DryStoneGarden

Rain Garden Perspective Drawing by Gates and Associates

As part of the stimulus program and various water quality initiatives, El Cerrito got funding to add some rain gardens along San Pablo Avenue, the main commercial street in my neighborhood. A huge percentage of the area is covered with concrete, so when it rains the water has nowhere to go and the streets can look like this photo I took in May; sometimes I feel like I should get out a kayak. To help mediate that, the city redid two sections of sidewalks and curbs with plantings set below the grade of the street. Instead of draining straight to the bay, stormwater will now flow from the streets and sidewalks into planting areas where sediment will drop out of the water, pollutants and trash will be filtered by the plants, and a percentage of the water will infiltrate into the soil. There are 600 total linear feet of basins in the two separate areas, calculated to treat 1.23 acres of paved surface; the San Francsico Estuary Institute is going to monitor water quality to see how big of an effect the gardens have. It’s a nice use of plants to address an infrastructure issue.

San Pablo And Eureka Ave

The plantings are all natives. Juncus, leymus, and a grass that looks like a melica are the main species, peppered with some yarrows, two monkey flowers, two California fuchsias, two Ribes speciosa, several Verbena lilacina, two wild roses, a redtiwg dogwood, and a Doug Iris. There are one or two blooming plants in each planter right now, not a big impact, but just enough to focus the eye as you walk past each one.

Monkey Flower and Leymus

San Pablo and Eureka

Island Pink Yarrow, Achillea millefolium rosea

There’s a meme about public plantings, Out on the Streets, hosted by Veg Plotting. Click through to see other posts about public plantings. I have a few more photos of the planters below the fold. (more…)

Farewell to Spring and Blessed Calendula

Happy Solstice everyone. Gotta say, it snuck up on me. I’ll still be in spring mode for a couple of more weeks, though the plants seem to know what time it is. A few days ago, the first Clarkias opened. Farewell to Spring.

Somewhat unrelated (though I see that clarkias are blooming in the relevant photos from last year) Landscape Architecture Magazine has an article, From Gray to Green, about PlantSF.org, a non-profit that works to take out pavement in San Francisco and replace it with permeable and planted surfaces. Basically, too much of San Francisco is covered with buildings and concrete — between 60 and 90% according to the article — so the stormwater system often gets overloaded, dumping dirty runoff and raw sewage into the bay. Richmond has the same problem, clearly visible every time it rains. The solution is to replace the concrete with surfaces that allow stormwater to infiltrate into the soil. Enter PlantSF. The article tells a good story about how one architect/designer/gardener can have an impact on a citywide scale.

We went to a PlantSF planting party last year (according to the article, that particular project was called ‘Mission Roots,’ who knew?). These photos are from two PlantSF plantings, taken several months later, sometime around June to judge from the blooming clarkias. I can’t remember which street we worked on, but it was somewhere in the Mission a few blocks from Humphry Slocombe (Oolong or Guinness Gingerbread ice cream anyone?). It’s not too often I use an ice cream shop as a landmark, but that’s how I found the sites when I went by afterwards to see the finished plantings, and I’m sure I could never find them again without having a cone first.

Underground Architecture by Malcolm Wells

‘In 1964, after 10 years spent spreading corporate asphalt on America in the name of architecture, I woke up one day to the fact that the earth’s surface was made for living plants, not industrial plants. I’ve been an underground architect ever since.’ Malcolm Wells

I didn’t notice until I saw mention at veg.itecture, but Malcolm Wells passed away last month at 83. Wells was the author of Underground Designs, one of the earliest books to advocate for underground buildings, green roofs, and what he called “gentle architecture,” architecture that would leave the land no worse than the architect found it. It was probably the first book I ever saw on green building, and one of the first, I’m sure, for many other people. As happens so often, his passing got me looking at his work again, and there’s a lot there, including some great water colors, drawings, cartoons, and quotes on his website. Highlights are an illustrated glossary of passive solar concepts and suggestions on how to celebrate the holiday he created, Underground America Day (think about moles, eat a parsnip or a radish, stay home from work and put some dirt on the roof…).

The Wells website has links to over a dozen obituaries, including the one he wrote himself. He clearly had a good time writing it, showing off a black eye in the photo and mostly talking about the people in his life. He ends with instructions that his last words should ‘tail off into a string of dots.’

‘But wait: don’t cut me off here. I haven’t told you about my two years in the Marine Corps - World War II - studying engineering at Georgia Tech and carrying a wooden rifle, of working with the Seneca’s, or doing a World’s Fair building, or designing a quilt, or never having touched a computer or a cell phone, or having done dozens, probably hundreds, of incredible designs and…

Patio with Laundry

My bloom day photo of what Daffodil Planter called ‘the vine with multi-colored blooms’ reminds me that I took a photo of it in full bloom back in May. We hang-dry our laundry for a variety of practical reasons — it doesn’t use fossil fuels (clothes driers account for 5.8% of residential energy use), line-dried clothing lasts longer, it makes sense in our climate, and, well, we don’t own a dryer — but also I sometimes like the look of it. I remember when I was in Italy I thought the laundry lines between the apartment buildings were very charming, and now looking at two shots of our patio this past spring, I prefer the one with the laundry.

Patio lacking Laundry

I know at least some garden bloggers use a line. Daffodil Planter said she has one. Townmouse has a variety of drying contraptions. It’s getting more fashionable, and there’s, of course, even a blog devoted to the topic. How fashionable is it? Seems like an opportunity to try out my slick new polling feature.

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Composting toilet

A friend of mine once said that the stupidest thing our culture does is put our waste into clean water. I think there are some other serious contenders for that title, but she had a point, the current system is a wasteful solution, though it’s hard to see it changing any time soon. Grist has a long article about the humanure/composting toilet movement, part 3 of a 5 part series on human waste. Personally, I would chime in that I’ve used a variety of composting toilets–they’re fairly common in some of the more off-the-grid parts of Australia and New Zealand and at the backcountry campsites here in the states, the Little Yosemite Valley campground has the best one I’ve ever used–and that the good ones are not at all unpleasant. But I shower on my front porch, so I’m not sure how much weight my opinion has on this issue.

ryan 5/7

   

map of a compact community, walkability within 1 mile, from sightline.org

In the planning world, one mile is considered walkable and one quarter of a mile is the gold standard. WalkScore.com takes that standard and gives a rating from 1-100 for an address, giving high points for things like stores, libraries, and schools within a quarter mile and diminishing points for up to a mile. The ratings seem fairly accurate, my current address gets an 83, very walkable, while the house where I grew up gets a 27, very unwalkable. That matches with my experience at both places.
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