Rushing from place to place trying to fulfill our obligations to one and all, we miss so many beautiful moments and opportunities.  I recently made a large delivery to El Dorado Hills to a client who found Eye of the Day through our website.  The house reminded me of L’Amorosa in Tuscany, a mini fortress built of stone. The entrance required two of our largest Terrecotte San Rocco Orcios (oil jars). However, rushing this order to meet a deadline, I was not excited about a 14-hour round trip from Santa Barbara to Sacramento. After all, with fear and trepidation, I could have freighted it all including the antique Orcios, but I had a plan that would allow my sense of adventure, my love of horticulture and my need to spend time with South Pasadena’s 2014 Teacher of the Year, my sister Nan, on her much deserved summer break. The plan was to take advantage of being so near to California Highway 49, which goes through California’s Gold Country, and drive back via this scenic byway checking out how things have developed over the last 20 odd years. Then, we could take advantage of the open passes over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to smell the pine sapped air and dip our toes in cool mountain lakes. And because I suffer from a Sisyphus complex, crest the divide and descend the eastern side down to Highway 395 to the Owens Valley (think about the movie Chinatown and you’ll remember the fight for the water from this valley). And here, just 26 miles up, up and up outside of Lone Pine, California was our true destination: the Bristlecone Pine Forest, home to Earth’s oldest living things, trees that are over 4,000 years old. Nature’s longest lasting landscape design in one of the planet’s harshest environments. A trek at 10,000 feet sucking thin air to be in a landscape of such desolation and beauty.  I look at sophisticated, lush, and beautiful landscape designs and gardens every day of my life and the contrast of this magnificent place and its unfathomable significance is seared into my mind’s eye forever. Oh, the places my work takes me!

The word of the day is sustainability. The United Nations World Commission for the Environment defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The other word that makes headlines is “green.” What that means for gardeners and landscape designers: We must pay attention to the materials we use in our landscapes. Hardscape materials should be renewable. Plants should not require major input of chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides) to keep them healthy. Water needs should be easily fulfilled by the local climatic regime. We can also invite in native sources of nutrients and pest control agents. In an ideal natural ecosystem, there are no major inputs from outside sources. Think about an old-growth forest. Seeds sprout, trees and herbs grow and die. Their elements are recycled by decomposing fungi and bacteria to feed the roots of the remaining members of the forest. The model for us to emulate is to recycle all of the organic material produced either on site or by directing it to the local recycling program. We are used to calling it green waste, but it is really a green resource. Caring for our landscapes, whether we have a small city lot or manage a golf course, should mean thinking about sustainable practices. We must begin to see our personal green spaces as little pieces of a much larger urban ecosystem. What are the integral parts of that ecosystem? Who or what are the major players in this cycle? What are their needs? What practices will we need to adopt to encourage this natural process? And, just as important, what practices must we abandon?

The goal of sustainable gardening is to have a complete cycling of nutrients and maximum health of the soil and plants.