Spark

Well, you know we all want to change the world. Here are a few people who are doing it and inspiring the rest of us to join up!

Fritz Haeg is approaching growing your own food as an art expression and in the process creating a revolution in how we approach our front yards. He wrote “Attack on the Front Lawn” and installed an ‘Edible Estate’ right here in Austin in 2008.

Artist Ju Doqui playing with his vegetables...

Resolution Garden installation in a school yard.

Austin has local enterpreneurs making it sooo easy for us to get growing – now is the time.

With so many resources available to help us, why not?

Austin Urban Garden installation.

Austin Urban Gardens has a simple approach to creating your own veggie garden, as does Resolution Gardens’ Randy Jewart. Randy has this list of reasons to grow your own on their website:

Save $ U.S. farmers normally receive about 22 cents of every dollar spent on food. The remaining 78 cents is devoted to packaging, labor, transportation, depreciation and marketing.

Safety If we grow it, we know what goes into making it.

Reduce Carbon Fruits and vegetables shipped from distant states and countries can spend as many as 14 days in transit before they arrive in the supermarket.

image by Pam Penick: http://www.penick.net/digging

Eat Healthy Those who choose to eat local foods produced seasonally are much more likely to consume a greater amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, and tend to eat less processed foods that are often high in calories and saturated fats.

Share Whether it’s the farmer who brings local apples to market or the baker who makes local bread, knowing part of the story about your food is such a powerful part of enjoying a meal.

Explore Many aspects of gardening seem miraculous when you are actually involved in them – you may know intellectually that seeds grow into plants, and waste decomposes into compost, but when you actually do it, it seems wondrous.

To see more of talented designer/blogger Pam Penick's story about this garden by Jenny of RockRose blog, click on the photo!

March is a perfect time to put in a garden - look at all the veggies that go in the ground this month!
First half of month: plant potatoes, asparagus crowns, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, mustard and collard greens, carrots, radishes, Swiss chard and lettuce.
Second half of month: plant tomatoes, peppers, snap beans, lima beans, corn, cantaloupe, cucumbers, eggplant and squash.

So you’ve been following the series, dreaming of your highest and best design, getting a clear picture of the style that suits you best, and gathering up your inspirational images. Now it’s time for action! Get out and get your hands on the finest Austin has to offer… Visit Natural Gardener for pots, plants, water [...]

Close your eyes… picture your favorite outfit in your closet right now. What do you love about it? Color? Texture? The way it fits? It’s one way to understand your overall sense of style and head off into the promised landscape. Minimal. No muss, no fuss? Try a minimalistic approach – you may find layers [...]

Snuggling up with friends on an outdoor couch with a fire in the firepit (or chimenea if there is a burn ban in effect) is so attractive this time of year. It just makes conversation flow. A Spark client is considering a structure for her firepit/conversation area so I went to one of my favorite [...]

There is no better time to plant in Central Texas than now! Plants will have a long establishment time before getting socked with the searing summer heat. We can work happily in the garden without sweating ourselves to dried husks. And often times, nurseries will reduce the pricing on some stock to move it before [...]

Perhaps the previous ideas posted in this series (synthetic grass; edible estates) just don’t solve your ish. You still need to cover the bare ground in your yard with something simple, beautiful and sustainable. Below are some quick fixes with some pros and cons. Allow me a quick word to the wise: some clients bandy [...]

Children in white linen frolicking with croquet mallets. Rolling meadows of close cropped fescues and sedges. Bucolic pastures dotted with sheep. I think these images are the inspiration for our approach to our yards – long stretches of green to give us the feeling we are To the Manor Born. Well, snap out of it! [...]

As we transition from Crazy Hot Summer to Tolerably Warm Fall here in Austin, we tend to burst outside as if surfacing from a deep dive. We gulp in the fresh air and revel in the teeniest cool breeze. It begs the question – how do we bring that gorgeousness inside when we can’t be [...]