For some people, gardening is therapeutic and fruitful (literally). For others, it can be frustrating, and well…not fruitful. If you’re an aspiring gardener or if you find your office plants wilting, dying, or even drowning, this post is especially for you! Here Tianna and Meghan share how they got into gardening, what they love to grow, and how to get those flowers to bloom!

The Experts:

haradon_tianna-2Tianna Haradon
Assistant to the AVP, Development


 

processed-with-vscocam-with-se1-presetMeghan Farrington

Web Design & Technology Manager


 

How and when did you get into gardening?

Tianna
: I started gardening with my parents when I was pretty young.  We had a really big backyard, and my sisters and I were in charge of watering and picking the bananas off our trees.

img_20131215_173400Meghan:
Growing and eating good food was pretty much what it meant to be part of my family.  My Dad, my uncles and aunts, my grandfather- they always had fruit trees, tomatoes and swisschard plants tucked into every corner of their yards. The majority of my childhood was spent running around in someone’s garden with some combination of my 13 cousins or 2 sisters, eating apricots and green beans in between games of tag.





What do you enjoy growing?

processed-with-vscocam-with-m3-presetMeghan:
I love to
cook
eat so edibles are my favorite, especially earthy vegetables and bitter greens like chard, kale, beets and arugula. But I also really love California natives, the history of plant life in this area, the adaptation of native plants to unique microclimates in the area, the biodiversity and the overall awesomeness of our native grasses and oaks… there is so much to love about the plants that were native to this area – like the Black Walnut and Engelmann oak groves that blanketed large parts of Orange County or the delicate strawberries that grew on costal bluffs. Bonus: reading about gypsy botanist Lester Rowntree’s awesome adventures through California’s wild places in the early 1900s.

Tianna
: I love to grow any and everything!  I have a small backyard, but I have a variety of different plants from roses, fruit trees, vegetables, flowers, etc.

tianas-garden


Tiana’s garden and her dog, Bando 🙂


Do you have anything blooming currently?

Tianna
: My roses are currently going crazy! They are the first thing I planted when my husband and I bought our house, so I take extra care of them.

Meghan:
Hum… the apricot, peach and nectarine just finished blooming. Little baby apples are dotting the apple trees and the native salvias and Purple Three Awn grass in our yard are beautiful right now. In our local mountains and canyons- lupins and poppies are blooming and the white sage smells amazing!

Do you have an interesting wacky gardening story you’d like to share?

Tianna
: I pour beer into pie pans and place them around my plants to keep slugs away.

Meghan:
Um, I was stung by a bee from our bee hives on the very top of my ear once. That was more just weird and painful than wacky.



What gardening tips do you have for those who don’t necessarily have a green thumb?

Tianna
: Anyone can do it.  A little water and a little love and you’ve got a beautiful garden. 

processed-with-vscocam-with-f2-preset-3Meghan:
I don’t know that I have a green thumb… my garden doesn’t look like The Huntington by any means. To be honest the plants that survive outside of our vegetable garden are the ones that don’t need anything, I am not really good at weeding or watering. In fact I am pretty much a lazy gardener in general (yay for permaculture!!). So…. my advice is find out what native plants or edible plants like your soil and sun, plant them in the fall (important for natives) when they are most likely to be rained on and just leave them alone and see how they do. Repeat annually until some plants decide to stick around.

 So get those feet dirty and start planting




processed-with-vscocam-with-f2-preset-2


Shoutout to Meghan for all the artsy pictures 🙂