This concept and current understanding that we have of "keystone species" - species that are essential to preserving the food web, are covered early in his book. It's interesting to note that I'm confining this to a parenthetical side note and considering not even mentioning it at all because of its obviousness, but apparently until somewhat recently these concepts were not commonly understood.) The tone of the book is not preachy or histrionic. He makes his case calmly, with facts, anecdotes, and extrapolation: From Tallamy's point of view, it's not too late to do something that makes an essential difference.
Tallamy is an entomologist at the University of Delaware in Newark, so he takes a look at how humans have altered the historically longstanding food web as we've expanded into previously wild areas from the standpoint of disruption at the insect level. Looking one level up and down the food chain from herbivorous insects (by total tonnage the largest group of herbivores in the world and whose predation accounts for the most abundant source of food energy in the world) he pieces together an argument supporting the expanded use of natives as follows:
Tallamy takes as his definition of native plants as species "having a historical evolutionary relationship" with their environs. This definition does away with arguments, for example, that one can take a plant from anywhere in North America and plant it anywhere else, so long as the USDA hardiness zones are the same, and call it a native. By contrast, alien species do not have a historical evolutionary relationship with their environs and therefore do not participate completely in their local ecosystems. In fact, the nursery trade has made a virtue out of "pest free" plants, in other words, aliens which won't support significant amounts of indigenous insect life.
Because native insects have a common evolutionary history with native plants, the insects have a preferred diet of native plants and in some cases exist only on certain natives. Alien plants nourish far fewer (in number and in diversity) insects than natives, even those that have been here for 100s of years. (100s of years is quite short in terms of evolutionary adaptation.) Because insects feed on plants and in turn are fed upon by higher trophic levels (mostly birds), reducing the number of natives will proportionately reduce the number of higher higher trophic levels supported.
As remedy, Tallamy proposes that urban and suburban gardens favor native plants over aliens in order to take the place of the diverse woods and wildlands that they have displaced. As a corollary, we must actively guard (or garden) remaining "wild" areas to prevent intrusion of aliens. These steps, he argues, are essential if we are to preserve the next higher link in the food chain - birds, mostly, as well as other small mammals that eat insects.
In addition to native plant species, Tallamy recommends high diversity both in species and in structure. Structural complexity means having varied types of plants (grasses to trees and everything in between). This is logical from the standpoint of replicating the diversity of native habitats which provide for the habitat needs at many more cycles of life: The insect herbivores need both larval and adult food which are often completely different plants.
Finally, he points out that the beneficial insect predators that you want in your garden (such as ladybugs) need populations of prey insects (such as aphids) to sustain them or they will abandon your garden. Therefore the co-existence of small numbers of "pest" insects is necessary to ensure that the beneficial ones are there when you need them. Your garden won't be perfect, but he cites a study showing that even the most gardeners won't notice or perhaps care about 10% leaf damage, so there's the possibility of peaceful coexistence of a variety of insects, in balanced numbers, with peoples' requirements for nice looking plants. As for where to put these plants: He suggests shrinking your monoculture lawn and expanding your hedgerows to incorporate natives and increase diversity in a subtle way.
Here's an illustrative quote from the book on the topic of diversity.
In the East, the number one pest of ornamental gardens is the azalea lace bug (Raupp & Noland, 1984). This bug was introduced along with evergreen azaleas from Asia and now sucks the chlorophyll from alien azalea leaves wherever the plants are massed in a sunny setting, although the bugs won't touch our native azalea species. Why don't natural enemies, the insect predators and parasites native to North America, control this pest? Because the community structure of most of our gardens is far too simple to support the numbers and diversity of natural enemies required to keep the azalea lace bug in check. Picture a classic suburban foundation planting: a row of Asian azaleas along the front of the house, bookended by two arborvitaes. Just where are the natural enemies needed to control the lace bug supposed to come from? Ladybird beetles, assassin bugs, damsel bugs, and parasitic wasps can only live in a garden if there are enough types of prey available to support them at all stages of their life cycle. Because our classic suburban foundation planting is dominated by alien plants, the only insect available to support a community of predators is the azalea lace bug. When the lace bug population is small, which is the critical time for predators and parasites to prevent an outbreak, there simply is not enough [other] prey biomass in the garden to attract and support populations of natural enemies. And so the lace bug population explodes, the homeowner runs for the insecticide, and the goal of having an undamaged garden is lost.
One of the areas where Tallamy has come in for criticism is in his recommendation of trees as primary insect habitat. Of course, for habitats that didn't originally have a lot of trees, such as the California coastal prairie habitat originally around my house, this makes little sense. However, a reasonably careful reader of his book will note that in chapter 12 he writes, "I am also forced to slight western North America and focus on...eight states of the easter deciduous forest biome.... I restrict my discussion to this region because it is the only area for which we have done an exhaustive literature search for host plant relationships." So casual readers may misunderstand his writings, but the disclaimer is there for all to see, and the results are still quite interesting.
Working with moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) as representative of all insect herbivores (apparently they represent over 50% of all insect herbivores in this country, so this is a good first choice) he then sets forth some interesting findings: Among woody plants, Oaks support the most Lepidoptera with 517 species, willows are next with 456, and Walnut, Beech, and Chestnut trees bring up the bottom of the list with 130, 126, and 125 each, respectively.
It's probably zeroth or first order correct to pull the tree genus' native to California directly from his list and assign them that relative rank in terms of insect value. However, there is no mention of the contributions of other plant types (groundcover, vines, shrubs, cactus, etc) so for areas of historically sparse woody plants, like California coastal scrub or prairie, there's no equivalent starting point to make most effective use of California's other plants.
Read an interview with Tallamy on Garden Rant.
A related link to BUGS - Biodiversity in Urban Gardens.
2008-01-31
LA Times article on garden redesign
Today's LA Times Home and Garden section has an interesting article on redesign of a conventional lawn+garden in Sherman Oaks.
"We wanted no obvious separation between the garden and the view," the designer says. In order to seamlessly connect the 8,000-square-foot, pie-shaped lot with vistas of live oaks, native shrubs, mature Italian cypresses, palms and eucalyptus trees, Kuhlmann suggested removing three backyard distractions: a leaky 1960s swimming pool encircled by brick and concrete, a 4-foot-high block wall that spanned the property's west perimeter and the expansive lawn. My emphasis.
The 1960's era pool gets replaced by an infinity pool, which looks great. However, I notice that it isn't fenced. Perhaps they can get away with that because their entire back yard is restricted? Clearly, it's not a house for little kids.
Not that I'm sour about it, but it seems that featured homes in the LA Times are often those of celebrities. Certainly, people in The Business (in casual conversation you can hear the capital letters) often have an artistic sensibility and oodles of disposable income. Still, I wonder how the Times selects the gardens it profiles. One thought: Garden designers are in the business of self-promotion and in the position to know the relative merits of many gardens, so perhaps the determining factor is hiring a well-connected garden designer with a yen for self-promotion.
A related article profiles the "various plants [used] to transform the Wehle-Lynch backyard" which is an interesting read if one focuses on the design guidelines (repetition, focus on foliage not flower, motion, scent, micro-climate) that underly the plant selection.
"We wanted no obvious separation between the garden and the view," the designer says. In order to seamlessly connect the 8,000-square-foot, pie-shaped lot with vistas of live oaks, native shrubs, mature Italian cypresses, palms and eucalyptus trees, Kuhlmann suggested removing three backyard distractions: a leaky 1960s swimming pool encircled by brick and concrete, a 4-foot-high block wall that spanned the property's west perimeter and the expansive lawn. My emphasis.
The 1960's era pool gets replaced by an infinity pool, which looks great. However, I notice that it isn't fenced. Perhaps they can get away with that because their entire back yard is restricted? Clearly, it's not a house for little kids.
Not that I'm sour about it, but it seems that featured homes in the LA Times are often those of celebrities. Certainly, people in The Business (in casual conversation you can hear the capital letters) often have an artistic sensibility and oodles of disposable income. Still, I wonder how the Times selects the gardens it profiles. One thought: Garden designers are in the business of self-promotion and in the position to know the relative merits of many gardens, so perhaps the determining factor is hiring a well-connected garden designer with a yen for self-promotion.
A related article profiles the "various plants [used] to transform the Wehle-Lynch backyard" which is an interesting read if one focuses on the design guidelines (repetition, focus on foliage not flower, motion, scent, micro-climate) that underly the plant selection.
2008-01-17
Yarrow as lawn
In The LA Times Home section today there is an article, "Imagine: Rain, rain, stored away" focused on retention of rainwater on residential properties. The main thrust is infiltration pits that the City of Santa Monica is helping underwrite. But other water-wise renovations are also discussed:
"...Where a traditional turf-style front lawn once stood, Jensen planted no-mow lawn, a grass that requires less water and eliminates use of an energy-hogging lawn mower. The parking strip is planted with a flowering evergreen yarrow, a good lawn substitute...."
Old news for my reader, of course. Follow the link or click on my "evil lawn" tag to see more posts lawn. Santa Barbara County actually encourages yarrow lawns.
"...Where a traditional turf-style front lawn once stood, Jensen planted no-mow lawn, a grass that requires less water and eliminates use of an energy-hogging lawn mower. The parking strip is planted with a flowering evergreen yarrow, a good lawn substitute...."
Old news for my reader, of course. Follow the link or click on my "evil lawn" tag to see more posts lawn. Santa Barbara County actually encourages yarrow lawns.
2008-01-10
Hey! That's my house!
I went to a seminar tonight called "Beyond the Lawn" which was held at the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve (formerly South Gardena Park).
The topic was, of course, California native plants used as lawn substitutes. I went hoping to make some contacts that would assist me in moving my design skills and plant knowledge to the next level.
The seminar was given by Connie Vadheim of CSU Dominguez Hills and was a real wealth of information. I left with the seminar contents rattling around in my brain and some wildflower seeds rattling around in envelopes plus quite a few handouts on plants that I ought to learn a bit more about. The coolest thing about the seminar was that judging by the turnout there's quite a bit of local interest in natives. There were maybe 12 or 15 people there, and so far as I know it was advertised only on the Willows website.
Imagine my surprise when towards the end of the seminar Connie was flipping through pictures of houses as examples of the use of natives and MY HOUSE WAS RIGHT THERE! I let out a yell, "Hey! That's my house!" People laughed, but as a result I ended up answering a couple questions and making a connection with another homeowner who has redone her garden with natives.
The seeds I left with are from the "One Pot at a Time" project. I'm supposed to grow them in pots, let them go to seed, and then either scatter the seed, distribute it to friends, or clean it and give it back to the Madrona Nature Center. I'm also supposed to document the growth of the plants. From the glee on her face and her comments, I'd bet that Connie thought up this insurgent little idea with the intent of repopulating our local natives. I'll play along happily.
The topic was, of course, California native plants used as lawn substitutes. I went hoping to make some contacts that would assist me in moving my design skills and plant knowledge to the next level.
The seminar was given by Connie Vadheim of CSU Dominguez Hills and was a real wealth of information. I left with the seminar contents rattling around in my brain and some wildflower seeds rattling around in envelopes plus quite a few handouts on plants that I ought to learn a bit more about. The coolest thing about the seminar was that judging by the turnout there's quite a bit of local interest in natives. There were maybe 12 or 15 people there, and so far as I know it was advertised only on the Willows website.
Imagine my surprise when towards the end of the seminar Connie was flipping through pictures of houses as examples of the use of natives and MY HOUSE WAS RIGHT THERE! I let out a yell, "Hey! That's my house!" People laughed, but as a result I ended up answering a couple questions and making a connection with another homeowner who has redone her garden with natives.
The seeds I left with are from the "One Pot at a Time" project. I'm supposed to grow them in pots, let them go to seed, and then either scatter the seed, distribute it to friends, or clean it and give it back to the Madrona Nature Center. I'm also supposed to document the growth of the plants. From the glee on her face and her comments, I'd bet that Connie thought up this insurgent little idea with the intent of repopulating our local natives. I'll play along happily.
2007-11-13
Last rainfall of the season?
We had a light rain followed by some fog on Sunday. I'm guessing a few hundredths of an inch all in all: There had been substantial evaporation by the time I got to my rain gauge. According to reports on NPR yesterday, that may be it for this rainy season because of La Nina conditions. Weather modelers reportedly give scant hope that La Nina will weaken before January, meaning that we'll have to rely upon late season rain or nothing at all. It's not completely outlandish to draw an inside straight with rain - remember the March Miracle of 1991 which ended five years of drought? But in my book it's better to be prudent.
While our total rainfall thus far this year exceeds last year's total, it's still quite low -- low enough to qualify as a second, back to back, severe drought year.
My urge to eradicate all grass starts to look smarter and smarter, since I predict the start of water rationing in Los Angeles by early 2008. The city of Long Beach has already started rationing. Green grass has high water needs, and I doubt that my remaining lawn would get any water at all in a rationing situation.
Ironically, the highest water wasters are better off in a drought situation than those of us that have conserved in previous years. This is because water allocations are based upon your previous history of usage (usually during winter months when non-wasters wouldn't use much outdoor water). Users with historically high water usage are assumed to have greater water needs, a not unreasonable going in position. However, this also favors the waster who has a lot more easy remedies to live within their new water allocation. (You mean I have to give up showering until the water runs cold and turn off the faucet while brushing my teeth?}
So far as I know, there is no easy way for the water utility to discriminate between need-based usage and waste-based usage. However, in previous years there has been an appeal process to increase water allocation, and this was successful in the one case where I heard of it being used.
While our total rainfall thus far this year exceeds last year's total, it's still quite low -- low enough to qualify as a second, back to back, severe drought year.
My urge to eradicate all grass starts to look smarter and smarter, since I predict the start of water rationing in Los Angeles by early 2008. The city of Long Beach has already started rationing. Green grass has high water needs, and I doubt that my remaining lawn would get any water at all in a rationing situation.
Ironically, the highest water wasters are better off in a drought situation than those of us that have conserved in previous years. This is because water allocations are based upon your previous history of usage (usually during winter months when non-wasters wouldn't use much outdoor water). Users with historically high water usage are assumed to have greater water needs, a not unreasonable going in position. However, this also favors the waster who has a lot more easy remedies to live within their new water allocation. (You mean I have to give up showering until the water runs cold and turn off the faucet while brushing my teeth?}
So far as I know, there is no easy way for the water utility to discriminate between need-based usage and waste-based usage. However, in previous years there has been an appeal process to increase water allocation, and this was successful in the one case where I heard of it being used.
2007-10-15
Water rationing "forever" ?
Long Beach seems to be in the vanguard of lawn destruction. New weekly publication The District Weekly, made it the cover story recently.
Choice quote from the end of the article:
According to Wattier, the problem goes beyond the current drought that last year gave Southern California its driest winter in recorded history.
“Back in 2003 we lost almost half our Colorado River supply because of drought and demands from Arizona and Nevada,” he recites. “Then there was that federal ruling reduced our supply from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by 30 percent because of the endangered smelt. Now comes news that storage in the three major reservoirs in Northern California has dropped from 90 percent of capacity in March to 42 percent today.”
Consequently, Southern California likely won’t be able to stockpile surplus water anymore, meaning that even a good rainy season this year probably won’t alleviate the crisis.
“That’s why we see this as a long-term change,” says Wattier. “It’s not something where, if we just tighten our belts and pray for rain, everything will be okay in the spring. It could be forever.”
Choice quote from the end of the article:
According to Wattier, the problem goes beyond the current drought that last year gave Southern California its driest winter in recorded history.
“Back in 2003 we lost almost half our Colorado River supply because of drought and demands from Arizona and Nevada,” he recites. “Then there was that federal ruling reduced our supply from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by 30 percent because of the endangered smelt. Now comes news that storage in the three major reservoirs in Northern California has dropped from 90 percent of capacity in March to 42 percent today.”
Consequently, Southern California likely won’t be able to stockpile surplus water anymore, meaning that even a good rainy season this year probably won’t alleviate the crisis.
“That’s why we see this as a long-term change,” says Wattier. “It’s not something where, if we just tighten our belts and pray for rain, everything will be okay in the spring. It could be forever.”
2007-09-28
Evil lawn
There's yet another article in the LA Times Home & Garden section about losing your lawn.
...drought-tolerant plants became part of the solution -- although in entirely different ways. Despite being dissimilar in architectural and garden styles, the [two] homes prove just how versatile these plants can be. Once used mostly as stylistic botanical props where something unusual was called for, they are becoming part of the garden vernacular, equipped to live on low doses of moisture and survive bouts of drought.
Updated with a relevant picture 1 Oct
Here's a picture of some interesting grass area from a June-July 2007 trip to Germany. This is on the grounds of the Wurzburg Residenz, a palace known as "the Versaille of Germany." Needless to say, no expense is spared on grounds upkeep. Note the "weeds" in the turf lawn, which would never be tolerated here in the US.
Also, take a look at John Greenlee's presentation from 2004 (works best with MS Explorer, ugh ).
...drought-tolerant plants became part of the solution -- although in entirely different ways. Despite being dissimilar in architectural and garden styles, the [two] homes prove just how versatile these plants can be. Once used mostly as stylistic botanical props where something unusual was called for, they are becoming part of the garden vernacular, equipped to live on low doses of moisture and survive bouts of drought.
Updated with a relevant picture 1 Oct
Here's a picture of some interesting grass area from a June-July 2007 trip to Germany. This is on the grounds of the Wurzburg Residenz, a palace known as "the Versaille of Germany." Needless to say, no expense is spared on grounds upkeep. Note the "weeds" in the turf lawn, which would never be tolerated here in the US.
Also, take a look at John Greenlee's presentation from 2004 (works best with MS Explorer, ugh ).
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