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I started with ornamental grasses and I've became really interested in making meadows
and low evergreen panels nobody wanted me to make a big flammable landscape
and instead of everybody you know throwing their arms around me and
and loving me and buying my plants like Kurt Bluemel on the East Coast, people
are going:
"this isn't a gonna escape like Pampas grass is it?" everybody was already sorta
looking at me
you know funny, and it was this thing where you had
really say, I mean as a scientist, sometimes I like to think that I'm a scientist,
and go "Gee, I Really Don't Know"
Nobody's ever done it, you know, so
a lot of these plants these were there first times, really, on the west coast
and seeing what they do, or didn't do, which is why
for the last five years, I started spending more time actually looking at native western plants.
Western grasses from Mexico from Texas
from other areas similar to ours and saying well
there's 10,000 years of ecology on this one, you know like we know that this
one works
that kind of thing
This is a native Western Sedge, Carex texensis,
sedges are of the Cyperaceae family, the same family as nut grass,
I'm still waiting, that's my ultimate goal , to sell nut grass to somebody
I mean it still like tortures my professors
at school that I sell stuff for a living that they basically taught me in weed lab...
(laughter) but these are sedges, members of the Cyperaceae family
when you say the word "grass" it can be, there's about
4 to 5 maybe even six different plant families lumped into "grass"
the true grass family is Poaceae (also called Gramineae or true grasses)
so I've I spent a lot of time looking at these sedges
and i'm looking at these for for being lawns that don't need much mowing
or you know don't need, say the same kinda maintenance as says
as standard turf grass. This one's clumping
but it's mat forming, you can see the texture
this is the height of it unmowed, only problem is you can't buy it as sod just yet
I showed you that little flatter one Caex texensis
this one is a little bit coarser
uh, in wet meadows, in nature, it might be
12 to 18 inches, maybe more
we've maintain it sort of like you see here by mowing twice a year
... look at the rabbits here, sorta gave up on the rabbits, we were poisoning them for a while
and finally I just said you know I'm gonna need stuff that rabbits don't eat
anyway so I bring stuff here like did today
set it out and if they eat it, then, (shrugs)
you know it has limited applications, I'm making meadows
and lawns out of these creeping sedges
this one has a nice dark green color , it's tough
basic evergreen, so how I got away from the
you know, where I started looking for plants in nature
was not on the hot dry slopes, but not
actually down in the water with cattails. looking for the stuff that was was like on the edge
so like this, which basically in nature
Where I collected this in nature, it was still in August
and still basically green, although it was crispy on top
So, the point is is, with maybe
4 irrigations per summer, you could basically keep this evergreen
whether it's Country Club green or not is another story...
But if you made fifty acres of this, you'd get your money back
in reduced mowing after the first year
I keep talking to firms, going, "Don't you think your client would be?
you know it's like NO! We just want to sell houses, get in the house is as quick as we can
and it's like well but who is gonna have to pay that water bill
on that like that fertilizer bill & that mowing bill later on
I think this is just fine for median strips, parks or anything
Ruby Grass or or Rhynchelytrum nerviglume this had
incredible amethyst pink flower spikes
that have all disappeared
Clumping, it does sort of
seed itself a little bit. here and there so um
I use it as an accent, I don't make large scale panels of it
this is a new Pennisetum I'm excited about, it flowers
it is basically finished
This could be my Holy Grail of meadow grasses
I talk about my Holy Grail of lawns: Mowable, walkable, evergreen, drought tolerant
grows from seed but doesn't seed itself. I want a similar thing from a meadow grass
a showy flower, but when the flower is finished
I want the flower to shatter and clean itself. I don't have to go back and
phhfft, cut the old flower off and that's what this guy does
very excited about this one...we've done some 70,000 50,000 units plantings of them
down in San Diego County
that is our first sort of large-scale plantings of them
These were planted from plugs 24 inches on center, so they probably could have
really been like 15-17 yeah
The trick is ...
getting a client to put up with the little tufts going in
and how long does it take to get going... This is Buffalo Grass
I've been growing buffalo grass now
really since I moved here, and the turf industry just
does not wanna get behind Buffalo Grass.
Who wants a lawn that just does not want to be watered, fertilized or mowed
Most of the California turf grass industry cartel
at UC Riverside and Davis, I know these guys I'd say the same thing if they were here
Their whole life's work was in turf & Bermuda grass. It came about
whether you could wack a ball on it, a lot has to do with the golf course industry
There were two uses, whether cows could eat it, or whether you could hit a ball on it
that's really what turf grass has been all about when I was a young buck
just going to horticulture school the improved tall fescues didn't exist yet
tall fescue was this big rank coarse grass
you saw out on bad athletic fields and they kept hybridizing it
and hybridizing until the leaf got narrower & narrower until the leaf was looking more and more like bluegrass
and that's really our state-of-the-art now of course our tall fescues
right? That's a European species.
This is a native southwestern prairie grass
native to the short grass prairies
it goes from Canada all the way down to Mexico
touches the Pacific in Mexico but it doesn't get across the
the Mojave again to really be
quote unquote a California native. but what's wrong with buffalo grass?
you know? well what's wrong with it
is it goes dormant, nobody wants a grass that goes dormant
but look at it, I love the color
Buffalo Grass downsides are, the biggest downside is
that it looks an awful lot like Bermuda... and of course Bermuda
is the most serious weed pest of Western horticulture
So Bermuda grass gets started in this
so if somebody plants a lawn of this
and don't do, you know, thorough, you know weed control
beforehand then eventually like every other
turf grass lawn in California this will revert to Bermuda Grass
There's male & female buffalo grass plants
the plants as boys and girls The turf industry was testing the girls
the female flower... is held down inside
the turf grass guys were looking at female flowers held down inside
but when I saw male buffalo grass
in test trials I was like, he look at that, the male flowers stick up above
adds a little sparkle to the whole thing we'll see some up here
but check this out, this is a female clone
this has never been mowed
never been mowed
couple sod growers tried to grow it, one guy down in uh
the desert and some guy up in Sacramento and it has just not caught on.
I plant it in my projects, it's extremely heat tolerant, extremely drought tolerant...it works here by the coast
the problems I've had is if Bermuda gets started and the help can't tell the difference
I collected these in West Texas, this is a Muhlenbergia. Muhlenbergia emerslyi
The flowers come out on this kind of a purple
very open & then they dry to this
um to this sort of spike you see here ...
this is a great flowering accent grass, you know
this would work in Phoenix, Vegas it is showy
full evergreen foliage basically to about here, flowers here, you can see through
my speck on this will be,once a year to shear it
as close to the crown as you could get it
the first year, maybe not the 1st, but after the 2nd year
like every you know, once a year
The Big Chop...I try to talk to clients about that right off the bat, There's Gonna Be A Chop
You can maybe do it a little bit at a time
quadrant by quadrant... supposedly our good friend Robert Irwin at the Getty
gonna make art out of the Muhlenbergia we sold him
for the area going down there. In Japan they
do projects like tie them up
you know or something of that nature. I think they should have like the big corporate burn...
This is actually softer then Texas Meadows Sedge
this actually feels better on the the bare tops than the
than the wiry dark green
native California Carex. It does
we have some now, that are little more lawn like. This is the main lawn in front yard now
Now I define a lawn as a grassy panel by virtue of
short enough or creeping enough that you can walk on it
without twisting your ankle so even though this is basically a clumping grass
It's mat forming so you are not gonna gonna turn your ankle on it
This is still not "quote" a traditional lawn
and basically the look you're seeing now
it was looking really nice until we mowed it
because it was growing up, it had grown up and folded over on itself
but after yeah but after we do the cut, then you
you know you get this sort of look
and if we work to maintain this regularly as a lawn if you mowed it more
often
it would be more lawn like in appearance when you mow the grass is
it forces them to tiller I like this grass a lot
for its golden color. I plant it where the places where the late afternoon light
sort of shows on it, to me this is a perfect condo/backyard
I mean, you can walk on it
the animals can play on it and basically you maybe cut it twice a year
Y'know cut twice a year
Evergreen , drought tolerant, there isno flower on it, nothing to write home about but
but its also basically clean, nice texture
this plant gets 4-5 ft high & wide
so a mass planting is 6 feet on center
This is Spartina Bakeri, Florida Cord Grass
Florida gamagrass this is actually one of the best evergreen grasses I have for deep shade
you know look at the two
the difference between the two
this has as a prolific flower spike so it reads a little browner, but check out the flowers that are really trippy
back this is a nice you can group it with diodes
in the shade evergreen
flowers somewhat showy ...ah you don't call it showy
interesting... but not showy, if I was to do a light
chop here, like cut it in half & come out
after the flowers have been taken off
I really like this one... Sun or shade. Here it is in full sun, in the shade it is a darker green
such a good grass for the shade
and you know, grass-like is the other thing that
really almost all of these grass-like things I'm going to show you ...the phormiums
the nolinas and all this stuff that are basically from
grasslands like that that's something you would see
is yuccas and grasses come together with you when you really find good desert
its its grass y'know
I just don't see it I certainly don't see it in Phoenix but uh
these are nolinas they are in the in the lily family and
rabbits don't eat 'em... they get a white flower they have really sharp edges
but we have nolinas that'll grow from Oregon
Washington all the way to Florida there are a lot of native
nolinas and nurseries are really just starting to grow them but great networking with the grasses
here's something if the rabbit problem is just so nasty that you can't even
even deal with, not very user-friendly
sharp edges and you wouldn't want to put it anyplace where it would...
This is a great plant if you don't know it: Kalanchoe, it's a succulent
I've treated it as a climber on a vine up trellises
If you've got a large scale project you can buy this from me... it is a cutting.. you can stick it right in the ground
get I've worked with Nancy Powers and a couple
other designers that are aware of the fact you can do it this way
you can really drop the cost of a mass planting down
by just using cuttings
you do have to coordinate certain things
that's why you see a lot of the succulents. This is a brand-new grass
I'm really excited about Brachypodium It is a species I got from Denver
and its in the brome family. That's the flower, nothing to write home about
but still a nice little dainty thing, good dark green color, good in the shade
and actually the foliage, if you feel it, it's hairy
so it does that thing that plants do when they have
pillous foliage they
hold little water droplets in the dew... for grass-like stuff these are Kniphofias
this is Kniphofia zuluensis
I brought a lot of what i've got today are more bulbs
in my own design work
those are phormiums, phormium surfer right there
here's phormium dark delight
they all revert, they all eventually revert
so they just do...
Right they'll revert back to a non-colored form unless somebody gets in there
pulls that reversion out, then you know
its eventually gonna go into some other color
They don't like really hot Monrovia Nursery picked these up in the 60's
couldn't figure out how to grow 'em in Arcadia and and I can either I don't grow them in Pomona
They basically just sulk all summer long
then down here they crank. This is a new Phormium
That actually came from the old Burkhardt's Nursery in Pasadena
a dwarf Phormium Tenax Variegata look at this this
Dark Delight and behind it is
is aPhormium I don't think is being used enough, is the species, the straight species
Phormium cookianum
this is the Phormium Tenax is the one species
which is big upright growth and this is cookianum
which is basically foliage 2-4 ft
much more prolific from a flowering standpoint , those bloom red
this is a 609 Buffalo Grass
609! ~ Turf Grass guys are really something else
once again two cuts a year basically maintains it like this.
Q: Pretty Good With Traffic?
A: you can see it's it's a little greener and they make football fields out of it in Nebraska
this grass right here is called Sweet Grass
and when I'm makin' meadows
I grab some this , and crush it , smell it, its real perfumed, good for accents
one of the original screwing herbs, this is actually it's a warm-season grower so it's actually going dormant
now what I'm really interested in is really the art & science
making & actually mixing grasses together... you add a little of this
The Carex we saw,
just get a little
we get some sweetner out of it, poke in some bulbs, just let it, y'know,
maybe some Brachypodium coming up
try to make it look like God did it
so you know you can't be just as formal layered, like this, or you can start, you know putting it together...
I think that's the fun part
I think it really is something new in horticulture