Replace Your Lawn!
Happy New Year! Make a change in 2014 by getting rid of that expensive water-guzzling, care-intensive lawn, to make way for a gorgeous native landscape. We are presenting our Replace Your Lawn (RYL) workshop series in a special five-part installment about the basics of converting your lawn from boring to beautiful, carefree and sustainable habitat.
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These free workshops will be held SATURDAYS at 9:30am-10:30am, beginning January 11, 2014. No registration is necessary, please simply join us!
Jan 11 – RYL I: Kill the Grass, Speaker: Jeff Bohn
Jan 18 – RYL II: Design Elements – Plant-Community Based Landscape Design, Speaker: Clayton Tschudy
Jan 25 – RYL III: Creating and Caring for Your Native Garden, Speaker: Mike Evans
Feb 1 – RYL IV: OC Goldilocks Native Plant List, Speaker: Brad Jenkins
Feb 8 – RYL V: Plant Selection for Native Plant Gardening – Spring Flowers!
More details after the jump.
Saturday, Jan 11, 2014 – 9:30 AM
Replace Your Lawn I: Killing the Grass
Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to acknowledge the loss of our lawns. Killing your lawn can be more involved than you would expect (depending on the type of grass you have) and the methods to get rid of a lawn are quite varied. Avoid unnecessary labor and learn several successful methods for lawn removal, depending on your turf type, budget, and timeline. Join one of Tree of Life Nursery’s owners Jeff Bohn as he gives this practical, easy-to-follow talk about how to remove your lawn to make way for a fresh and more sustainable landscape.
Please see this helpful handout: 
Replace Your Lawn: Kill the grass!
Saturday, January 18, 2014 – 9:30 AM
Replace Your Lawn II: Clayton Tschudy – Design Elements – Plant Community-Based Designs
Clayton Tschudy is an environmental biologist and has 15 years experience in ecological horticulture and landscape design. Mr. Tschudy will demonstrate a practical design approach that starts with the natural condition of the landscape, translates site-specific indigenous plants into horticultural categories, and interprets the underlying aesthetics of the plant community into discernible garden styles. Plant community design is customized to every site, creates vibrant habitat unmatched by any other design approach, and minimizes resource use. Surprisingly, this approach is also aesthetically flexible, accepting many historical garden styles, or inspiring a uniquely local sense of place. This lecture is appropriate for amateur gardeners as well as professional designers and horticulturists.
Saturday, January 25, 2014 – 9:30 AM
Replace Your Lawn III: Creating and Caring For Your Native Garden
Creating and Caring for your Native Garden. Bringing his over 30 years of experience with these plants, as well as just as many years of site-prep, initial irrigation techniques and working with tricky landscape situations, Mike will teach you how to create a thriving and enjoyable native garden. As he has mentioned to us for years and years: “Maintenance is what you do for your car, you CARE for plants!” To get your creative juices flowing for plant choices using this list: Thirty Basic California Native Plants.
Saturday, February 1, 2014 – 9:30 AM
Replace Your Lawn IV: OC Native Plants Goldilock’s List
Native plants are intriguing, and yet some are too much this and too little that for normal Orange County urban gardens. The Goldilocks List presents plants with the “just right” balance of year round color, water use, degree of nativeness, value to wildlife, availability, and maintenance simplicity. The graphic list is sorted by bloom time using flower colors. Additional notes about plant type, size, water, sun, community, and wildlife are included. This presentation shows how to use this valuable resource to select plants for your garden.
Saturday, February 8, 2014 – 9:30 AM
Replace Your Lawn V: Choosing Native Plant Combinations – Spring Flowers!
Join us in our last installment of the Replace Your Lawn Series as we highlight what to plant for the spring blooming season and how to combine different plants for pleasing year-round enjoyment. Come learn about what’s currently blooming and what will soon be blooming. We’ll discuss plants that attract beneficial wildlife like bees, butterflies and songbirds. We will discuss the care these plants require for their whole lifespan – from transplantation through many years of beauty and enjoyment. Join us for this informative and practical discussion.
