By JUNE STODDARD Special to the Daily Press
Sitting at The Talking Stick on Ocean Park Boulevard, after my volunteering gig at KCRW, an e-mail pops up. It’s an invitation to the second annual Green Gardens Tour-Santa Monica coming up later this month. Last year, I participated in the first garden tour. My favorite garden felt like a secret, lush garden — a vacation far from the city. I can’t wait to go again to see what I’ll experience and learn this time.
Sipping my green tea I remember I’d never heard of sustainable gardening last year. This year, I’m working toward sus-tainability. What does that mean? Sustainable landscapes thrive with little watering or chemical treatments. They use few resources and create little or no waste. They’re in balance with their environment.
Well, I have a few small patches of ground around my condominium and work sporadically at taking care of them. I’ve succeeded in not watering them much, and presto it looks great. No really, I chose cape honeysuckle to frame my patio, butterfly bush, jade plant, rosemary, a rose bush in a blue pot, and various flowering perennials around my patio in ceramic pots organized by size, shape and color. It is looking pretty good, but random. It needs something and I know this year’s tour will bring me the answer.
Oh, I forgot, usually every spring some microscopic predator attacks my plants. One day the leaves are a beautiful shade of shiny green. The next day they’re just nowhere to be seen. What do I do about them and not use pesticides? Well, last year solutions abounded at each and every inspiring garden, and wouldn’t you know I didn’t take notes. This year I will.
Thank you, Marilee Kuhlman, for creating this wonderful fundraiser for the Virginia Avenue Project, an afterschool nonprofit, helping children discover their full potential.
The tour is on Saturday, April 29, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Their choice of gardens demonstrates that green gardens can be lush, colorful and inexpensive. Information is available at (310) 264-4224, or at www.VirginiaAvenueProject.org. (June Stoddard, a Santa Monica free-lance writer and gardener, is working toward sustainable gardening on her patio and in life. To reach her, )
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 21, 2006. Read the original PDF.