a lovely little infusion I shared with my friends

Well another year has drawn to a close and tonight is the night we all must raise a glass and toast the coming of 2012.

I hope that the glass you are raising has something in it that came out of your garden!

There has been an infusion craze going on! Over the past couple of years, I’ve not only been eating out of my garden, I’ve been drinking out of it. I use my lemons, lemongrass, strawberries, tomatoes, marjoram, basil, melons, peppers, and much more as a flavor enhancement to all manner of spirits, and the results are delightful and delicious!

And SOOO easy to do! Just think of the flavors you want in your drink, put those fruits, vegetables, herbs, or spices (sometimes all of the above) into a mason jar and pour some vodka (or bourbon, or tequila, or rum, or gin) in. Let it rest, “cooking”, and in a week or two you’ll have a kick ass potion of your own creation. Be an ALCHEMIST! EXPERIMENT! And taste it often, because some flavors can infuse quickly and may overpower your liquor of choice.

This is really a game. It’s fun. And the drinks you can make with your infusions are endless. Be your own bartender for 2012 – it is the Year of The Dragon, so we are all going to need a cocktail every now and again! There is a FABULOUS blog, Dirt & Martinis, that all of us who enjoy … well, dirt and martinis MUST read!

Gardens are such lovely places to throw cocktail parties. The days are getting longer, we are thinking about our gardens and what food we want to grow – let’s think about things we can DRINK, too! As soon as spring rolls around you should be swimming in ideas of the homemade infusions you can make! Get ready for a bash in your garden!Serving your guests drinks that have been kissed by your garden in the ultimate. And there is really no reason to wait to grow it yourself – support your local Farmers Markets and get some bounty there! A lovely winter infusion is Bourbon with Clove-studded Oranges. Serve it on the rock, or make a toddy by heating it up with unfiltered apple juice – YUM!!!

This is my New Year’s Gift to you, my dear readers – I give you more reasons to drink in the 2012. And if you make it, you must drink!

XOXO, Your Germinatrix

a greenhouse in the Antarctic - notice how they painted vegetables on the side of the building!

In the last post, we looked at the work of an artist who is creating spaces to grow food in a very difficult place – a cubicle in an office building. In THIS post, we are taking a trip to possibly the most difficult, inhospitable space to grow food in the entire world – McMurdo Ice Station in ANTARCTICA!

You might be asking yourself how your Germinatrix managed to get these super top-secret shots of growing food in this extremely remote, unforgiving place? I will not divulge my sources. Let me just say that I had a clandestine meeting with a young denizen of the ice station, and he regaled me with stories of hydroponic food growing at McMurdo. It was all so Sci-Fi and enthralling!

McMurdo Station is a science and support facility that services all of  the research going on in Antarctica – everything that has to get to the South Pole station (the remotest place on earth) has to come through McMurdo. There are a little over a 1500 people there during the prime season, but when the skies go dark, the numbers dwindle to a tiny crew of support staff and engineers who keep the station up and running until it the conditions are right for the scientists to return. Science and research is the main aim of the station – it is a remarkable “control”, because there is little pollution, and because it is very very quiet – some of the most interesting discoveries about sound have been made down there, in the silence. Isn’t that FREAKY???

what a humble home for such a wonderful thing

Anyway – the people who live at the station subsist mostly on canned and frozen food. But one day, several years ago (my source whispered this as if it were a legend or a well kept secret), one man decided he needed some fresh tomatoes. He commandeered a shed and set about building a hydroponic system to allow for the growing of vegetables and herbs and had a pilot bring him seeds. That was the beginnings of fresh food for the station. I asked if there was any other “plant” being grown in the hydroponics in the shed, but my source just raised an eyebrow- I was left to wonder.

where the magic happens - an obvious labor of love

My source recently returned from his 9 month sojourn way way down there, and he was very serious when he looked into my eyes and said that it is unbelievable the difference fresh herbs made to a meal prepared exclusively of canned or frozen food. I gently patted his hand – I could imagine. He was there at the station doing support work – important maintenance and upkeep of the facilities, but he spent most of his spare time in the growing hut. Not only was the act of cultivating fresh food immensely centering in the strange, dark environment where he found himself , but the growlights helped him keep the intense gloom that a lack of sunlight causes at bay. The air in Antarctica is very dry, but in the food chamber there were humidifiers, so it was comfortable – he would read, listen to music, and nap. I had no idea how necessary a growing environment could be down there – it was obviously something more than just a place to grow food. The way my source described it, it was a GARDEN – a place to get away, to enjoy nature, to revel in the magic of what living plants (and the place they grow in) can do for a person. I was dazzled, but not surprised.

notice the chair in the corner - for relaxation and contemplation in the "garden"

What WAS surprising was the jerry-rigged nature of the greenhouse. I’d imagined it would be sleek and scientific – but no, of course it wasn’t. It was built by food lovers with things that were cast off from the station, because asking for things to be flown in by plane was often a problem. See, EVERYTHING down there has to be flown in or brought in by boat, and the climate makes these trips infrequent. Most of the cargo is limited to necessary science and building equipment, so the fact that they got humidifiers (obviously from Home Depot or OSH), rockwool (the substrate used for hydroponic growing) and growlights was a luxury. Everything else was gleaned and salvaged from things cast off from the station – old ventilation tubing was used to warm the space, drain pipes were cut in half to be used as containers, reflective thermal insulation sheets – all recycled. McMurdo HAS to be a sustainable environment – they have no choice. Instead of everything being Sci-Fi in a sleek, space age way, it was a post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” sensibility that was evident. And that made it better. It shows that we can grow food anywhere, under any conditions, without having to erect an expensive greenhouse. We can find and old shed and go from there, finding what we need in what others throw out and making odd, unwanted things work to our purposes.

this small space provides every bit of fresh food for 1500 people

When I first met my source, and artist Stephen Wong from the previous post, I had science fiction visions of hydroponics bays from Star Trek Voyager, the garden ship tended to by Bruce Dern in Silent Running, and the doomed oxygen garden in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (Watch Sunshine! Brilliant!!!). Growing food isn’t quaint or cottage-y, it is crucial to our survival, welfare, and general well-being. And it will only become more of an issue in the future. The isolation of the people living in McMurdo made taking control of their fresh food not only an issue of taste and nutrition, but one of emotional and physical well-being. Considering that McMurdo is a science station, might we take the results of the growing of food here and the effect of it on the residents as a type of experiment? I might be getting a little metaphorical and simplistic here, but in dark times, getting close to the means of your food production makes you feel better. Imagine yourself in the darkness of space (or Antarctica!), in a place you can’t leave, eating rations day in day out. I would be like the legend of McMurdo who wanted that fresh tomato – I’d find a way to get something fresh, green, and alive around me. Or I’d scream. And in space, nobody can hear you scream…

I want to thank my source, who is getting ready for a new adventure, this time on the high seas. I am hoping the next time we meet, he has another story to tell, maybe of seaweed farm in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, or of a tribe of vegetarian mermaids who live near the Galapagos.

So there are no excuses – GROW FOOD, wherever you are!

XOXO Your Germinatrix

the run of the mill office cubicle, BUT - Space Cube has come to the rescue!

While enjoying the afternoon, I was introduced to an artist, Stephen Wong (who works also works under the name of Dai Toyofuku), and we got to talking about his project called “Space Cube”. (It has to do with plants, and something about me gets people talking about plants. I wonder what that’s about) Wong creates modular “planting pods” that are specifically made to be used in office buildings by people stuck in cubicles during the work day.

I’m pretty exclusive in my gardening practice – I am all about the glory of the world outside your back door (and front door!), and I tend to see indoor gardening as purely decorative and slightly limited. I mean OF COURSE I know that there are reasons beyond the ornamental for bringing certain plants indoors, but in my personal experience it has never been as satisfying or interesting to garden inside. I’ve made terrariums, coddled ficus trees (which all die miserable deaths for mysterious reasons that get me all riled up), and grown plants that with wicked names like “Mother-in-laws Tongue” that are so boring in their potted isolation that they put me to sleep. The results of my indoor gardening efforts have always looked like a TGI Fridays in San Antonio, Texas. Eeeewww.

shelving with grow lights and SNACKS !

Seeing the images of Wong’s project were exciting to me – here was a very simple, clear, and direct way to utilize the functional aspects of plants in a place where they can have an immediate impact. Most office buildings are “tight”, meaning they were built to minimize the infiltration of outside air to reduce the cost of heating and cooling. As a result, every bit of air in these energy efficient building is recirculated – including the dangerous volatile compounds off-gassed from carpets, office equipment, and chemical cleaning products. There is no way for anyone to stroll over and open a window to let in a breeze – the workers have to sit and suffer the assault of molds, formaldehyde and all matter of noxious ickiness.

Wong’s project sites small plant growing units within an office cubicle. He uses plants that have been tested and proven to help clear the air of chemical compounds, then he directs the air flow to where it is most needed. There are shelving units with grow lights mounted, and here you’ll find lettuces, herbs, and even strawberries. The worker in the “sick” building can grow their own healthy, organic snacks to avoid the dangerous pull of the candy machine.

munch munch munch

The containers where the plants grow are pleasantly hand made out of see through materials. All of the layers of drainage, the soil, and roots are visible. One planter is a closed box – a system which gathers the fresh oxygen released from a boston fern and emits it to the spot where the worker is seated at his/her workstation via a silver ventilation tube with a small fan attached.

the oxygen machine, for your breathing pleasure

Like I said before, indoor planting is dominated by aesthetics. The straightforward, jerry-rigged way Wong builds his “machines” strips down the idea that plants are used to decorate and deals exclusively with the use value of the living material. It has a no nonsense approach that brings an edge of the post-apocalyptic into play – the grow lights are eerie, the bins and buckets used to plant in seem trash-picked, and the crinkly shine of what looks like recycled aluminum foil lines some of the food containers. Who has time to think of “pretty” when the air in your office building is polluted and the food you buy is suspect as well? The movement towards sustainable living also carries with it a frisson of paranoia, which is nicely in evidence in Space Cube.

strawberries! in an office cubicle!

I revel in the place where art and issues of landscape collide. Artists like Fritz Haeg (Edible Estates, Animal Estates) and the Fallen Fruit collective open up their practices and create an inclusive, democratic place between critical thought and our practical, essential, day-to-day concerns with food and planted spaces. It is great to see another art practice moving forward and taking up these issues in a way that welcomes both art viewer and the lay person to join in.

Today I have a special guest star weighing in on Stephen Wong’s Space Cube – ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to my husband, art writer Jan Tumlir:
“There’s a relation to Minimalism – to the shelving units of Donald Judd as well as the plexiglass cubes of Larry Bell and others – in particular, I think of Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube, but here it is given an environmentally functional role rather than one that is hands off phenomenological. This makes sense in the world, and thereby also complicates its sense as art. Bravo!”

YAY ART!
XOXO Your Germinatrix

JoAnn is a fabulous mama bear to her hundreds and hundreds of seedlings

Meet JoAnn Trigo, owner of Two Dogs Nursery, in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.

She provides a very very valuable service to gardeners (like me) who want to grow the best, coolest edibles around – but just don’t have the time or patience or wherewithall to do the whole “planting in seed trays then pot those up to tiny pots then pot THOSE up to slightly bigger pots then put them out in the garden” thing. If I can’t sow it directly into my garden, I am probably not going to sow it at all. But I don’t want to go buy my starts at any old nursery, either – how can I guarantee that they are organic? JoAnn to the rescue! She is grower of 100% certified organic edible starts – and that is all she does. I love a focused objective!

her nursery is run out of her home - check out the edible containers spilling out into the front yard!

JoAnn started this from love and passion – she saw a hole in the market and went for it. Thank goodness! I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to be assured of the organic status of your starts. She is so ecologically responsible she doesn’t use peat in her seed starting mix – she uses coconut fiber. (the harvesting of ancient peat marshes for peat moss to use in planting mixes is just as bad as strip mining, in my opinion. Go Peat Free!!!)

munch munch munch... how good does this look?

pretty!

I’m going to confess to a dream – I TOTALLY want to have my own nursery one day. It would be different than JoAnn’s, because I am so mad for succulents and ornamentals as well – AND I want the nursery to convert to a bar at night! But when I saw what she did, how she had an idea and went for it at the right time, and made it work – well, it inspires me.

food glorious food!

tomato row - I want some! (actually, I got some!)

little babies, growing strong...

Thank you, JoAnn, for opening up your appointment-only nursery at such short notice to me! And an extra thanks to my friend Nick Kersulis, who found JoAnn and her amazing enterprise while taking a walk in his neighborhood. Way to spy a good thing!

So all of you don’t live in Los Angeles, but Two Dogs has a website! And I encourage all of you to visit your local Farmers Markets, because many growers of organic seedlings sell their wares alongside the vegetables and flowers. If all else fails, ask questions at your nursery – are these edible starts organic? Is the grower certified? Are they local? It is important to let the powers that be in the nursery industry know that being organic is what we DEMAND – it may not be easy, but it is the only way to go!

XOXO Your Germinatrix!

my flourishing hellstrip edible beds

Yes. The book is DONE!

Amazing – I can’t believe I actually DID it – wrote a book in 4 months, 1 month to edit, and here I am, spent!

little 'Sungold' tomatoes playing peek-a-boo among the leaves of ruby chard

Garden writing is a tough business. Lots of people do it, but frankly, there aren’t many venues for us to ply our trade anymore – magazines have folded left and right, publishers are wary, and the internet has made traditional publishing seem completely outdated. Things HAVE to be different now. The paradigm has shifted, and it is up to writers, editors, and publishers find new relationships to each other and move forward in this WWW. (Check out how clever I am – WWW can be either World Wide Web OR Wild Wild West! See why I write? How can I keep this all to myself?)

Laura Livengood Schaub of Garden Writers Today asked me what a garden writer needs these days. I almost fell over. I need ALOT. Jewelry. A Cabana Boy. A 1978 black Mercedes and a driver. But the Garden Writers Today site is concerned with helping support us, so I thought I’d be serious for once and give some real answers. So here are the three things that I, as a Garden Writer, would love.

#1 – Access to new, fresh garden photos. Maybe a new free image bank can be created!

#2 – Proofreaders – ones that know something about gardening.

#3 – A non-competitive environment, not about promoting one’s work, but about advising and aiding each other WITH work and with GETTING work. Am I dreaming?

lovely fennel seeds drying in the sun

These last few months has been a journey, an ENORMOUS learning experience. I haven’t been able to blog as much as I wanted, I haven’t been able to garden as much as I wanted, I haven’t been able to design much either. My time was frantically devoted to “THE BOOK”, and now that it is finished I feel like I have been picked up by a cyclone and set down somewhere else. I don’t know what this other place is (even though it looks suspiciously just like my life, it feels different), but I know that this, too, will be a journey. One thing I DO know is that I am thrilled to be able to think about other aspects of gardening than just the little area I’ve been focusing on, and excited to get back to regular blog posts!

Thanks for hanging in there with me, I remain your devoted

GERMINATRIX!!!

a bowl of ladybugs makes a fun afternoon for my favorite neighbors

not even the tough boys could resist the spotted little beetles

Ana was the Captain of the Ladybug Brigade

she kept stopping to feed the little ladies a flower...

one, two, three ... GO!!!

they tickle...

"the ... the... little things... ladies-bugs... they're on the FLOWER! they're EATING the FLOWER! ...they don't eat the flower? why? cuz... cuz... my grandpa says bugs EAT FLOWERS! not these ones? heeheehee! I LIKE THESE ONES!!!"

"... but... but ... where is the ladies-bugs GOING???"

"...did ...did one went in my ear?"

Ana's brother happily takes back the bowl, assuring her there is no ladybug in her ear, and if one goes in, he'll take it out for her

... and suddenly they were gone, scattered like little ladybugs themselves, scampering home to sound that only they could hear - one that had to mean dinner time. The Captain and her Troupes did well - the 2010 release of the ladybugs was a complete success. Bravo.

chopping up the tomato harvest- no big deal... but I assure you, THIS was an EVENT

For those of us who love to grow food, this is the time of year when we really reap the rewards of our hard work. In fact, sometimes we reap like crazy. This year, I am reaping buttloads of tomatoes. What to DO with them once you’ve had caprese salads daily, pasta every way imaginable, sun dried them, salsa’d them, given them to friends… is there anything new do be done with the emblem of the summer garden?

Well, why not make jam?

Fallen Fruit is a Los Angeles based art project that explores notions of urban spaces, neighborhoods, and ideas of community. It began by creating maps of fruit trees growing on and above public land and encouraging foraging. The ideas of foraging and gleaning food from our public and semi-public spaces is rife with social and political implications – a great way to familiarize yourself with these ideas is to see Agnes Varda‘s fantastic documentary  The Gleaners & I, made in 2000. Anyway, Fallen Fruit started as a collaboration between three artists, David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young, and has grown to be an exciting movement that has galvanized many to think about food  and our city in a different way. On Sunday, August 1st, they had one of their public Jam Sessions at the LA County Museum of Art, where they encourage people to bring home grown and foraged/gleaned fruit to be jammed – for free, all you needed to do is leave one jar behind.

awesome Matias greets us as we arrive - he taught at Cal/Arts when Jan and I were there (how does he manage to look younger than us?!)

Matias gives eager jammers pointers on flavor combinations and proportions

Well, it was a packed house! People brought fruit galore and were happily chopping and mashing and slicing – everyone was pretty sticky, but it was the right kind of sticky; gooey, messy, foody fun!

what better way to spend a sunday than to get messy playing with food?

everything was provided, all you had to bring was fruit and a sweet tooth

While most people brought fruit, Jan and I brought tomatoes – but a tomato IS a fruit, so I felt justified in my jamming endeavors. My jam was going to be yellow and red tomatoes, mint, basil, and jalapenos from my garden, and then some bitter orange and Oro Blanco grapefruit provided by Fallen Fruit. Doesn’t that sound … adventurous?

okay - Jan doesn't like tomatoes. But here he is anyway, bravely cutting up his least favorite fruit to make my jammy dreams come true

this face shows Jan's true feelings as he sprinkles bitter orange zest on the jam - to - be

It was a lively crowd – everybody was excited, talking, sharing recipes, making friends. I made some friends!

my new posse - the jam fiends

this young dude is the head fiend

we bonded. I gave him some extra mint - he said he's sending me a copy of "Yes Man", the Jim Carrey movie.

Unlike Jan, I love tomatoes and was very excited to see what we would come up with. The recipe was very loose – all we did was chop up our tomatoes and add as much basil, mint, and orange zest as we thought would work. I threw in a few segments of the Oro Blanco grapefruit and a squirt or five of bitter orange. It looked so pretty, I was very excited to find out how to turn this into something I could smear on toast.

could I BE more thrilled over a gloopy bowl of stuff?

Now came the cooking part. There were lots of  cooking stations, with adept jammers doing the actual cooking. All we had to do was go up and wait our turn in any one of the lines, and one of the Fallen Fruit volunteers would help us whip up our jams. I chose the line with the pretty girl in the yellow shirt – she seemed like she’d do my tomatoes justice.

I just KNEW she was the right one to jam with me!

While I was waiting my turn in line, I snuck away to have a taste of the other jams people had made – there were tables full of jars of the yummy sweet concoctions, along with bread, crackers, and peanut butter. People were sampling up a storm!

these were just a few of the many jars left behind so that we could all be inspired to greater heights

what a gorgeous smile! see what a spoonful of jam made from gleaned, fallen fruit can do?

even cool, pouty teenagers can find the good in the gooey sweet stuff

Finally it was my turn to pop my bowl of garden goodness into the communal cooker! My jam making muse, Diana (she of the sunny yellow shirt), wiped off the pot so no trace of apricot or strawberry would taint my tomatoes. I proceeded to dump my chopped up everything into the pot, followed by one half of a cup of pectin (Diana was giving me clear directions) and 3 cups of sugar (I wanted less sugar, but Matias said it would just be salsa if I didn’t make it sweet. So, sugar, LOTS of it!).

here goes - all of this plus pectin plus sugar and maybe we'll get something good

The cooking was easy – we stirred and covered it, then waited for it to boil, stirred some more, more boiling, then added the mint and basil right before the final boil. I ended up with four jars of  JAM! I was very honored that the lovely Diana asked me for one of my jars. I felt special. So I went home from the Jam Session with three jars of tomato mint basil jalapeno citrus gold – all homegrown or Los Angeles foraged. It was a good feeling.

all done! jam jarred, and Diana helped turn me into a fan of jamming

Thank you LACMA, thank you Fallen Fruit, Matias, and Diana – it was a wonderful afternoon and a great way to activate the community. In a city where the citizenry are as famously insular as Los Angeles, you managed to create a vibrant, exciting place to meet people, to celebrate our city and one of its most unique qualities – food dangling right before our eyes, at every corner, within easy reach. Thank you for encouraging us to reconsider the public and the private, and to use our resources. And thank you for doing this in such a fun, lighthearted way. I’m a fan. A fan of public jamming.

check out the front yard beauty!

Every hardcore gardener I talk to, email, or ‘tweet’ with is on the same page as I am as far as front yards are concerned: Lawn, NO – Gardens YES!!! And front yard gardens that include vegetables? HELL YES!!!

Recently, I was in my hometown of San Antonio, Texas, and I was extremely lucky, because my awesome cousin Paul arranged for me to visit with his friend Curt. Curt is somewhat of a legend around San Antonio, being a fixture in the local art scene and an all-around great, eclectic man. AND … he has a crazy awesome garden. In his front yard. LOVE!!!

First off, props to ANYONE who dares to tinker with living, growing things in the intense heat of a South Texas summer. This year saw some of the hottest temperatures on record –  in fact, July (when I was there) was the the hottest month EVER for San Antonio and Austin. When Paul and I pulled up to Curt’s house, I was amazed … everything looked so beautiful – perky, even! All around San Antonio, where water restrictions are serious business, lawns are drying up and front yards are looking fairly desperate, but here in Curt’s island of horticultural wonder, things are just lovely. Exactly as it should be! 

He does what I advocate – uses a tough palette of drought tolerants and succulents and plays with them fearlessly. Other than reading about what survives in this rigorous climate, he works purely on instinct – he proudly says he knows nothing about plants – Ha! I beg to differ! DOING is the best learning in the garden – you can read, study, and intellectually understand everything there is to know about a plant, but until you actually plant it yourself and grow it firsthand – everything you know is just a rumor.

But what REALLY gets me is his raised vegetable beds! I mean, front yard vegetable gardening makes so much sense. Usually, your front yard gets the best sun – because front yards are always planned around the ubiquitous lawn, which doesn’t grow it’s best in shade. By removing a front lawn and replacing it with a mix of drought tolerants and vegetables, you are transitioning from a space that gives you very little and takes alot (water, chemicals) to a space that gives alot (food, fragrance, flowers) and takes less in terms of water and no chemicals at all (we only advocate organics here at The Germinatrix!). Most of the early season veggies have already been harvested – the extreme heat has forced a mid-summer lull, but the structure Curt has built into the garden keeps it looking great.

I love the use of corrugated aluminum for the raised beds … it’s so Texas! Very chic – it gives the potentially rustic vegetable garden an industrial edge. Curt has a flawless eye for plant combinations, also – Euphorbia ‘Stix on Fire’ plays with Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed), the pinky/orange on the ‘stix’ talking to the orange and gold flowers of the asclepias; all that colorful heat is then cooled off by a white cosmos waving in the air nearby. 

Planting herbs in this challenging climate is smart – they can be a great low water alternative to traditional groundcovers. I love using thymes, the culinary sages ( S. ‘Berggarten’ and S. purpurescens are my favorites), sweet marjoram, golden oregano, and then throwing in medicinal aloe, just like Curt has done. He as been right on target with his choices, as far as I am concerned. 

 This place was a real treat to experience. I have to admit having a bit of a prejudice … I love an owner-designed garden! I adore idiosyncrasy, but orchestrating that for someone else and having it look authentic is really hard. There is something elusive – call it ‘heart’, maybe – that all of us as garden designers strive for as an antidote to strident, over-determined, corporate-style plantings. Spending time in a garden like Curt’s allowed me to bathe in a landscape with heart, and it was FAB! Thank you, Curt, for the generous peek into your wonderful garden!

a haze of arugula rises up behind my container garden

I am NOT a neat, fastidious gardener.

Actually, I am not a neat, fastidious ANYTHING … I tend to enjoy the random, the accidental, the chaotic. I am a big fan of letting things go to seed; I never cut anything that blossoms until it is well past its usefulness as a thing of beauty or a food source for bees and birds. I am also not incredibly organized – I SO admire my gardening friends who gather seeds, dry them, label them, store them, and then begin the whole process of growing the following season – because no matter what my intentions, I just can’t do it. So I take the passive approach. I accept any and all volunteers.

I pry open dry seedpods and blow them into the breeze, letting them fall where they will. When I pluck out dried plants at the end of the season, I shake them until I am certain not a kernel is going to waste. I don’t fear the promiscuity of the ebullient self-seeder – I KNOW arugula can go on a rampage, but I will still allow a good 1/4 of my spring crop to flower and seed itself where it will. I love seeing the drifts of delicate white blossoms buzzing with bees. I love knowing that I’ll be finding delicious little patches of the peppery young leaves in a month or two, huddled in the cooling shade of a ceramic pot, or cuddled next to an aloe.

The rigor with which nature gardens can be surprising! My late summer lettuces must have very purposefully planted their next generation, because the little volunteer mixed greens are lined up in the straightest, neatest row right next to the bed of their ancestors. I couldn’t have planted a row that perfect!

Chamomile has been very prolific this year – which I love (mint/chamomile tea being my favorite after dinner drink). There is a little sprinkling of it under a mound of Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurescens’, and I just adore the combination! I wish I would have thought of it – but I am totally going to take credit for coming up with this delicate combo the next time I add edibles to a garden for a client. Mama didn’t raise no fool!

It bothers me that the phrase ‘gone to seed’ means that a thing has deteriorated, and that ‘seedy’ means rundown, dangerous; unsavory. What is more glorious, what has more potential, more hope, than a SEED? Please!!!

Okay, let’s coin a term. From now on, use the term ‘SEEDY’ when you want to refer to something as cute, a little edgy, a little sexy … like, “I LOVE Carla’s new haircut! It is so fresh and seedy!”

Will it work???

Hi Everyone!!!  I’m BACK!!!

I'm BACK!!!

And I am THRILLED to be blogging again! Sorry it’s taken so long, but you know … life …

So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Ivette, your Germinatrix, and I blogged on all landscape-related matters for the now defunct Domino magazine. I am a garden designer and consultant working in Los Angeles, CA, and I am a crazy plant maniac. Some people describe my planting style as ‘cramnation’ (meaning I cram in as many plants as I can fit into any given space), but I prefer to think of myself as an exuberant maximalist (yes, that word is overused, but I think it really applies in my case). Since I live in perpetually rain-deprived Southern California, I work with a palette of planting material heavy on drought tolerants and succulents – which are the sexiest plants in horticulture. You might think that tropicals are the sexiest plants around, and they ARE hot – but a tropical is to a succulent what an exotic dancer is to a fashion model.

Like I said in the earlier incarnation of this blog, I truly believe that gardening can change the world, and I want to be a part of that evolution/revolution. My long range plan is world domination via garden design, but just having a lot of fun with plants runs a close second!

For me, gardening is a form of personal expression, and the best gardens have a strong point of view. I love a landscape that reflects the owner’s personality … but frankly, just like there are people with sucky personalities, some gardens are just – well… sucky also. Here at The Germinatrix, we call it like we see it.

Oh – anything and everything written in this blog is my opinion and my opinion alone and does not reflect the thoughts of any other member of any landscape or architectural firm I am now associated with or have been associated with in the past. Just had to get that out of the way, before I get down to the business of serious garden blogging, because you never know WHAT might happen when you start talking about plants and gardens!

rose