Sustainable Living
Thirty six million Americans claim at least a little bit of Irish ancestry, myself included. Over 80 million people worldwide claim an Irish family connection. No wonder St. Patrick’s Day is more popular outside Ireland: the total population of the country is just 4.8 million people.
We love St. Patrick’s Day at Good Earth Plant Company, because it’s all about the green! Anything that gets people thinking green and about plants is something we support, whether we are Irish or not.
The truth is that blue was the color traditionally associated with Ireland, and the color most often connected with the real St.… Read More
Catch Up With Top Reader Recommended Blog Posts
Catch up with our top blog posts so far for 2016 on topics including stormwater pollution, nature and well-being, and how to recognize and treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
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Let’s Make San Diego A Biophilia Hub
Leaders from 40 of the best large gardens in North America came to San Diego last week for the Directors of Large Gardens Conference at the San Diego Botanical Garden in Encinitas. When I opened my San Diego Union-Tribune on Saturday, I was glad to see an article about the meeting by reporter Phil Diehl, and I especially loved the headline: “Stressed? You may need some nature.” Right up my alley. It’s worth reading.
As many good things as the article covered, there were so many other great topics it couldn’t fit in. Many are the things we write about here in this blog: biophilia, bioinspiration, biomimicry, author Richard Louv’s concept of “nature deficit disorder,” the new Wellbeing Standards – I could go on.… Read More
Good Earth Plants’ Ten Most Popular Blog Topics
When you are in business it’s vital to listen to feedback from your clients to learn what’s working, what’s not working, and where you can improve. Let me tell you, sometimes it can be painful! But it is necessary.
When I first started as a florist in the Plantscaping industry nearly four decades ago, we didn’t have any posts, tweets, snaps or chats to help us gather feedback. We had to get it the old fashioned way – by actually talking to people. In person! I won’t claim I walked several miles uphill through the snow to do it.
Today, there is no excuse for anyone in business not to make at least a minimum effort to gather feedback and use it to improve products and services.… Read More
Dig In and Support Urban Gardening in San Diego
While I’m on the road at the annual Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition in Florida, I learned about a proposal making its way through the approval process at the City of San Diego. Yes, stop the presses: a government idea I’m excited about!
The San Diego City Council’s Smart Growth and Land Use Committee took an important step Wednesday at its meeting to establish Urban Agricultural Incentive Zones in the City of San Diego. These zones were given a green light by California state legislation passed in 2014. Now it’s up to individual cities and counties to decide whether they want to allow them in their areas.… Read More
Do Your Part to Stop Stormwater Pollution
Just a few months ago, the Good Earth Plant Company blog was full of advice about surviving our Southern California drought. Now here we are in 2016, and our first blog post of the year is about too much rain.
The anticipated El Niño winter rainstorms have hit our area. While we are all grateful to get some relief from our drought, watching our reservoirs fill back up and enjoying the sight of snow in our Laguna Mountains, we also have to be concerned about managing the negative effects of all this water, especially stormwater pollution.
Stormwater runoff is the single biggest contributor to poor water quality in the ocean off San Diego.… Read More
Good Earth Plants New Year’s Resolution for 2016: Take A Breath
Are you thinking about your New Year’s Resolution for 2016? You are in good company. Forty five percent of all Americans make at least one resolution. If you’re struggling with your resolution, blame the Babylonians. Four thousand years ago, they made promises to their gods hoping to win their favor in the coming year. Their most common pledge: to get debt free.
Today, the most common resolutions have to do with health: losing weight, exercising more, eating healthier, drinking less alcohol, quitting smoking, and managing stress (source: Marist University poll).
Only half of us are still keeping our resolution six months later.… Read More
Recycle, Repurpose, Rejoice: Eco-Clever Christmas Trees
The most universally loved symbol of Christmas is the Christmas tree. This makes us happy at Good Earth Plant Company, as trees are so important to our ecosystem and represent shelter, food, and diversity in Nature.
Some people love a fresh-cut tree, and others are happiest with an artificial tree. There are good arguments for both being eco-friendly. The trees here fall in a completely different category. They are all made of unusual recycled materials, everything from tires to shopping carts to books. It’s the ultimate in eco-cleverness and we love them all!
We know on Christmas Eve you are busy getting your Christmas celebration together, so we won’t make you read a long blog post, even one of our incredibly informative ones.… Read More
Bringing Nature into The Workplace Tops Design Trends for 2016
For more than 38 years, Good Earth Plant Company has made it our mission to bring the beauty, health, well-being and environmental benefits of living plants and nature into your life. We started out as florists and our business grew into providing interior plantscaping design and service to many of the leading workspaces in the San Diego region.
As technology has improved and as thinking has evolved about the importance of humanizing our workspaces by bringing the “outside” inside, we have eagerly embraced living walls, green roofs, and other creative natural structures along with container plants and other traditional interiorscape designs at restaurants, upscale hotels, shopping centers, universities, hospitals, corporate headquarters, schools and nonprofits throughout Southern California and the nation.… Read More
Have a Green Christmas with These Tips
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25 percent according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Where do you think all this extra trash ends up? You got it, mostly in landfills. An additional one million tons of waste hits American landfills every WEEK of the holiday season. It’s mainly food, shopping bags, product packaging and wrapping paper.
Your San Diego Eco-Warrior is here with a few tips from Good Earth Plants to help you do your part to recycle, reduce and reuse. Consider it your Christmas gift to Mother Nature.
Let your fingers do the shopping.… Read More