— Nan Sterman What if you could grow most of your family’s vegetables and protein in your own backyard and do it with just a fraction of the water and resources that your in-ground garden requires? According to the people you’ll meet in this week’s episode of A Growing Passion,

–Nan Sterman From Anza Borrego Desert to the beaches at La Jolla, this is San Diego County’s garden tour season. This time of year, gardeners open their gates and invite the public in to enjoy the fruits (sometimes literally) of their labors. If you love seeing what’s behi

March in the Garden Get Ready for Spring — Nan Sterman March is such a busy month for gardeners. There’s so much to see, so much to learn, and so much to do. Where to begin? Here’s my list for getting your garden ready for the months ahead. Edibles Start your home ve

— Nan Sterman After our group of enthusiastic garden travelers left Cordoba, Spain we went on to Seville. We toured Seville’s historic old city on foot, then headed to the Alcazar, one of my favorite gardens in the world. These gardens also hugely influenced San Diego arch

— Nan Sterman   Visit a beautiful waterwise garden and you’ll notice the amazing colors and textures, fabulous structures and gorgeous flowers. Birds and bees and butterflies flit through the garden. Lizards scurry about. Each garden is an oasis all of its own, as you’ll se

— Nan Sterman It’s emerald green. It’s soft underfoot. It smells great when it’s cut. It’s fun to play on. There are many reasons to like grass, but there are also reasons not to have a lawn in your garden. How grass lawns got here Lawns are new to California. They arrived durin

— by Nan Sterman Week before last, Southern Californians had our first taste of El Niño rains; four inches in three days – nearly half the rainfall we normally see in a year. Fortunately, we prepared ahead of time at our house. We had the plumber out to clear in-ground dra

— by Nan Sterman You might wonder if the drought means the end of home grown fruits. Thankfully, it doesn’t. There are many kinds of fruiting trees, shrubs and even succulents that produce lots of fruits with little, if any, irrigation once the plants are established. Here are t

— by Nan Sterman My phone has been ringing off the hook (do phones still have hooks?) and my inbox is overflowing with queries from people asking for help removing their lawns, designing new gardens, and redesigning outdated gardens. Finally, Californians are getting the message

— By Nan Sterman Having a waterwise garden means much more than simply planting unthirsty plants… To create a waterwise garden you have to look at the garden as a system in which every component contributes to water conservation. Start with soil. Whether your garden has he