MRAS Board President Diane Goldsmith's award winning garden for pollinators was featured in this summer's "The Designer", which is the quarterly publication of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD).
Diane's Nectar Garden was one of a pair of garden designs chosen by the City of San Jose to showcase alternatives to lawns; the drought tolerant plantings are wildlife friendly, and helpful to the environment in reducing the chemically toxic water runoff that occurs with traditional lawns. The paired gardens opened in September of 2012.
The garden is located at the Guadalupe Courtyard Gardens, Taylor and Seymour streets, near the Heritage Rose Garden.
Check out APLD's nice article on the topic at : http://issuu.com/apld/docs/apld_summer2013_designer_issuu_fina
Some of us went off grid...
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How to farm at 40 degrees below
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Arti Kirch, MRAS Board member and tomato expert extraordinaire, had a yen to explore the boundaries of extreme tomato farming; she made a visit to the chilly reaches of northern America to consult with a family that is raising lovely organic tomatoes... in the winter... in Michigan. Brrrrr!
Per Arti - "I visited Craig Schaaf, the owner/operator of Golden Rule Farm in Kaleva, MI, earlier this summer. This man, with his wife and 7 amazing/delightful children, grow highly sought-after heirloom tomatoes in the winter -- and I mean 40-below winter -- without electricity. The Schaafs do this with the most clever use of the sun and humble materials like jars of colored water.
The Schaafs are completely off the grid, so they don't host a website. However, you can learn more about his methods in this video made possible by the Michigan Land Use Initiative (http://www.mlui.org/food-farming/about/#.UfFvFY2Thic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EUlL38JNChE
Some of us did some writing....
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Bladder Sword fern
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Board member Chris Christiansen has been busy writing a fascinating article on ferns; which are both ancient and very widespread. Modern ferns are present in nearly all climatic zones, including polar and desert regions. If you haven't considered making them a part of your garden scheme, this article may well persuade you.
As Chris says, Ferns are among the oldest and most abundant group in the plant kingdom.... and fern fossils have been found in early Devonian age rocks (420-360 million years old), several tens of millions of years before the first seed-bearing and flowering plants. And, while we may be made of star dust, a layer of the coal on this planet is actually composed of fern spores. How amazing is that!?
Click here to learn even more to love about our frondy friends.
And some of us stayed home and worked in the garden...
Finally, while our Board members have been busy, we should not ignore the work of one of our park's residents. Our nursery manager, Ryan Penn was amazed to see "Robur the Bizarre" (Banksia Robur) in action.
Per Ryan "Out of the otherworldly Australia, land of the bizarre comes this Banksia, native to seasonal swamps of Eastern Australia, and happy in the heat of the Concord sun, over here at Markham Arboretum.
The pictures are of the flower as young budding youth, near mid-life, and at late bloom. And yes, those are flowers popping out of the lignotuber base, something I have never seen, or imagined.
Take a stroll through the main path going through the Australian section of International Garden. It is in the middle Island, and hard to miss, even at this young age."
Troy McGregor - one of our favorite human Aussies - added his note...
"I diddly-bopped over to Australian garden on Tuesday morning and found the Banksia robur (Swamp Banksia) not only blooming, but sending out buds from the lignotuber. This is super odd behavior .... I've attached a link below from a dude who in Australia who gives a pretty good description of the plant.
http://anpsa.org.au/APOL2006/dec06-s3.html "
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Banksia robur the younger
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