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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 [...]

Everybody in garden design is talking agaves. Retro modern folks are digging golden barrel cactus. We’re even seeing fire stick euphorbia in pots of mixed perennials. While these new ventures into old succulents are revitalizing the aesthetic of our gardens, there are some key concerns for safety among these often prickly plants. Succulents have the market [...]

Celebrate a natural holiday season with decorations from your garden and the wild places near home. Cook up a fresh batch of rose hip jam as the fruit ripens this fall.          Gather twigs to create rustic wreaths to decorate.                Cut long runners of run-away vines to tie into garlands.            Harvest your herbs before frost to hang [...]

Got a computer and a color printer?  Unleash your creativity at MoPlants.com where our resources will help you make your own gifts, decorations and cards for the holidays.             Now that summer’s over, get a head start on the season with some great money saving ideas for using Internet databases of stunning vintage images.  If [...]

The art of entertaining education should apply to the horticultural world as it does elsewhere.  The problem is that plant people aren’t often good communicators, and they struggle to share their life long knowledge with others. This lack of good presentation is matched by TV garden show “talking head”? hosts who can read a teleprompter but have little [...]

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 [...]