By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Would you like more information about using native grasses in the landscape to reduce irrigation needs, prevent erosion, and enhance wildlife habit?  If so, you might be interested in the workshops the California Native Grasslands Association is holding on September 29th at Fallbrook, CA and on September 30th in Arcadia,CA.  The all-day workshop is open to both professionals and homeowners.   There is more information on the CNGA website and you can register there as well. 

Need a landscape designer but don't know any?  Monrovia can help.  The wholesale grower has added a new feature on its website to help homeowners and landscape professionals connect. 

Enter your zip code, narrow the search by choosing a style (Contemporary or Cottage, for instance) or an expertise (edibles, meadows) and a list of professionals comes up with links to their websites.  Pretty handy.  Click here for a trial run.

Wish you could visit the gardens of some of your favorite garden bloggers?  I have.  Rueben Munoz of the Rancho Reubidoux blog is high on my list.  The below photo, shot by TK, shows why.  I love the way Rueben makes arid look stylish. 

Photo by Mitchel Maher

Maher shot more of Reuben's garden and turned the results into a cool video.  Click here to take a look.

While you're on Reuben's site, read about this wonderfully shaggy living wall he saw at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles.  More about it here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Pam Penick, Digging

Loree Bohl (pictured above) has long been one of my favorite bloggers, which is why her Danger Garden blog has been on Sunset's list of favorite blogs for so long. But her garden is what you've really got to see, and since it isn't public, the best place to look is on an extended blog post done by Pam Penick for Digging.

If you don't know Loree's gardening philosophy (and why her blog is called Danger Garden), she sums it up well: "Nice plants are boring – my love is for plants that can hurt you. Agave, yucca, anything with a spine or spur! [This is reflected in Loree's email address, which is spikyplants@gmail.com]. Besides the danger the plants provide, gardening itself is just plain dangerous. The money! Who couldn't drop a couple hundred in an afternoon at your favorite nursery or a plant sale? Dangerous! And then there is my tendency to garden with plants that are on the edge of what my climate will allow. Dangerous!"

Anyway, read Pam's post about Loree's garden, and you may start gardening more dangerously too.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

DiggersList works pretty much like Craigslist except that it only lists home improvement items.  So you can type in your zip code and browse to see what's available for sale near you under such categories as kitchen, bath, storage, building materials, and, our favorite subject, garden. 

The shabby chic table opposite, for instance, is in my zip code range and seriously tempting.

Or you can use DiggersList to get rid of things, which, for most of us, may be the more useful option. 

See if anyone wants that piece of garden art you had to have but now loathe -- "one man's trash is another man's treasure" and all that.

Or, if you can't wait a moment longer to get rid of that former treasure, donate it online via DiggersList to an organization like the Habitat for Humanity Restores (outlets that accept donated goods for resale) and be done with it.

Or take the "Good Samitarian" option. 

Ask for a reminder email from DiggersList in, say, 30 days. If that sweet little cherub statue that now seems so cloying hasn't sold by then, just click the "donate" option and watch it fly away.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

You've heard it before: good gardeners take the trouble to learn botanical names so there won't be any confusion about what they're buying and growing. I'm quite sure I've given the lecture myself. "There are at least a half dozen plants representing several species with the common name 'loosestrife'," I say; "common names change from region to region, and in some cases from (human) family to family. You just can't trust them."

But in the years I've done this, nobody has had the presence of mind to ask me why the RHS Plant Finder, the last word on botanical names, has to be updated every year. Are botanical names as undependable as common names? The answer, I'm afraid, is "yes."

Consider this example. Because even an annual update of the RHS Plant Finder can't keep pace with botanical name changes, England's Royal Botanic Gardens (run by Royal Horticultural Society) and Missouri Botanical Garden created a wonderful web site called The Plant List. You can go there, key in the name of a genus and species, and learn whether the name is accepted, or a synonym, or unresolved. It turns out that of more than a million species names you might enter, about a quarter are unresolved, and nearly half are synonyms—that is, they were once, or were once thought to be, the correct name. But no more.

Further, when The Plant List gives you its judgment on the status of a name, it doesn't just say yay or nay; it supplies a confidence rating. For example, when I checked American elderberry, which was moved from S. nigra canadensis to S. canadensis, the confirming page tells me that they are mostly sure (two stars out of three) that this is right. There are even confidence ratings for synonyms and unresolved names—they are slightly certain (one star out of three), for example, that the nomenclatural status of Sambucus alba is unresolved. This reminds me of Winston Churchill's famous assessment of his prewar government: "they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

The changes in genus names are shocking. Remember Chrysanthemum? Now it's been split into Ajania, Arctanthemum, Argyranthemum, Coleostephus, Glebionus, Leucanthemum, Nipponanthemum,  Rhodanthemum, and Tanacetum. And if you're a native plant lover, you get to move Alaska cedar (a Chamaecyparis) to Xanthocyparis. And Eucalyptus? I don't even want to talk about it.

But with all these moves, guess what hasn't changed? Well, Shasta daisy (which has worn the names Chrysanthemum X superbum, C. maximum, Leucanthemum X superbum, and L. maximum) is still Shasta daisy. Alaska cedar is still Alaska cedar, and ponytail palm (once Beaucarnea recurvata, then Nolina recurvata, then back to Beaucarnea recurvata again) is still ponytail palm. Of course, it isn't really a palm, but we won't go there just now.

Everyone's hope—my hope, anyway—is that present advances in DNA fingerprinting will help taxonomists determine actual relationships in a way that allows them to fix names, then go away. But that's a future we will never see. For now, I feel my confidence in common names rapidly climbing from one star toward three.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I may or may not be crazy. I keep thinking that I'm seeing the start of some moss growth on my hypertufa-ish slab. I can't really tell. It's subtle at best.

I know what you're thinking -- it's the wrong time of year. I know, I know. We just got so excited when all the moss started growing in winter, but it was mid spring by the time I made the moss milkshake. 

I'm trying to keep it misted in hopes that it'll grow by Celebration Weekend. But I think the more likely scenario is that it'll be the coolest moss project you've ever seen in April 2012. Sigh.

To solve the mystery of whether or not anything is actually happening, I've decided to put to work another product that I've been meaning to trial.

PlantCam is the coolest thing ever! It's a weatherproof camera (still or video) designed especially for a garden setting. You program it to take pictures or movies whenever you want, like once a day at a certain time, or every hour while it's light. Then it streams the pictures or clips together into a time-lapse of your garden.

I actually set it up last year and monitored the dahlias in bloom. The problem was I deleted all the photos before converting them into a movie. Let's just say it was operator error. I make a lot of those. 

I rigged it back up and am having it take a photo of the moss once a day. Hopefully it'll be able to help solve the mystery of whether or not I'm crazy (at least when it comes to this).

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Did I read stiletto heels were going out of style or was that just wishful thinking?  If they are, here's a good way to repurpose them.  The plant choice seems appropriate, don't you think?  The photo was found on the Urban Gardens blog.  More stilettos put to good use here.

Birdwatchers, check out this post on Laguna Dirt, featuring birds caught in flight shot by British Columbia photographers Roy Hancliff.  Here's one of the stunning examples.  There are more on Hancliff's website.

A wonderful use of a sunny side yard.  The gorgeous, mostly edibles garden belongs to Portland garden designer Darcy Daniels.  Found on Willi Galloway's blog digginfood.  More about the garden here.

Need a weekend project?  Far Out Flora demonstrates how to build this succulent table on their blog.

And, finally, how about a bit of poetry.   Read "An Objection to being Stepped on" by Robert Frost on Susan Martin's Edible Gardens -- Point Loma blog. 

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I remember meeting Dave Smith and Paul Hawken in the 1970's at an industrial warehouse in Palo Alto, California. They had a container full of beautifully forged tools from Bulldog in England, and a very cool line-art catalog that made you want to put steel to soil and grow your own food. The company thrived, was sold, changed focus, and finally went down in flames.

Enter Target—who'd have guessed?—to pick up the flag. Now you can buy Smith & Hawken furniture, tools, and garden supplies both online and at Target stores.

For me, it's all about the tools. From the day I bought my first forged Bulldog spading fork (which I still use) to the day I bought my last trowel from them, I loved their commitment to quality. Fully expecting Target to take tool production to China, I was delighted to learn that instead they went back to an English forge to be true to the brand's roots. Three cheers for them!

For biggest selection, go to Smith & Hawken online. Target stores have smaller quantities of Smith & Hawken merchandise in stock now, but that will increase when they formally roll out the brand next month.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Reading David Cristiani's blog, The Desert Edge, is like having coffee with your best friend the desert landscape architect. He brings plenty of pictures along, shares laughs and good stories, and drops little gems of design wisdom along the way (advice like "think outside the design box and within the water budget").

When he travels, he brings pictures of nurseries he's visited and nice moments he's encountered with hardscapes and plant combos. And when the weather does something outrageous, he's all over it: he knows more about desert climate than anybody I can think of.

Best of all, he posts often—an average of once every two or three days year-round.

Cristiani is principal at Quercus, a solo landscape architecture firm in Albuquerque, NM. The company's tag line is "Real landscapes for the real Southwest," and his closely related philosophy: "I embrace my ecoregion." Quercus does design only—no installation. And to quote him, if you want "Midwestern or Faux-Cal landscapes—not a chance!" That's conviction for you, and one of the reasons to love his blog.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

When Mike Dirr wrote Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, whose 2009 edition is the size of a extra-fat metropolitan phone book, you had to wonder what was left for him to conquer.

Your iPhone, it turns out.

Now you can buy most of the contents of Dirr's $76 Manual for $14.99 in the new Dirr's Tree and Shrub Finder app, which runs on iPod touch, iPhone, and (at iPhone size) on iPad.

It's an even better deal than you think.

• The app has 7600 color photos, while the book only has a little line art.

• The app lists everything alphabetically, while the book is mostly alphabetical, but partly arranged by relationship (so you find Acer circinatum, for example, right after Acer japonicum).

• The app has instant searches available on any of 72 criteria, while the book sends you to the indexes in the back, which just lead you to plants by name.

The app covers 1670 species and 7800 cultivars of trees, shrubs, vines, and groundcovers. Surprisingly, even that big a list still leaves a few holes. For example, Westerners won't find many common western oaks (like coast live oak, Oregon white oak, and California black oak), Fremontodendron, or any manzanita except kinnikinnick, of which there are many. But Dirr covers the huge majority of common woody plants for landscapes with his usual candor and wit. Of climate zones for madrone, he writes "Have seen hardiness listed as Zone 5 to 9 but seriously doubt the validity of same."

Because this app is primarily an exercise in programming, most of its writing is repackaged verbatim from the book. Organization of listings is fairly intuitive: you browse from a master index based on name or plant type; then you select a species to see its varieties. Once you select a variety—'Osakazuki' maple, for example—you get the appropriate picture and a "details" tab that leads you to back to descriptions of all varieties of Acer palmatum. And even this pattern is inconsistent: when you ask for details on Arbutus menziesii, you get descriptions of all species of Arbutus, not just all varieties of the species.

Fortunately, the information Dirr offers is gold. It covers everything from propagation to growth rate, all interspersed with the kinds of anecdotes and opinions that make the information stick.

Asked whether publisher Timber Press had plans to optimize the app for iPad, or planned to release versions for android or other smart-phone operating systems, a publicist told me they were keeping track of requests, and would respond according to demand.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

iVeggieGarden is the newest iPhone garden app, and the best I’ve seen. With about 500 varieties representing more than 60 kinds of vegetables, this app is written by Leslie Sturgeon, who runs a vegetable farm with her husband and a software business (Superwoman, for sure). That combination lets her unite equal parts of growing experience and software expertise, which is why the app stands out.

After plugging in your climate zone information, you open iVeggieGarden to an alphabetical catalog of vegetable types, from artichoke to zucchini, and from that you can go to variety lists, where you’ll find full info about how to grow it, and how to deal with insects and diseases.

The app actually goes a bit beyond vegetables, covering small fruits such as strawberries, grapes, blueberries, and raspberries too. There are no blackberry or kiwi entries yet, and some entries (like strawberries) are about as generic as they can be. But this is only version 1.0, and given the quality of what’s been fleshed out, my guess is that this will only get better and more complete with each new version.

Photography is generally excellent, and Sturgeon paid attention to copy editing, which is rare for garden apps.

The link of garden information to climate zone is important, but it can be a trap when information is extrapolated nationally. For example, USDA zones 8 and 9 are all over the rainy Pacific Northwest, but they also cover Southwest deserts. Planting dates are months apart in the two regions, but that isn’t reflected in iVeggieGarden (or in most other publications that use USDA zones, for that matter). There’s also some fine tuning that needs to be done on small-fruit planting dates to reflect bare-root season.

My only other quibble is also fairly minor. In an effort to be comprehensive, the app gives long lists of potential insect, disease, and nutrient problems—but no guidance about probability. If your cabbage has collapsed, for example, it’s likely a cabbage root maggot issue. But without knowing that, a beginning gardener is faced with a daunting list of 19 other pests to consider. But better more info, I guess, than less.

The app allows you to add vegetable types yourself (my blackberries, for example), and lets you plug in unlisted favorite varieties too. It also gives you two places to make notes: When you find a plant that you want to try, you can enter it in the app's "Ideas" box; and when you've grown something you never want to be without, you can list it in the "Gems" box.

For $9.99, this app is a steal. You can order it for iPhone from the iTunes product page; an iPad app is in the works (but like other iPhone apps, this one already runs on iPad, but at iPhone size). Study it before you buy seeds or plants, note what you want in its shopping guide, and don't forget your iPhone when you go to the nursery.