Our Plant Collection Is for the Birds (and Butterflies)
Can a plant collection also be a wildlife garden? Yes it can! And, be it big or small, a wildlife garden can also be a plant collection. Our Bird and …
Topics: Perspectives
POD: An Award-Winning Garden
The garden selected for the Pacific Horticulture Award at the 2006 San Francisco Flower & Garden Show was unlike most others that have won our award, …
Fragrance in the Wild Western Garden: Uncommon Conifers
Gardens exist for many purposes ranging from practical and pleasing to bewildering, amazing, and instructive. A stroll through a fragrance garden can …
Thanks to Our Feathered Friends
A few years ago, I started offering foods to attract a different range of birds. Birds eat many different things. When people think of feeding birds i…
Go, Lovely Rose
Fred Howard, who twice won the Gold Medal award for roses at the Bagatelle competition in Paris, France, before WW II, was among the most famous rose …
Classifying Arthropods
Many arthropods carry out their daily routines only on the surface of the soil. A surprising number, however, live at least part-time below the soil s…
Plants Are in Control
Healthy soil is teaming with life—not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. The term…
A Sedge by Another Name
The search for more water-sensible surrogates for traditional turf grasses has focused attention on some long overlooked native sedges of the genus Ca…
Berkeley Sedge is Eurasian Grey Sedge
Berkeley sedge (now properly known as Carex tumulicola) provides another example of how some plants are rushed into production and to market before id…