Taproot Garden Design & Fine Gardening

Lily's low water, all organic, (mostly) native garden

2012-05-24T21:17:00.004-07:00

A darling customer who we never miss a chance to visit, even just for tea. We've been maintaining & upgrading this garden for the past two years and wow! has it improved. With a wide variety of natives, nectar-producers and ready pollinators, this garden is a true oasis for local wildlife.

Low Water Urban Gem

2011-09-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

This three year old garden literally sparkles with light and life. The owner had a talented local artisan (Lyndon Johnson) custom create the planting beds and walkways in cut stone, while her extremely handy husband hand-built the craftsman-style dual facing street side benches, as well as the fence and entryway deck. More than almost any other garden we've ever helped to create (and thanks to

Vegetable Gardener's Paradise

2011-08-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

This forward-thinking homeowner worked with us to transform unused and rather conventional looking back yard spaces into a sprawling vegetable garden replete with multiple types of fruiting trees, scores of different (and exotic) veggies, wires for grapes, custom made raised beds, even copious lavenders to ensure ample pollinators - all using standard low-water drip irrigation methods. A

Moden Minimilism, Low Water, Asian Flair

2011-08-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

A great project and beautiful plan melding low water practicality with serene aesthetic balance. This garden was created for a stylish couple looking to capitalize off the previously designed interior with modern Asian highlights. We took the opportunity to tie in many of the colors & textures occurring inside to the hard-scape (pavers) and plant materials outside lending the entire unit an

Effortlessly Elegant, Evergreen Low Water Retreat

2011-06-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Its not often that you overhear a gardener glowing about how s/he wants badly to return to a specific garden for maintenance if only just to be back in the garden itself! Well, this is just one of those magic gardens which strikes an ideal balance of form and texture, movement and foundation, open spaces and softly directed, natural views. We added a few small detail elements which together

Study: Fresh Food Diet Flushes Chemicals From Body

2011-03-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

A Wonder-fall Harvest of Colors

2010-09-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

Asian Long Beans, Sweet Bell Peppers, Tomatoes Red Hot Cherry Peppers, Black Beauty Eggplant, Hot Banana Peppers, Strawberries Potatoes The Autumn colors don't stop with rusts, oranges, reds and yellows. The vegetable garden will surprise you with purple beans, purple eggplant, chartreuse peppers and an assortment of different colored squash and melons. This fall harvest

A Fruitful Proposition

2010-07-14T21:24:00.000-07:00

First Summer harvest: plums, nectarines, heirloom tomatoes, pole beans, snow peas and mixed leaf lettuce. Consider including fruit trees and a variety of vegetables in your garden design and you can have year-round consumption of in-season, organic and fresh produce that can be picked right outside your door. Having an over-abundance of fruits and vegetables during the year is also an

Successful Cuttings of Mimulus (Monkeyflower)

2010-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

On April 20, we posted an article on 'Experimenting with Outdoor Cuttings' http://taprootgardens.blogspot.com/2010/04/experimenting-with-outdoor-cuttings.html Here is the result of our experiment:

Spring Plant Sale 2010 @ Foothill College

2010-05-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

It was a pleasant afternoon on the campus of Foothill College on Saturday, April 24, 2010. Under the canopy of the open-air nursery were trees, shrubs, ornamentals, succulents, natives, perennials & grasses. Booths were set up with organizations such as Native Revival Nursery and California Native Plant Society, displaying their products and information. All the edibles were lined up neatly

First Crop of Organic Strawberries - May 2010

2010-05-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

Our first gathering of strawberries this year from an all organic garden. You can clearly tell the difference between the two varieties. 'Quinalt' everbearing strawberries & 'Albion' everbearing strawberries. The Albion were the more petite of the two; both were super sweet.

Experimenting with Outdoor Cuttings

2010-04-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

A large part of Taproot Garden Design & Fine Gardening is the fine gardening. Specialty pruning during the months of February and March affords us the opportunity to take cuttings of plants that survived a full year's cycle of the elements. During these months, softwood cuttings of most perennials are easy to propagate in large quantities, as plant material is removed to accelerate new spring

Foil Proof! A Study on Gopher Activity

2010-04-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Pocket gophers have been both a problem and a blessing in our clients Los Altos Hills garden. Two years ago, we planted eight snow peas over the winter for a spring harvest, all with cages underneath to protect the roots. Just as the plants were ready to be harvested, six of the plants were severed (above-ground) at the base and pulled underground. Two of the eight plants survived. We were

Living with Low Water Plants, Part 4: Plant Maintenance

2010-04-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

Of all the important factors contributing to overall plant health in the urban garden, none is so overlooked as timely pruning, cleaning or thatching. Plant maintenance can be an energy intensive and sometimes meticulous process, as in the case of plants which require selective pruning. With almost all plant species, regular pruning is a sure way to promote more abundant flowering cycles,

Living with Low Water Plants, Part 3: Soil Building in the Garden

2010-03-24T00:08:00.000-07:00

Soil health is essential for any successful garden or landscape. As we touched on in previous installments in this series, the microorganisms in the soil are in effect the unseen stewards or caretakers of the soil. Without these tiny soil workers, the available nutrients never make it to plant roots and hence, soil & plant health can decline. The leading reason for deteriorating organic life is

Living with Low Water Plants, Part 2: Using Drip Irrigation

2010-03-16T03:32:00.000-07:00

Today's resource-conscious consumer is always eager to find new & improved ways to save the environment while saving a buck. As it turns out, using drip irrigation can be one of the main at-home or do it yourself steps which simultaneously addresses the broader issues surrounding water management and water conservation. Used in conjunction with adequate mulch and a properly functioning system,

Choisya Ternata

2010-03-12T21:52:00.000-08:00

Now Flowering - March 2010: Choisya ternata (Mexican Mock Orange) Location: San Francisco Bay Area Region Foothill College's Environmental Horticulture Department holds Spring and Fall plant sales every year to raise money for the Environmental Horticulture & Landscape Design program. I adopted our Choisya ternata from Foothill College in 2006, during their Spring sale. I purchased it

Living with Low Water Plants, Part 1: Plant Installation

2010-03-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

With ecological consciousness forever on the rise, people have become more & more interested in the potential of low water, low maintenance plant selections to serve active duty in the urban landscape. Typically, at the end of winter, the inner-gardeners come out of the cask and make their seasonal inquiries about the possibility (and price) of having a beautiful new low water garden installed

Planting Seeds of Wisdom

2009-03-03T20:26:00.001-08:00

I remember walking into the back yard when I was four and finding my dad there, toiling away in the heat of the sun, birds and bees abuzz 'round the flowers. I sat and watched through a small window of the dollhouse he made for me and my two sisters and wondered if he'd involve me in his days work.He prepared a mix of sand, soil, peat, and composted manure in a wheelbarrow; a recipe for gardeners

Eliminating Toxins, Maximizing Health in the Garden

2009-02-26T23:37:00.001-08:00

"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers."- PlatoDuring a recent on site garden consultation we stumbled in conversation upon a very helpful metaphor. Being that we are striving for holistic application of health-based values in the landscapes we work & live in, and seeing that people are becoming increasingly more interested in poison-free, pesticide and herbicide-free organic

Deer Resistant Plants for Los Altos Hills, California

2009-02-26T23:34:00.001-08:00

Have deer? Residents in the Los Altos Hills area of California have found that deer are constant visitors to their gardens and can devour most of a day's work in one scrumptious night. After setting the late night buffet several times, and very successfully (ask our rotund deer-friends) using many plants labeled as Deer Resistant, we've whittled down our list of truly deer resistant perennials

Vegan Tomato Harvest

2008-09-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Today's tomato harvest yielded several pounds of Brandywine, Early Girl, Roma, and cherry tomatoes. Grown in a vegan specific environment, these tomatoes were fertilized once during planting time with an actively aerated liquid compost tea which contains no animal by-products and no chemical fertilizers and were left unfertilized during the growing season.Amazing what we can grow without harming

Volunteering our time for 'AchieveKids' CLCA SFBA Chapter Project

2008-08-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

Read about our involvement with this year's local charity event with the California Landscape Contractor's Association on Pages 6, 7, & 15 of the Bay Breeze - June 2008, Volume 32, Issue 6:http://www.clcasfba.org/content/download/jun08.pdf

Mulch Before May

2008-04-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

April is a good time to add mulch to any beds that are bare to the elements. The beneficial microbes underneath the soil will thank you for it by giving your plants a boost in appearance through robust, greener leaves and more flowers. Earthworm activity increases as mulch helps to keep the soil cool for them. Applying mulch in April helps prevent water from evaporating quickly from the soil in

T.C. Garden Design & Restoration Report 2008

2008-03-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

One Year LaterThis garden design & restoration was created for a client who wanted to provide lizard habitat and increase plant diversity in his family's garden where visitors can learn about the plants while viewing insects & animals that thrive in the garden. We created a series of lizard 'beaches' made from loads of sand and existing recycled concrete and stones that were collected from