Category Archives: Sustainable Gardening

Kiss Your Lawn Good-Bye

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Tiarella cordifolia in flower

Tiarella cordifolia – one of my favorite lawn alternatives for shade.

Many homeowners would like to reduce the size of their lawns but they have no idea how to begin, what’s involved or what makes sense for their own gardens.

Let’s face it, while lawns are resource intensive, most of us have a basic idea of how to grow a lawn. But the idea of growing a ‘lawn alternative’ is foreign and seems difficult, maybe not even worth the effort.

Regardless of where you live, whether you garden in Connecticut , California or points in between, shrinking the size of your lawn is easier than your think.

Getting Started Kissing Your Lawn Good-Bye

♦ Easy Ways to Shrink Your Lawn ~ An article I wrote for the May/June edition of Connecticut Gardener magazine with all sorts of plants possibilities to use instead of lawn grass.

 

♦ Lawn Alternatives ~ A collection of posts on the Garden Designers Roundtable from garden bloggers across the country filled with ideas on how to green your garden and shrink your lawn all at the same time. This is a great place to find regionally appropriate lawn alternatives no matter where you garden.

 

♦ Lawn Alternatives  ~  An interesting look at using weeds as a lawn alternative from the Ecological Landscaping Association.

 

♦ Planting a Meadow ~ Planting  a meadow is a wildlife-friendly alternative to a lawn. Take a look at one community’s efforts to revitalize their streets in this post over at Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens.

 

♦ Reinventing the Lawn ~ A look at ‘eco-friendly lawns and lawn alternatives’ from the New England Wildflower Society.

 

♦ Shade Gardening as an Alternative to Lawns  ~ Stop struggling with growing lawn grass in the shade and embrace these native plant alternatives from the Ecological Landscaping Association.

 

Have you started shrinking your lawn? If so, please share your experiences, both good and bad…

Biocontrols for Your Garden: Advice from the Experts

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These days, more and more gardeners are shunning the use of chemicals in their gardens and turning to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices for controlling ‘bad’ bugs in their gardens. Whether you’re creating a wildlife-friendly garden or just trying to be more conscious of what’s happening in your own backyard, learning more about IPM is a good thing.

One facet of IPM is the use of biocontrols. But what exactly is biocontrol?  According to Cornell University’s Biocontrol website, it is “ the reduction of pest populations by natural enemies and typically involves an active human role”. The site goes on to say “natural enemies of insect pests, also known as biological control agents, include predators, parasitoids, and pathogens”.

Learning from the Pros

I recently heard several plant growers from Connecticut talk about their efforts to use biocontrols in their growing fields and greenhouses. I thought I’d share some of their advice that can be easily translated for use in your home garden.

◊ Stack the deck. When you’re first starting to implement IPM in your garden, try several approaches at once. For example, if you’re planting beneficial insect-friendly plants – like marigold, lantana, and dill – plant lots of it in several areas of your garden.

◊ Expect high costs when your begin.  Until you get the right levels of beneficial insects returning to your garden, expect to spend more money than you would if you were simply buying a bottle of chemical spray. It may take 2 – 3 years to get it right, but it will be worth it in the long run.

◊ Plan ahead. Take notes about the kinds of ‘bad bugs’ that are popping up in your garden and plan ahead to have the appropriate ‘good guys’ on hand to take care of the infestation next year. While you’re at it, learn to recognize the larval form of common beneficial insects. Until I saw a photo, I had no idea what the larval form of lady beetles looked like.

◊ Become a scout.  Get yourself a decent hand lens, some reference books and field guides on garden insects in your region, and bookmark some helpful websites for figuring out which bugs are ‘good’ and which one’s are ‘bad’.  BugGuide and InsectIdentification.org are two good places to start.

◊ Crawlers may be better than flyers. If you are going to buy beneficial insects to add to your garden, remember that crawling predators are less likely to leave your garden as quickly as flying predators might.

◊ Take heart. All the experts said controlling aphids and white flies with biocontrols is very difficult. Sounds familiar, huh?  If an infestation gets particularly bad, try an OMRI-approved insecticide to get things back under control.

Are you practicing IPM in your garden?  If so, how’s it working?  What’s been your biggest challenge?

Sustainable Roses

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Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden

Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden (photo courtesy of NYBG, by Ivo M Vermeulen.)

Sustainable roses. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? If you’re like me, you love roses but don’t grow them because you equate growing roses with spraying lots of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides.

Recently, I saw Peter Kukielsi, the curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden  at New York Botanical Garden talk about his efforts to transition the famous rose garden from a collection highly dependent on chemicals input, to what is now considered one of the most eco-friendly collection of roses in the world.

The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden houses over 4000 individual rose plants from almost 700 different varieties of roses. Obviously, Mr. Kukielski knows ALOT about growing roses. And about growing roses without spraying them with chemicals.

A Rose is a Rose is NOT a Rose

Purple rain was a top performer at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden in 2011 (Photo courtesy of W. Kordes Söhne)

With over 167,000 cultivated roses available today, how on earth is anyone supposed to find the perfect rose to grow in their garden?

The problem with many cultivated roses is that they were bred for fragrance or color, not for cold hardiness or pest or disease resistance, the  primary characteristics eco-friendly gardeners are looking for.

So when it comes to picking the best roses for your garden, remember…a rose is not always a rose.

The Keys to Growing Roses Sustainably

♦ Choose species roses. The oldest rose fossil found is over 34 million years old! That means roses have been around forever, and many roses have strong genes that inherently make them ideal for growing in your garden.

♦ Breeding matters. Kukielski recommends choosing cultivars from German rose breeder Kordes, among others. Apparently the germans have been growing roses for decades without chemicals so their cultivars are known to be disease resistance and consistently good performers at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

♦ Another aspect of sustainable gardening is conserving water. EarthKind roses, a special designation given to different cultivars based on their performance in field trials throughout the county, do not need any supplemental watering after their first year. The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is currently trialing dozens of EarthKind roses.

♦ “We have worms!” Just like growing any other type of plant sustainably, growing roses sustainably starts with healthy soil. Kukielski told a story about how excited he was to see worms return to the soil at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. He uses tons of composted manure and fish emulsion in the Garden.

Karl Ploberger is another top performer. And it's fragrant.

♦ Companion planting is another key to growing roses without chemicals. Kukielski recommended planting 4 o-clock flowers (Mirabilis) around roses. He also recommended checking out the book Roses Love Garlic by Louise Riotte.

To make choosing a sustainable rose, or two,  for your garden even easier, here’s a list of the top performing roses of 2010 at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

Designing Child-Friendly Natural Playspaces

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Cover image of Landscape Hardscape Design Build magazine 09/2011 editionI thought I’d share an article I wrote for the September 2011 edition of Landscape & Hardscape Design Build magazine (yes, it’s a mouthful!) on designing play spaces for children. The article looks at the growing trend of using natural items found in the landscape as play equipment rather than the metal and wooden ‘play environments’ found in many playgrounds.

A garden is an ideal way to connect children to the great outdoors, but it’s a sad fact that childhood and playing outside no longer go hand in hand. We need to create outdoor spaces that entice children to venture away from the TV and out into their backyards. A place where they can explore and play in a safe space created just for them.

These child-friendly spaces don’t have to be large or grand; they don’t have to dominate an existing garden. But, they do need to be a place filled with mystery, magic and wonder. A dynamic space to encourage creativity, imagination and free play; a place for hosting tea parties with fairies, excavating dinosaur bones or building a rocket for a trip to the moon. A space for kids (read the rest at L&HDB).

Resources for Wildlife Gardeners

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Gratuitous butterfly photo

On the 20th of each month, I blog over on Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens.  This month, I’ve written a post about the difficulty gardeners have in finding reliable online resources.

I hope you’ll check out the post, Online Resources  for Wildlife Gardeners, and while you’re there, don’t forget to read the comments section for links to other websites that will sure to be of interest. And, of course, please feel free to leave your own link, too.

Garden Designers Roundtable: A Connecticut Yankee’s Guide to Socially Acceptable Lawn Alternatives

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This month the Garden Designers Roundtable explores the important topic of lawn alternatives, along with our guests, the members of the Lawn Reform Coalition. Since the trend of shrinking the size of your lawn is just starting to take hold here in southwestern Connecticut, I offer a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at why it seems to be taking a bit longer than it should for some of my fellow Nutmegers to embrace the lawn alternative movement…

Here on the Connecticut gold coast, in quaint little towns like Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan, the streets are dotted with modest multi-acre estates. Most are hidden behind stone walls, fences and rows of evergreens. A quick glimpse inside often reveals a meticulously manicured lawn sweeping almost as far as the eye can see. Getting these homeowners to reduce the size of their lawns in any way, shape or form, is, quite frankly, a very difficult proposition.

You see, we’re conservative, some might even call us uptight. And we love our lawns. We certainly don’t grow food in our front yards, like some hippy-dippy southern California gardeners are doing. Really, what would the neighbors say? And a meadow garden? Like the unruly and overgrown mess on the grounds of that new progressive church? Certainly not on my property. We couldn’t possibly cut back our lawn area, after all the kids play out there at least once a week and an acre of grass per child seems to be the gold standard.

We may cling to tradition a little too tightly at times but we are open to new ways of thinking. We like to support local wildlife (after all, many of us are card-carrying members of the Audubon society) and increased biodiversity is a laudable goal. We’re concerned about the environment and increased levels of pollution and pesticides, just like regular people.

The perfect place to begin embracing lawn alternatives

But we love our lawns. And the status quo. What’s a humble homeowner with just the ‘right’ amount of lawn to do?

I’d like to suggest an easy and painless way to start embracing the lawn alternative trend. Why not plant something other than grass in that narrow strip of land on the other side of the fence? Since no one really pays any attention to it, it offers the perfect opportunity to throw caution to the wind and do something a little crazy. In fact, some of the neighbors are already leading the way. Goodness, they must not be from around here!

Baby Steps 

From a maintenance standpoint, this grove of hosta is a better alternative than simply having more lawn area. And it’s much more attractive. But from a biodiversity standpoint, it’s really not offering much.

Adding a few ferns to the mix helps liven things up a bit. And the area still looks manicured and well-kept, important qualities when you’re keeping up with the Joneses.  We’re getting there but I know we can do better.

From Baby Steps to a Leisurely Walk

So I offer a few socially acceptable, eco-friendly lawn alternatives that won’t embarrass you in front of the neighbors and also won’t bring down your property values. Not only will these lawn alternatives help support local wildlife since they are all native, they will tolerate winter road salt much better than the grass you’re trying to grow there now.

Go ahead, try one or try them all. Just take that all important first step.

I invite you to continue exploring the topic of lawn alternatives by simply clicking on the links below:

Susan Harris : Garden Rant : Takoma Park, MD

Billy Goodnick : Cool Green Gardens : Santa Barbara, CA

Evelyn Hadden : Lawn Reform.Org : Saint Paul, MN

Saxon Holt : Gardening Gone Wild : Novato, CA

Ginny Stibolt : Florida Native Plant Society : Green Cove Springs, FL

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Susan Harris : Gardener Susan’s Blog : Takoma Park, MD

Tara Dillard : Vanishing Threshold: Garden, Life, Home : Atlanta, GA

Espresso – A Jolt For Your Garden

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Geranium maculatum 'Espresso' - photo from http://www.westonnurseries.com

In my ongoing search to find native plants to use as groundcover in my wildlife garden, I am ‘trialing’ some Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso’ . When I say trialing, I don’t mean that I have access to a new plant that hasn’t been introduced through retail outlets yet (although I wish I did!). I mean trialing as in testing it out in my garden first before I use it in any of my landscape designs.  I try to do that with as many plants as possible because I find it helps me use the plants properly when I can see them grow throughout several seasons.

Spilling The Beans on Espresso

I decided to buy some landscape plugs of Espresso (I also bought some Running Tapestry foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia ‘Running Tapestry’ and some Korean feather reed grass (Calamagrostis brachytricha) but more on them later) so I could test Espresso under several different site conditions.

 I’ve also never worked with landscape plugs before and wanted to see how they behaved. From talking with other landscape designers I found out that some designers will plant their plugs right into the ground while others plants them in containers first and let them ‘grow out’ and then put them in the ground in the fall. You guessed it, I am trying out both methods to see if there is a difference.

Espresso intrigued me for several reasons. First, it’s a relatively new offering and many local garden centers are not even carrying it. Second, I am trying to incorporate more native plants into my garden and Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso‘ is native to the Eastern US. I currently have some species G. maculatum and it seems to love it in my garden so I’m hoping Espresso will too. And third, I love plants that aren’t green. I have some many plants with foliage in various shades of green, and purely from a design perspective, I’d need some other color foliage to work with.

Here’s a look at a few of the plugs in their original form, they were 2″ x 3″;  four plugs growing in a container and several plugs in my new habitat garden along with other perennial ground covers such as fern, lady’s mantle and Japanese forest grass. Look closely, it’s a little hard to see the tufts of little brown foliage against the wood chips.

If you’re wondering if Espresso could be right for your garden, here’s a taste of some of its finer points…

A Taste of Espresso

◊ With its little pink flowers in late spring/early summer, Espresso is a good source of nectar for butterflies and bees.

◊ Like other clump-forming perennials, Espresso provides important cover for lots of different critters, such as chipmunks, squirrels and toads, as they scamper around my habitat garden.

◊ Espresso prefers average soil and will grow in full sun – partial shade.  It is tolerant of dry shade and is deer and rabbit resistant.

◊ It’s chocolate-brown foliage is not supposed to fade during the summer.  The color should be more intense in full sun. I’ll let you know what actually happens but I can already see the leaves on the plugs that only get afternoon sun are starting to turn green.

◊ Espresso grows to about 18″ x 18″ and is hardy in zones 3 – 9.

◊ In addition to using Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso’ as a ground cover, it would also look good in containers, as an edging along a pathway in a woodland garden or as a front-of-the-border plant in a mixed bed.

Are you growing Espresso or other chocolcate-foliage plants?  Have you ever planted landscape plugs?  If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Making the Move to Organic Land Care

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Organic land care.  It sounds ‘good’.  And healthy. But what does it mean to actually care for your garden organically? I think some gardeners hesitate to make the switch to organic landcare because they feel it’s unproven, difficult to implement or their garden will not look the way they want it to look.  By the way, they are all completely untrue.

Knowledge is Power

If you’re thinking about making the switch, here are a few key points you should know:

◊ The foundation of organic land care is building healthy soil.  If your soil is healthy, your plants will be too. So, much of the focus of organic landcare will be on feeding your soil. This is a totally different approach for many gardeners who are used to addressing the symptoms of unhealthy soils they see on their plants such as discolored leaves or stunted growth.

◊ An organic garden is more bio-diverse. It will be home to a plethora of insects and the birds and other small mammals that feed on those insects.  Yes, you will be encouraging beneficial insects to eat your plants. A natural predator-prey relationship will evolve and eventually the good guys will take care of the bad guys. It sounds counterintuitive, but it really does work.

◊ Many organic ornamental gardeners plant lots of native plants. Choosing the right plant for your site conditions, whether it’s native or not, and encouraging bio-diversity go hand-in-hand in reducing the need for fungicides and pesticides (even organic ones) and also helps reduce long-term maintenance. That translates into more time enjoying your garden and less time working in it.

◊ In the long run, a organicly maintained garden is less expensive than a garden maintained with synthetics (chemicals) . This is because your healthy soil will feed your plants and the predator-prey relationship will keep them looking and performing their best.  You won’t need to spend money on all sorts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to ‘force’ your garden to look good.

◊ You, your family and your pets will be healthier.  You won’t be exposed to all the harmful chemicals that are found in many non-organic gardens. Personally, I don’t like using the ‘illness card’ when talking about the benefits of going organic but it is absolutely true that scientists are finding more and more hazards associated with chemical use in our gardens. 

Helpful Resources

Want to know more?  Here are some resources to get you started making the switch to organic land care:

Cornell’s Resource Guide for Organic Insect and Disease Management

Cornell’s Guidelines for Using Organic Matter in Your Garden

NOFA’s Introduction to Organic Landcare for Homeowners

The Soil Biology Primer

Earth Day Reading Project

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When I was first asked by Joene, of joenes garden, to participate in an invitation-only blog meme started by The Sage Butterfly to “List at least three books that inspired you to perform any sustainable living act or inspired you to live green, and then tell us why they inspired you” in order to commemorate Earth Day 2011, I have to admit I looked up from my desk and saw the shelves and shelves of gardening books in my office and thought it would be an easy choice. Well, to my surprise, it wasn’t.

After spending some time thinking about how green I am (I’m on the road but have lots of room for improvement), I realized that my journey towards living a more sustainable life really started when my kids were born and was slowly nurtured as I nurtured them.

The Giving Tree

The first book I’d like to highlight is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. In a way, it represents all the books my sons and I read together over the years. It also represents my realization, one I imagine many new parents experience, that life was no longer just about me.  My first steps towards living a more sustainable life where out of concern for the well-being of my children, not the larger environment. 

I also chose The Giving Tree because, even though it’s a little book with simple line drawings, it was one of my sons’ favorites. Who wouldn’t love a book that begins with Once there was a tree…and she loved a little boy. My sons found thier own giving trees in all their special places – our garden, their grandparents garden, the park, etc.

The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds

I selected The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds because it represents the beginnings of my realization that what I do in my own garden impacts local wildlife.  My mother-in-law gave this book, along with a bird feeder, to my boys and started us all on a journey of appreciating birds.

Rather than show the cover image (which is just plain green), I wanted to show you a representative page from inside the book.  Notice the two blue circles, one on the photo of the Great Blue Heron and the other on the Little Blue Heron?  We put sticky dots on the photos of any birds my sons saw.  For years, we took this book with us everywhere — on vacation, to the zoo, when we visited family — and always looked for new birds to ‘check off’ in the book.  To entice more birds into our garden, we hung bird feeders, put out bird baths and started looking at our garden as a place that birds would want to come and live in.

Bringing Nature Home

The final book I selected is Bringing Nature Home:  How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants by Douglas Tallamy. Like many other native plant advocates, I can trace my epiphany back to the first time I read this book.

Before I read it, I never really thought about the plants in my garden nourishing so many different kinds of insects. Sure, I chose plants based on their deer-resistance or whether they offered something for the birds we loved to look at but I never imagined their  leaves had chemical signatures that were integral to the survival of so many different insects.

After reading Bringing Nature Home, I realized that viewing plants through a native lens, with an eye towards the diversity of wildlife they can sustain, could really make a major impact on the environment. It’s a lens I now using when choosing plants for my own garden, as well as for my landscape design clients.

I invited two of my favorite bloggers to join me in the Earth Day Reading Project. Please click-through the links below and check out the books that inspired them.

♦  Marguerite of Canoe Corner in Prince Edward Island, Canada

♦  Scott of Blue Heron Landscapes in Granby, CT

Pinch Me, Alex!

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I have exciting news…I was asked to join Carole Brown‘s latest group blog, Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens, as an author.  I’m still pinching myself because I am joining an incredible team of fellow native plant enthusiasts, many of them authors of well-known books and blogs on the topics.

Carole created Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens to be a central location for readers to find tips on greening their gardens and also to be exposed to different ideas and concepts on what gardening with native plants and welcoming wildlife looks like around the country. Each author will post once a month, so readers are insured of lots of new and exciting daily content.

My inaugural post, I’ll take ‘Why Does My Boxwood Keep Dying’ for $100, Alex!, was published today. That means I’ll be posting each month on the .

I hope you’ll check out my post and those of my fellow teammates.  While you’re on the site, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed so you don’t miss a thing!