Bee Houses!! wait....Bee Houses?!?

Yep, you heard right! But not for the kind of bee you're thinking of, these nests are for the little known but quite industrious native bee. These little bees are very different from the imported honeybee that most of us are familiar with and while the honeybee has a reputation for being a bit, well, sting-y, native bees are quite docile, so much so that most people hardly know they exist!

So if we hardly knew they existed why do we want to encourage them into our gardens? Well, with the current crisis with the honeybee population (number are dwindling because of pesticide use and disease) we stand to lose more than just honey. Bees are one of the major pollinators and without pollination most plants are not able to produce fruit, vegetables, seeds, and new plants. Basically, no pollinators=no new plants.

Thankfully, native bees are great pollinators and encouraging them into the garden is a safe (and now fashionable!) way to maintain a healthy and diverse population of native pollinators!

Check out sculptor Greg Corman's blog to see more examples of his beautiful Native Bee Nests (all hand-made from Recycled Wood and Steel) and to learn more about why native bees are so important: http://www.zenindustrial.blogspot.com/

You can also check out this great article on California's native bees for more info: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2869/

Morgan's Best of Show Pic's

The garden show may be over but we walked away with tons of gorgeous photos, fun ideas, and great sources for the garden! We'll have plenty to share with you over the next couple of weeks!

So, without further ado, we'd like to share our pic's from what we thought were this year's greatest gardens :

Morgan's Best of Show

Check out http://www.springhomegardenshow.com/ for more info about this year's gardens.

Farewell Spring Home and Garden Show....

Today we said 'adieu' to this year's Spring Home and Garden Show at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. All of the gardens that were so lovingly assembled over the course of last week have disappeared surprisingly fast, leaving little more than piles of dirt and building block but also leaving us with lots of wonderful design ideas and, most importantly, photos!!

So on that note, here are some photos of our contribution to this year's show. Thank you to everyone who contributed to our garden and much thanks to everyone who stopped by to enjoy it!

The Artful Native Garden:

Winner: Best San Diego Adapted Landscape

Peak Bloom Season has begun in Anza Borrego!!!

((Thanks to Tom Chester of the CNPS for sharing!))

Peak bloom began on the desert floor ~23 February 2010, at elevations of ~1000 feet and below. About half of the desert annuals have begun blooming, with the rest to follow in the next month. This is the exciting phase of peak bloom, where every trip reveals additional species blooming, and finds fields of bloom from species that only had a few individuals blooming just a week earlier.

Peak bloom at elevations of ~1000 feet on the desert floor should continue for at least several weeks, through ~7 March. Its end will come whenever the temperatures hit 80° or above for a week or two. Peak bloom in the canyons to the west of Borrego Springs should begin in a few weeks, sometime in early March.

Peak bloom is defined here as the time period when you can see the maximum number of species in bloom on a given one or two day trip, as well as the maximum number of individual plants in bloom. The bloom is best from the city of Borrego Springs westward; it has not been observed to be very good at all east of there. The best places to go now are along Coyote Canyon Road, and the main canyons west of Borrego Springs: Hellhole, Borrego Palm Canyon, and Henderson Canyon.The desert sunflowers on Henderson Canyon have not yet begun to bloom; they are coming.

Check out the latest reports and photos at Desert USA http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/ca_abdsp.html

Gathering Plants for the Show!

Today we took a field trip to RECON Native Plants down in IB to look at plants that we might use for our upcoming installation for the Spring Home and Garden Show. We picked out some beautiful flowering bulbs (including one rare gem that is a secret until the show!!), some flowering June Grass and some Red Monkeyflower that should be a great addition to the other gorgeous plants we picked out from Tree of Life yesterday.

It was so hard deciding on plants at both nurseries! Tree of Life has some gorgeous manzanita in all sizes (including some 5g Del Mar Manzanita that it was painful to pass up since, as Jeremy pointed out, they are native to the site of the show!). We decided at last on Pacific Mist and Carmel Sur, two of our favorites.

RECON has some great specimins available now including Giant Coreopsis (which is like a daisy out of a Dr. Seuss book) and some gorgeous 5g Yucca (both whipplii and shidigera). Not to mention all of the San Diego native Sages, Sunflowers, and other cool finds!

In the end I had to cut some great plants out simply to prevent the design from being too full! I will definitely be keeping them in mind for someone's garden though!

Pottery: Not just for plants anymore!

Try to install a landscape with only plants and you get the sneaking feeling that something is just missing... Pottery! Pots are a great addition to any landscape from modern to rustic and are much more than just fancy planters. A large glazed pot can make a lovely stand-alone focal feature, well sealed urns can be converted to make great rain barrels or small water features, and no patio is complete without at least one potted plant!

Courtyard Pottery in Solana Beach, owned and run by designer Tita Heimpel, is my absolute favorite resource for pottery in San Diego County. With a huge selection of glazed pottery ranging from huge imported planters to tiny hand-made tabletop treasures there is little that cannot be found at Courtyard, and if you don't see what you are looking for Tita will order it for you from one of her many suppliers.

Formerly located on Hwy 101 in Solana Beach, Courtyard Pottery has recently moved to a larger location almost directly across the train tracks to the Cedros Design District across from the Belly Up. After picking out your pottery you can head down the street to Cedros Gardens to pick out plants or over to the beach for a surf check!

Courtyard Pottery (858) 481-7687

http://www.courtyardpottery.com/ (under construction)

Las Pilitas Nursery

Whether you are looking for native plants for the garden or whether you're simply looking for a great source for CA native plant knowledge, Las Pilitas Native Plant Nursery is a great resource!

Their website is an outstanding resource for information with thousands of pages of information about native plant communities, proper installation and planning, and general plant information.

On the website you'll find an alphabetized encyclopedia of native plant species ranging from commonly planted cultivars to rare and endangered species that are hard to find even in the wild. You'll also find a great search engine that will take your zipcode and site conditions and produce a list of species suited to your garden's conditions.

Their two locations, in Escondido and Santa Margarita (near SLO), are just off the beaten path but well worth the trip to find not only some of our more common native landscape plants like Manzanita and Sages but also rarer gems like Leopard Lilies and SpiceBush.

Check out their website at http://www.laspilitas.com/ for more information!