Subscriber Comments for
Lessons From The Mall

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COMMENT 51975	2010-01-02 10:37 AM
Neat article, well written.
SARAH	2010-01-02 04:15 PM
I love the photos of LaCumbre. I've been watching their dismal plantings for years. You missed the giant circular "planting" of astro turf between Macys and the Pottery Barn. No one seems to know if they should walk on it or go around.
COMMENT 52023	2010-01-03 06:03 AM
Is there a difference in bare root fruit trees you buy at places like Home Depot vs. local nurseries. In other words, are all bare root fruit trees created equal? What are the dos and don'ts on selecting fruit trees?
COMMENT 52034	2010-01-03 10:08 AM
Billy here: Sarah: If space allowed, I'd expend at least another 1000 words ripping La Cumbre a new one, including their artificial turf crop circle. So many other things wrong their, including the line-up of potted plants along the wall at Sears. So many horrors - so little time. Puente: the biggest advantage of buying at Sumida is that rather than all the plants being packed in cardboard boxes preventing you from inspecting the roots, Sumida loosely packs them together in sawdust. You can hunt around until you find just the right one. 2) You also get individual attention from knowledgeable professionals - not the case at the national retailers, 3) they're more likely to have varieties that work best in our climate, rather than one-size-fits-all national buying strategies, 4) most important, locally owned businesses are quickly disappearing - gotta help the homies.
COMMENT 52049	2010-01-03 01:34 PM
Sumida? How about Terra Sol? We love that nursery. Locally owned too.
KDEF	2010-01-03 03:14 PM
Billy, you should do a whole edhat piece on the landscaping or lack thereof at the La Cumbre Mall. Your reply to Puente fits right in to your criticism. It is out-of-town corporate mall owners and managers trying to impose their plant material and design to Santa Barbara. They should hire local landscapers such as yourself to suggest a pleasing and sustainable plant palate. It is the same reason why Puente needs to get her bare root fruit trees from a local nursery
COMMENT 52094	2010-01-03 09:41 PM
Happy, beautiful, healthy potted plants is an artform...that often takes trial and error to suceed, especially under terrible growing conditions. Citrus seems to be my biggest grievance. I have yet to see a good batch in town.
COMMENT 52106	2010-01-04 01:13 AM
A few observations, FWTW: Odd that La Sumida heels their bareroot into sawdust. L.E. Cooke out of Visalia used to state clearly to retailers that their guarantee for trees would be void if trees were heeled into anything but soil, sand or DG, as soon as they were delivered. No covering with tarps, etc., for a day or two. In the 'ground' now! NO ground wood products. Roots need to be kept well hydrated and ground wood dries out too fast. Also, I doubt seriously if any retailer would allow anyone to pull and inspect tree roots. "Choose your tree/shrub, we'll pull it (carefully!) and inspect the roots. Most are fine, as we inspected them as we heeled them in." As far as mall & streeside plantings, I could tell some horor stories about durability and maintenance. I maintained the 30-odd large streetside pots in the village of Arroyo Grande for three years. It was a constant battle to keep plants alive between trash, discarded food, and other unmentionable human debris--yes, as bad as you can imagine. People can be pigs. Make that disgusting pigs. Seasonal availability made finding and combining interesting groupings tricky. Spring was a no-brainer, once I convinced the merchant in charge to allow plantings other than Yellow First Lady marigolds, red petunias and cobalt lobelia. But other seasons were hair-pullers. I actually built a few planters that I was proud of. But usually just as soon as some would start to thrive, someone would XXXXXX in them. Talk about thankless jobs. The public didn't respect the planters and the merchants wouldn't adequately fund their maintenance. Some California shopping malls to rival the best public gardens: The Barnyard, Carmel; Del Monte Shopping Center, Monterey, Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto; and the heartbreakingly beautiful interior courtyards at Stanford Hospital cancer units between E= Gound and F-Ground. Just thinking about their beauty starts the tears flowing. Generously funded by an endowment by Peter and Helen Bing, groupings are replaced as soon as flowers fade. Delphiniums, foxglove, helebores, scented geranuims, antique rose varieties, giant blue salvia 'limelight', verbena, hosta, acers, flowering cherry, tulips, ranunculus, iris, narcissus, daphne, camellias, azaleas, all of which thrive in the best climate in California. A spot of sanity in a surreal habitat.
SHOREBIRD	2010-01-04 07:08 AM
It's "dogma" to believe that cell phone towers have any physical effect on people in playgrounds and lawn bowling venues.
COMMENT 52116	2010-01-04 07:33 AM
It's stupidty to assume that there is no harmful effect in the absence of long-term studies proving otherwise. Why take the chance with a generation of kids? Why trust the communications industry which has a huge vested interest?
COMMENT 52106	2010-01-04 07:55 AM
Billy redesigned the Meadow?
COMMENT 52141	2010-01-04 09:42 AM
Well thanks for trashing all the hard work done by the landscapers of the malls. Have you ever lived anywhere else where malls are landscaped only with mailboxes, rows of newspaper boxes, and cigarette/trash bins--not a flower or tree in sight? Perhaps you are lobbying for a job at the News-Press where the mode of reporting is to find all that is wrong with something and hammer that point over and over as if trying to destroy its very essence. Because that's what you have done in your article (and don't get me started about your debasing others as a way of promoting yourself). There is beauty to be found in those mall pots of flowers and trees...life, color, renewal, care, nature, peace. It's a shame you can't see it and a shame you will be teaching others there is only one right way to do landscaping....yours.
COMMENT 52106	2010-01-05 11:37 AM
Let's turn this thread around. Who has some GREAT looking public landscapes to reccommend? Mine: The Barnyard, Carmel Cal Poly Botanic Garden, SLO Stanford Hospital Interior courtyards Del Monte Shopping Ctr, Monterey demonstration garden@ Sierra Azul Nsy, Watsonville

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