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How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne...
First, a rant. The good side of the drought and irregular weather we’re experiencing here in California is that it provides an opportunity to rethink our unimaginative “mow and blow” residential...
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Win Two Tickets to the 15th Annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour
If you’re a Southern California local we’re giving away two tickets to the 15th annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour that will take place on April 14th and 15th. It’s a self-guided trip...
View ArticleThe Wild Yard Project
Storyteller and native plant evangelist David Newsom’s Wild Yard Project seeks to transform the lawn wasteland of our built environment. According to the mission statement of the Wild Yard Project,...
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A Lemon Arbor
Consider this post one of those inspirational ideas we’ll never get around to but perhaps an ambitious Root Simple reader will tackle: a lemon arbor. You can find this particular lemon arbor at...
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There is Something Beyond the Straw Bale
Fig tree off the front porch. As usual, when I blog about our small vegetable garden as I did on Wednesday, I neglect to put that small part of the food growing efforts at the Root Simple compound in...
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Backyard in Progress
This morning I thought I’d update progress on the garden. A crew from Haynes Landscaping worked hard over the past week to clean up our backyard and install the hardscaping for a rain garden fed by...
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Beautifying the Home Grounds: Your Source for 1920s Outdoor Project Inspiration
I have a simple design process here at the Root Simple compound. I ask the house what it wants. The house, being a fuddy-duddy, vaguely colonial bungalow build in 1920, invariably tells me that it want...
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Thankful for the New Rain Garden
See an update on this post here. One day during a high school English class, here in Southern California where I grew up, it started raining. The entire class spontaneously got up and ran to the...
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Rain Garden Update
Root simple reader Julia requested an update on the rain garden our landscaper Laramee Haynes designed and installed in 2019. Laramee’s rain garden idea solved two problems by taking care of a...
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