environment

In 1994 when I wrote California Wildfire Landscaping, we knew the fire season of 2007 was coming, we just didn’t know when. In those days I gathered up all known information on how to create defensible space homesites and compiled it into an easy to use book for homeowners and their families.Click this link to [...]

English ivy suffers a most profound duality.  While at once refusing to grow where we want it to, escapees can naturalize to engulf whole landscapes.  This is just one aspect of an insidious spreader that has wrecked havoc unparalleled in the annals of horticulture.Though it is commonly known as English ivy, Hedera helix is actually [...]

In the 15th century Florentine Codex of Aztec physicians, the healer is “well versed in herbs, who knows, through experience the roots, the trees, the stones.  She keeps her secrets and traditions.”?  The healer is clearly female.  But where the Codex covers Aztec physician, the text indicates this role applies to the male gender.    Today [...]

English ivy suffers a most profound duality.  While at once refusing to grow where we want it to, escapees can naturalize to engulf whole landscapes.  This is just one aspect of an insidious spreader that has wrecked havoc unparalleled in the annals of horticulture. Though it is commonly known as English ivy, Hedera helix is actually [...]

By MARK HUME
Toronto Globe and Mail

The small beetle that has already eaten its way through about 40 percent British Columbia's lodgepole pine forest since 1993, is developing new appetites.

Don’t let yellow start thistle get a start in your garden!  It can appear without warning to gain a foot hold, particularly in suburban and rural homesites.This painfully prickly plant has already earned a very bad reputation among ranchers who have watched it damage valuable range land.  This imported annual thistle was first brought to [...]

Finch seed socks may be the simplest of all bird feeders.  I first saw them at a garden center where a tree had a dozen of these socks hanging beneath the canopy in the shade.  The whole place was a finch mob scene and these bright yellow and orange birds were flitting around there in [...]