Orchard Trees of Rancho Los Cerritos: Loquats
Loquats (Eriobotrya japonica) are a delightful fruit for eating fresh off the tree or for canning, and may someday prove to be important in the pharma…
Topics: Gardens & Design
Succulent Container Gardens
As a sequel to her successful Designing with Succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin has written a colorful and informative treatment of these popular plants as container…
Starting Your Own Native Bee Sanctuary
Native bees provide us with the essential service of pollination and are the most effective pollinators we have. Gardens can be easily designed or mod…
Golden Gate Gardening: The Complete Guide to Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area and Coastal California
In his 1993 review of the first edition of Golden Gate Gardening, editor George Waters concluded: “if you garden in the San Francisco Bay Area,…
Quarryhill Botanical Garden: A Sanctuary for Asian Plants
Quarryhill Botanical Garden is a hidden gem in Sonoma County's tranquil Valley of the Moon. This verdant garden is not only a world-class botanic gard…
The Auricula: History, Cultivation and Varieties
The auricula (Primula auricula) will never match the drama or economic impact of the tulip, as featured in Anna Pavord’s definitive The Tulip (Bloomsbury, 1999).…
A Golden Moment in a Northern California Garden
During a visit to the garden one cloudless day last May, I enjoyed the privilege of strolling underneath the fortress created by forty carefully train…
A Surprising Landscape at Pitzer
Never before had I seen a campus landscaped like Pitzer College, in Claremont, California. Its buildings are surrounded by the most sophisticated and …
History of the West in an Altadena Garden
Our home sits on a south-facing alluvial fan at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Altadena, California. We designed and installed a semi-formal…