The most unique Sculpture Garden on the Planet

This is the most unique Sculpture Garden on the Plantet. Please go HERE to see a short (2.44 min.) video of Jason de Caires Taylor underwater sculpture garden

Bryan's Cardiff House to be in SANDAG Mother's Day Tour

Bryan Morse'sprofessional experience and artistic flair are evident in his home and landscape. Use of fieldstone and natural products allow the eye to travel along the path by the front wall embedded with colorful glass, past well placed plantings, taking the visitor around the home into the carefully designed and sculpted patio and raised pool area. Circles and curves on the fieldstone and Amesyth stonework carry the theme throughout. The backdrop on his pool area is landscaped with a mixture of southwestern and tropical lush growth to accentuate the beauty and warmth of this home.

The Gardens of Villa Lante

The experts aren’t admitting that Pirio Ligorio had a strong influence on this garden. Having looked at some of his other Gardens on my Blog, what do you think? Apparently, this property was also owned by Bromarzo, go figure...

In the eyes of many, this is the consummate example of the best period in the history of garden design: the Mannerist phase of the Italian renaissance. It was designed for Cardinal Gambara, who had a modern taste for outdoor living and eating al fresco. The buildings are treated as garden ornaments, illustrating a good principle, and the overall design is attributed to Vignola.

It uses the Palladian circle and square. Every aspect of the garden is perfectly proportioned and richly detailed: a square terrace subdivided into smaller squares, a water parterre, a wonderful fountain in a central position. Design ideas are drawn from earlier projects. The geometry was inspired by the Belvedere at the Vatican; the use of water by the Villa d'Este; the circular island echos Hadrian's 'marine theatre' a Tivoli and the isolette at the Boboli. There is an echo too from the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut: terraces command views down a sloping hillside. A grotto sits at the summit of the hill, from which flows water which is full of delight. It does not follow the central axis.

Symbolically, the garden represents the tale of humanity's descent from the Golden Age (based on Ovid's Metamorphosis). It has a Grotto of the Deluge. Paths lead to an outdoor dining area with a fountain table, and then to other enclosures. The Water Chain is the best and earliest example of a stepping cascade. The Villa also has a park, now in some disrepair, which had the character of a hunting park but is too small for a hunt.

"Earth Song" by Micheal Jackson

Listen to Michael Jackson's "Earth Song". This is an incredibly powerful plea to save the Planet



On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it is time to reflect on the damage we have done..
Michael Jackson's Earth Song Lyrics

What about sunrise
What about rain
What about all the things
That you said we were to gain...
What about killing fields
Is there a time
What about all the things
That you said was yours and mine...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we've shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
This crying Earth its weeping shores?

Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh

What have we done to the world?
Look what we've done.
What about all the peace,
That you pledge your only son?
What about flowering fields?
Is there a time?
What about all the dreams,
That you said was yours and mine?

Did you ever stop to notice,
All the children dead from war?
Did you ever stop to notice,
This crying Earth its weeping shores?

Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh

I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don't know where we are
Although I know we've drifted far

Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaah Oooooooooh

Hey

what about yesterday
(What about us)
What about the seas
(What about us)
The heavens are falling down
(What about us)
I can't even breathe
(What about us)
What about everything
(What about us)
I given you
(What about us)
What about nature's worth
(ooo, ooo)
It's our planet's womb
(What about us)
What about animals
(What about it)
We've turned kingdoms to dust
(What about us)
What about elephants
(What about us)
Have we lost their trust
(What about us)
What about crying whales
(What about us)
We're ravaging the seas
(What about us)
What about forest trails
(ooo, ooo)
Burnt despite our pleas
(What about us)
What about the holy land
(What about it)
Torn apart by creed
(What about us)
What about the common man
(What about us)
Can't we set him free
(What about us)
What about children dying
(What about us)
Can't you hear them cry
(What about us)
Where did we go wrong
(ooo, ooo)
Someone tell me why
(What about us)
What about baby boy
(What about it)
What about the days
(What about us)
What about all their joy
(What about us)
What about the man
(What about us)
What about the crying man
(What about us)
What about Abraham
(What was us)
What about death again
(ooo, ooo)
Do we give a damn

Aaaaaaaaah Ooooooooh

Life Straw at a Glance

Life Straw at a Glance

Half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne disease, and nearly 6,000 people – mainly children – die from diseases contracted from unsafe drinking water every day.


LifeStraw® water purifiers have been developed as a practical way of preventing disease and saving lives, as well as achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water by the year 2015.

LifeStraw® and LifeStraw® Family are complimentary point-of-use water filters – truly unique offerings from Vestergaard Frandsen that will help people obtain safe drinking water at home and outside – paving the way to accomplishing the MDGs.

Help the disaster victims of the Haitian Earthquake. For a donation of only $6.50 each, you can purchase a LifeStraw and have it deliverewd to a needy person in Haiti.

Can LifeStraw filter out cow dung from water? Watch the You Tube demonstration.

Mike Reynolds and Earthships

An Earthship is a type of passive solar home made of natural and recycled materials. Designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture of Taos, New Mexico, the homes are primarily constructed to work autonomously and are generally made of earth-filled tires, utilising thermal mass construction to naturally regulate indoor temperature. They also usually have their own special natural ventilation system. Earthships are generally Off-the-grid homes, minimizing their reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels.


Earthships are built to utilize the available local resources, especially energy from the sun. For example, windows on the sunny side admit light and heat, and the buildings are often horseshoe-shaped to maximize natural light and solar-gain during winter months. Likewise, the thick, dense outer walls provide effective insulation against summer heat.

Internal, non-load-bearing walls are often made of a honeycomb of recycled cans joined by concrete and are referred to as tin can walls. These walls are usually thickly plastered with stucco.

The roof of an Earthship is heavily insulated - often with earth or adobe - for added energy efficiency.The Earthship was designed as a structure that would exist in harmony with its environment and be freed from the constraints of modern shelters which rely on centralized utilities. It is important that the Earthship create its own utilities as well as use readily available and sustainable materials. In order to be entirely self-sufficient the Earthship needs to be able to handle the three systems of Water, Electricity, and Climate. While these systems are not exclusive to Earthships, a properly designed Earthship must have these systems.

See a You Tube video about Mike Reynolds, vision.

Las Pozas

Las Pozas ("the Pools") is a sculpture garden built by Edward James, more than 2,000 feet above sea level, in a tropical rain forest in the mountains of Mexico. It includes more than 80 acres of natural waterfalls and pools interlaced with towering Surrealist sculptures in concrete.

Las Pozas is near the village of Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, a seven-hour drive north of Mexico City. In the early 1940s, James went to Los Angeles, and then decided that he "wanted a Garden of Eden set up . . . and I saw that Mexico was far more romantic” and had "far more room than there is in crowded Southern California.” In Cuernavaca, he hired Plutarco Gastelum, then a young manager of a telegraph office, as a guide. The two found Xilitla in November 1945

In Xilitla, Plutarco married a local woman and had four children. They all lived with "Uncle Edward", as the children called James, in a house Plutarco had built, a mock-Gothic cement castle, now a hotel - La Posada El Castillo.

Between 1949 and 1984, James built thirty-six concrete follies - palaces, temples and pagodas, including the House on Three Floors Which Will in Fact Have Five or Four or Six, the House with a Roof like a Whale, and the Staircase to Heaven. There were also plantings and beds full of tropical plants, including orchids - there were, apparently, 29,000 at Las Pozas at one time - and a variety of small casas (homes), niches, and pens that held exotic birds and wild animals from the world over. Massive sculptures up to four stories tall punctuate the site. The many trails throughout the garden site are composed of steps, ramps, bridges and narrow, winding walkways that traverse the valley walls. Construction of Las Pozas cost more than $5 million. To pay for it, James sold his collection of Surrealist art at auction.

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Stop Killing your Soil!

On a project that I recently completed the soil is some of the worst I have ever seen. I had added to the existing plant palette a year ago and in spite of normal soil amending practices had watched the plants grow smaller every month. I asked the gardener to fertilize the garden. He proceeded to dump fistfuls of granulated fertilizer around the trunks of the plants and killed off a good percentage of the young plantings. After that he was prohibited from ever fertilizing anything again. Later on, he was also prohibited from pruning anything. His job got even easier as we removed most of the sod.


When we stripped the lawn, we blended the sod and roots back into the hard pan to add organics and then purchased a massive amount of Humic Compost from Agri service inc. and blended it along with many bags of WormGold worm castings, ‘Live Earth Bio-Basics’ (soil enzymes) and ‘Soilbuster’ (pelletized gypsum). We purchased a Biostack composting bin and a worm composting bin for our client from Solana Center for Environmental Innovation so that the client could continue to add rich ammendments to the soil as time progresses. The soil had been sterilized through years of chemical fertilizer use, it would take some time to bring it back to life.

The planting theme is eclectic and blends succulents with tropicals. The irrigation is drip and thus we are able to add plenty of water to the Palms, the Sugarcane and Gingers and almost no water to the young succulents as they establish themselves. There are some small areas with groundcover and for those areas we have installed ‘Netafim’ soaker tubing. This moistens the soil with no spray at all.

When the planting is complete the ground will be top coated with Forest Fine, another product from agri service designed to dress the raw dirt and decompose easily over the next year. In six months worms will be added so that they may begin to do their magic and bit by bit the transformation will be complete.

Bomarzo, the park of Monsters & Nymphs

The Park of the Monsters (Parco dei Mostri in Italian), also named Garden of Bomarzo, is a monumental complex located in Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy.

The gardens were created during the Italian Renaissance, in the 16th century. They are composed of a wooded park, located at the bottom of a valley where the castle of Orsini was erected, and populated by sculptures and small buildings divided among of the natural vegetation. It is named so for the many larger-than-life sculptures, some sculpted in the bedrock, which populate this predominantly barren landscape. It was comissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, a patron of the arts, greatly devoted to his wife Giulia Farnese ; when she died, he created the gardens. The design is attributed to Pirro Ligorio who also built the Villa D'Este in Tivoli near Rome