I'd suggest you join the San Francisco Bromeliad Society, which meets every third Thursday(next week) at 7:30pm at the Hall of Flowers Building, enter back side of building from the parking lot. See their web site at www.sfbromeliad.org. This is a great way to build up a collection of hardy outdoor bromeliads, and also get good advice on which ones to look for from the knowledgeable members. New visitors/guests get first pick free from the raffle table, which can be a very good start to your collection. I grow over a 100 different types of bromeliads, all outdoors here in Berkeley, and use them for landscaping clients' gardens as well, so it is certainly possible.

Next year's show should prove interesting, as the new buyers are Davis Dalbok of Living Green here in San Francisco, and Rock and Rose Landscape Contractors, both past garden creators in the past, and both very good. Another entry on the scene this year, if funding holds up, will be the Late Show Gardens, to be held at Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma County this fall. It will be actual outdoor gardens, at a different season than all the spring shows, and fall in northern California is actually prime garden time around here, especially for gardens featuring subtropicals and cloudforest plants from Mexico and Central America. The economy and threats of water rationing may yet prove too much for a successful launch of this new garden show, which had originally aimed to premiere last year up in Napa at Copia. The vertical wall plantings seemed to be a common thread in many of the gardens, (the latest "it" item?), but I fully agree that in concept they are wonderfully inventive, and would love to do a three or more story garden wall for some client if I could interest one in the idea. As I mentioned, I did buy Patrick Blanc's book on his vertical wall gardens, and he is the French designer/horticulturist who first launched this trend. I found it interesting that he was doing phd work in Kuala Lumpur at the same time that I was living/working there so many years ago, what a small world it sometimes is... Kim, You should go for that wall of bromeliads/staghorns, and don't forget to add some Rhipsalis into the mix, and maybe Echeverias and sedums too, as these often grow epiphytically on trees/rocks in Mexico. In looking at Patrick Blanc's plant lists for many of his wall gardens, I was amazed to see that the list virtually duplicates many of the plants that I most often use in my own northern California garden designs.

I hadn't meant to be abusive of Joe's points, just a counterpoint. Just a note about Urban Farmer's services, they are a full service irrigation store, and sell all the materials to install a conventional spray irrigation system as well. I would like to counter one of Joe's points, about drip irrigation being cheaper to install. I don't find that to be the case, in the systems I design and install, there is more hand labor involved to get emitter line to individual plants, so I'd say that the different systems are probably about on par or even slightly more expensive for a drip irrigation when using higher quality/more reliable fittings and materials. Also, as to the point about needing pressure regulators for drip systems, what is your point? The pressure regulator is not some expensive or elaborate device prone to failure, and even a conventional spray irrigation system will often require a pressure regulator at the valves if the house or street pressures are too high. Where drip irrigation excels is the benefits of using it on difficult to water steep slopes where spray irrigation would cause run-off at the higher application rates, and is not as good at giving deeper watering. You can also get away with using less valves with a larger area of coverage in a typical garden setting, because the water flows required are less volume and pressure. As to maintenance and repairs, I often find that clients with dogs and conventional spray irrigation systems may have more need of regular inspections to repair broken irrigation heads, especially if they conflict with a large dog running along an open metal fence at the street. As well, pop-up spray irrigation heads are equally prone to damage from autos driving over them or lawn mower blades clipping them, and when broken and set to run overnight, the wasted water will be far more wasteful than it would be with a lower flow/lower pressure drip system. I would not waste my time trying to convince someone who has their mind made up about their preferences in irrigation systems, but it is not as black and white as Joe would make it appear. Everyone should irrigate in a way that makes sense for their particular situation. I simply believe that drip irrigation in combination with micro-spray drip can create superb results while also using less water overall. Joe's contention that drip irrigation does not permit deep rooting of plants is only germane for those who don't run their systems long enough to wet the soil deeply. This is also very much a concern with spray systems as well, as most gardeners simply don't know how long it can take to deeply water a clay soil. Most spray systems will cause run-off in clay soils if watered for more than 10 to 15 minutes on a sloping site, and this won't wet the soil much beyond the first inch or two. Not to mention the water lost to wind/over throw spray, and evaporated water lost to the hot sun in combination with winds. In any case, both spray and drip irrigation design have their pros and cons, and the majority of residential homeowners are more likely to be timing their irrigation by schedules rather than plant needs, nor do most adjust their watering schedules more than once or twice a year to reflect the weather and seasons. In specifying which type of system makes more sense for an individual homeowner/client, it helps to weigh all the factors that should influence such a decision. While working as a landscape architect for a large firm doing subdivision homes for a developer, I had occasion to design a subsurface system using Netafim for lawns in this development. I can tell you that it drove the new home buyers crazy, as too many didn't trust that it was working properly, and would reset their individual home's irrigation controllers to vastly overwater the lawns, as they couldn't see it working. While it may make sense to use such a system for a commons area landscape that isn't subject to the whims of different homeowners, I wouldn't recommend it again for the average garden. The one place I would always recommend a spray system over a drip system would be for a client who can't control their dog's digging and chewing of things in the garden. A drip system will be much more vulnerable to damage in such a garden. I've also found that the most common animal damage to drip irrigation systems in my experience has been with squirrels chewing off the hard plastic mister heads I use in gardens which may have subtropicals such as bromeliads mounted on fences or trees. I've learned that the misters should never be mounted on the top of branches, but always on the bottom of a horizontal branch, to make it more difficult for the squirrels to do damage.

If you have a car, then I would suggest you go to Draegers Grocery in San Mateo on 4th St. and have the most fun ever. Outrageously expensive but the best upscale grocer in the Bay Area. Since you've been to Spanish Table in other cities I wouldn't bother with the Berkeley location, it's pretty small although it is nearby the Cheese Board, which is a great cheese store run by a collective (very Berkeley). If you like seafood, then eat at Sea Salt on San Pablo & Dwight Way in Berkeley, an excellent place for lunch that is one of my favorites. If you do have your car when going to IKEA, then Townhouse Grill in Emeryville has an excellent burger and good salads, but Sea Salt is not that far north, just a few minutes, and is much better food. Their lobster roll is very tiny but absolutely choice and with a bowl of their excellent clam chowder (full of bacon and properly unthickened), my hands-down favorite lunch in the entire East Bay. Good wine list, excellent coffee, very laid-back at lunchtime. Weather in the Bay Area has cooled off and the fog is back, so bring that Polarfleece vest, especially for the Marina.