plant selection
The word xeriscape is one of those terms that most everyone has heard but few truly understand. When we think of xeriscapes or xeriscaping, most people immediately visualize a dry almost lifeless desert landscape with rocks and cactus. Because the "x" is pronounced like a "z" the word is often mistaken for a fancy way of spelling zeroscapes, which implies that it has no plantings or uses zero water. Neither is true. Working in the arid climates of the Texas hill country, I've embraced the xeriscaping concept as a way to create sustainable and inviting landscapes with minimal irrigation, but again, that does not
'My daughter and I just returned from our annual trip to visit family in Connecticut and used the occasion this time to travel all over the northeast,' wrote Stephanie Rose in opening her Natural Companions column for November 2004. 'I'm never disappointed by the beauty I find in that part of the country.' 'What I find most beneficial in travel
When my client purchased a home at the top of a steep ravine, all she really knew was that she owned a lengthy stretch of a streambed and the land rising above it on both sides. At some point after she moved in, she decided to beautify the space, had a load of 200 boulders dumped in the driveway and hired her landscaper to move them down to dress up the waterway, which was dry through most of the year and was overgrown with all sorts of unwelcome plants. What she didn't know was that she was fooling around with Kenter Creek, a federally protected Blue Line waterway that started high in the hills a couple miles away. She had figured, reasonably so, that the stream was
Back in June 2002, Stephanie Rose began her Natural Companions column by writing, ‘Everyone knows that hanging a pool, pond, or spa off a slope can make quite a dramatic statement, which is probably why so many great watershapers love working on hillsides. ‘But the project doesn’t begin and end with the vessel,’ she cautioned. ‘In fact, placing a watershape on an
What we have here is essentially three stories rolled into one. Partly, it's about what happens when a well-established company steps beyond its comfort zone with a major renovation project that involves an unusually large set of unknowns. It's also about what can happen to a property when an old, large, man-made pond system breaks down, time passes and the space reverts to a wild, natural state. And it's about what's involved in pulling a failed
The Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens has a huge advantage over its neighbor, the Chinese Garden: It's been there about 100 years longer. As was discussed two months back (click here), the Chinese Garden was first opened at
