I’m convinced – gardeners love the outdoors, love nature and love the earth more than most people. That’s why we garden, to be closer to nature. So when it’s time to make decisions about the plants to place into their gardens these folks are increasingly weighing things like water needs and climate suitability. Gardeners are asking [...]
Sometime when we look at the foliage of our plants we automatically think it is under attack from a large creature (usually a small insect) taking advantage of our poor defenseless plants. […]
California is home to a lot of unique plants that we can all enjoy for many reasons. One of the most enjoyable aspects of a native garden is the overwhelming scents and flavors of our native plants. Sometimes you might have to lean in close to smell them and sometimes [...]
Fall is my favorite! I love the merging of offshore, salty summer breezes with a hint of fall crispness, the leaves are starting to turn and there are spiders everywhere. Halloween is just around the corner! Tomatoes are still in abundance, but there is a whiff of winter squash and greens on the horizon. As [...]
Fifteen years ago Roger’s Gardens was surrounded by lush lawns, lots of them. Times change and so do landscapes. In August of 2015 we took on the ambitious project of removing the last remnant of our lawns. Completing the last leg of a project that we began over ten years ago, we uprooted the water-thirsty [...]
A couple of days ago, I received a question from a gardener, Christian in Newport Beach, that I think summarizes how a lot of homeowners might be feeling right now. Christian writes, “I want to get rid of my lawn completely; I’m tired of watering, fertilizing and mowing it. Also, I know that we are going into [...]
“Runoff” is a very bad feature of many landscapes. It is water that runs off our landscapes, down the street, and into the ocean; carrying a bit of our gardens with it; the fertilizers, pesticides and other pollutants. From the Newport Coast development alone, 24 million gallons of contaminated runoff are ending up in our protected [...]
Everyone is going drought tolerant these days. As we scale back our lawn areas in our gardens some people are left scratching their heads wondering, “What should I replace it with?” We’re going to offer a few of suggestions for filling parkways and shrinking your lawn areas with beautiful filler plants and alternatives. […]
When I moved into my home almost 15 years ago, I tore into the garden – or, more literally: tore up my garden. The lawn went, shrubs were dug up, trees were felled, beds reconfigured. And I installed all new irrigation with the latest timer (with the very generous help of my very kind sons!) [...]
The lawn that just won’t die! Surprisingly perhaps, that’s exactly the fear that many people have when contemplating switching their lawn to something else. We fuss and labor over our lawns. If we miss a watering, forget to fertilize or ignore our little green oases, we quickly see the outcome, browning, dieback, weeds, disease, [...]
