Welcome to my Sustainable Urban Garden

My garden is a work in progress, always growing and changing within itself.

My gardens include many herbal beds, raised vegetable beds, raised "citrus heights" citrus tree bed, berry beds, fruit trees, grape arbor, rose beds and many perennial flower beds with annuals too. My greenhouse is still in the transformation stage,
as well as some planting areas.
Enjoy your journey through my gardens, I do!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Moving ahead! sustainability using organic principles

The next step in educating our city as to the benefits of diverse and sustainable landscaping has fallen to the radio and our website for me. As Web Master I am continually growing as I am researching to put up informative articles, links and then writing about sustainable gardening in a way that is easily understandable. I love building websites so this is both fun and stimulating for me - but then, it is very time consuming.

I am now doing a weekly radio spot for approx. an hour. It is on how to grow an organic vegetable/fruit bed. This is focused on those who are new to organic gardening and/or new to gardening. The talk show is fun because Christine, the host is very interactive with me on the air, as she is an organic gardener also. She is a lot of fun which makes it easy to do for me.

There are so many wonderful reasons to garden and to grow your own food following organic principles.

  • Help provide proper nourishment and five-a-day fruits and vegetables.
  • Supplement food budgets.
  • Provide fresh food that has not been grown with pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
  • Provide a healthy family activity.
  • Provide an education in ecology, botany, and the cycle of life for the whole family.
  • Provide a fun activity that includes good exercise.
  • Provide a needed stress reducer in a fast-paced world.
  • Provide for the development of positive relationships with neighbors through communication as well as the sharing of produce.
  • Provide beauty and a place to practice being good stewards of the earth on your little piece of land.
  • Help lessen the impact of waste products in city dumps through composting of left over food.
  • Help lessen green waste by composting and mulching.
  • Help lessen chemical run-off into our streams and rivers by using environmentally friendly garden practices.
  • Help lessen air pollution created from conventional lawn yard-care equipment.
  • Provide diverse species of plants that provide habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife.
  • Digging in the dirt with your hands chemically provides the body with a natural antidepressant.

So, out to the garden I go! Happy Earth Day!

Friday, April 06, 2007

We did it! Democracy can actually work in America!

We did it!!! After a full year of dedicated work, we were able to change the city front yard landscape code in our city. My own gardens are in a sad state, because every bit of my energy has gone into this effort. I have spent from as little as two hours a day to about 15 hours doing research, writing, and distributing our information to supporters and citizens of our city. Also, time spent finding and photographing gardens, editing and creating a website and creating three powerpoint presentations. Then the tasks of presenting to neighborhood associations, issuing media releases and talking with the media . I have never done anything political like this before. It has been a huge learning curve.

On April 3rd, we made a presentation to the full city council. focused on my powerpoint presentation, I believe that we "wowed" them with the depth of research and the far reaching implications that changing the existing and the city's proposed Front Yard Landscape ordinance language could have. It is all about sustainability and setting up our city to be in a better position to deal with an uncertain future.
The "Quality of Life" indicators that we focused on were:
economic impact
water conservation
water quality
green waste management
air pollution
energy
climate change
food security
hunger
ecological risks and benefits
neighborhood development
and cultural diversity

This is a big thing for the welfare of our city. It has been quite an experience!!!