A Visit to Desert Theater Nursery

Last Friday I visited the Desert Theater Nursery up in Escondido with some clients. This nursery is truly amazing for the stunning amount and variety of cacti, aloe, and agaves on site. I'm working on a project for clients in Escondido, and they've worked with Brandon of Desert Theater before - so we headed up there on Friday and scoped out planting materials.

I was impressed with the number and quality of mature plants at the Nursery. I'm really excited to get this plan through the HOA approval process and to bring some of these gorgeous plants into this couple's yard!

Even Newer Schwag - and QR Codes!

One of my first entries on this blog was with a photo of my first set of business cards. While there haven't been a ton of posts in the interim 10 months, I have run out of business cards. Friday I got my newly redesigned and reprinted cards:

I print my cards at Moo.com - a most wonderful printing company! I do my holiday cards there, personal portfolio collateral there, and business cards for other ventures of which I undertake. I love their recycled paper, print quality, fast production/shipping, and their "print-finity" option (allows you to have a different front to each business card in a package). 

Now that I have some built projects, photos of those, combined with botanical photos taken by yours truly grace the front. The back has all of the important details, some project drawing and photo thumbnails, and my ADS QR Code.

I QR coded everything in my online life several months ago. Its incredibly useful - now with the right smart phone app (I use Optiscan on the iPhone) you can access ADS' website by scanning my business card! Go on, try it. You know you want to...

Tee Gifts

Earlier this week Aeonium Design Studio finished up the first custom orders for the Garden Shop. ADS supplied tee gifts and gift card holders for a local charity women's golf tournament:

The event had a "Spring Fling" theme, so recognizable spring annuals (Marigolds and violets) in oranges and yellows were used for the tee gifts. The lower, wider vases also featured a sedum groundcover in addition to the annuals. Tournament winners were awarded gift cards presented in a bird cage votive candle holders that double as place card holders and were selected and decorated to coordinate with the tee gifts plants in the white vases.

This project also gave me a chance to try out the new work bench space at the ADS office (i.e. in my garage!) - with 32 5" vases, and over 90 plants on the table at a time, I'd say it worked out pretty well!

Carlsbad Home: Installation & After Photos

As promised, here are some photos from our latest residential landscape installation in Carlsbad. For before photos, check the previous post.

Installation (done by a very hard working crew...):

After Photos:

All photographs in this post are credited to Laurel Stanford. Check out more of her brilliant photography at Precious Memories - Photography by Laurel Gales Stanford. 

Carlsbad Home - Before Photos

This weekend Aeonium Design Studio finished up another residence. This one in Rancho Carlsbad - a community of manufactured homes just East of the Carlsbad Flower Fields. ADS is working on the entryway to this community for the HOA, and as new owners come in, will be helping them to redo their landscaping according to their HOA guidelines.

Our first yard, a demonstration house for the community, went in this past Sunday:

Front Yard - Before

Side Driveway Planting - Before

A note about the property. Rancho Carlsbad started out as a trailer park some years ago. About 30 years ago the community members started buying the homes AND the land. Now when many people move into the community they pull out the existing structure and rebuild.

The community itself is gorgeous. Its a dedicated senior community, built with Mission style architecture and planting. Two creeks run through the property, a large clubhouse sits on a lake in the center of the community, and they boast a large community garden, resort style pool and recreation area, and a heavily planted environment.

Photos from the installation, as well as photos of the completed front yard will be up shortly!

Aeonium's Garden Shop - Now Open

Things have really been cooking over here at ADS. Right now I'm tying up plans for an HOA's Community Entry, finishing up the maintenance manual for my 2 latest happy landscaping clients (postings soon to come), working on some live gifts for a Garden Shop client, and well, working on the Garden Shop.

Garden Shop? Yeah. Garden Shop.

As if life in general, and life at Aeonium weren't busy enough - I've decided that Aeonium will have two arms, so to speak. One is the landscape design aspect of the business - facilitating people to develop their  outdoor spaces, create their dream yard, or dress up a house in need of a face lift. On the other end of the business you'll see the Garden Shop - essentially a place for me to play around with centerpieces, miniature succulent gardens, vertical wall gardens, succulent wreaths, and one day (one day soon I hope) planted furniture.

As an avid Etsy buyer and seller, it seemed pretty natural to start up an Etsy Shop and Account for Aeonium and run the Garden Shop through there. So here they are, the first two listings:

Morning Coffee

4 Tiny Pails

Slowly but surely I'll be adding more little plantings to the Garden Shop. So keep checking in here: Aeonium Design Studio Garden Shop for updated listings!

I got this today...

... not gonna lie - pretty excited!!! 

Mudscaping

Once again, its been a while, and once again there are some more pokers on the fire here at Aeonium Design Studio. Azlynn took the month of October off - and toured Scotland and England with her best friend, but since she's been back the nose has definitely been on the grindstone. To be honest I can't help but think that if I stopped going on vacation all of the time I may be able to turn this into a viable business!

Right now at Aeonium, there are three active projects (2 in Carlsbad in design development, and 1 in Redondo Beach undergoing installation), and a couple more lined up to continue after the first of the year.

The residence in Redondo Beach is being installed by yours truly and the homeowner (lets face it, this is at times a low budget operation) and we've certainly been getting our hands dirty. We started 2 weekends ago in unseasonably warm weather, and were able to clear the property (a small yard attached to a condo complex) and finalize the design and purchase plants. This past weekend we continued to prepare the ground and plant despite the buckets of rain and whipping winds that came into LA. At the moment the project has been sidelined due the fact that its difficult to install paving when your a sliding around on mud, and while you dig holes they immediately fill with sludge. We've dubbed it mudscaping - and I wish I had some photos - but to be honest I didn't want to get my camera too muddy. I left on Sunday after watching this beautifully leveled yard turn into a flood zone, and a ceanothus nearly ripped in half/pygmy date palms bending at 90 degree angles, and fountain grass flattening itself all due to the wind. I'm hoping all of the plants survive the wind and the flooding!

Here are some before photos of the Redondo Beach residence - after photos to come in a couple of weeks!

Happy Holidays to you all, I'm sure I'll have more updates for you on this residence and other projects soon after the holidays!

ADS' First Clients = Happy Clients!

This last week has been very exciting - the installation on my first residence finished up! I went over this afternoon to take some photographs and give my clients a maintenance manual for their new plants. I'll include a few photos in this post, there are more on Aeonium's Design Studio Facebook page.

The back yard is split up into the main yard, the garden, and the side slope:

Before - Main Backyard

Before - Garden

With the Scripps Ranch residence, it was important to the homeowners to have drought tolerant/low water and low maintenance plants. They had outgrown their need for a lawn, but still need wide and stable access through the backyard on either side of the existing patio. Flagstones set in mortar create a wide walk, are easy to keep clean, and create more of a garden feel compared to the existing concrete side walk. On one side of the garden the walk features an expanding bend which will allow for two small outdoor chairs, or one lounge chair.

A low keystone wall system was installed along the slope on the side of the house and replaced a low wall providing soil control for the Coral Tree. A low, stepped keystone wall was also installed along the back of the main yard.

After - Main Backyard

After - Main Backyard

After - Garden Area

After - Garden Area

Plants on site were selected in collaboration with the contractor and include, but are not limited to some of the following: Agave attenuata, Tecomaria capensis, Rosa mutabilis, Euryops tali, Coprosma repens 'Marble Queen', Crassula mulitcava, and Iresine herbstii 'Brilliantissima'. All plants were planted in either 1 or 5 gallon sizes, so they will need some time to fill in. Also note that today while photographing temperatures were roughly 90 degrees - so some of the plants look a little droopy.

Thanks so much to the homeowners and the team at Dream Builders Construction, its been a real pleasure working with all of you!

Fences and Plans

Life has been busy for me on the personal front the last month, so I've been neglecting updates, blogging, and the like.

Aeonium has a couple of pokers in the fire right now, and today I felt like spotlighting one - Jason and Julia's house. Jason is a friend of mine from Cal Poly and he and his fiancee Julia have recently purchased a house here in San Diego. I'm helping with the landscape design, and Jason (an architect himself) is overseeing, and to be honest, doing, the installation. There really is no backyard space on the property due to the siting of the house, so we are creating a back yard in the front yard. We are going for more of the outdoor living room feel. There will be a wrap around deck with cutouts for in ground planters, a flagstone living room area, a vegetable garden, and a plant palette heavy on California natives, and some drip irrigation to keep it all alive.

Its been great fun working with the pair of them, and the yard is starting to take shape. They are documenting it here at: http://thecactusrecoveryproject.blogspot.com/ The fence went in recently, the deck is next on the docket. We are all pleased with how things are shaping up right now, and I'm excited to see this continue to move forward!

Schwag!

I have a logo, business cards, and a splash page on my personal site for Aeonium! Currently working on two houses, and excited to start prospecting for some more clients!

Lawns and Lawsuits

Lately there has been a lot of press on lawns in California. With the passage of AB 1881 (an Assembly Bill regarding water use in landscaping in residential and commercial properties) Californians are becoming more aware of their water use and looking into planting and landscaping alternatives in order to comply with these water regulations (and to save money).

While all of this is going on, some press has been coming to a couple in the City of Orange, regarding their lawn, or rather lack there of.  The Has removed their lawn and left bare dirt in its place. When their neighbors complained about the bare dirt yard, the couple added wood chips over the majority of the exposed soil. This is when the City comes in - fining them and charging them due to a law on the books in Orange stating that 40% of a residential landscape area needs to be planted with live plants.  Eventually the Has built a fence and added some "drought tolerant" planting (the LA Times lists lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum) and now approximately 10% of their yard has live plants in it (I'm guessing that with the way they've planted those plants won't grow into much more of the space available in the yard - and certainly not anywhere close to the 40% required by the city). The City of Orange announced that they are dropping the lawsuit against the couple (most likely because its been giving them so much bad press) claiming that the property's landscaping is "up to code".

I find this whole situation kind of mind blowing. When I first heard about this - the press was that the couple were being sued for trying to do the "right thing" and rip out their lawn and replace it with xeriscaping. Needless to say, I was appalled. This definitley isn't the case. While the Has have stated that their water usage went down from 300,000 gallons in 2007 to 58,000 gallons in 2009 (which is great), I feel like that's not the only way this situation should be measured.

First, lets talk about lawns. I, for the most part, detest the lawn. Native turfs are rarely used, grass sucks water like no one's business, they are notoriously difficult to maintain, and studies are coming out now showing that the carbon footprint of a turf area's maintenance (including mowing, fertilizing, and irrigation) can out measure the beneficial carbon dioxide fixing properties and the tempering of the "heat island" effect  in urban areas that turf has been known to have. Not to mention, out here in the West, they are usually ugly as sin.

{The "heat island effect" relates to the phenomenon when an urban area has a consistently significantly higher temperature than the surrounding rural areas, due to the large amount of reflective roof materials, structures, and emissions.}

Second, lets mention the benefits of landscaping in an urban area. Having living plants in an area cools the area (fighting the "heat island effect" and reducing the need for air conditioning), plants remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it, they stabilize slopes (preventing run off and erosion), they buffer water, provide habitat for fauna, and provide aesthetic appeal. Residential landscapes can also buffer wildfire spread (I realize that in Southern California that's a complicated and loaded statement, but in many conditions its a valid argument) and have cultural and utilitarian uses (think healing gardens and kitchen gardens).

It bothers me that the Has are now being made into martyrs for Southern Californians who want to save water. Why?

    1. They pulled out their lawn and for over a year let soil sit exposed. Dried soil, aka dirt, creates dust, promotes run off, and is highly reflective. So basically, by lowering their water bill, this couple encouraged run off from their property into nearby storm drains, created a "breeding ground" for dust, and probably raised the temperature around their house. I'd be willing to bet that while their water bill went down, their air conditioning use increased a bit, and that consequently their electricity bill went up.

   2. This couple is not promoting proper landscaping. It bothers me that the media has not focused enough on the RIGHT way to handle taking out a lawn. The responsible way would include xeriscaping (another loaded term that is usually totally misused), proper irrigation techniques and scheduling (drip or otherwise), and appropriate run off retention and reuse.

There are SO many people who are doing this right. With AB 1881 now in effect, and people starting to see the benefits of retro fitting their yards, people all over Southern California are starting to create amazing gardens. These are the people we should be making examples out of!