green gardens

this past saturday i attended the 3rd annual green gardens tour featuring sustainable gardens in santa monica. the tour benefitted the virginia avenue project, a free after-school program that uses the arts along with one-on-one mentoring to help kids discover their full potential.

the goal of the tour, themed "the value of trees" was to highlight environmentally harmonius landscaping practices, and it did a great job at that. here is an excerpt from the booklet that i received at the tour:

"in natural systems, rainfall is caught by trees or shrubs and released slowly into the ground. this natural cycle produces nutrient, fresh water and clean air. even in a semi-arid landscape like early los angeles, the eco-system was in balance, providing everything that native people, plants and animals needed for a sustainable and prosperous life.

in the los angeles of today, we have interfered with the natural cycles of energy and water with thousands of square miles of concrete, asphalt, skyscrapers and residential neighborhoods. in this system, rainfall is channeled to our roadways, where it picks up...a toxic soup of pollutants and washes into the over-taxed storm drain system and out to our beaches and bays. very little water remains to replenish the water table for later use.

two important and expensive problems result from this: we must import billions of gallons of water each year, turning other regions into deserts; and we spend half a billion dollars on massive flood control projects.

in order to turn things around, we need to begin understanding los angeles as a living ecosystemm and working with nature to rehabilitate its ability to protect and meet our needs. trees are central to this rehabilitation."

so what constitutes a "green" garden? aren't all gardens green? well, these gardens were chosen for their use of recycled materials, climate appropriate plants, urban runoff systems, organic practices, wildlife friendly-ness, edibles, water efficient irrigation, green building practices, mulch, and lawn reduction.



below are photos that i took of some of the gardens. i'll be following up with a series on green landscaping and my experiences in designing through a whole-systems approach.