Terrarium making over at N.A.

Check out the blog I write for once a week!  Every thursday, something new for New Yorkers to do to enhance their green in such a brown & grey city.  This weeks post is a pretty good one, try it out!

The Terrarium Project at Naked Apartments

If your looking for a place to live, or are in real estate, this site links both parties together for an easier way to find a great place to live.  The blog just helps you settle in nicely. 

ENJOY!

Rainy season

June Gloom is all the buzz.  

We have been having a good amount of rain recently, which is fine by me- I love the rain.  But my poor plants are starting to feel the effects.  

These containers are planted with colocasia, sweet potato vine, nepeta, and no longer wave petunias.  I had a few deep purple wave petunias for a rich color burst but the rain just kept these beds super moist, causing mold to grow and kill off the softer plants.

I'll replace them this week I suppose. 

But with all this rain, my Cornus Kousa Dogwood is going NUTS!  So many flowers- it's a little unreal.

Spring is on it's way out.  I dug up all these pansies and will save them for the fall.  Replanting them in rich soil, cutting the back hard ... They should be great in September/October when I am ready for them again.  

The pansies below were replaced by bright red calibrachoa, fuchsia wave petunia, yellow lantana, lavender angelonia, blue annual salvia and apricot portulacas.  

- But that photo will come when they get nice and established... it's a bit dainty at the moment.  Patience, patience.

And finally,  

Late in the day downtown. 

Brooklyn Planting has some things in the mix.  New gardens, possible new business ventures, that new blog I'm writing for!

Which reminds me- Thursdays, check out my urban gardening tips at Naked Apartments !  

Dig around!

From Spring to Summer

I have a new camera, finally.

It works like a dream and I was able to use my original memory card in it so I could view the old photos from my Los Angeles trip through May. 

A few days before leaving L.A. I had the chance to visit Huntington Botanical Gardens. 

http://www.huntington.org

It was March so most plants were still dormant for the winter- which gave me the opportunity to sit in on an amazing lecture. 

It was on the art of Tussie-mussies!

"Tussie-mussie" is a term from the 1400s in England for small, round bouquets of herbs and flowers with symbolic meanings.  There were thought to be other bonuses to having a small cluster of sweet smelling flowers.  Holding them up to your nose would mask smells and was thought to purify the air a bit. 

There is a cute website that has a list of the Victorian flower meanings:

http://victorianbazaar.com/meanings.html

This is a tussie-mussie I made for my friend zack. It lacked meaning because I just wanted to give him a purple and orange burst on his desk.

So here's a bit of Brooklyn Planting that the old camera was holding hostage from this past spring.

This was from the lake house upstate that I occasionally garden at.  It is such a pleasure to work there. 

...

And these are just a couple shots I will be posting to the other blog I write for... (nakedapartments.com/blog)  

Window boxes make even the view outside more enjoyable.  

And this one will be about finding ways to get plants up off the floor on on tables.  Think vertically in NYC.  It's all we have. 

Glad to be back blogging. 

Lots of fun projects on the horizon.  Stay tuned!

Contributing

Fun new work!  

I'm now a contributing writer to a new blog that focuses on making New York a bit more livable.

The company is called Naked Apartments, scandalous- I know, but it's a really cool group that helps brokers and renters make the most of the apartment hunt... sign up at their home page if you are interested. 

My first post went up today.  I just wanted to introduce the public to a few good places to find plant material.  The more you see what is available, you can decide what you are interested in and then start asking questions like light requirements or watering needs.

Check me out!  I guess my bio isn't up yet... meh. 

http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/

Thanks Shankar!

P.S.  My camera is dead.  The battery area is busted and won't turn on anymore.  I now need to get a card reader for my March-May pictures as well as a whole new piece.  UGH.  

Ok, ok...

I know.

I have totally neglected the blog.  I've been easily passing the blame to my camera, which still has photos from March on it.  It's easy enough to just go get a new cord to connect it (I think I left that 5 pin to USB cord in L.A.) ... 

Man, I missed posting about all the amazing spring projects!  

Getting it together for a MAJOR recap will be needed... considering I'm writing for another blog now!  

YUP, I'm going to be a "contributer"... I will let you know when and where the first entry will be!  The blog is about "how to make NYC more livable"... 

So with that, I'm trying to come up with a little bio- which is soooooo hard!  I keep doing funny entries and serious ones and rambling nonsense ones. 

So let me get back to that- but I will DEFINITELY get that cord or a new camera this week- the thing is falling apart.  

Hope to be back soon with some great photos from March- May... oh boy- SLIDE SHOW!  

Happy Gardening!

Back in the Saddle

It has been almost three solid months since my last report!  Posting feels almost unfamiliar.

Well, winter is completely over!  

Spring is officially here with all our April showers and early spring flowers!  

Brooklyn Planting has been up and running for the past few weeks, dusting off the old tools and cleaning out some early garden beds and planting a few small containers here and there.  

But before we get ahead of ourselves... lets talk Los Angeles!  

I flew out mid January with intentions of volunteering with a friend of mine at Tree People for the Million Tree effort.  In the end, I didn't plant as many trees as I would have liked but the completely new environment inspired a whole slew of ideas and directions!  

On the flip side, I did some gardening at my friends house where I stayed... I think it inspired them because now they are planting so many new flowers and are constantly sending me updates!

Let the photos begin!

Welcome to Los Angeles, California!

This was my first experience with L.A.  

They love/hate their highways out there.

On the Tree People grounds.   

www.treepeople.org

 LEED™ platinum-certified Conference Center at the top of Coldwater Canyon.  Check the website for specifics, there are so many interesting forward thinking projects going on here!  The Tree People staff work out of seven all-weather yurts organizing plantings or classes.  (A "Yurt" is a round tent like structure. It's a modern interpretation of homes the nomadic people of central asian have been living in for over 2000 years.) Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of those structures...arrr.  

It was such an interesting spot!

The grounds were pretty amazing... Look at the view of Studio City!!!   The trails take you to the most breathtaking edges of the canyon. 

An upside down photo of an upside down sign on a trail.

It says:   Air is part of the city forest.  People breathe oxygen into their lungs and breathe out carbon dioxide.  Trees absorb carbon dioxide into their leaves and give off oxygen.

Looks like they were propagating some pine tree clippings in their huge greenhouse.  So many new baby trees!

Off to the nursery.

Boething TreeLand Farms in Woodland Hills, CA. 

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful

Can you believe they sell palm trees at the nurseries out there???  

The stock was all pretty familiar, a few things I consider annuals are perennials out there, that's mostly it.

Strapping down the trees to be delivered.

Riding my bike around.

This is a canopy tree and my favorite tree in all of Los Angeles.  I think it lives on 4th Street in West Hollywood because that street had a bike lane. (one of the very few)  

And a loving shot of my bicycle and the canopy tree.  The scale of it was so impressive. 

Classic alternating palm trees in Beverly Hills on the ride home.  

This shrub has a great story.  In the winter, the toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) would be covering most of the hillsides in it's evergreen foliage and bright red bunches of berries.  Settlers mistook the plant for a holly and the story has it that the "father of Hollywood", H.J. Whitley, dubbed the area Hollywood on in 1887 due to the abundance of the "holly bush".  Variations on the story are all floating around.  But more or less, this was what was gathered.  Mistaken identity!

Irises bloom in January and February... I'm sure in March and April and May... it's like paradise!

  I was admiring this alien of a plant on one of my first days in town when a little old woman approached me. (Californians are incredibly friendly.)  She told me it was an agave bloom. This Agave attenuata has a clustered base that can mass up to 4-5 feet.  This flowering stalk can be as high as 10 feet! It's a monster!  

Hollywood Forever Cemetery 

It had the most beautiful unexpected treasures.

Like this bell tower at the front entrance covered in vines!!!  

And these beautiful white roses mixed in with equisetum (horsetails).

This is a HUGE hydrangea.  Look how little my friend Lauren is underneath that!  It sits on the north side of the pond.  During the summer months, old time/scary movies are projected onto the side of the mausoleum that sits in the center of that pond!!  Oh L.A. 

This is just a taste!

More to come!  Lots and lots more!

I'm baaaaack!

Well, it sure has been a while.

Gardening season was going full force through the holiday season. Closing down garden and laying the winter greens over all the flower beds, making garlands, dressing winter window boxes... it was fun.  Decembers weather was up and down as per usual.  One day was close to 70 and then I remember working one day all bundled up with temps around 25 degrees!  

I will have lots of time to go back and post photos, talk at length about what happened in the garden scene in Brooklyn the past few months, as well as fill you in on my personal adventure of taking Brooklyn Planting across the country to Los Angeles, California.

Saturday I leave my office, apartment, pets and plants in the hands of  two sub-letters thru March. 

 

My wonderful friend Oscar has invited me to help his group, Tree People (treepeople.org), in planting trees for the city of Los Angeles as a part of the Million Tree LA effort!  

I'm thrilled to help with such an important project.  

Plant a tree if you can!

www.milliontreesla.org

www.millinotreesnyc.org

-There are so many organizations, publicly & privately funded, look for what you can do where you live... Or have your own adventure helping out our big cities!

Keep on keep'n on!