Here I post about what’s new and good in organic and sustainable gardening practices, and great-performing, low-care plants. Also stories about my garden, news in ecogardening, and my adventures in the trenches of Washington, D.C. or farther afield. And occasionally I’ll go off-topic altogether, especially in winter. (See categories My Life, Culture, Nature, People/Media and Local.) A gardener’s gotta have a life.
My role models for teaching sustainable gardening are gardenwriter Ann Lovejoy, Washington State hort researcher Linda Chalker-Scott and television’s Paul James of “Gardening by the Yard.” Oh, and Paul Tukey of SafeLawns.org fame. More will be discovered over time, I’m sure.
Urban gardening is a topic I added in 2009, and that means covering urban gardening projects, as well as container and balcony gardening, backyard-sharing, the White House Kitchen Garden, and really anything I think is important to cover! It’s all good.
Affiliate agreements
The only source of income here is the occasional link to a company with whom I have an Affiliate Agreement contract – primarily Amazon. So the few times I recommend a book, I’ll include a link to its page on Amazon and if you buy one using the link, Amazon pays me 8 percent. I rarely recommend anything because honestly, I’m not much of a shopper myself.
Income sources not used on this blog
Notice any Google Adsense ads cluttering up the place? Also, I don’t do link exchanges, or take payment for links. Don’t ask.
Blog edition. The whole newsletter is right here.
Sustainable Gardening on the Web
Sustainable Gardening on the Web
- The latest Lawn Reform Update is packed with news about lawns and global warming, golf managers trying to go green, the Lawn Reform Coalition in the news, lawn-free make-overs, and more.
Winter Sanity-Savers
In the Garden
- Winter's the perfect time to catch up on garden recordkeeping.
- That's all I've got – unless you count snow sagas, of which I have my share.
I trust these photos of before and after the Mid-Atlantic's "Snowmagedden" will tug at the hearts of gardeners in all climates and maybe provide a teachable moment for homeowners in wintery places. In the "before" shot you see the now-ruined 'Little Gem' magnolia on the left and one of the now-ruined Foster hollies on the right. (In between are some acuba, damage unknown but they'll bounce back from anything.) They're all technically my neighbors' but visually they're very much in my garden. And another heavy snowfall predicted for mid-week? NO COMMENT (at least none that's family-friendly).
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Simone Fary lives just 3 blocks from the newly-bustling downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, with its shops, night life and subway station to greater DC. So, a great location. Plus plenty of sun, y'all! But like every other front yard in the neighborhood, hers was devoted to the care and feeding of turfgrass and some foundation shrubs. That bit of conformity ended when Simone got the urge to grow some food, dammit, but to grow it in a gorgeous, gardeny way. No need to go whole-farm and get the neighbors all nervous about property values. No need to deny herself a beautiful garden. The gardener with sun can have everything!
There's no real plan or formula for mixing edibles with ornamentals, just lots of experimentation. Lots of gardening. (Get that? It's not what you'd call low-maintenance, and it isn't intended to be.) Here are the plants that have done well for Simone in her sunny city lot.
Fruits and vegetables
Highbush blueberry, Egyptian walking onions, Calendula, Egyptian spinach (self-seeding), Peas, Purple bush and pole beans against the fence, Chard, 'Hard neck' garlic she plants in October, Collonade apple (of which the squirrels eat ALL), Red currents (very pretty in the spring), Pepper, Pawpaws (which are fly-pollinated, so Simone does that by hand with a paintbrush, Asian persimmons.
Herbs
Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Pineapple sage, Chives (blossoms are great on salads), Bronze fennel, Sorrel, and Dill (gorgeous the day I visited in late summer).
Strictly ornamen
tal or for wildlife
Sunflower, Purple sage (or its looks, not for cooking), Creeping phlox, Sedum, Asters, Dayliles (though you can eat daylily flowers), Mums, Lamb's ear, Ajuga, Liatris, Monarda (though flower petals can be used in salads), Hydrangea, Sunberries (for foliage only – because the bugs eat the fruit).
What she does not recommend
- Passionflower or purple coneflower because they seed too freely.
- Strawberry also reseeded too freely, and they're great in jellies and syrup. So, maybe in hanging baskets.
- Nanking bush cherry – little red lines, tart. Simone says it takes up too much space for what it yields.
Next up in our on-going exploration of garden furniture – what's long-lasting and affordable – I have to show you my teak bench. Sure it's more expensive - I paid $320 for it about 20 years ago, fully assembled and retail – but then I did absolutely nothing to it and it still looks perfect to this day! Up close you'd see that it's smooth, with no splinters – truly amazing. It’ll certainly outlast me..jpg)
Ah, but is teak sustainably harvested? Planet Green sums it up nicely for us – " Two out of the three species of teak are endangered, and all have been subjected to unsustainable forestry practices for decades", so mostly, no. If you have your heart set on it there IS a certification for sustainable harvesting of teak and one company that's attained it is East Teak.
Garden writer Julie Shapiro, whose 1/4-acre garden is in Hull, MA along the Boston Harbor, sent me these photos of her "eco-lawn", and the story behind it. That interesting tale includes far more than lawn, though. Her 1885 house has a colorful history that includes lobster boats being stored alongside it, so Julie's first job on the site was to get rid of some asphalt and lots of soil filled with metal lobster trap shards, glass and other sharp dangerous things. But because her land is in a A1 flood plain – meaning an area of special flood hazard – "care had to be given to the plant material and lawn, if there was to be any."
That official status meant that Julie had to go before the town's Conservation Committee with copious amounts of documentation from all sorts of agencies about her plans for the yard, including exactly how many times her new peastones had been washed. New surfaces needed to be permeable. Even her new 200-square-foot lawn-type area had to be spec'ed and approved – and that's where we pick up the story of her eco-lawn.
My research on what to do with the "lawn" brought me to the developing of an ecolawn or biolawn, an ecologicaly-based area (consisting of plants suitable for the region we live in, and are both drought and shade tolerant, don’t thatch, as grass does, and is attractive to look at, doing away with constant “mowing, spraying , fertilizing and watering, thereby conserving water and energy, protecting the soils surface, and having a lovely and safe alternative to “a patch of green”.
This is what we proposed to the Conservation Committee, and after receiving our positive declaration proceeded to hand sow a mix of Colonial Bentgrass (Agrostis tenuis), Strawberry clover (Trifolium fragiferum) and Dutch White Clover (T. repens), Wild English Daisies (Bellis perennis), Roman Chamomile (Anthemus nobilis), Yarrow (Achillea millifolium), and Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophila menziesii), low-growing thyme, and small spring ephemeral bulbs.
These photos are of our lawn. We are proud of it, have to mow it with our reel mower very rarely, and it blooms, feeds itself, and has become a comfort for our feet and a comfort to us. We did this right and we are happy with all the work and effort we put in to doing it right.
At the 11-year mark, the annual clover, leaving bare patches, has me on the move to decide what to reseed in its place. I do reseed with clover and chamomile every other year, but I would like more thyme. It seems the thyme grows well and lives happily in these reclaimed spots, as a hermit crab would in retaking another's space.
That is our story and we're sticking to it.
Thanks, Julie!
Here I post about what’s new and good in organic and sustainable gardening practices, and great-performing, low-care plants. Also stories about my garden, news in ecogardening, and my adventures in the trenches of Washington, D.C. or farther afield. And occasionally I’ll go off-topic altogether, especially in winter. (See categories My Life, Culture, Nature, People/Media and Local.) A gardener’s gotta have a life.
