Great Gardens in Small Spaces features 44 wonderful and exquisitely photographed California gardens, specifically treating the small garden, its particular challenges and its abundant opportunities and rewards. 300 color illustrations.
"California Native Plants for the Garden" is a comprehensive resource that features more than 500 of the best California native plants for gardening in the Mediterranean-climate areas of the world. Authored by three of the state's leading native-plant horticulturalists and illustrated with 450 color photos, this reference book also includes chapters on landscape design, installation, and maintenance. Detailed lists of recommended native plants for a variety of situations are also provided.
Since it was first published in 2002, the California Master Gardener Handbook has been the definitive guide to best practices and advice for gardeners throughout the West. Now the much-anticipated 2nd Edition to the Handbook is here—completely redesigned, with updated tables, graphics, and color photos throughout. Whether you're a beginner double digging your first bed or a University of California Master Gardener, this handbook will be your go-to source for the practical, science-based information you need to sustainably maintain your landscape and garden and become an effective problem solver. Chapters cover soil, fertilizer, and water management, plant propagation, plant physiology; weeds and pests; home vegetable gardening; specific garden crops including grapes, berries temperate fruits and nuts, citrus, and avocados. Also included is information on lawns, woody landscape plants, and landscape design. New to the 2nd Edition is information on invasive plants and principles of designing and maintaining landscapes for fire protection. Inside are updates to the technical information found in each chapter, reorganization of information for better ease of use, and new content on important emerging topics. Useful conversions for many units of measure found in the Handbook or needed in caring for gardens and landscapes are located in Appendix A. A glossary of important technical terms used and an extensive index round out the book.
It may be the Golden State, but your garden can be any color you want it to be. California is already famous as one of the world's leading fruit and vegetable producers--but a glance at a valley oak or California buckwheat is just a small glimpse of the native plants the state has to offer the home gardener. Written by Alameda resident and longtime gardening journalist Claire Splan, California Month-by-Month Gardening is the sister manual to our California Getting Started Garden Guide. Inside, Splan dedicates a thoroughly detailed chapter to each month of the year, telling you what species you should consider planting, precisely when you should plant them, and how to care for them for maximum health. Within each month are recommendations for annuals, bulbs, lawns (and lawn alternatives), natives, perennials, roses, shrubs, trees, vines, and groundcovers. An introductory overview of California's microclimates and soil types, along with a primer on general gardening techniques and a color-coded USDA zone map, prepares you to make your best effort as a gardener in California. Splan's instructions go much further than just the basics, as you learn how to plan, plant, care for, water, fertilize, and troubleshoot your diverse garden spaces during every single month of the year. Fully illustrated with beautiful color photography of the "how to" steps and plants, California Month-by-Month Gardening keeps your garden prosperous through all types of California weather and terrain. For our full introduction to gardening in California, we also recommend companion books California Getting Started Garden Guide and California Fruit & Vegetable Gardening.
Detailed with loving accuracy in the photography of Melba Levick and in the lucid prose of Karen Dardick, Estate Gardens of California showcases fifteen magnificent estate gardens that are uniquely, exuberantly Californian. Included within are the classically inspired, 654-acre gardens of Filoli near San Francisco, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation-an estate with grounds of such alluring beauty that many times the cameras of Hollywood have come here to film; the Huntington Library Gardens in San Marino, one of the most important botanical gardens in the world; and the opulent and strange but wildly popular Lotusland in Montecito, a fantasy world of exquisite beauty created by Madam Ganna Walska with famed designer Lockwood de Forest. Other gardens featured are in Pebble Beach, Newport Beach, Beverly Hills, the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, and Rancho Palos Verdes. It is the plant palette of almost endless possibilities that makes California's great gardens so breathtaking. In Estate Gardens a rare and privileged glimpse of these possibilities is given. Cohen Estate, Newport Beach (owner of Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles) Collins Estate, Beverly Hills Hacienda Mar Monte, Pebble Beach Descanso Gardens, La Canada (open to public) Filoli, Woodside (open to public) Lotusland, Montecito (open to public) Rancho Los Alamitos, Long Beach (open to public) Stathatos Estate, San Marino Beaulieu Residence, Napa Valley (private residence of owner of Beaulieu winery) Villa Fiore, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County Huntington Library, San Marino (open to public) Val Verde, Montecito (open for limited public viewing) Villa Narcissa, Rancho Palos Verdes Virginia Robinson Estate and Gardens, Beverly Hills (open for limited public viewing) Alden Estate, Santa Monica Canyon.
A must-have for every gardener in California looking for a new way to garden in a changing climate In recent years California has been facing extreme drought, and in 2015 they passed state-wide water restrictions that affect home owners. Unfortunately the drought is only going to get worse, and gardeners who aren’t willing to abandon their beloved pastime entirely are going to have to learn how to garden with the absolute minimum of water. The Drought-Defying California Garden highlights the best 230 plants to grow, shares advice on how to get them established, and offers tips on how to maintain them with the minimum amount of water. All of the plants are native to California—making them uniquely adept at managing the harsh climate—and include perennials, annuals, shrubs, trees, and succulents.
Gardens are immobile, literally rooted in the earth, but they are also shaped by migration and by the transnational movement of ideas, practices, plants, and seeds. In Paradise Transplanted, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo reveals how successive conquests and diverse migrations have made Southern California gardens, and in turn how gardens influence social inequality, work, leisure, status, and our experiences of nature and community. Drawing on historical archival research, ethnography, and over one hundred interviews with a wide range of people including suburban homeowners, paid Mexican immigrant gardeners, professionals at the most elite botanical garden in the West, and immigrant community gardeners in the poorest neighborhoods of inner-city Los Angeles, this book offers insights into the ways that diverse global migrations and garden landscapes shape our social world.
Dry summer, wet winter climate? This is your must have plant guide. Selecting plants suited to your climate is the first step toward a thriving, largely self-sustaining garden that connects with and supports the natural world. With gentle and compelling text and stunning photographs of plants in garden settings, Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates by Nora Harlow and Saxon Holt is a guide to native and climate-adapted plants for summer-dry, winter-wet climates of North America's Pacific coast. Knowing what these climates share and how and why they differ, you can choose to make gardens that maintain and expand local and regional biodiversity, take little from the earth that is not returned, and welcome and accommodate the presence of wildlife. With global warming, it is now even more critical that we garden in tune with climate.