May 2006

My recent post about this National Wildlife Foundation program elicited some questions - does my community have this? - so here’s a link to the communities that have either completed the process and been certified, or have registered, meaning they’re working toward certification.  Three more communities have registered since the list was updated: Burlington, VT;  Clarksville/Buffalo Junction, VA, a rural community on the NC border; and Lawrence Township in the Indianapolis area.

Notice how these communities concentrate in Virginia and the Seattle area?  Further confirmation that Seattle’s an environmentally progressive community.  Virginia has the good luck to have the Foundation headquartered in Reston, and nearby Arlington County recently became the largest habitat community in the U.S.

So if your community isn’t on these lists, maybe you can help make that happen.

And Readers, thanks for generously offering your photos for the cause.  They’ll be accompanied by links to your sites and blogs.

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Readers may remember that it all started with the removal of the hated Bradford pear, which punched quite a hole in this border, but we gardeners call that an opportunity to plant something better.  Like the 5 highly recommended ‘Green Giant’ arborvitaes newly planted here and still flying their orange tags in the before photo.  I can see you all smirking at the notion of "screening" trees lined up in a row, but here’s the deal.  In a Combined Border you don’t have to treat them like cadets; they can be massed naturalistically on both sides of the property line.  How cool is that?  But that’s only the beginning.

My neighbor leapt at the suggestion that we work together to redesign our joint border - because when you see it from our decks, it’s one border, ya know - and then the fun really began.  Well, I may be under-remembering how much work it was but the adrenalin was definitely flowing.  I even got to use my bright yellow (not clear) spray paint to create a nice curvy line on her side to match the one on mine.  I brought the border out to meet up with the huge old stump in her lawn, then moved another, movable stump from somewhere else to join it and act as focal points. 

Next, I replanted all of her shrubs and small trees I’d moved to my holding garden for the duration, and when they didn’t fill up the newly drawn border, I added extras from my own overcrowded garden, a process that’ll probably never end.  Already, since this supposedly "after" photo was taken, the border’s acquired Solomon’s seal woven in amongst the arborvitaes, and a stepping stone path for easy  commuting between the two halves of our joint garden.  One particular empty spot that I deemed in need of a full-grown spirea was miraculously filled with - funny thing - a full-grown spirea given away by someone on the local gardening Yahoo group.  (And if you don’t have one where you live, why not?)

So after I’d totally had my way with someone else’s property, what was the effect on neighborly relations?  Let me answer that by first recalling the prior owners and the poison ivy-infested jungle that was their back yard.  The worst was actually inside, where the couple worked as voodoo practitioners, complete with clients arriving with lists of enemies, an elaborate temple for worship,  and the keeping and sacrificial slaughtering of various animals.  FOR REAL.  Yeah, when we talk about ethnic diversity in this town, we’re so not kidding.  So when this pretty, cheerful public interest lawyer bought the place, moved in and started cleaning up, I knew I’d gotten lucky.

Turns out she tells me she feels lucky, too - and also that her enjoyment of life has been enhanced by having such a pretty garden.  Nice pay-off, that one.  Then she asked how she could continue the look across the rest of her property and is proceeding forthwith to make it all happen. Best of all, I don’t have to fear for my cats’ lives anymore.

[The photos were taken from my deck, with the property line running down the center just to the right of my flowering viburnums. More photos to follow as the border develops.]

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A really cool program I’ve recently jumped on board is the National Wildlife Foundation’s BACKYARD WILDLIFE HABITAT PROGRAM. You might have seen one of their signs designating a certified backyard - one that attracts wildlife with food, water, cover, and places to raise their young.  But I hasten to add it’s the birds and bees we want to attract, not raccoons, deer, or rats.  Not a big turn-on, those critters, so birds and bees it is.  But this program that’s been quietly changing front and backyards across America since 1973 has gotten bigger and better.

SUSTAINABLE GARDENING - a term ya gotta love - has recently been added to the requirements for certification, and here they mean things like using mulch, reducing the use of chemicals, and growing more drought-tolerant plants.  And I say Hooray for the NWF coz just reading through the application for certification educates homeowners about healthier ways to treat their property.

HABITAT COMMUNITIES, a much newer program, applies the same criteria to whole towns or counties, combining healthier individual backyards with similar improvements to public, nonprofit and businesss-owned sites to achieve a multiplier effect and create wildlife corridors. Imagine wildlife-friendly plantings in schoolyards, churchyards, parks, or along city streets. Points are also awarded for events like stream clean-ups and invasive plant round-ups.  Plus, don’t forget, the use of sustainable gardening practices - the gardening practices we’re all trying to get people to adopt these days, despite the public’s persistent addiction to perfect lawns and everblooming everything. 

Now that you know what I’m talking about, why am I writing about it and how can you help? It all started on our local gardening email group when someone mentioned the Community Habitat program and the fact that of the 15 certified communities in the U.S. so far, 3 are in Virginia and none are in Maryland - yep, a big zip. And if you’re not from these parts let me explain something about the mindset around here: Maryland is blue and Virginia is red, so we Marylanders expect to beat the pants off Virginians when it comes to anything remotely progressive.  And eating Virginia’s dust in this really cool environmental program?  It hurts.

So meetings have been held and the citizenry of Crunchy Takoma (nuclear-free and don’t you dare laugh) are determined to be the first town in Maryland to accomplish community certification, thereby salvaging our city pride, at least.  And I have two volunteer assignments, both of which will earn us points toward certification: writing articles and updates about the program in a local newspaper - easy enough to do with my new gig as a gardening columnist - and "having a website" about the program.

Now Readers, if your assignment were to create a "website," would it be a traditional, static, official-looking but boring site, or would it be something dynamic, interactive, fun and hip - to wit, a blog?  I’m preaching to the choir and of course you’d all choose the blog.  And Blogger is free and easy, so I’m there!

And here’s where you come in. The photos you see here are the sum total of my wildlife-related photos for possible use on the new blog, WildWildTakoma.  So readers, and especially gardening bloggers, we need photos of:
    - birds, bees, frogs or turtles in your garden
    - plants in your garden that are loved by any of these critters, or
    - ponds, birdhouses, or other features that attract them.
What the hell, I’ll even take stories of plants and features that attract wildlife.  Just point me in the right direction on your blog and I’ll take it from there, giving you photo credits, of course. I’ll eventually be forwarding the fruits of our labors to the NWF, so someday your photos may show up on WildWildToledo or WildWildEugene - who knows? 

[Photos: My birdhouses by Julie Wyatt of the Takoma Voice Newspaper, and a pollenating bee eggholder in my garden. God, can that really be what it's called? Help me out here.]

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Here’s the story of someone who discovered a garden  that so excited her that she instantly caught the gardening bug and determined to transform her own little patch of earth.  It all started when this gardenless homeowner went on a local house and garden tour and discovered this enchanting garden, shown here and previously on Takoma Gardener coz it’s one of my favorites, too.  And best of all, in talking to the gardener/owners, she learned that they did it all themselves, without a designer.  So suddenly this kind of beauty became attainable on her budget and she could imagine herself creating a wonderful garden herself someday.  Actually not someday - now.

Next, in a passionate quest to see the garden again, she looked for photographs of it on line; after all, these days we expect to find everything on line and most of the time, we do.  Her search ended on the Takoma Hort Club’s websites, where she found photos of not only this garden but my own, and the offer of my services as a gardening coach for beginners.  She immediately emailed for help. 

Now construction is about to commence on her home but no, she doesn’t want to wait till fall to start; if we start now she can plan and visualize and fantacize all summer and not waste a minute!

So the work begins soon.  I’ll visit her site - can’t call it a garden yet - and maybe she’ll stop by my garden to see some of the plants I’ll be suggesting.  I’ll urge her to start leafing through garden magazines, watching HGTV, and going on every garden tour in the D.C. area.  But now that she’s felt the first stirrings of garden fever, she’ll probably never be the same.  Readers, our church has a new convert. 

[Photos:  Garden of Dave Roeder and Joe Buriel in Hyattsville, MD. That's the town that was recently maligned by the writers of ABC's now-defunct "Commander-in-Chief"in a recent episode.  Hyattsville was mentioned, oh, 2 dozen times, as crime-ridden and on the verge of race riots. As much as I loved seeing Geena Davis play the POTUS, good acting couldn't compensate for lousy - and badly researched! - writing.  It just made me anticipate missing "West Wing" even more.]

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It was a humbling experience, touring gardens in one of D.C.’s wealthiest neighborhoods.  I got to see what real money can buy, and the answer is more than fabulous plants.  It’s fabulous hardscaping, like pergolas, stonework of all kinds, multiple ponds and waterfalls and lots of seating, like the really cool stone bench in this photo.

This particular garden was so outstanding I’m happy to give a plug to its owner-designer, Corinna Posner of European Garden Designs, especially since she was kind enough to let me photograph it and answer my many questions.  The second photo of the same garden shows the kind of interesting detail you find in the best personal gardens - Persian ivy ‘Sulphur Heart’ framing a really cool sculpture.

But for me, the real highlight of the tour was meeting another gardening blogger, Jane Berger of GardenDesignOnLine.  Yeah, it was that kind of tour - lots of professionals’ own gardens, so they could actually tell you what everything was, unlike the checkbook gardeners in most wealthy neighborhoods who tell you they have to "ask my designer."  But with Jane, I could have chatted all day - about her garden, the impressive portfolio of her designs, and naturally about the world of gardener/bloggers.  We could have gossiped about you guys!  Well, we may yet have a chance, since I’ve joined the local garden designer association Jane recommended and they get together monthly.  And guess what they do every month - go on designer-led tours of fabulous gardens and network like hell.  I’m totally psyched.    

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Here’s a close-up of a plant I recently showed you and labeled as either Mexican or Evening  Primrose.   My excuse for not knowing (and Readers, do I really need one?) is its origin in my garden as a passalong from a neighbor.  But more will be revealed.

Friday night we Hort Clubbers enjoyed a private tour of the garden of Kevin Conrad, Curator of the Woody Plants Collection at the National Arboretum.  I was bad and didn’t snap lots of fabulous photos for you but I did take action when I saw this plant in his garden.  When I asked Kevin to solve the mystery - Mexican or Evening - he replied, "Neither.  It’s a Missouri Primrose."  Aha, I think, I’ll run home and report the results. 

Trouble is, a quick Internet search for the Latin name revealed the expert to be mistaken.  I knew this right away because the Missouri Primose, Oenothera missouriensis, is yellow, not pink like the Mexican Evening Primrose (O. berlandieri) we were looking at.  Kinda unsettling, I know.  And his garden was filled with really cool plants and he was cute, too.  I’ll just file it away under Don’t Believe Everything an Expert Says or Writes, subfolder Verbal.

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Newbie gardeners these days have it easy.  Thanks to gardening blogdom, they get to read what real gardeners say about the down-and-dirty of real gardening.  Like this little piece of advice I’m happy to pass on. You don’t have to spend 20 years digging with the wrong damn tool like I did because I’m telling ya right now, the pickaxe is the clear winner in the Takoma Digging Trials.  The shovel, the tool that’s singlehandedly upped the annual income of my physical therapist, is for lifting and moving the dirt, not digging it.  Ya dig?  Oh, the shovel could handle digging in store-bought potting soil or pure compost, but the rock-imbedded clay on my property?  No fricking way.

[Photo - an improvement over the standard pickaxe shot I first included here.  And the umbrella's my temporary solution to the full-sun here resulting from the removal of a Bradford pear.  A better umbrella is coming soon.]

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The garden blogosphere has been analyzing all sorts of declarations about the state of gardening in the country today and where it’s headed and apparently it’s an inexhaustible subject because there’s more. The Garden Writers Association reports these results from their 2006 Late Spring Gardening Trends Research Report. 

1.    Better mental health, nutrition or fitness is the primary reason 36% of households garden.

2.    More perennials and more vegetables are the two leading additions households plan to make to their garden this spring. 

3.    The number of consumers planning to increase their lawn areas rose by 5% over 2005 while the number planning to decrease their lawn areas dropped from 11% to 9%. 

4.    Fewer households plan to use weed and insect control this spring.

5.    Manure is the most frequently planned means of fertilizing gardens and container plants this spring (31%), followed by slow-release fertilizer (27%), potting soil with fertilizer (19%), and liquid fertilizer (16%). 
6.    This spring and summer, one in four households plan to prepare their garden area with store-bought soil mixes (26%).

    The 2006 Late Spring Gardening Trends Research Report was conducted in April and covers consumer expectations and attitudes for activities and purchases planned for the next few months. The survey was conducted by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, a national consumer polling organization, and statistically represents the attitudes of 110 million households with an accuracy of 95% (+/- 3.1 percentage points).  
   
Wow, I hardly know what to think of such a hodgepodge of results.  Most of it sounds good but what’s up with the increase in lawns?  And the notion that people are gardening for fitness reminds me that my experience of gardening isn’t necessarily what clicks for everybody.  So should I rhapsodize less about Nature and Beauty and more about Soundness of Mind and Body?

[Photo: The pink flowers of what's either Mexican or Evening Primrose are new to this border and I love it with the chartreuse of the creeping sedum, my all-time favorite weed.]

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Here’s another of Takoma’s lawnless frontyards, one of my favorites.  The berm is brimming with rock garden plants of all sorts and even a petunia-filled treasure chest.  The owner/gardener, a local artist and art teacher, has an infectious sense of fun.

And speaking of fun, I promised you this shot of the beloved cow sculpture in the garden of local landscape designer Margaret Atwell.  You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s nearly life-size and adds the right touch to the pastoral feeling of her backyard.

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