Help Your Trees Survive The Drought

Here is an infographic that was sent to me today by the California Urban Forest Council. It has a lot of great information about how to care for you trees during this season of drought. Even as we choose to change our landscape to be more water efficient, it is imperative that we not neglect…

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Bee and Butterfly Friendly Plants

When choosing new plants to go into your landscape it is important that they not only be drought friendly, but bee friendly as well! Bees are at the cornerstone of our ecosystem as their pollination helps our crops thrive. Unfortunately with so many plants dying, the drought is hitting them the hardest. So we need…

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Making Our Yard More Drought-Friendly

Over the past few weeks we’ve been posting articles about how to keep your landscaping looking great during the drought. Today, we thought we would put that information into action in our own yard. Here is what our landscape looked like before the drought. The first thing we needed to do was some math to decide…

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Taking Care of Trees During the Drought

While “Brown is the New Green” becomes our state motto and more people opt to stop watering their lawns, how are we supposed to continue caring for our trees? Lawns are easily replaceable but trees are an important part of our ecosystem providing wildlife habitats, clean air, shade, food for us and for critters, and…

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Mandatory Water Rationing

It’s happened: Residents of San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, Campbell, and others are going under mandatory water rationing. Paul Rogers stated in the Mercury News on Tuesday that, “All single-family residences — defined as any home that has its own water meter — will be given monthly water allocations. Apartments and most businesses,…

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The Coming Drought

You may have noticed the “D” word in the news these days, especially here in California. Governor Brown has declared a Drought Emergency. Strange, considering that the majority of the US is blanketed in a second Ice Age. Periods of drought are not uncommon in California.  They are cyclical patterns in our ecosystem, and we…

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A Lifestyle of Water Conservation

Throughout human history, the development of large civilizations was possible due to the direct access and possession of an abundance of fresh water.  However, as the world’s population continues to expand—by 4 billion in the last 50 years alone—our large civilizations are headed towards lengthy periods of water stress, scarcity, and finally crisis. The Food…

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Architecting Sustainable Landscapes

An old Greek proverb says “a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.”  In other words, the pinnacle of a civilization is when its citizens develop future-thinking lifestyles.  The future of humanity resides in discovering and crafting sustainable ways of life, and this can begin…

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