We've been marking the weeks by what’s newest in bloom: snowy jade flowers signal early January, jasmine vines close the curtain on February...
A bland bedroom patio and an impulse buy were the two things that conspired, 16 years ago, to initiate Barry Levine into the practice of bonsai. This was while he was still a bachelor living in Brentwood. “The patio had nothing on it but a chair...
You might have seen them. The Clivia miniata, or natal lily, squats patiently and monochromatically for most of the year, beneath trees and in dark corners of gardens in Zones 9 and 10. It's also a beloved indoor plant — as it shuns direct sunlight and...
Healer, gourmand and world traveler, our friend Sam Gerson is a key member of our circle of fellow New York exiles, a design-minded group that arrived on these shores in search of sun and cycads. Last fall he moved into a place by the water in...
The traffic islands around here are truly one of the natural wonders of the world. A couple weeks ago, we noticed that one of our regular concrete drive-bys became irradiated overnight with thousands of fuchsia-color flowers. Turns out, it’s a type of athletically spreading succulent,...
When the Spring Home & Garden Show rolled into town last weekend, we made a beeline for the Del Mar Fairgrounds and jumped right into the flower-hungry fray. It was our first time at the exhibition. Initially fearing it would skew more “home” (that is, the...
Scent-wise, white flowers are like the older, more, um, experienced sisters of the floral world. Their fragrance is sweet but with an extra fleshy note, evident in the sultry auras of tuberose, gardenia and jasmine. The scent just feels extra…familiar. This quality comes from indole, an...
A quick follow-up to our outdoor theater/rosemary trimming story. Right around sunset here on the West Coast, we pulled down the screen, fired up the HD projector, and watched the Oscars in our yard. Our propane-fueled Robot Heater kept us warm, as did Adele's world-wise...
A rosemary hedge says you've planned your garden for years. Besides freshening up the pasta sauce to turn around an afterthought dinner, your hedge will fend off insects and make the breeze smell like bread. Our Tuscan blue rosemary is surviving well in our lime-rich...
We usually ascribe human features to our succulents — e.g. the textured fleshiness of our “mama jade,” the zombie pallor of the echeveria — but our newest crop is made of stonier stuff. The stubby, cleaved Lithops marmorata is one of our favorites. “Lithops” comes from the...