Jim Mumford

Dig In and Support Urban Gardening in San Diego

| January 20, 2016 | Categories: Agriculture and Farming, Gardening, Good Earth Plant Company, Sustainable Living
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

Even San Diegans Get The Winter Blues – How to Cope

| January 14, 2016 | Categories: Environment, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Nature and Wellbeing
After suffering through several years of drought, the arrival of rain thanks to El Nino storms was welcome. Even with some flooding problems, we will benefit in the long run from watering out trees without irrigation, replenishing our reservoirs and groundwater. But I didn’t realize just how much the gray gloomy weather had gotten to me until the sun came back out. When it hit 70 degrees, it felt more like an 80 degree summer day. People were back in their shorts and flip flops, even if it was only for a few hours. Feeling the blues when the days grow shorter isn’t in your imagination.… Read More

Do Your Part to Stop Stormwater Pollution

| January 7, 2016 | Categories: Environment, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Green Roofs, Indoor Plants, Living Walls, Sustainable Living, Water and Water Conservation
El Nino has arrived in San Diego, and with it a lot of stormwater runoff polluting our waterways and ocean.
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

| December 30, 2015 | Categories: Environment, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Green Roofs, Living Walls, Sustainable Living
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

| December 23, 2015 | Categories: Environment, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Sustainable Living
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

| December 16, 2015 | Categories: Architecture and Design, Biophilic Design, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Sustainable Living
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

| December 12, 2015 | Categories: Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Sustainable Living
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

Good Earth Plants Holiday Myth Busting

| December 4, 2015 | Categories: Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Indoor Plants, Plantscaping, Sustainable Living
Many myths circulate at Christmastime, and several of them deal with our favorite holiday theme plants. The Good Earth Plants Eco-Warrior is here with his Myth Busters hat on to help you out by spreading the true dirt. Myth 1: Poinsettias are poisonous. NO, poinsettias are NOT poisonous! It has been a real battle to bust this myth. Some sources attribute the rumor to a 1919 poisoning case in Hawaii that led to the death of a two year-old child. At the time, the cause of the poisoning was incorrectly determined to be a poinsettia leaf. Poison control centers nationwide say a child or pet weighing 50 pounds would have to eat 500 poinsettia leaves to even start being affected, and that might be due to plant overload versus outright poisoning.… Read More

Join the #OptOutside Movement on Black Friday

| November 25, 2015 | Categories: Biophilia, Environment, Good Earth Plant Company, Indoor Plants, Nature and Wellbeing, Sustainable Living
Recently it seems like we barely get to clear the Thanksgiving dinner table before the madness known as Black Friday hits us. So I was one of many people who loved REI’s announcement on October 27 it would not just close its stores in Black Friday and give their 12,000 employees the day off, but it would also encourage all of them to enjoy outdoor activities with family and friends. What a concept, putting Nature at the center of your Thanksgiving holiday. We could all use a reason to burn some calories after chowing down Thursday night. I’m not naïve enough to think there wasn’t a bit of public relations genius behind this.… Read More

Good Earth Plants in the Spotlight on San Diego 6

| November 18, 2015 | Categories: Good Earth Plant Company, Green Roofs, Indoor Plants, Media Coverage
Good Earth Plant Company had the opportunity this week to appear on San Diego 6 Morning News with anchor Heather Myers to talk about toxins lurking in the air in our indoor environments, and how adding plants can help clean the air and improve both your physical and mental health. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? If you missed it, you can check it out here: Those few minutes on TV are precious and we don’t want to waste a second of it. For every interview like mine you see, there is a ton of preparation. First of all, when you see us at 7:30 a.m.… Read More