On the evening of April 12th, from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m., you are invited to meet the artists. You will have the opportunity to hear the artists speak about their passion while you enjoy tasting a selection of wines and cheeses courtesy of Newell Nurseries. RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED for this evening reception, so please call Newell Nurseries at (909)797-9210 or email newell2002@hotmail.com with your name, the number of people in your party and a phone or email contact.

Yucaipa VisionQuest--The Center for Creativity was founded in 2001 and currently boasts a membership of 182, including 95 artists who work with watercolors, oils, acrylics, pastels and pen and ink. Other artists include quilters, glassblowers, stone workers, metalworkers, bead and jewelry makers, potters, photographers, musicians and writers. Their mission is to "foster public interest in the development of creative thinking, with the goals of empowering people and enhancing the quality of life, by providing opportunities for all community members to participate in and enjoy creative activities". This non-profit organization relies on volunteers to maintain The Gallery at 35136 Avenue A in Yucaipa. The Gallery is currently open on Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

Read on to meet some of the artists who will be at the Faire and the Reception:

Beverly McClanahan joined the Yucaipa Valley Art Association in 2000 where she soon became Vice-President. After three years in that office, she became YVAA Liaison to VisionQuest--The Center for Creativity, where she has been on the Board of Directors for several years. For years, Bev has been a significant part of promoting and supporting local artists. She is also the recipient of numerous awards for her artwork included her most coveted award--The 2002 Yucaipa Valley Art Association Spring Show Popular Vote Award.

Bob Norris discovered his talent for oil painting in the 70s by taking adult evening classes. Fellow art colleagues call him the “Mountain Man” as he prefers to paint mountain scenery. He and his wife spend summers at their mountain home in the Colorado Rockies which provides the inspiration for his oil paintings. “I truly enjoy the creative process of painting. It 'takes me away' to places I love to visit or would like to visit. I would wish for everyone the pure artistic enjoyment I have each time I sit down at my easel.”

Dave Taylor has been blowing glass in Southern California since 1997. He trained at San Bernardino Valley College under Ken Reed and Jim Stewart. He also attended workshops and demonstrations by such artists as Fritz Dreisbach, Elio Quarisa, Dick Marquis, and many others. Teaming up with fellow glass artist Ezra Hunt, he has established his own studio, Big Yellow "T", in Rialto, California, where he produces his own unique glass pieces. His work has been featured by The Redlands Glass Museum in Redlands, California and VisionQuest--The Center for Creativity, where he has been a member for more than 5 years.

David Porras' love for pottery began while studying under Robert Karlinsey at Loyola Marymount University and then while studying under the late Neil Moss at El Camino College. He improved his throwing skills by working as a production potter at factories in Carson and Santa Monica. Then he had his own retail pottery studio in Playa del Rey, making and selling functional stoneware.

Many years ago, a neighbor asked David's then five-year old son, what his dad did for a living. Since his son had only seen his dad working on pottery in his garage studio, David’s son said he was an attorney and said that attorneys make pottery. Actually, his son was right – David works with pottery and is an attorney with Varner and Brandt in Riverside.

Ezra Hunt is a native of San Bernardino. He started blowing glass in the spring of 1998, where he studied under Ken Reed and Jim Stewart, at Valley College. He has attended workshops by Elio Quarisa. Ezra’s work is renowned for its technique and vivid colors. He has sold many glass vases and bowls since The Gallery opened five years ago. He currently works with Dave Taylor, owner of “Big Yellow T” studio in Rialto, and has been a member of VisionQuest for more than five years.

Richard Jones, a painter and native of Ohio, Richard Jones spent his formative years growing to love the beauty of nature by hiking along rivers and through the woods. Since his retirement in 1997, Richard has enjoyed oil painting, gardening and traveling. He said his early art training was in high school, but during the last two years, he has very much enjoyed his art classes taught by Anita De Carlo. Richard is a member of VisionQuest--The Center for Creativity and has many paintings for sale at The Gallery@VisionQuest. He was honored with an Artist’s Reception by VisionQuest on March 23, 2007.

Charlene MacLeod, a painter and a native of Los Angeles, moved to Yucaipa with her husband Fred, in 1987. She is an avid member of the Yucaipa Valley Art Association (YVAA) and a Board Member of Directors of VisionQuest. She has belonged to the Hawthorne Art Group, the Torrance Traditional Art Guild, and the Gardena Art Association. From 1973 to 1987, Charlene displayed her work at shows in San Diego, Del Mar, and Hawthorn. She continues to show her work at The Gallery@VisionQuest. Over the years, Charlene has won numerous blue ribbons for her beautiful paintings. Her most coveted award was at the 1975 Gardena Valley Art Association when she won Best of Show. Although Charlene is mostly self-taught, she used some instruction when learning to use acrylics, which is her medium of choice. She paints on canvas, sandstone quarried from Arizona, and Bass wood from Wisconsin, The ideas for Charlene’s paintings come from photos taken when she and Fred took trips into the “Gold County” (up highway 49) and in the New York area. She has recently begun painting at art classes taught at the Scherer Senior Center in Yucaipa by Anita De Carlo, another YVAA and VisionQuest Associate Member.

Marge Lammers, a painter and a native of the mid-west, has lived in the Yucaipa/Calimesa area over 50 years. She and husband Rome have five children and ten grand children. Marge worked in banking for 20 years and upon retirement, has had the opportunity to pursue her interest in painting, taking lessons from Sharon Rachal, Anita De Carlo and David Fairrington. She says that besides learning to paint, the new friends she's made these past few years mean the world to her. Marge is a member of VisionQuest and the Yucaipa Valley Art Association, where she currently serves on the Board as Treasurer.

Patty St. Clair, a Yucaipa resident, specializes in painting lighthouses, because of the detail involved. Although she has painted in pastels, oils, and other media, she loves to paint in watercolors. After sitting many hours in her little “studio” in her spare bedroom, Patti has everything at her fingertips so she can make beautiful watercolor paintings, many of which have garnered blue ribbons and sales of many of her watercolor lighthouses. Occasionally after delving into some other art project, she always returns to her love of watercolors and her lighthouses. Patty is a member of VisionQuest.

Perhaps no other single plant or tree can add as much value to a garden landscape as a Japanese maple. They look great planted as a centerpiece in mounds or garden islands, plus they make excellent container plants for a patio or terrace. Japanese maples are also used quite extensively as bonsai specimens.

What makes this tree so popular is that it is available in many sizes, colors, leaf shapes, and growing habits. The color of Japanese maples ranges from bright green and variegated to shades of orange, red, and purple. The fall foliage on most varieties is beautiful. You can find single-stemmed specimens, multi-trunk, and low-growing mounded varieties.

This versatile tree can be planted any time of the year in most regions of the U.S., as long as the soil is not soggy. They require a location with good drainage and prefer protection from the wind. Avoid planting them in lawn areas, because lawns receive more frequent watering than Japanese maples require. Use red- and purple-shaded varieties against light-colored fences and walls, or to set off other plants. Use green-leafed varieties in shadier areas, against plain fences or darker shaded walls.

Most Japanese maples prefer a morning sun/afternoon shade or full shade location but will acclimate quite well after a few years planted in full sun, provided the soil around them is kept consistently moist. The key to watering Japanese maples is slow, deep and regular waterings. Never let the tree dry out. The soil should be kept moist, not wet.

Japanese maples are not heavy feeders, and can burn from too much or too strong a plant food. We recommend feeding twice a year during the growing season. It is important not to cultivate around the root zone. A 2" layer of mulch will help keep the upper layer of soil moist and help prevent soil crusting and weeds.

Pay us a visit and let one of our nursery experts help you pick the perfect Japanese maple tree for your garden.

If you ever find yourself getting bored with your garden, consider adding or creating some topiary plants to bring a little life to the party. Topiary, the art of fashioning living plants into ornamental shapes and sculptures, is an art that has been practiced for centuries: the practice of controlling plants by selective pruning and shaping.

There are many different plants that can be used to create topiary, but the main attributes for the types of plants used are that they are evergreen, have smaller leaves or needles, produce dense foliage, and have compact or columnar growth habits. While some folks use shaped wire cages to guide unsteady shears, most traditional topiary depends on patience and steady hands to create the shape one desires.

Mediterranean topiary dates back to Roman times where figures of animals, inscriptions, cyphers, and obelisks were introduced to gardens. The Romans also introduced the art of miniature landscapes. Clipping and shaping shrubs and trees has also been practiced in China, Japan and other parts of Asia for centuries but with completely different esthetic goals. The Orient has given us more "natural" forms of topiary including "cloud pruning."

Europe can be credited with starting a topiary revival in the 16th century and has historically been associated with the terrace gardens of wealthy European land owners. This is where traditional geometric topiary forms such as balls, cubes, pyramids, cones, tapering spirals, flattened hedges, and other formal shapes were introduced.

Hedging is an easy way to introduce geometric topiary into your garden. Simply take your selected shrubs and give them a smooth, crisp finish. Then cut out windows and doors, or turn the top into a battlement. You can use rows of smaller growing plants to create mini-walls to frame flower and vegetable beds--or consider creating a traditional knot garden with embroidery-like patterns.

For spirals, use a line of string tied to the top of the plant, and then circle it around and down to outline the shape. Then start pruning with some topiary shears. You can even create evergreen pillars and arches to highlight the entrance to a special part of your garden. For more informal but equally spectacular topiary, try Japanese cloud pruning. Simply strip most of the leaves off each stem leaving a ball of foliage at the end. This looks beautiful and impressive, adding an abstract formality to a garden and makes a great sculptural focal point.

If you're not sure about your pruning skills, buy 3-D wire frames, which are available in a huge range of shapes and sizes and are placed over plants to grow more complex figures. Just remember that shapes requiring sharp angles require using small-leaved plants. Another option is to plant a vine-type plant outside the shape and allow it to grow over the object.

Ask our staff which of our plants are best suited for what you wish to do with topiary. And check our selection of shears to find what you need. Then just let your creative juices flow--but please be careful where you point those shears!

When most people think of annuals they think about upright varieties for borders and containers. But when planning your annual garden, think about more than just upright plants. There are a number of wonderful trailing varieties that are perfect for providing a splash of color between shrubs, on a hillside or cascading over a rock wall or trailing from a hanging basket.

For a hillside, it's hard to beat trailing lantana, with its showy purple and white blooms. A happy plant can reach 3-4 ft across in diameter. If you are looking for a slightly flatter foliage that hugs the ground, consider the mauve-flowering scaevola.

It's easy to perk up your landscape by planting patches of million bells (callibrachoa) in spaces between larger shrubs. This colorful annual comes in a variety of bright hot colors including red, yellow, apricot, white, pink, fuchsia, blue, and violet. Another alternative would be verbena, which is available in many colors, flower sizes and flat or mounding foliage. These plants also look great flowing over rock walls or pool edges.

For large splashes of color in the landscape, use petunias or ivy geranium. Both grow incredibly fast and come in every color under the sun. You can dress up the edges of a boring-looking vegetable garden with nasturtium, whose orange, red and yellow flowers are also edible.

All of the above mentioned plants perform well in hanging baskets but there are a few plants that make great partners with them and are particularly suited for container planting. To add some texture and unique foliage color to your hanging baskets consider using silver dichondra, licorice plant (helichrysum) or parrot's beak (Lotus maculatus). All have silvery grey foliage that provides a great contrast to other plants.

While most plants in hanging baskets perform better with a little shade from the afternoon sun, one annual is particularly suited for slightly shadier confines. Use trailing lobelia, which comes in many shades of blue, rose and white. Its cheerful little blossoms are perfect for any container.

Spring is around the corner. The cool season grasses such as fescue, ryegrass, and bluegrass are those lawns over which people have exclaimed, "You look marvelous!" (Can't you just hear Billy Crystal?) They have been bright green all winter. They are still growing fast; mow them weekly with a rotary mower (to 1 1/2 inches in height).

You should be feeding all established lawns now with a complete lawn fertilizer--containing phosphorus and potassium as well as nitrogen--to get warm-season grasses off to a good start and keep cool-season grasses going longer. A healthy, well-fed lawn is better able to withstand pests and diseases and choke out weeds

Warm-season grasses, such as Bermuda, dichondra, and zoysia, are waking up from winter dormancy. As they start growing, begin mowing weekly with a reel mower to the correct height for each. Mow common Bermuda to 1 inch, hybrid Bermuda to 1/2 or 1/4 inch, St. Augustine to between 3/4 and 1 1/4 inches, and zoysia to 3/4 to 1 inch height. Cut Adalayd grass with a rotary mower between 3/4 and 1 inch in height.

We have mentioned two different kinds of lawn mowers: rotary and reel. A rotary mower is one in which one blade spins horizontally and uses a sucking and tearing action to cut the blades of grass. A reel mower is one in which the blades spin vertically and use a scissoring action to cut the blades of grass.

You notice that we recommend fertilizing with a complete fertilizer. While nitrogen gives your lawn top growth and a healthy green color you can see, phosphorus and potassium feed the roots and growth systems of the plant that are unseen but just as important. Phosphorus and potassium are longer lasting in soil than nitrogen, so one feeding a season with them is often adequate. After this complete feeding, you can switch to a less expensive, pure nitrogen fertilizer if desired, and feed warm-season grasses with it once a month for the rest of the growing season.

Before applying your complete fertilizer, be sure to read the instructions for your lawn type. Apply fertilizer when the ground is damp and grass blades dry, and follow up by watering deeply. Otherwise, you risk burning your lawn. As an alternative fertilizer for the cool season lawn, add coated slow-release fertilizer. Cool-season grasses need little or no fertilizer during the warmer months of the year. Slow release fertilizer will work perfectly for this type of lawn.

Irrigate all lawns now, according to their individual needs, if rains have not been adequate.

Both warm- and cool-season grasses may be bought as sod, and cool-season grasses can be planted from sod any month year-round. Although you can plant both warm- and cool-season grasses from seed this month, fall is actually a better time to plant cool-season grass seed. This is because fall planting gives cool-season grasses planted from seed more time to establish a root system before summer heat arrives. When planting warm-season grasses, wait until the weather has warmed up in your area. (If you plan to plant zoysia, it's best to wait until June.)

There are numerous lawn types and you should investigate each of them before choosing and planting one. How do you choose which grass is right for you? There are many considerations: sun, shade, foot traffic, pets, children, hardiness, style, color, and simply the "look" that you like.

When planting a new lawn, regardless of the type of grass and method of planting you choose, be sure to prepare the site thoroughly. If you're planting an invasive grass, such as Bermuda or an invasive variety of zoysia, first install edging to keep it from creeping into borders.

For all lawns, roto-till deeply, add plenty of soil amendment, then level and roll this amended ground. "Level" might mean rolling the area completely flat or it may mean compacting the soil but adding mounded areas of interest. The point is to level out soil so that your new lawn is not filled with hundreds of hills and valleys that would make walking on it (and mowing it) difficult.

If you have chosen to put in a seed lawn, sprinkle seeds evenly. This is most efficiently done using a hand-held fertilizer spreader or a seed spreader and covering the seeds with mulch or a lawn topper product.

Perhaps you are putting in a lawn that can be grown from stolons. Solons are little portions of the plant that will root once in contact with the soil. St. Augustine is an example of this type of grass. Either roll stolons with a roller to press them into the soil or simply partially cover them with topsoil or a lawn topper product. Keep your freshly planted lawn damp until established. Sprinkle it two or three times daily, and avoid watering late in the day.

Just water and watch. In a few months--voilà--your new lawn!

Is rainwater really better than faucet water for my plants?

Answer:

Yes.

Many municipal water systems put chlorine and other chemicals in the water. Chlorine is bad for soil bacteria, not to mention our air. Rainwater is oxygenated, un-chlorinated and warmer than tap water, qualities that make it a better source for plants and safer for the environment. Cold tap water can also "shock" your plants.

There is a growing movement to conserve water by collecting rainwater in plastic barrels. This has become very popular in the Canadian province of Alberta and communities in the eastern United States.

The water they collect is better for plants, plus they don't have to pay for it. It also reduces energy consumption--every 1,000 gallons of tap water requires about one kilowatt hour of energy to be treated and pumped. Reducing such water use also slows the need to expand municipal water treatment and sewage plants.

If you decide to use a rain barrel, make sure it's childproof. To be safe for kids, it should have a secure lid that can't be opened easily. You don't want anyone using your rain barrel as a swimming pool!