succulents

Show Mother Earth The Love on Valentine’s Day

| February 12, 2020 | Categories: Biophilia, Environment, Good Earth Plant Company, Nature and Wellbeing, Sustainable Living
Roses are a popular expression of love on Valentine's Day - but production can be hard on our planet. Photo: Dramm & Echter
Attention Good Earth Plant Company blog readers: Friday, February 14 is Valentine’s Day. You’re welcome. If you let this sneak up on you like a lot of people, you’ll be scrambling today to purchase the no-brainer Valentine’s Day favorites: chocolates and flowers, usually roses. Valentine’s Day roses and I go back a long way at Good Earth Plant Company.  For my first 14 years in business,  I ran a flower stand named “Good Earth Plant & Flower Co.” – very different from what we do today after four decades in business. Back in the 1970s and into the early 1990s, our main product was fresh cut flowers, and our biggest sales rush of the year was Valentine’s Day.… Read More

Ten Unusual Indoor Plants for Your Office Desk

| April 12, 2018 | Categories: Indoor Plants, Office Design, Plantscaping
Office plant designs
You’ve read here many times about the benefits of having plants in your workplace environment. They absorb impurities and toxins in the air, they help dampen noise down in open floor plans, and they improve your mood, creativity, and productivity. Really, there is no down side. You may have noticed the same type of indoor plant on everyone’s desk in every office. The reason you see certain plants all the time makes sense. These plants tolerate the less than perfect growing conditions in many indoor spaces. They will absorb some abuse, and still look beautiful. This is why Good Earth Plant Company uses and recommends hardy flowering orchids, colorful bromeliads, pretty variegated pothos, tough sansevierias and the workhorse dracaena family.… Read More

Succulents Give You A Fighting Chance Against Wildfires

| December 21, 2017 | Categories: Agriculture and Farming, Architecture and Design, Good Earth Plant Company Tips, Green Roofs, Indoor Plants
Watching wildfires burn across Southern California including close to home in the Bonsall and Fallbrook areas of San Diego County is sobering, especially for a wildfire survivor like me. Most of you know my own story: my home in the Muth Valley area of Lakeside in San Diego County burned to the ground in the Cedar Fire of 2003. I wrote about the experience in a journal shortly after it happened, and posted it to this blog page several years ago. You can read it here. The largest of the fires, the Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, continues to burn and it’s likely to end up as the largest wildfire in California state history.… Read More

We’re Out Of Our Gourd About Halloween

| October 26, 2017 | Categories: Agriculture and Farming, Environment, Gardening, Sustainable Living
Americans really love Halloween. Really, really love it! The National Retail Federation projects total spending this Halloween of $9.1 billion, with 179 million Americans planning to take part in festivities of some kind. For every three dollars spent on a child’s costume, another dollar is spent on a pet’s costume. Here’s even more proof: Out of the 50 plus blog posts we published in 2016, our blog post about Halloween pumpkins was one of the most popular, especially on the popular sharing website StumbleUpon. We are all about giving our readers what they want, so we will return to one of our favorite topics at this time of year.… Read More

Water Water Nowhere: California’s Drought Crisis of 2014

| January 30, 2014 | Categories: Environment, Green Roofs, Indoor Plants, Living Walls, Sustainable Living, Water and Water Conservation
California’s water situation has officially become a CRISIS. Governor Jerry Brown has declared a State of Emergency for California and we are scheduled to have the driest year (2014) on record. Reservoirs are at very low levels and the snowpack is 20 percent of the normal average for January. That’s the bad news. And there isn’t much good news. For Good Earth Plants and GreenScaped Buildings, increasing water costs and less rainfall means a quantum shift in our thinking. Gone are the days of the lush green lawn. We are designing, installing and maintaining drought-tolerant plantscapes that rely on minimal irrigation.… Read More