PLAYING IN THE DIRT: The back yard of Sophie Clanton, which won awards for Xeriscaping. (Photo: John Davenport/ZUMA)

When I tell Cassy Aoyagi, the friendly and knowledgeable co-owner of C&K Landscape Design, that I want to talk to her about xeriscaping, she laughs.

“The term xeriscaping is so ’70s,” she says. “I think there are really weird associations with it — people see gravel and cactus.”

In case you missed the coining of the term “xeriscape” in 1978, it can very simply be defined as dry landscaping: Gardening in dry regions without much in the way of supplemental irrigation. Seems easy enough — just plant a bunch of cacti, throw in some rocks, and call it a day — but there’s a tad more to it. The term xeriscaping is more and more often interchanged with the phrase “native gardening.” It’s a growing movement that strives to reintroduce plants that are native to dry regions such as Southern California, where they’ve long been squeezed out by thirsty and needy exotics.

Aoyagi and her team are a full-service, Southern California-based landscape design, construction and maintenance company. Specializing in sustainability, they endeavor to make every project as environmentally friendly as possible, which means using lots of natives along with recycled, repurposed materials.

Despite what she calls “terrible stereotypes” associated with natives, Aoyagi has noticed a marked increase in requests for native gardens in the last year. That’s partly thanks to a growing interest in the environment, and partly because native gardening means less water and less maintenance. And although those “terrible stereotypes” about native plants exist — “When people bring up natives, they envision woody, weedy stuff that’s half-dead by the end of summer,” Aoyagi explains — the reality is that xeriscapers aren’t limited by a lack of options.

According to Louise Lacey, whose website Growing Native offers a wealth of information on working with native California plant communities, there are more than 5,000 species native to the Golden State — and that’s not counting subspecies.

Lacey fell into native gardening years ago when living in a shady place on a shoestring budget. With a 60-mile commute, she didn’t have the time or money to care for a needy garden. She fell in love with the plants at a local native plant botanic garden, and quickly realized that they would solve all of her gardening problems.

“I wouldn’t have to water; I wouldn’t have to do anything,” she explains. “They didn’t need me.”

It’s an amazing concept for those accustomed to gardening with exotics, whose care requires water, fertilizer, pesticides and lots of time, but Lacey stresses that even natives do need some attention in the first few years.

Aoyagi echoes that sentiment.

“The biggest misconception about natives is that they don’t require any maintenance,” she warns. “Don’t do any planting, including natives, if you’re not willing to maintain it, because you’ll be disappointed.”

Once they’re established, though, they know how to take care of themselves. Lacey insists that three years after getting started, her native garden only required eight hours of care — per year.

What was born of necessity quickly turned into a life’s passion. Through trial and error, Lacey learned the basics of native gardening, which she now offers online. She’s also quick to speak about the healing aspects of native gardening — both for the earth, and for the gardener.

“It’s really a spiritual experience,” she says, going on to describe how growing native plants creates natural habitats for native fauna such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

Lili Singer, special projects coordinator for the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, Calif., designed her own native garden specifically to attract hummingbirds. A horticulturist, garden consultant and garden writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Singer grew up in the San Fernando valley, where she hosted a garden show on KCRW for more than a decade, and worked as the publisher and editor of The Southern California Gardener and The Gardener’s Companion, both specifically focused on gardening in Southern California. Throughout her career in radio and print, she has always included native plants and endorsed the Theodore Payne Foundation, a nonprofit nursery dedicated to promoting the understanding, use and preservation of California’s native flora.

“The foundation has 22 acres, most of it undeveloped, in the middle of residential,” Singer explains. “It’s kind of like this little oasis. We have demonstration gardens, a big retail nursery, an art gallery and an education center with programs all year.”

One of the things Singer was hired to do was get the Theodore Payne Foundation into farmers markets, and she says the Hollywood Farmers’ Market has made Sunday her favorite day of the week.

“We had a native coyote mint plant in there one week, and it had a flower on it. Coyote mint is a butterfly attractor, and there we were, in the middle of this urban farmers market with 7,000 people walking by and all of these booths, and butterflies came in and found the plant.”

The anecdote is a testimony to Singer’s belief that putting natives into home gardens may be the way to save certain species.

“Most insects will not eat non-native plants,” she explains. “Butterflies will not lay their eggs on non-native plants. If we don’t have those little caterpillars, we don’t have birds eating them, and we don’t have the birds. It’s a picture of the food chain, and the fact that we’ve destroyed most of our wild lands means that we can’t depend on that being the sanctuary for the wild animals anymore.”

It’s a bad state of affairs, but the good news is that Aoyagi, Lacey and Singer are all optimistic about the positive impact of native gardening, not to mention the growing interest in it. The moral of the story: Whether you’re planting your own small garden or hiring a landscape design company, try going native.

Resources

Interested gardeners across the United States can contact their state’s Native Plant Societies, where they’ll find helpful information and local native nurseries.

California-based gardeners can check out Louise Lacey’s small book, The Basics, available on her website, and those in Southern California can visit the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. Take one of its courses, such as California Native Plant Garden Design with board member Cassy Aoyagi. Want to know more about the relationship between native flora and fauna, and how you can make them both a part of your life? Lili Singer suggests reading Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, by Douglas W. Tallamy.

[Cross posted from Mother Nature Network]

Photo: Eggybird/Flickr 

There have been some truly great scams throughout history, but perhaps none as wide-reaching and environmentally destructive as bottled water. Somewhere along the way, we were all deceived into thinking that bottled water was “better” than tap water, and that we had to shell out to healthfully hydrate.

It turns out the joke’s on us and the punch line, of course, is that a lot of bottled water is just tap water anyway. Aquafina, a PepsiCo brand, and Dasani, a Coca-Cola brand, are two examples of “purified” bottled tap water. Meanwhile, brands such as Fiji, which offers “all natural artesian” water, uncap their own ocean of concerns –namely that the bottles the pristine water is sold in require large amounts of oil to make, and the fuel needed to ship them all over the world results in a huge carbon footprint.

According to Pacific Institute estimates from 2006, “Producing the bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil,” and “bottling water produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.” That doesn’t include the energy and transportation involved. And then there’s the waste. The Container Recycling Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, reports that eight out of 10 plastic water bottles in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill.

After years of buying into the bottled-water swindle, consumers are being spurred to return to the tap by the growing green movement and the current economic downturn. Fast Company recently reported that Americans spent $15 billion on bottled water last year — arguably $15 billion that would have been better spent on water purifiers and reusable bottles.   Take Back the Tap, a campaign spearheaded by consumer-rights organization Food & Water Watch, is encouraging individuals to take action by contacting their elected officials, and “calling on restaurantsto support the city’s tap water by keeping bottled water off their menus.” Refill Not Landfill and Filter For Good are two more campaigns, organized by Nalgene and Brita, working to encourage bottled-water drinkers to break the addiction. They’ve even partnered with Crystal Light to offer a “reusable water bottle kit,” replete with “one Filter For Good reusable bottle, ten Crystal Light On The Go sticks, and valuable offers including a $5 off Brita water filtration system coupon.” Their tag line should be “a spoonful of sugar helps the tap water go down.”

For those who don’t need the kit or flavor enhancers, the world of water filters, purifiers and reusable bottles is a veritable embarrassment of riches. Well-known brands include PUR and Brita, both of which offer pitchers, faucet mounts and refrigerator filters. Once you’ve filtered and purified your tap water, you’ll need something to carry it around in. This is where a reusable bottle such as the popular Nalgene comes in.

The company is currently in the process of phasing out production of consumer bottles containing the controversial compound BPA. Check out Nalgene Choice for more info.

If you’d rather avoid plastic altogether, consider my reusable bottle of choice — a pretty little stainless steel number from New Wave Enviro Products, which you can pick up on Amazon. Whatever you do, stay thirsty for knowledge and healthfully hydrated.

[Crossposted from Mother Nature Network]

Photo: Greenknickers.org

Think turning bamboo into underwear is like spinning straw into gold? While it is a potential goldmine, it’s definitely no fairy tale. More and more clothing manufacturers are using fiber made from the versatile grass in garments ranging from T-shirts and hats to — you guessed it — skivvies and knickers. Skeptics might think bamboo boxers sound abrasive at best, but the cloth can be as soft as cotton and is even being used by some designers as an economical, vegan alternative to silk. So, is bamboo clothing green by default, and how on Earth do they turn those enormous, woody canes into comfortable undies?

Earlier this year, interior design magazine Core 77 explained what makes bamboo so awesome. High on the list is its resilience and sustainability: Unlike trees, bamboo can be harvested without damaging the original plant, plus it grows incredibly fast. Unlike thirsty, conventional cotton, bamboo doesn’t require much in the way of pesticides or water. This is all good news but as any amateur ecologist knows, nothing comes for free, and for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Because bamboo has experienced such a surge in popularity, certain farmers have begun growing it as a monocrop, and in some cases they’re even clearing trees to make room for bamboo plantations.

Furthermore, while the natural product offers a lot of reasons to celebrate, the way it’s processed is raising some eyebrows. As Azadeh Ensha recently noted on the New York Times’ Green Inc. blog, “critics point to the excessive chemicals used in its production.”

The most common process of turning bamboo into raw fiber is similar to that used to produce rayon, and involves two caustic chemicals — sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide — both of which have been shown to cause environmental damage and health problems. That said, National Geographic reported in its Green Guide that more Earth-friendly ways of creating bamboo fabrics are being tested, and a few alternatives are currently in use. Finally, a number of nonprofits are pushing for a third-party certification of bamboo, which would help consumers identify and choose sustainable bamboo products.

You don’t have to wait for third-party certification to feel good about your bamboo briefs, though. One thing you can do is look for certification from an independent and reliable certification company such as Oeko-Tex, the Soil Association, SKAL or KRAV. You can learn more about these organizations and what their certifications mean here.

What it comes down to is this: Nothing is perfect, so as consumers who don’t want to get bamboozled, we’re faced with the challenge of sorting the facts from the hype, and the pros from the cons. Despite its current challenges and shortcomings, bamboo arguably has a much lighter environmental impact than conventional cotton, which requires a huge amount of water and pesticides. The fiber is also preferable to nylon and polyester synthetics, seeing as how they’re derived from nonrenewable petroleum. The best thing we can do is stay up-to-date, share our knowledge and make informed purchases. For a thorough and extensive look at both the upside and downside of bamboo clothing, check out this post from Lotus Organics.

Ready to start shopping? Retailers such as Bamboosa, Shirts of Bamboo and Footprint Bamboo Ecowear offer clothing and underwear made from Oeko-Tex-certified organic bamboo, and they post their certifications on their websites. Then there are the fun-loving gals over at Greenknickers, who claim their bamboo fiber is processed using nontoxic agents, and even offer padded cycling knickers made from 70 percent bamboo to keep your bambooty comfortable when biking.

[Crossposted from Mother Nature Network]