There is no doubt that fences are useful for a variety of functions. They exclude deer from the garden. They confine livestock. For suburban homes, they enclose a relatively safe space for children and pets. Fences should be designed according to their intended functions. Those designed to exclude deer might be as simple as coarse mesh on posts. Those enclosing backyards might be more refined and compatible with the landscape.
Over the years, conformity to modern suburban and urban landscapes, as well as modern architecture and lifestyles, has changed the standards of how fences are designed. Low picket fences do not adequately obscure the scenery that adjacent and often dissimilar landscapes contribute to a view. Where common vegetable gardens might have been, most of us want private outdoor rooms, with a distinct style of landscape.
It seems that everyone wants privacy nowadays. Those who have no need for privacy will get it anyway because no one will build fences that will not provide it. In the 1950, fences were commonly four feet high, and not every backyard had them. By the 1970s, they were more commonly six feet high, and standard for almost every backyard. Now, fences are expected, and many are seven feet high or higher, with lattice on top!
Modern architecture and lifestyles are part of the justification for such tall fences. Low profile older homes on formerly suburban lots are commonly replaced with two or more larger homes on smaller subdivided city lots. They are much closer to each other than the older homes were, with only narrow spaces between upstairs windows, where even eight foot high fences will not provide privacy.
So, not only do much larger homes on much smaller parcels mean that there is much less space for gardening, but taller two story (or taller) homes with weirdly high fences mean that more of the very limited space available for gardening is shaded!
Campground
There happen to be quite a few campgrounds in the region, with one about a quarter of a mile upstream from where this picture was taken, and another less than three miles past that. Both are primarily used by school age children. The vast redwood forests with creeks flowing through are ideal for such campgrounds.
This is a campground too. I know it does not look like it. It is located between a creek and an industrial building, the eave of which is visible in the top right corner of the picture. The herd of dumpsters that is barely visible at the bottom of the picture might include a dozen dumpsters at at time. (I tried to get both the eave and the dumpsters in one picture.) There really are two rows of barbed wire on top of that fence behind the dumpsters.
Nonetheless, it is a campground. You see, individuals who lack adequate shelter occasionally camp on a flat spot next to the creek, right below the big cottonwood tree in the middle of the picture. It is not a big space, so can only accommodate one or maybe two people at a time. No one has been there for quite a while. Yet, on rainy days like today, it is saddening to imagine someone camping there, so close to inaccessible buildings.
Because the area is outside of landscaped areas, I do nothing to make it any more comfortable as a campground. I only cut away the limbs that fall onto the fence.
The trees are a mix of mostly box elders, with a few cottonwoods and willows, and even fewer alders, with one deteriorating old bigleaf maple. They concern me. Box elders, cottonwoods and willows are innately unstable. All but bigleaf maple are innately structurally deficient. Although bigleaf maple should innately be both stable and structurally sound, the particular specimen in this situation is in the process of rotting and collapsing.
I really do not mind if limbs or entire trees fall into the forested riparian zone. If they fall outward, they do not damage the dumpsters. Only the fence needs to be repaired. What worries me are the potential residents of the campground. Part of my work is to inspect trees for health, stability and structural integrity, and if necessary, prescribe arboricultural procedures to make them safe. I just can not do that here.
UPDATE: Just after this article posted at midnight, a very big box elder off to the right of those in the picture fell with a loud but quick crash. It was probably the biggest and most deteriorated of the box elders in this area, and pulled completely out of the ground to reveal that the roots were so decayed, that none stayed attached to the stump. Seriously, you should see the pictures when they get posted next Sunday.
Felton League
When I started posting my weekly gardening articles here, along with a few other odds and ends, I reserved the right to occasionally post articles or information that is not directly related to horticulture. I do not do it often, but I will do it now, in order to briefly explain another blog that I started today.
Felton League
It will feature articles and insight about the distinguished small group of displaced or socially marginalized people and their friends in Felton in California. In other words, it will be about our homeless Community.
In about 2013, at a time when the homeless were more openly persecuted and assaulted, and evenly violently attacked, Felton League began as an informational forum on Facebook. We had been discouraged by the portrayal of the homeless in other so-called ‘community’ groups. Disparaging pictures, often contrived, were shared openly for the amusement of haters. This is common on the pages of our local law enforcement agencies.
Well, that seemed like a good idea. We started sharing pictures of those taking pictures of us, and describing how they stalked us for the sake of taking such pictures. They did not like that, and accused us of stalking, harassment, and all sorts of nonsense. They were also much more careful about how they stalked us.
In fact, the stalking subsided so much shortly after the establishment of Felton League, that the page was almost deleted. Instead, it remained as a Community forum for topics that were of interest to our segment of the Community. It was designed to appeal to less than one percent of the populace, most of whom do not use Facebook, but gained quite a following. There were nearly a hundred followers, but less than a dozen homeless.
That seemed rather odd, especially since a local hate group that specializes in the derision of the homeless, and claiming to represent ‘everyone’ in town, had only about three dozen followers when an associate checked in on them about a month ago. It became obvious that others beyond our Community appreciate the insight.
It is now time to expand Felton League. I hope that this blog makes it more available to a broader audience. I will not post daily. Nor will I discuss certain local events and news that are not directly related to our distinguished small group. As unpleasant as homelessness is, I hope that readers find Felton League to be insightful and perhaps, in some ways, encouraging.
The three men in the pictures above and below are three old friends and members of our Community who have passed away since the establishment of Felton League, and are three of the reasons why I continue to write.
Felton League can be found at feltonleague.com
Six on Saturday: Willow
Rain is rare here so late in the season. It is also potentially damaging to some of the plants in the landscapes, and some of the latest of the spring flowers that are still blooming. Most of the deciduous plants are lush with new foliage on limber stems that are still adapting to the increased foliar weight. Foliage gets even heavier when it gets wet from rain. For the willows, the extra weight is enough to break limbs.
Willow limbs do not often break away cleanly. They instead split apart so that they fall slowly while still attached to the main tree. In the swampy conditions where they naturally grow, the broken but still attached limbs develop roots where they touch the ground, and then grow into new trees. Broken limbs are therefore not a problem for willows. Nonetheless, they are a problem in the landscapes.
1. This looks like mozzarella cheese being pulled apart. My great uncle used to bring some of the good Italian stuff when he came up from Long Beach for some of the Holidays. Oh my, how off topic!
2. This is what it really was. Willow limbs are surprisingly weak this time of year. They don’t just break. They split apart. I should have gotten a picture of it before I cut it up.
3. It landed right across a walkway, where I could not put off breaking it apart and taking it away. With all the rain that caused it to break, the lawn was too swampy to walk around on.
4. It landed on this bench too, or at least the left half of it. With hundreds of acres of unused and unlandscaped forest out there, why must falling trees land in such inappropriate situations?
5. All that mess was not even a full load. It just didn’t take up much space after it was all broken apart and loaded up. There was plenty of other willow to cut later in the day, and for the next few days.
6. Willow! My niece named him. I knew better than to argue. I never liked the name though. I and almost everyone but my niece knew him as Bill, which is short for Willow. My friend Steven knew him as William.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Horridculture – Fake Environmentalism
Fake environmentalism is a HUGE topic, so for now, will be limited to fake environmentalism as justification for the eviction of homeless encampments.
The yellow triangle in the picture above was the site of the Hero’s Camp, which was more commonly known as Ross Camp, and located behind Ross Dress For Less in Gateway Plaza in Santa Cruz. It is gone now. This satellite image was taken by Google Maps prior to the development of the Camp. I did not get pictures of the camp while inhabited, but you have likely seen enough other camps in the news to imagine what it looked like.
It really was as big as it looks, and really did exhibit all the problems that you hear about in the news, although not to such an exaggerated degree. Not everyone there used syringes to inject illicit narcotics. Not everyone there was an alcoholic. Not everyone was violent, from somewhere else, or a criminal. This is not about such issues anyway. It is about how the two hundred or so unhoused people who lived here affected the environment.
Was there trash? Of course there was. Was it more than what two hundred people who live in homes generate? No. Houseless people do not generate as much trash as the housed, simply because they lack resources to purchase the commodities from which so much trash is generated. The houseless certainly do not waste as much as the housed. Their trash just happens to be more visible for outsiders who do not know any better to see.
Furthermore, what is so typically described and perceived as trash is actually the belongings of those who live in such camps. Without closets, cabinets or furniture, our belongings would look about the same, except much more voluminous. When we take just some of the belongings that we don’t want or need and put them out in front of our homes, it is a garage sale, and likely amounts to much more than individual homeless people own.
The satellite image from Google Maps below shows the neighborhood where my grandparents lived in Felton, less than seven miles north of where the picture above was taken. Their old home is right in the middle of the picture. There were not so many other homes there when they arrived, just as World War II was ending. They lived a relatively modest lifestyle, on a small suburban parcel. They were not concerned about the environment.
Why should they have been? Even now, the people who live in homes here can generate as much trash as they want to, and no one will complain about it. They can fill their homes with their belongings, and put them neatly away in closets, cabinets and drawers. There are alcoholics in this neighborhood, as well as a few who are addicted to illicit narcotics. Some are criminals. Some are violent. Few are native. Again, this is off the main topic.
None of that is visible in this satellite image anyway. What it shows instead is how the lifestyles of those who live in homes are more detrimental to the environment than the lifestyles of those who lack homes. This picture is the same scale as the picture above, so you can see that only a few homes would fit into an area comparable to that in which about two hundred unhoused people lived. Only a few people live in each of these few homes.
What that means is that two hundred people like those who lived at the Hero’s Camp live dispersed over a much larger area, on land from which trees and vegetation needed to be removed. They all live in homes that are made of wood derived from trees that grew in forests. These homes are furnished with synthetic plaster, carpet, paint, glass, vinyl, metals and all sorts of materials that needed to be quarried, processed or manufactured.
It doesn’t end there. These homes consume energy for heating, lighting and whatever else that gas and electricity are used for. Cars driven by those who live in homes are also constructed from raw materials, and then need fuel to function. Water is consumed as if it were not a very limited resource. Much of it gets mixed with soaps and detergents before going back into the environment. Chlorine volatilizes from chlorinated swimming pools.
Then there are the landscapes and gardens, the parts of domestic lifestyles that we actually believe to be beneficial to the environment. They contain exotic (non-native) plants that compete with native species, and interfere with natural ecological processes. Irrigation of the landscapes stimulates redwoods and accelerated decay of oaks. Soil amendments, fertilizers and some of the pesticides change the chemistry of the soil and ground water.
Just compare these two pictures. As bad as the mess at Hero’s Camp was, the two hundred people who lived there were less detrimental to the environment and the local ecosystem than those who live in just a few of the homes visible in the picture below. Those who claim to be concerned about the environment should be more concerned about the ecologically detrimental lifestyles of those who live in homes than those who lack homes.
Fake New Lawn
A new lawn is getting installed at work. Yes, installed. It will not be grown like lawns were decades ago. It will be unrolled and fastened into place, not like sod, but more like carpet. It will be synthetic artificial turf. After considerable deliberation, it was determined to be the most practical option for the particular application. The real turf that was there before succumbed to excessive traffic above and very sandy soil below.
The contractor who will be installing this lawn sent a sample piece of it prior to the final installation. We actually do not know why we got a sample, since we already know what the particular artificial turf is like. There was some concern that it would get too warm in sunlight, but it arrived with no explanation. It was unrolled onto the asphalt driveway at our maintenance shops, and surrounded with cones to protect it from getting driven on.
Rhody wasted no time in trying it out. Obviously, he found it to be quite satisfactory. He rolls around on it and tried to dig into it like it is real grass. With all the fallen locust flowers and cottonwood fuzz, it even looks like a real lawn in need of raking. I certainly hope that it does not expect to be watered and mowed as well.
You might think that all horticulturists would automatically dislike artificial turf. Yet, I am not the only one who prefers it to real turf grass in some situations. You see, real turf takes so much effort that those of us who enjoy horticulture would rather put into other more interesting and productive chores. After all, lawn is the most demanding feature of most landscapes, but is also the most monotonous and boring. Many of the best get no use.
By the way, this article was intended for yesterday. The article that should have posted today got posted yesterday instead. I am sorry for the glitch of chronology.
The Seventh On Saturday
This is the one that got away; or actually, the one that was never caught. It bloomed after I got the pictures for the ‘Six on Saturday’ post for this morning. It could be the same unopened bud in picture #3 of the Six on Saturday post, as it is now blooming. If not the same bud, it is on the same plant, and now looks even more like the common ‘Simplicity’ rose. It is not my favorite, but I did not select it.
That is how the recovery nursery works. It is where we bring salvageable plants that need to be removed from their landscapes. Some were in the way of other projects. Some were not the right plants for their particular situations. Some were even donated by neighbors who thought we might be able to utilize them somewhere in the landscapes.
Some of plants brought in are not there long. They might get groomed and then moved directly to a more appropriate situation. That happens more during winter, when we dig up dormant plants and relocate them while the weather is still cool and rainy. We did this with a big overgrown forsythia that was dug and divided into five or so new plants before getting relocated into a new landscape. It helps is we can delay relocation until winter.
There are many potentially salvageable plants that must be moved at a particular time, even if it is not while they are dormant. They get groomed and canned (potted), and can take their time to recover before we put them back into the landscapes. Unfortunately, many do not recover adequately. Some end up staying too long because we can not find homes for them. After several years, the roses will finally be going to a new home soon.
Six on Saturday: The Yard
This is no home garden. It is the yard outside the various shops of the Maintenance Department where I work part time. It contains some of the salvageable plant material that we try to recycle from some of the landscapes from which it must be removed. Over winter, some plants get dug and relocated directly, rather than come to the yard. Otherwise, plants come here to get canned (potted) to recover, and then find a home.
Because no one sees our yard, we need not maintain it like we maintain the rest of the landscapes. Consequently, it collects a few weeds. Also, because there are other shops in the same buildings, there are a few unexpected odds and ends left strewn about by other types of professionals, such as the electrician. Hence, #6.
1. You know, when I took this picture, I though that the annual grassy weeds somehow looked pretty in front of the wild cucumber vine on the cyclone fence. I’m not the artsy sort; so will not try to explain it.
2. Mixed in with the wild cucumber vine, which incidentally makes not edible cucumbers, this potato vine blooms, but incidentally makes not potatoes. Of course, I never dug it up to confirm that claim.
3. This rose, which might be ‘Simplicity’, has been here for a few years. No one remembers where it came from. It was supposed to get planted into a landscape while it was still dormant. Too late now.
4. This rose might be ‘Medallion’, but it is hard to say for certain. It is not as big as it should be. It was supposed to get planted while dormant too. There actually is a landscape that can use both of them.
5. Shasta daisy has been blooming for a while now. You would think that it would be easy to find a home for this one, but it is still in the yard. It is big enough to divide into more plants if still here this winter.
6. Spring bulbs are done now.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Horridculture – Bad Pollarding And Coppicing
Pollarding and coppicing are proper pruning techniques. If you think you are an arborist who believes otherwise, do not waste my time arguing about it. More than likely, you are neither as educated nor as experienced as I am with such matters, or you work exclusively with trees for which such procedures would be very inappropriate.
Well, yes, pollarding and coppicing are very inappropriate for the vast majority of trees and shrubs out there. Furthermore, even for those trees and shrubs that they are appropriate for, such procedures are very rarely done properly here in California. Most attempts at pollarding and coppicing are really horrid!
Take these blue elderberries and mock oranges for examples. They were mutilated last summer to improve the view of the historic Felton Covered Bridge. It sort of accomplished that objective, although the improved view of the Bridge was then cluttered with the disfigured and mostly bare trunks and limbs of the brutalized shrubbery below. Because they were chopped back too late in summer to grow much, they stayed that way until now.
So it is spring, and the shrubbery is growing from the tops of the mutilated but tall trunks and limbs, right back to obstructing the view of the Bridge. They will likely get chopped when they get to be too overwhelming, which again, will be in late summer, repeating the process. It would be better to just remove the shrubbery not only because it would be less work, but also because the shrubbery is so unsightly when it gets chopped!
OR; the shrubbery could get coppiced. Both blue elderberry and mock orange respond favorably to the procedure. If coppiced, or in other words, if pruned back to the ground annually each winter, they could regenerate fresh new growth each spring, but not get big enough to crowd the view of the Bridge by the following winter, when they get coppiced again. The elderberry would not bloom or fruit; but that is not important here anyway.
Coppicing takes advantage of the natural dormancy and regenerative processes of the plants. Starting over fresh each spring and growing uninterrupted through summer is more natural for them than trying to recover from getting brutalized while they are actively growing in summer. Since they start the process at ground level, they have room to grow without interruption. If cut back only as much as necessary, they have no room to grow.
Utilitarian Landscape
I am no designer. I am merely a horticulturist. I grow things, and I know how things should be grown in landscape situations.
My colleague Brent Green is a landscape designer, as well as a horticulturist. He knows how things should be grown in landscape situations too, but more importantly, he knows how to assemble the landscapes that they grow in. He creates the sort of landscapes that most people think that all horticulturists strive for. (A few pictures of his home garden can be found in a former article, as well as another similar article that it links to: https://tonytomeo.com/2019/04/06/six-on-saturday-brents-garden/ .)
Brent and I have two completely different sets of standards for landscape design, to say the least. His ideal landscapes are very lush and inviting, with abundant color and fragrance. Mine are very simple and structured, with abundant fruits and vegetables. He strives to bring the ambiance of wild jungles into very urban settings. I try to instill formality and structure into the forests. Yet, we both agree that landscapes must be functional.
That means that landscapes must work for those using them, whatever they are using them for. Almost all of Brent’s clients use their landscapes as extensions of their homes, so want them to function as such.
I do not design landscapes, but I do happen to work in some. Most are in public spaces, and some are comparable to athletic fields. They function very differently from those in residential situations.
The unexpected way that these three small redwoods are functioning in this landscape was just too amusing to not get a picture of. I have no idea where all these wet suits came from, or why they are hung in this particularly prominent location, but it is the last thing I expected to encounter here.
Tony Tomeo 