Noturf

My favorite plant is Turnera subulata. But I confess that
the list could be up to twenty, based on their resistance to
drought, shape, height, no need to maintenance often and aesthetics.

In Puerto Rico, gardening, landscape management and installations are done mostly by avaricious, illiterate and functionally illiterate fools.
They believe mulch is a FINISCHING TOUCH. For this reason the metro area looks as if the soil is bleeding terrible with the four, five and six inches of orange mulch spread all over the
medians and spaces where grass.

With the explanation given, any rubber mulch does help in any manner gardens or the environment.

A respectable, serious garden should have original
ground covers, plant selection, composition. This picture
of your garden shows excellent perspective, receiving
high marks as a whole. Congratulations! In http://endemismotrasnochado.blogspot.com/, you could
see my credentials and standards.

Do not ever think of coming to Puerto Rico, USA.
Down here pipes and water meters broken...spill millions
of gallons all over the island in plain sight. And NO ONE
worries. As if water will be there for ever.

Lawns? I hate them for the waste of water, energy, pollution
required to keep them. Lawn are the greatest way to destroy nature, particularly in GOLF. However golf is so cute for some...

We will have to deal with lawns with the same harshness smokers and tobacco manufacturers have been dealt.

Since I am a plant collector with over one hundred species
identified with their botanical names, do not follow trends, and could care less about uneducated opinions.

I have my criteria, credentials to choose. After all a garden
depends on variables such as microclimates, salt breeze, soil drainage and not just futile aesthetics.

For these reasons I look for no validation, opinions from
others since one may change the plants with time, but the
conditions remain for ever...

When one exposes his tastes, plant collection, sterile lawns,
silly hedges, one should be adult, mature enough to take
criticism, creative or not.

As a Creative Horticultural Critic with credentials, I make constant criticism in my blog. I give and take with indifference unless there is something to be learned from
the critic.

Why should people express only good thoughts? If
the installation stinks, it does, keeping quiet about it
does not change a bit.

Aesthetics are wide. In Puerto Rico, all these examples
you have brought are the rule. No taste, a total absence
of imagination and intelligence.

That is the result of people in landscaping maintenance or
ignorant property owners thinking that a garden is not
a garden unless you have to prune like a madman.

Hedges, hedges everywhere and mutilated vegetation with ridiculousshapes..unnatural and creating excessive organic waste. Polluting and a waste of energy.

I did turn pro, not only collecting over one hundred
identified species, but when got tired of the dull
commonplace installations in Puero Rico, became a
Creative Horticultural Critic with a endemismotrasnochado.blogspot.com/, now read in over
thirty five countries, in five continents.

As a collector with criteria about gardens as habitats, ecology and environment, I believe one should, could go beyond
pure, inane aesthetics.

Turf, hedges and palm trees do nothing for the environment, only create organic waste,requiring excessive hours to maintain. The first need, irrigation, gas, oil,electricity, noise to keep up, unless using a push mower or goats.

The only relevant matter with aesthetics besides garden composition is the way to go regarding, informal/formal; prairie/cottage and so on.

One thing that I find really dull is the mania with planting in even numbers. I go for ZEN asymmetrical groupings.

Now, if one can not propagate, does not know, practice that
fundamental skill, then you depend on nurseries and designers.

And that is that.

Is that a little spider?

Yep...

Nothing is more stimulating than watching one's pets
or others enjoying the smells, insects, birds, in the garden.
Particularly when there is Papyrus around, irresistible for
dogs and cats...

For fragrance, aroma I have planted four types of Frangipani in the south side of my urban garden, with some Mirabilis siciliana below. When I wake up I feel the first during the whole day and after four o'clock, the second.

Love, to love things, people I do not know what to say. Regarding horticulture I dislike very much weevils, how
they chew at my Coccolova uvifera, destroying their symmetric
round thick leaves.

Yet, I love that my garden planned, installed as a habitat,
serves others, birds, lizards, spiders, in my surroundings. Destructive or beneficial.

What can one do? I have great difficulties to destroy insects,except with dish soap/hot sauce my secret weapon, and
never feel comfortable with pulling beautiful weeds, that otherwise will take the whole space...

I do not know if this is fall/winter, however, the amount
of inanimate matter versus the vegetation seems overwhelming.

Perhaps it was shortly after the installation was finished,
at any rate I see a lack of balance between rocks/plants, something that could be seen as pragmatic regarding maintenance and beyond aesthetics.

On the other hand, the money is made with the rocks not the plants, for the Green Industry, that is the motivation.

I agree with most of what is presented. But in general a wide scope has been covered. Perhaps the most important is how individuals mark their gardens depending on
their expertise, credentials and practice of gardening.

However, I bet the in the British Isles, USA and everywhere else, a great percentage of the gardening folks depend on the
GREEN INDUSTRY, for installation, maintenance of their gardens
for lots of money and cookie mold gardens. These gardens look the same everywhere.

In Puerto Rico, USA, the situation is much worse. Through the internet, mostly looking and reading blogs from Asia/Australia for example, one sees the importance given to aesthetics, even if what is planted is not pragmatic in terms of the cost of maintenance, pollution and noise.

On the other hand there seems to exist a disconnection between gardening as a habitat, in harmony with our surroundings in many places.

In my case, I do not propagate, plant anything from nurseries
since their selection is useless for other flora and fauna, regarding food or nesting material.

I believe that gardens are not just for us, everything else
should be in the wider scheme of nature.

Excellent article.

In my blog endemismotrasnochado.blogspot.com/,
my motto is: No turf, palm trees or hedges.

For evident reasons, pollution, noise, excessive
organic waste and waste of energy and effort

Unless lawns are done by cattle or push mowers, fine.
However the amounts of money wasted in fertilizer,herbicide,
insecticide, and fungicide is irrational.

The other waste factor irrigation, can not be tolerated unless gray waters are used.

Congratutalations, the infatuation with turf everywhere
has to end.


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