{"id":41437,"date":"2013-05-10T16:39:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T20:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=41437"},"modified":"2019-04-20T17:43:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T21:43:57","slug":"the-disappearance-of-summer-lawns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=41437","title":{"rendered":"the disappearance of summer lawns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawns are vanishing all over town. The chief ringleader and instigator is the Long Beach Water Department,<\/a> with their irresistible Lawn-to-Garden Turf Replacement Program<\/a>. Quite a few of my neighbors have already taken advantage of this program the past couple years, and more applications for the $3K rebate are being accepted now. There will be an upcoming tour May 18 to showcase some of the gardens that have taken up LBWD’s offer. Last evening I snuck a driveby look at one of the houses on the tour.<\/p>\n

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Close to the house, behind the potted orange tree is a tall, diaphonous Pittosporum tenuifolium. In back of the Tibouchina urvilleana, center, is an olive tree.<\/p>\n

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Blue Chalk Fingers, Senecio vitalis, Festuca glauca, lavender, and a glimpse of Verbena ‘Homestead Purple.’ There were Iceberg roses, gaillardia, aeonium, daylilies — lots of blooms to come for summer. Lots to interest people, birds, insects.<\/p>\n

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The parkway has been deturfed too.<\/p>\n

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And losing the lawn seems to be going viral in this neighborhood. Dark green ceanothus swirls around an aloe and Salvia chamaedryoides<\/p>\n

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A fountain of the firecracker plant, Russelia equisetiformis<\/p>\n

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Cylindropuntia and echeverias<\/p>\n

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When lawn is removed the fun begins, and these garden makers really seem to be enjoying themselves. I’m guessing this little bulb is a babiana. (Dustin Gimbel confirmed in a comment Triteleia ‘Ruby’). This lawn is being nibbled away at the margins, but I’m predicting it won’t be long before it vanishes completely too.<\/p>\n

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Agave potatorum nestled up against verbena.<\/p>\n

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I noticed this intriguing beauty growing in the parkway a couple houses away. Not the sago palm, but that foaming, pencil-stemmed wonder with the wax flower-like blooms. The Baja spurge, Euphorbia xanti<\/a><\/p>\n

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Try to imagine it not squished against a telephone pole. There were three of these euphorbias in the parkway, one around the corner.<\/p>\n

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Everyone’s love affair with Calandrinia spectabilis continues. A couple blocks away, an entire lawn was replaced with this plant. The landscape cloth used around the crowns of the young plants was too hideous for a photo<\/p>\n

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An interesting contrast to these personal gardens lies diagonal across the street from them. Just four months ago, architects Abramson Teiger<\/a> finished a major renovation of the Temple Israel, including the landscape. Long sweeps of feather grass, a problematic self-sower, and nepeta anchor the front of the temple.<\/p>\n

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With the prominence succulents continue to enjoy for their evergreen, year-round good looks, it’s unusual for new landscaping projects to include perennials, even evergreen shrubby ones like Verbena lilacina, a California native. I love the needlepoint detail against the concrete work and their billowing effect. Despite their many attractions, billow is one verb that can’t be used with succulents.<\/p>\n

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Though succulents are included here too: Senecio mandraliscae, aloes, aeonium. Meyer’s asparagus fern in the back. What looks like red-dyed mulch are fallen petals from the callistemon bottlebrush trees overhead in the parkway.<\/p>\n

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Anigozanthos, the kangaroo paws, in the foreground. I couldn’t get close enough to these trees for an ID, but they had an Australian look to them.<\/p>\n

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In the fading light, against the building can just be seen the slim outline of more anigozanthos, the shrubby Teucrium azureum to the left.<\/p>\n

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Feather grass, phlomis, with Teucrium azureum in the rear. All these plants are as drought tolerant as succulents, though their upkeep and cutback needs differ.<\/p>\n

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A few streets away, a front lawn has been usurped by Achillea ‘Moonshine.’ All over town, whether commercial projects or residential, the hissing of summer lawns during the hot, dry days of summer is becoming a relic of the past.<\/p>\n

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And another lawn vanishes under succulents, pennisetum, and a cloud of Gomphrena decumbens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawns are vanishing all over town. The chief ringleader and instigator is the Long Beach Water Department, with their irresistible Lawn-to-Garden Turf Replacement Program. Quite a few of my neighbors have already taken advantage of this program the past couple … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2807,551,2423,898,27],"tags":[2812,553,2811,2809,43,973,2808,2445,2820,2817,2816,2818,1123,1080,2814,2819,1449,2810,37,38,1119,2813,2815,1959],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-aMl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41437"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41437"}],"version-history":[{"count":156,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90404,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41437\/revisions\/90404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}