women in the plant world: ‘the earth in her hands,’ with jennifer jewell

Luxury Rockridge Casita in Sunny Garden / Melissa Habegger Photo

Every kitchen needs good storage, but not every kitchen has good storage. Some are small and need a lot of hacks to find a spot for everything. Some can be the right size but with not enough cabinet or drawer space. And others are just not using their storage potential fully, like this kitchen in San Rafael, California.

It’s well known that the housing market is so competitive right now, but prospective home buyers aren’t the only ones hurting—renters are, too. According to personal finance website WalletHub, inflation has impacted rental prices, and 2022 saw the second-highest price growth in decades with a 6.2% year-over-year increase. 

For those who are looking to buy a home for the first time, the feat can seem like quite the hurdle. With housing prices and interest rates still high, and a competitive market, it’s tough out there! And the number of first-time home buyers are dropping, too, because of those high prices—according to personal finance site WalletHub, 26% off home purchases were made by first-time home buyers in 2022, down from 34% the previous year.

The ‘80s film Back to the Future (and its subsequent sequels) are total classics, and while fans will most definitely remember the comedic one-liners, storylines, and iconic characters, there are also some noteworthy architecture and design moments. Doc Brown’s home in the film is the Gamble House in Pasadena, California, a stunning, historic example of the Arts and Crafts movement designed by influential 20th century architects Charles and Henry Greene. Movie fans still flock to the location to take photos and go on tours.

Read this Boysenberry vs. Blackberry guide to find differences and similarities between the two and get a clarity once and for all!

Experience the charm of Cactus with Arms, where nature takes on an unexpected twist. These captivating plants bring you the rugged beauty of cacti with arms, showcasing nature’s creativity at its finest.

Did you know that citrus fruits are one of the only fruits in season during the winter? Not too long ago, the joys of taste-testing some unique citrus fruits was limited to winter, but now we can enjoy many citrus fruits (and their many benefits) all year long. One delicious type of orange that you may not be familiar with is the cara cara orange. A relatively new kid on the block, the cara cara is not only beautiful, but it also has a flavor profile that might just make it your new favorite citrus.

Nothing says Christmas more than a poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima). Did you know that December 12th is known as National Poinsettia Day? Plant breeders have developed a wide range of colors in hues of white, purple, orange, and pink, but red poinsettias continue to be the most traditional color of the holiday season.

The English-born Capon, a doctor of botany from the University of Chicago who went on to be a professor at California State University, Los Angeles for 30 years, has since retired, leaving time for the revamping of “Botany for Gardeners,” the bestselling title for its publisher, Timber Press, in the U.S. and England.Not only did Capon write it; he illustrated it, too, and even took the plant photographs that further bring the text to life. Capon is also a lifelong gardener, though images of his own place never appear in the pages.“Botany for Gardeners” was born as a textbook out of lecture notes for a botany class Capon taught for many years to non-science students, so it’s thorough—but not the kind of dense, full-fledged botany text that will scare you away.In fact (even 20 years later), it just keeps drawing me back in, especially for tidbits like these. Did you know:That litmus, the dye used to indicate acidity and alkalinity, is

E. palustris, as its species name reveals, is a marsh-type plant, so wet and heavy soils are no problem for it (though it doesn’t seem to require them). Most spurges are finicky about such conditions. Not this one. It gets to between 2 and 3 feet tall and at least as wide.I grow seven or eight other Euphorbias, including the basic polychroma, its newer, red-foliage variant called ‘Bonfire,’ and the fiery-colored one called E. griffithii ‘Dixter’ [above]. In California, mail-order Digging Dog Nursery has a good list of spurges, but not palustris. I swore I got my most recent generation of plants at Forestfarm, but I don’t see it in their current list. Hmmm….how about Annie’s Annuals?The hardest thing about growing spurges is cutting them back,

I have two other Abies concolor here (I know, there’s evidence of my former“everything in threes” insanity again), the other two grown naturally, unshorn, and therefore quite different-looking. I won’t tell you what I paid for the big guy, all thick and a perfect pyramid and already near 10 feet tall when he came to me to live on my hillside of a backyard, among the crabapples and a giant island of ornamental grasses. The others were scrawny little things, maybe 3 feet high, though each is more than 15 tall now.The white, or concolor fir, a Western American native species ranging from Colorado to Southern California, New Mexico and into Mexico, can grow to 100 feet in the wild, apparently, but in a garden setting you are more likely to see it get to 30 or maybe 50 feet in time, and half as wide.Its long needles, which are particularly silvery-blue in the cultivar ‘Candicans,’ curve outward