Easy Garden Simulations - No New Software Required! - Fine Gardening

Here's a fun, new, useful post at my Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening magazine. I've used this easy technique to experiment with plant composition ideas, then present them to my clients.

All you need is a computer with an internet connection and a word processing program--though PowerPoint makes it a bit simpler.

When you're stuck in the house on a winter day, longing to be out in the garden, use your time to play with all your favorite plants without spending a dime or getting your hands dirty!

Click on the link below, learn this easy peasy technique and find out how to win a great book - Planting: The Design Book for the 21st Century, by Diarmuid Gavin and Terence Conran.

Easy Garden Simulations - No New Software Required! - Fine Gardening

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Time To Unite In The Name of Ugly

The Hague prosecutes heinous acts like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Though the plant mutilations and acts of aesthetic idiocy I've uploaded to my Flickr site don't rise to that level, they at least deserve to be ridiculed.

Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some of you might look at the images and say "What's so bad about that?" I resort to my mom's dictum: "You have your opinion and I'll have the right one."

Thanks mom.

Brace yourself, ask the children to leave the room and click here.

Santa Barbara Edhat : Look, Up In The Sky!

When I think of October I think of Halloween, which gets me thinking about bats. Naturally, bats conjure thoughts of belfries, which invariably lead to the topic of beavers.

Confused? There's a cure. Read the rest of this sumptuous tour of Santa Barbara's architecture and "roof toppings" at my recent Edhat.com blog.

Read Look, Up In The Sky!

Planting Design Lessons from Raleigh NC - Fine Gardening

Blessing or curse, I find it difficult to look at a garden without immediately activating the design teacher in my brain. I imagine it's no different for a film critic trying to watch their brother-in-law's home videos.

Tune in and see me apologize to a cactus on my hands and knees. Really!

Planting Design Lesson from Raleigh, North Carolina

Win a copy of Designer Plant Combinations! - Fine Gardening

What a fun read this was! Scott Calhoun's book is now the first thing I reach for when I need a bit of inspiration on a planted design job. You gotta have this book!

You can win your own copy by visiting my blog at Fine Gardening Magazine and leaving a comment. Do it NOW!

Win a copy of Scott's book. Click over to my Cool Green Gardens blog.



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One Pill Made Me Larger: Tripping on Bonsai

Does the current economic downturn have you contemplating a career change? Have you considered taking a hallucinogenic drug? No? Let me tell you, it worked for me.

Wait! Hold it! I’m not talking about my recent departure from my gig with the Santa Barbara Parks & Recreation Department. I’m talking about the early 70s when I began extricating myself from the music business and entering the world of horticulture.

The rest of this sordid tale is posted at my most recent Edhat.com blog, Santa Barbara's finest on-line news and entertainment site.

Santa Barbara Edhat : Tripping on Bonsai

Can Coyote Pee Repel Zombies In The Garden?

Once again, my inner 3rd grader was on the loose, interviewing a rep for an unusual product at the Garden Writers Association symposium in Raleigh, NC a few weeks ago. The full article and video are at my Fine Gardening blog. Here's a teaser...

"I stifled a giggle as I approached Ronald Boyce, an actual scientist who works for Shake-Away Animal Repellant, developed as the humane and environmentally safe way to repel deer, woodchucks, armadillos, skunks and other unwanted garden visitors. They use coyote and wolf urine to keep four-legged pests out of the pea patch...

I couldn’t contain myself. Tapping into my hard-hitting Kathy Lee Crosby journalistic instincts, I peppered him with probing questions. "How do you get them to pee on demand? Do they prefer Miller Lite or Stella Artois? Who follows them around with the specimen cup? Would Shake-Away prevent zombie invasions?"

Video blog link!