Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Urban Garden Sans Water



To continue my theme from yesterday, there’s another amazing garden on my urban campus. It’s a couple years old now, tucked against a formerly ghastly orange wall. It’s just a little south-facing strip of land between a parking lot and the cafeteria, but the gardeners really know their stuff. They planted small succulents and cacti, and now it’s a full blown desertscape, complete with ocotillo and palo verde, which normally don’t even grow here on the coast. You have to have perfect drainage for these plants.
There’s a problem for the average gardener and these beauties: very hard to weed. You have to wear thick gloves to protect yourself from the thorns. Of course, weed-wackers can’t be used. We need to be taught how to care for these types of landscapes, cause this is what we should be growing instead of grass.

3 comments:

Julie said...

Hi! What a great post! I would love to see more of this little garden packed full of my fav plants!!! You are so right...I am trying to gradually encorporate more succulents into my yard...even here in South Florida...we have watering restrictions, so they are perfect! Only trouble is...we ain't got no rocks here!!! LOLOL.

kloeamongtheturks said...

Hi Julie,
Thanks for reading!
Yes, the rocks are a beautiful sculptural element. I've seen cactus skeletons in gardens in Arizona also. They actually sell them in the stores!
What's harder to take is astroturf, which I'm seeing more and more around here.
Happy gardening!
Kloe

kloeamongtheturks said...

PS Looked at your blog, love the photos... the bloom in the tire is amazing!