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Our new web site is on the way while we are trying to set up our new store location. I thank all of our friends, clients and vendors for their patience while we move forward.
Neighborhood Nursery is undergoing a name change from it previously being Las Tunas Nursery. We decided on an easier name for newcomers to remember us since we are no longer on Las Tunas Dr. Our number has also changed. Our new, temporary, number is 626-872-4537 and ask for the nursery or the landscaping division.
Suddenly losing our lease for the nursery at 1155 E Las Tunas after 15 years in business was a shock to us. We want to stay in the San Gabriel Valley to support all those who helped us grow from an undeveloped piece of land under the Edison Right of Way, to the thriving business we built.
We are searching out properties in Pasadena at this time.
Thank you for your continued support.
Frank
We all know the importance of trees for aesthetics, heat reduction in our environment and for global air quality.
This study confirms the importance of forests- world wide.
August 16, 2011
Forests Absorb One Third Our Fossil Fuel Emissions
The world’s established forests remove 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon per year from the atmosphere – equivalent to one third of current annual fossil fuel emissions – according to new research published today in the journal Science.
This is the first time volumes of the greenhouse gas absorbed from the atmosphere by tropical, temperate and boreal forests have been so clearly identified.
“This is really a timely breakthrough with which we can now clearly demonstrate how forests and changes in landscape such as wildfire or forest regrowth impact the removal or release of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2),” says CSIRO co-author of the paper: A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests, Dr Pep Canadell.
“What this research tells us is that forests play a much larger role as carbon sinks as a result of tree growth and forest expansion.”
Dr Canadell, who is also the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, said the international research team combined data from forest inventories, models and satellites to construct a profile of forests as major regulators of atmospheric CO2.
In addition to the large carbon sink, he said scientists now know that deforestation is responsible for emitting 2.9 billion tonnes of carbon per year – an exchange that had not been known in the past because of a lack of data. For comparison, total emissions from fossil fuels are currently above eight billion tonnes of carbon per year.
Dr Canadell said emissions from deforestation are much larger than previously thought, suggesting that the potential benefits of avoiding deforestation through the United Nations-backed Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme, are much larger than previously appreciated.
The REDD scheme aims to formulate a financial value for the carbon stored in forests.
Dr Canadell said a surprising finding was the large capacity of tropical forest re-growth to remove atmospheric CO2. Regrowth takes place following the end of logging and slash-and-burn land clearing projects. and, to a lesser extent, when new forest plantations are planted.
“We estimate that tropical forest regrowth is removing an average of 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon per year. Unfortunately, some countries have not looked on forest regrowth as a component of REDD, and so are missing a very important opportunity to gain even further climate benefits from the conservation of forests.
“Combining the uptake by established and forest re-growth plus emissions from deforestation, the world’s forests have a net effect on atmospheric CO2 equivalent to the removal of 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon every year.
“Carbon exchanges from tropical forests have the highest uncertainties in this analysis and this research has required a concerted effort to refine them to our best knowledge,” Dr Canadell said.
This work has been undertaken as part of the Australian Climate Change Science Program, funded jointly by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.
The paper was co-authored by: Yude Pan, Richard Birdsey, Jingyun Fang, Richard Houghton, Pekka Kauppi, Werner A. Kurz, Oliver L. Phillips, Anatoly Shvidenko, Simon L. Lewis, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Stephen Pacala, A David McGuire, Shilong Piao, Aapo Rautiainen, Stephen Sitc and Daniel Hayes.
SOURCE: CSIRO
This is a great article on the importance of trees in our landscape.
Plant trees and cut your energy bills by 30%
Learn how to plant summer shade trees and a winter windbreak to save money on energy bills all year long.
By Arbor Day Foundation of The Daily Green
Did you know that just three trees properly placed around a house could save up to 30% of energy use? This is according to the U.S. Forest Service Center for Urban Forest Research. One study found that trees planted on the south and west sides of houses in Sacramento, Calif., reduced summertime electricity bills by an average of $25.
Trees provide many benefits to all of us, every day. They provide cooling shade, block cold winter winds, attract birds and other wildlife, purify the air, prevent soil erosion, clean our water and add grace and beauty to our homes and communities. In Chicago, the city’s 3.6 million trees reduce air pollution by about 890 tons annually, a $6.4 million benefit, according to the Forest Service. And in Portland, Ore., street trees growing in front of or near a house added an average of $8,870 to its sale price and reduced time on the market by nearly two days.
Planting the right trees in the right places conserves energy and reduces your energy bills, while helping to fight global warming.
Try these tips for getting the most energy- and money-saving benefit from the trees you plant on your property.
Plant deciduous trees on the east and west sides of your home
Deciduous trees (ones that lose their leaves), planted on the east and west sides, will keep your house cool in the summer and let the sun warm your home in the winter, reducing energy use, according to the Energy Department.
Large deciduous trees planted on the east, west and northwest sides of your home create soothing shade from the hot summer sun and reduce air-conditioning costs by up to 35%.
You use less energy.
The utility company uses less energy, especially at peak demand times.
Less fossil fuel is consumed by the utility to create the energy.
Less fossil-fuel consumption means lower carbon-dioxide emissions.
Plant deciduous trees to shade high-heat spots.
Trees or shrubs planted to shade air conditioners help cool a building more efficiently, using less electricity. A unit operating in the shade uses as much as 10% less electricity than the same one operating in the sun.
Plant evergreen trees to the north and northwest of your home.
After the leaves fall, the sun pours through tree branches to warm your home in winter.
The sun travels lower on the southern horizon in winter, so you’ll want to avoid planting evergreen trees on the south side of your home, where they’ll block winter sunshine.
Instead, plant an evergreen conifer windbreak on the north and northwest of your home to block cold winter winds. That could help you save up to 30% on your heating costs. Once again …
You use less energy.
The utility company uses less energy.
Less fossil fuel is consumed by the utility to create the energy.
Less fossil-fuel consumption means less carbon dioxide emissions.
The best protection from wind occurs when the windbreak is no more than the distance of one or two tree heights from the house.
The downwind side of the trees is where the most snow accumulates, so plant your windbreak at a distance equal to one or two tree heights from your rooftop and driveway if you can.
Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.
I attended the 2011 California Grown Show and Nursery Mart yesterday. The show is smaller than many I attend, but it is also more intimate. It was fun to walk the aisles and see old friends, some I have not seen for years, and make many new ones.
Our updated catalog will show several of the new varieties of dwarf shrubs and perennials, which are our specialty, that I see are coming to market this year. Dwarf Photinia and Phormiums, mimulas that will bloom longer in the heat and some interesting wattles, that are typically large trees, all staying under 5 ft tall. I’ll do an update later on these and many other plants that were on display.
What I liked about this show was that many of the nurseries were represented by their owners and upper management, people I don’t see unless I go to their shops and catch them between their other clients.
We have been 20 year customers of Weeks Roses, one of our suppliers of bare root roses. Weeks and Iselli nursery were in the news this week. They were purchased by a company that is known to be very technology oriented. Their product lines will remain the same, but efficiencies of scale will be brought into play and I am excited to see what new products can come out of this.
I also had a long conversation with Brad Fickes of Normans Nursery, one of the largest nurseries in the western US. Normans is one of our neighbors and they have been working hard remaking themselves, growing more varieties of trees and shrubs that we at Neighborhood Nursery find exciting. They are using new types of growing containers that help prevent root girdling in the cans. New varieties of plants that will fit into the small planter beds of our Southern California homes will hit the market next year. Brad was telling me about their new dwarf Photinia. I haven’t specified a Photinia-Red Tip to a project in nearly 15 years because there just isn’t any room for a 10 ft wide growing shrub in any of our homes, unless you hack it back. So this dwarf variety may be a great addition. I will plant one in a display somewhere and see what happens.
I also met a few new aquatic plant vendors. When their product hits our displays, I let you know.
Essence of Grapefruit Repels Bugs
Centers for Disease Control is looking for all-natural insect repellents
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking for an all-natural insect repellent, and it’s found a viable candidate.
The CDC is pushing hard to develop a completely natural insect repellent made from a chemical called nootkatone, which is found in Alaska yellow cedar trees and citrus fruit, said Marc Dolan of the CDC’s vector-borne infectious diseases laboratory in Fort Collins, Colo.
Dolan says nootkatone “is nongreasy, dries very quickly, and it has a very pleasant, citrus-y grapefruit odor to it.”
He recently demonstrated its effectiveness as a mosquito repellent, rubbing some on his hand and then sticking it into a cage containing 50 hungry mosquitoes. When he holds the treated hand near mosquitoes, they try to get away in the opposite direction as fast as they can.
Even after five minutes, Dolan has no bites on his nootkatone-treated hand.
Nootkatone is also effective against ticks, and scientists think it will work against bed bugs, head lice and other insects, too.
Moreover, nootkatone is so nontoxic you could drink it. In fact, it’s already an approved food additive, officially classed as “Generally Considered Safe.” It’s also a natural ingredient in some foods.
“If you’ve had a grapefruit, you’ve consumed some nootkatone,” Dolan says, “or drank a Squirt, for instance.”
Dolan, who is leading a CDC team to develop nootkatone, says it could be put into soaps and sunscreens, so people wouldn’t have to apply a separate bug repellent.
But that’s not all — it turns out that nootkatone could be both a repellent and an environmentally friendly pesticide. That’s because it doesn’t just repel bugs — it kills them.
Kills In Seconds
Nick Panella, another CDC biologist, recently demonstrated nootkatone’s insecticidal properties by coating the inside of a jar with the chemical and then introducing some mosquitoes. Within seconds, they all started to die.
“This stuff has incredible knock-down,” Dolan says, referring to an insecticide’s ability to kill off bugs. “It kills very, very quickly, usually within a matter of about 15 seconds.”
It kills by blocking receptors on insects’ nerve cells for a neurotransmitter called octopamine. That makes the insects hyperactive. “They basically vibrate themselves to death,” Dolan says.
Humans don’t have octopamine receptors, so that may make nootkatone safe for humans, though Dolan says scientists don’t yet know whether there’s any cross-reaction between nootkatone and adrenaline receptors. Adrenaline is the human analog of insects’ octopamine.
Dolan thinks nootkatone is likely to be so nontoxic that it could be an ingredient in “the world’s first insecticidal soap.”
“If you come in from your garden, you could shower with this soap, which would not only repel ticks and mosquitoes, or ticks that may be on you,” he says, “but ticks that may be actively feeding on you, it would cause them to detach and possibly kill them.”
Environmentally Safe
Tests so far indicate that nootkatone is highly effective as an environmental insecticide, and not just against mosquitoes. “A single application of a 2 percent solution of nootkatone will control ticks for up to 42 days at greater than 97 percent efficacy,” Dolan says.
Another advantage, he says, is that nootkatone is volatile, so it doesn’t persist very long in the environment.
“Essential oils [such as nootkatone] kill bugs and then break down and are no longer active,” the CDC scientist says. “So you don’t get a lot of soil contamination. We don’t see groundwater contamination. And we don’t have a high impact on other nontarget insects that may come into the sprayed area, such as bees and butterflies.”
Finally, nootkatone works in a completely different way from other insecticides, so mosquitoes aren’t resistant to it yet — a major problem with current insecticides. The CDC hopes the chemical will be impregnated into bed nets to reduce malaria transmission in areas where the mosquito-borne disease is endemic.
The CDC owns patents on nootkatone and has licensed them to two companies — one to develop a repellent, the other to work on insecticides. The agency isn’t looking to make much money; its interest is in seeing products get to market.
Right now nootkatone is expensive — $4,000 per kilogram for highly purified food-grade material, which is used in parts-per-million amounts as a flavoring agent. Repellents and insecticides would use a higher concentration — perhaps 2 percent. But it wouldn’t need to be as purified.
Dolan says efforts are under way to find cheaper sources of nootkatone, such as waste products from the citrus and forestry industries. In addition, a different form, called nootkatol, appears to be a lower-cost alternative for repellents. “Nootkatol is just a waste product,” he says. “Right now, that’s virtually free.”
Neighborhood Nursery and The Rainbow Gardens Landscape are working with my fellow alumni from the The Penn State Alumni Association, along with Pasadena Beautiful and the Diggers Garden Club at Hillsides, a foster care facility providing education and a safe environment for those in their care.
The project is low water use but colorful. Plant materials have been chosen for their low maintenance qualities, texture and color.
Maintenance is expected to take only a few hours, once monthly.
Here is the plan
This is going to be a great project and I’ll post updates as work progresses.
Moringa oleifera Tree Provides Low-Cost Water Purification Method For Developing World
March 3, 2010
A low-cost water purification technique published in Current Protocols in Microbiology could help drastically reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world. The procedure, which uses seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree, can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water, and has been made free to download as part of access programs under John Wiley & Sons’ Corporate Citizenship Initiative.
A billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are estimated to rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily water needs. Of these, some two million are thought to die from diseases caught from contaminated water every year, with the majority of these deaths occurring among children under five years of age. Michael Lea, a Current Protocols author and a researcher at Clearinghouse, a Canadian organisation dedicated to investigating and implementing low-cost water purification technologies, believes the Moringa oleifera tree could go a long way to providing a solution.
“Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia. It could be considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees,” said Lea. “Not only is it drought resistant, it also yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertilizer, as well as highly nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.”
Moringa tree seeds, when crushed into powder, can be used as a water-soluble extract in suspension, resulting in an effective natural clarification agent for highly turbid and untreated pathogenic surface water. As well as improving drinkability, this technique reduces water turbidity (cloudiness) making the result aesthetically as well as microbiologically more acceptable for human consumption.
Despite its live-saving potential, the technique is still not widely known, even in areas where the Moringa is routinely cultivated. It is therefore Lea’s hope that the publication of this technique in a freely available protocol format, a first, will make it easier to disseminate the procedure to the communities that need it.
“This technique does not represent a total solution to the threat of waterborne disease,” concluded Lea. “However, given that the cultivation and use of the Moringa tree can bring benefits in the shape of nutrition and income as well as of far purer water, there is the possibility that thousands of 21st century families could find themselves liberated from what should now be universally seen as19th century causes of death and disease. This is an amazing prospect, and one in which a huge amount of human potential could be released. This is particularly mind-boggling when you think it might all come down to one incredibly useful tree.”
SOURCE: Wiley-Blackwell
March 3, 2010
DWR Announces Third Snow Survey Results Of 2009-2010 Winter Season
SACRAMENTO – Manual and electronic readings today indicate that water content in California’s mountain snowpack is 107 percent of normal for the date. This time last year, snow water content statewide was 80 percent of normal. “Today’s readings boost our hope that we will be able to increase the State Water Project allocation by this spring to deliver more water to our cities and farms,” said Department of Water Resources (DWR) Director Mark Cowin. “But we must remember that even a wet winter will not fully offset three consecutive dry years or pumping restrictions to protect Delta fish so we must continue to conserve and protect our water resources.”Lake Oroville, the State Water Project’s principal storage reservoir, is recovering slowly after three dry years. Despite recent storms, its storage level today is only 55 percent average for this time of year. It is also expected that dry soil conditions will absorb much of the snowpack’s water content that otherwise would help to replenish streams and reservoirs during the spring and early summer melt.
On February 26, the State Water Project allocation was increased from 5 to 15 percent of requested amounts. If wet weather continues, the final allocation this spring likely will be in the range of 35-45 percent of requested amounts. The figure will partially be determined by how the fishery agency restrictions on pumping are applied, which will determine how much flexibility DWR has to export water from the Delta.
In 2009, the State Water Project delivered 40 percent of customer requests. The federal Central Valley Project in 2009 was only able to deliver 10 percent of contracted amounts to some agricultural areas in the San Joaquin Valley. The reduced deliveries were due both to dry weather and fishery agency pumping restrictions to protect fish species; principally Delta smelt, salmon, and longfin smelt.
The average of final State Water Project allocations over the past 10 years has been 68 percent of the amount requested by the 29 public agencies with long-term contracts to purchase SWP water.
Results of today’s manual snow survey by the Department of Water resources off Highway 50 near Echo Summit are as follows:
Location Elevation Snow Depth Water Content % of Long Term Average
Alpha 7,600 feet 74.3 inches 26.2 inches 94
Phillips Station 6,800 feet 76.3 inches 25.1 inches 102
Lyons Creek 6,700 feet 79.4 inches 26.9 inches 105
Tamarack Flat 6,500 feet 77.8 inches 26.2 inches 112
Electronic sensor readings show northern Sierra snow water equivalents at 126 percent of normal for the date, central Sierra at 93 percent, and southern Sierra at 109 percent. The sensor readings are posted at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgiprogs/snow/DLYSWEQ.
Importance of Snow Surveying
Snow water content is important in determining water supply. The measurements help hydrologists prepare water supply forecasts as well as provide others, such as hydroelectric power companies and the recreation industry, with needed data. Monitoring is coordinated by the Department of Water Resources as part of the multi-agency California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program. Surveyors from more than 50 agencies and utilities visit hundreds of snow measurement courses in California’s mountains to gauge the amount of water in the snowpack.
The Department of Water Resources operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Contact the DWR Public Affairs Office for more information about DWR’s water activities.
Some California American Water (Cal Am) customers could see their water bills quadruple shortly. The rates were approved in July by the Public Utilities Commission, and will force the biggest water users to change their habits or pay more than ever.
Additionally, the majority of Cal Am customers will see an increase of 20%, resulting in an average monthly increase of $2.81. For about one in 10 customers, bills should stay the same or go down, while the majority of customers–62%–will see their bills increase by at least 20%.
Certain areas will be placed on a water allotment. Another change is that customers will be billed according to every 10 cubic feet of water used. Under the old rate system, customers were billed according to every 100 cubic feet of water.
The intent of the new rates is to discourage water waste and to foster conservative landscape irrigation practices, water officials said.
I have been a proponent of water conservation for 25 years and am more active than ever in promoting the proper use of irrigation in our community. I have found that most people are conscious of the need to be conservative water users, but there really is no incentive for many others not to save water. In these cases, stricter restrictions may be necessary. However, those of us that have been saving water for years, should not be penalized for not being able to save more than is reasonable. The City of Los Angeles is proposing a law that would require us to save more water when it is raining than nature itself can.
Los Angeles may require storm water recapture beginning in 2011, but the proposed law may have gone to the extreme.
The fairly new approach to managing storm water and urban runoff is designed to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization by controlling runoff at its source, which is parking lots, rooftops, driveways and streets, with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of treatment facilities. These “natural” systems would be rain gardens for small parcels and holding ponds for larger areas. But “larger” areas that have no land for holding ponds will have to install not so natural underground holding and or dispersement systems. And these systems are not small or cost effective.
The proposed law would require new homes, larger developments and some redevelopments in Los Angeles to capture and reuse runoff generated in rainstorms. Reducing this runoff improves water quality and recharges groundwater, which is a great thing.
The proposed ordinance approved in January by the Department of Public Works could go into effect by 2011 and would require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100 percent of runoff generated in a 3/4 -inch rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution mitigation fee that would help fund off-site, low-impact public developments.
With a project I am consulting on right now, the developer will be installing a system sized to his water needs. 100% of the water necessary to irrigate his landscape during the dry season will be captured and held for use from the rainfall captured over the course of the entire winter season. It is not realistically possible, either physically or financially to catch more than this on the available land, nor is there a reason to do so.
I do not understand how we should be forced to capture the 3/4 inch rainfall amount to be mitigated if it is more than nature itself can save. Runoff in our local foothills can occur with as little as 1/4 inch of rain. And what do you do if you have a 3/4 inch rain event followed closely by a second event? It is unreasonable to have to trap 1-1 1/2 inches of water under ground until it can infiltrate into the ground or be used.
LA Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, who drafted the ordinance last July, said the new requirements would prevent 104 million gallons of polluted urban runoff from ending up in the ocean. Under the ordinance, builders would be required to use rainwater storage tanks, permeable pavement, infiltration swales or curb bump-outs to manage the water where it falls. Builders unable to manage 100 percent of a project’s runoff on site would be required to pay a penalty of $13 a gallon of runoff not handled there—a requirement the Building Industry Assn. has been fighting.
Some building projects, such as those in downtown L.A. or areas where the soil is high in clay, would have difficulty with the 100 percent retention rule and that the $13-a-gallon mitigation fee is too high. A one-acre building on ground where runoff could not be managed on site, Schroeder said, could pay a fee as high as $238,000.
Realistically, storing water for our use during the dry season, installing rain gardens to hold water so that it can infiltrate into the ground naturally and being conservative with the use of our water is what we should be doing now. Being penalized for mother nature raining ¾ inch at a time is unrealistic.
A budget shortfall may force major changes in the City of Los Angeles that could affect the maintenance of trees along the city streets and parks.
 Homeowners in LA may have to maintain their own trees Los Angeles’ top budget analyst, Miguel Santana, is urging council members to focus on very bracing financial challenges in the years ahead which would include outsourcing landscape maintenance operations normally done by city workers.
The Los Angeles City Council could vote this week on whether to proceed with the elimination of 1,000 positions to address this year’s $208-million deficit and the city’s dwindling reserve fund. Santana urged city officials to immediately begin seeking private contractors for the convention center, municipal golf courses, city parking garages and the zoo. For example, a proposed pilot program in the parks department would contract out 20 percent of its landscaping duties. And L.A. residents could soon see some unpleasant changes.
Tree trimming may no longer be a service that Angelenos can count on. Because of prior budget cuts, very few of the city’s palm trees will be trimmed this year, according to the report. In the future, the city’s top budget analyst is asking City Council members to consider reducing the costs of street tree trimming “to the bare minimum” and returning “responsibility for street tree maintenance to the abutting property owner,” as was the case before a change to city law in 1931.
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