Sidewalk Gardens

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Sidewalk Gardens

I’m excited about a new element in the streetscape, sidewalk gardens. More and more frequently, I pass sections where the sidewalk has been removed and small gardens have been planted even where there are no street trees. Here are blooming yarrows, geraniums, sages, and lavenders. There are dramatic effects with New Zealand flax and muscular succulents. Grasses, wallflowers, and California natives like hummingbird sage or ceanothus, thrive in a profusion of colors and textures.

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Garden / Guardian

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Garden / Guardian

The word “garden,” like the word “yard,” comes from ancient linguistic roots meaning an enclosed space. The garden is a protected place, set apart from current dangers. Garden for the Environment, and the many other community gardening projects here in San Francisco, create space for people to belong to nature rather than just long for nature. And by guarding nature and our connection to her, perhaps we can open wider the garden of our hearts.

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Solstice Musing on Stewardship

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Solstice Musing on Stewardship

Gardens like GFE nourish people who are hungry. I'm not talking about dinner, but about our soul hungers; for the wild, for rich living dirt, for crazy beauty. Our culture restricts us more and more to two dimensions ("sent from my iPad"), but a garden can expand us back into ourselves, the smell of crushed thyme, the bright cries of a flock of bushtits in the butterfly bush, the rhythm of lifting and turning living soil.

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Generosity of Nature

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Generosity of Nature

Every year I bring the inspiration from my annual trip the Eastern Sierra back to my own gardens, and try to create on a small scale a reminder of this generosity and strictness. To create a natural feeling in the garden, it’s important to resist the temptation to plant one specimen of each of your favorite plants. Instead, repeat the most successful and best suited plants. This way you can create the same feeling of ordered wildness we loved in the mountains.

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