Gardens

Kendall Brown, professor of Asian art history at Cal State Long Beach and one of the experts to weigh in on the Storrier Stearns garden in Pasadena ( see related article ), has a book coming out this month. It's titled “Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America ,” and for this edited Q&A, we asked about his fascination with Japanese gardens, how best to experience them and why our notion of Japanese gardens is not entirely Japanese. What do you find most intriguing about Japanese gardens?

The shape and material of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles often creates unique lighting conditions. In this case, the Blue Ribbon Garden at the hall seems to live up to its name in this image by Neil Fitzpatrick, taken Saturday. The image was taken with a Nikon D60 while Fitzpatrick was at the Concert Hall to see "Rocco" at the REDCAT theater. Follow Armand Emamdjomeh on Twitter or Google + . Each week, we're featuring photos of Southern California submitted by readers.

Los Angeles residents who grow fruits and vegetables near their front curb will get a respite from the city's code enforcement officials, under a measure approved Tuesday by the City Council. The council voted unanimously to ask city agencies to temporarily suspend rules that restrict the cultivation of gardens in the parkway, the area between the sidewalk and the curb. While enforcement is suspended, city officials will continue to work on new rules governing parkway landscaping, said Council President Herb Wesson.

Phil Jackson's emergence from retirement to take over basketball operations for the New York Knicks last month completes a basketball circle that began, of course, when the young North Dakotan was drafted by the team and helped lead it to two world championships, in 1970 and 1973. Those triumphant, colorful days are recalled with enthusiasm, if a bit of reflexive adulation, in "When the Garden Was Eden," actor-director Michael Rapaport 's latest film, which premiered Thursday at the Tribeca Film Festival as part of its ESPN-centric sidebar.

* "Summer Survival Care for Your Plants," a workshop by display gardener Brian Sullivan, Friday, 10 a.m.-noon, at Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Canada Flintridge, (818) 952-4401; http://www.descanso.com. $18. * A class on lawns and ground covers, Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon, at the Arboretum of Los Angeles County, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia, (626) 821-3222. $18. * A slide lecture on propagating cacti and succulents, to be followed by a plant sale, July 13, 2:30 p.m.

Things to do this week: * Plant early tomatoes. In warmer areas, including most of the Los Angeles Basin and Orange County, where frosts are unlikely, try putting in transplants of 'Early Girl' tomatoes now and they may have tasty ripe fruit before Memorial Day. Choose a sunny spot protected from cool, coastal breezes (against a warm, south-facing wall is perfect).

Spring-like weather hasn't brought smiles at the Venice Community Garden. The locals who tend the garden's 54 plots recently learned that they have until the end of the month to clear out. With real estate prices rising, gardeners at the privately owned site learned more than a year ago that the property would go on the market someday. "But we were thinking in 10 years," said master gardener Kip Wood, one of the people who founded the community garden about four years ago. The number of community gardens in the Los Angeles area has grown to more than 100. The wave of popularity is so strong that leaders of the Los Angeles Community Garden Council have lost track of an exact count.

One of Mexico City's major tourist attractions, the floating gardens of Xochimilco, will get a face-lift to clean up its heavily polluted canals, City Hall announced.

The term drip irrigation is off-putting, much more agribusiness-sounding than, say, sprinklers . What might first come to mind is an irrigation system covering acres of crops in the Central Valley, not something that would be of much help in a back yard. But drip irrigation, its proponents say, is an efficient and money-saving way to get water to the garden.

NEW YORK - Since it was founded 12 years ago, the Tribeca Film Festival has sometimes swerved between identities like a barfly at happy hour, exuberant but hardly always clear. The festival looks to change that this time around. Tribeca has entered an era in which it hopes the sale last month of a 50% stake to James Dolan's Madison Square Garden Corp. gives it economic stability. It also believes it has finally found a mix of eclectic documentaries, international favorites, well-chosen independent features and even digital experiments to supplant earlier missions, which relied on a kitchen-sink approach to U.S. features or, for a number of years, star-heavy studio premieres.

Go ahead, play with your food, Niki Jabbour seems to be saying in her new book, "Groundbreaking Food Gardens" (Storey Publishing, $19.95, paper). The author of the bestselling "The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener" and host of the radio show "The Weekend Gardener" enlisted leading gardeners and designers to contribute themed food garden plans to "change the way you grow your garden. " They delivered handsomely. The food gardens in this illustrated book, subtitled "73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden," are inventive, inspiring and instructive - and creatively named.

Some garden advice can be heeded no matter where you live. But much in gardening and landscaping revolves around the specifics of location - weather, terrain, soil type and design preferences. That's where the redesigned and updated "Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping," edited by Sunset magazine's Kathleen Norris Brenzel (Oxmoor House, $29.95, paper), has an edge over a more general guide. A section on plants, for example, includes chapters on palms, ornamental grasses, tropicals, succulents, cactus and natives.

A SWAT team used tear gas and a K-9 unit to end an hours-long standoff Saturday wi th a shooting suspect who had barricaded himself in a parked vehicle at a Hawaiian Gardens supermarket, according to a release from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Authorities believe the man shot the mother of his two children at least six times with a small-caliber handgun about 12:30 a.m. in Riverside. He fled after taking her to a hospital, authorities said. The standoff began about 7 a.m. after deputies chased the man to a strip mall near Norwalk Boulevard and Carson Street in Hawaiian Gardens, authorities said.

An hours-long armed standoff ended peacefully Saturday afternoon after a man who was suspected of shooting the mother of his children surrendered to authorities, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department said. The standoff began shortly before 9 a.m. after a police pursuit of the man ended in a strip mall near the intersection of Norwalk Boulevard and Carson Street in Hawaiian Gardens , authorities said. The man then barricaded himself in his white Dodge truck, refusing to surrender to authorities.

In Southern California, spring is a good time for gardeners to start thinking about planting vegetable beds and perusing the hundreds of tomato varieties that are available. Curious about rare plants with strange titles like Black Sea Man, Chile Verde and Sweet Tangerine? Or just want some tips on short-season tomatoes? You'll find it at Tomatomania , a mobile one-stop shop for planting tomatoes that includes everything you need to successfully grow tomatoes: plants, soils, containers, stakes, fertilizers, books and tie tape, as well as hands-on advice from tomato experts.

Spring is the season for garden tours, and Southern California has an abundance of them. Here is a selection of 2014 spring tours to mark on your calendar. Be sure to check organizers' websites for more information and updates because some events sell out. Most are rain-or-shine. April 5-6: More than 40 gardens in the Los Angeles region are featured in the annual self-guided tour organized by the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Members $15, nonmembers $20. (818)

Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, a philanthropist, art patron and self-taught horticulturalist whose generous support of presidential candidate John Edwards drew her into the political scandal that ended his career, died Monday at her estate in Upperville, Va. She was 103. She died of natural causes, said her longtime friend and attorney, Alexander D. Forger. Mellon, a Listerine heiress who married banking scion Paul Mellon, lived quietly on a 2,000-acre Virginia farm, where her fabled guests included John and Jacqueline Kennedy and two generations of British royalty.