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There is a wonderful product to give your plants a growing boost. It takes time to work—about two to three months—but it doesn’t require too much effort, nor does it cost very much. For a small garden, you could spend less than 10 dollars. This easy and affordable way to improve your garden’s growth? Green manure. Sadly, it doesn’t come from green cows. In fact, it doesn’t come from any animal at all.
Green manure is essentially a cover crop, planted in late summer or early fall, that gets tilled back into the soil in spring. It generally consists of plants in the legume family (peas and beans) that improve soil nutrition and structure by fixing nitrogen and adding organic matter. When they are incorporated into the soil, they become an effective amendment.
Andrew Bunting, VP of Horticulture at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society explains: “Benefits include nutrient upcycling, weed suppression, adding organic matter, erosion control, help with soil fertility, and soil structure.” All of which, he says, “contributes to better water filtration, more pollinator habitats, and improved biodiversity. Certain legumes such as hairy vetch, field peas, white, red, and crimson clovers are also able to fix atmospheric nitrogen and make it available in the soil.”
While compost certainly has its place in the garden, Bunting says green manure has an advantage. “Compost does not help with soil structure or weed suppression and bringing pollinators to the garden.”
Your local cooperative extension office can help you find the right plant for your use and your climate. Generally, green manure is sown off-season, in the late summer and early fall, with crops that can either overwinter or are winter-killed. Crops such as winter rye and hairy vetch are winter-hardy, whereas buckwheat and field peas are killed by the cold. The plants are allowed to grow for two to three months, then cut down before they go to seed, chopped up, and tilled back into the soil in early spring in time for growing season. Something to keep in mind, particularly if you live in a warmer climate with mild winters: the bed will be out of use for sowing plants until spring and at least one month after tilling.
Some good suggestions are legumes like crown vetch, hairy vetch, and clovers; grasses like winter rye and sorghum; and buckwheat—all of which germinate quickly. Want to wait a bit and sneak in another harvest? Plant some clover, which can germinate in temperatures as low as the 40s. Whichever you choose, make sure you read the instructions specifically for sowing as a cover crop. Seeds sown for cover crops are sown at a much higher rate than seeds sown for harvest. You want a thick carpet of plants.
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Gardening is often a gateway to birding: As gardeners spend more time in their yards, they begin to notice all the other creatures who enjoy their landscape—and observation quickly turns into a desire to see more birds. Bird-loving gardeners might consider adding a water source in their gardens. In suburban and urban landscapes, fresh water […]
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Today, we’re thrilled to open up this column to all R/G readers, not just subscribers, to share the Quick Takes answers from our very own Kendra Wilson.
Kendra is among the OG Gardenista crew—she’s been a contributor to the site since its launch in 2012. She’s also worked for British Vogue (“my first writing job”), contributed to The Guardian‘s gardening blog, created her own “secret blog” about estate gardening in Northamptonshire, England (it was the era of blogs), and written ten (!) books—the latest being Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden. In bookstores October 14 and available for pre-order now, it’s the newest addition to the R/G collection.
We couldn’t have dreamed up a better author and collaborator for the book. Kendra, who was born in Fairfield, CT, but moved to the U.K. as a child (“I’m essentially American, despite the English accent”), is passionate about gardens and the people who bring them to life and is opinionated in the best possible way. Read on to learn what strikes her fancy (including new-to-us, and now must-have, gardening gloves), who gets her goat, and why “gardening for nature is not a trend.”
Photography courtesy of Kendra Wilson.
Petunias. Exploring the woods and meadows around our house in Weston, Connecticut, always barefoot. The sounds: cicadas, frogs, blue jays.
I return to these singular voices: Russell Page (The Education of a Gardener), Christopher Lloyd (The Well-Tempered Garden and many more), Vita Sackville-West’s columns for the Observer newspaper (“In Your Garden”). And less imperious: Marjorie Fish (We Made a Garden), Eleanor Peréni (Green Thoughts), and Derek Jarman (Derek Jarman’s Garden). His description of the photographer Howard Sooley is one for the ages.
@marcfinds, @idleriver, and @arthurparkinson when he’s annoyed about something. [Find Arthur’s own Quick Takes here.]
Abundant, indulgent, buzzing.
Crab apple blossom, lily regale, old-fashioned roses, oriental poppies, very full and highly scented lilacs.
Hyacinths—there is no reason to plant them in the garden after they have finished flowering indoors.
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That moment when you’re winding your way up to The Penny Bun inn in the picturesque village of Askwith in Wharfedale, England, car window down, breathing in all the beauty of the wild hedgerows, drystone walls, and patchworks of lush greens, and you are obliged to stop in your tracks for a carefree pheasant out on a very leisurely stroll? It’s a reminder to slow down, to reconnect with nature, the heart of everything at Denton Reserve.
Set within 2,500 acres of spectacular Yorkshire countryside, this estate has embarked on an ambitious journey to re-imagine, re-wild, and regenerate the land in a bid to tackle the climate crisis, improve biodiversity, and restore balance for generations to come. Rooted in the local, its intent is global. And armed with long-term vision and a profound sense of purpose, the entire Reserve team, supported by members of the neighboring communities, are rolling up their sleeves and pitching in—because the future starts today.
We visited two of the five main properties on the Denton estate in May: the recently opened Denton Hall, a Grade-1 listed Georgian Manor, and The Penny Bun, a 150-year old inn—both redesigned by architecture practice BOX9. We were greatly impressed by both the scale of the undertaking and the thoughtful attention to detail. (For a tour, read our story over on Remodelista.)
Here, we take a closer look at the land recovery project, as the Reserve celebrates some exciting milestones, including the creation of a beaver enclosure, the appearance of nightjars, and the promise of honey from black bees…
Photography by Sean Knott, Lucy Franks and Jake Eastham, courtesy of Denton Reserve.
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If you have prying neighbors or an HOA to worry about, move leaves to less visible areas, for example from front to rear, suggests Fell. “Make a pile in the corner of your yard, let it rot, and use the leaf compost later to feed your flowers,” says Camu. “Leaf compost is absolute gold, and it’s literally that easy to make: Just let it rot in a pile.”
You’ll see a lot of advice to just mow leaves right into the lawn, but Chris Hardy, a senior associate at Sasaki, an interdisciplinary design firm based in Boston, cautions against doing this. “When fall leaf drop happens, the density of the leaves is more than lawns can handle,” he says. “If you have a lot of leaves in your lawn, I would capture that in a bag and then spread it in your perennial areas instead.” Hardy also notes that he skips mowing even a light layer of leaves into grass because he likes to let grass grow long in the fall so it can maximize its storage of sugars over the winter. In other seasons, go ahead and mow right over a light leaf litter, but be sure you have a mulching mower (sometimes you need to buy a special blade.)
To ensure your yard looks cared for, rake the leaves from the most visible or used lawn areas, like the front yard, says Fell, adding. “It’s also important to move leaves from entryways and paths for safety as the weather worsens.”
You can use the whole leaves in some of your beds as mulch. Hardy suggests, “Any place where you’re putting down mulch as a weed suppressant is a great candidate to leave your leaves whole in place; for instance, under hedges, underneath shrubby landscapes, or in tree pits.” That said, do not lay whole leaves over places where you’re trying to get a perennial understory going.
In spring, Fell says she tries to remember where new plants or spring ephemerals are and moves leaves aside, so as not to inhibit their growth. Further north, Hardy says he avoids using whole leaves in perennial beds altogether, because when snow presses down on leaves, it can create a tightly-knit layer that can smother smaller perennials and groundcovers. Instead, he shreds leaves and scatters them amongst perennials.
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This developing field, known as aerial electroreception, opens up a new dimension of the natural world. “I find it absolutely fascinating,” said Anna Dornhaus, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved with the work. “This whole field, studying electrostatic interactions between living animals, has the potential to uncover things that didn’t occur to us about how the world works.”
“We know from all these brilliant experiments that electric fields do have a functional role in the ecology of these animals,” said Benito Wainwright, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of St. Andrews who has studied the sensory systems of butterflies and katydids. “That’s not to say that they came on the scene originally through adaptive processes.” But now that these forces are present, evolution can act on them. Though we cannot sense these electric trails, they may guide us to animal behaviors we never imagined.
In 2012, Víctor Ortega-Jiménez stumbled into electrostatics while playing with his 4-year-old daughter. They were using a toy wand that gathers static charge to levitate lightweight objects, such as a balloon. When they decided to test it outside, he made a startling observation.
PICTURE
Caption: Studies by Víctor Ortega-Jiménez of the University of California, Berkeley, revealed that a negatively charged spiderweb attracts positively charged insect prey.
Credit: Courtesy of Víctor Ortega-Jiménez
“My daughter put the wand close to a spiderweb, and it reacted very quickly,” recalled Ortega-Jiménez, who studies the biomechanics of animal travel at the University of California, Berkeley. The wand attracted the web. He immediately began to draw connections to his research about the strange ways insects interact with their environments.
All matter—wands, balloons, webs, air—strives for balance between its positive and negative particles (protons, electrons and ions). At an unfathomably small scale, Ortega-Jiménez’s toy buzzes with an imbalance: A motor draws negative charges inward, forcing positive charges to the wand’s surface. This is static. It’s like when you rub a balloon against your head. Friction sheds electrons from your hair to the rubber, loading it up with static charge, so that when you lift the balloon, strands of hair float with it.
In a similar way, Ortega-Jiménez considered, friction from beating insect wings could shed negative charges from body to air, leaving the insects with a positive charge while creating regions of negative static. He realized that if a web carries negative charge and insects a positive one, then a spiderweb might not just be a passive trap—it could move toward and attract its quarry electrostatically. His lab experiments revealed precisely that. Webs deformed instantly when jolted with static from flies, aphids, honeybees, and even water droplets. Spiders caught charged insects more easily. He saw how static electricity altered the physics of animal interactions.
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Max G. Levy
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In fact, bubble bursts caused by wave energy can release 100,000 metric tons of microplastics into the atmosphere each year. Since dolphins and other marine mammals breathe at the water’s surface, they may be especially vulnerable to exposure.
Where there are more people, there is usually more plastic. But for the tiny plastic particles floating in the air, this connection isn’t always true. Airborne microplastics are not limited to heavily populated areas; they pollute undeveloped regions too.
Our research found microplastics in the breath of dolphins living in both urban and rural estuaries, but we don’t know whether there are major differences in amounts or types of plastic particles between the two habitats.
Breath samples for our study were collected from wild bottlenose dolphins during catch-and-release health assessments conducted in partnership with the Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, National Marine Mammal Foundation, and Fundación Oceanogràfic.
During these brief permitted health assessments, we held a petri dish or a customized spirometer—a device that measures lung function—above the dolphin’s blowhole to collect samples of the animals’ exhaled breath. Using a microscope in our colleague’s lab, we checked for tiny particles that looked like plastic, such as pieces with smooth surfaces, bright colors or a fibrous shape.
Since plastic melts when heated, we used a soldering needle to test whether these suspected pieces were plastic. To confirm they were indeed plastic, our colleague used a specialized method called Raman spectroscopy, which uses a laser to create a structural fingerprint that can be matched to a specific chemical.
Our study highlights how extensive plastic pollution is—and how other living things, including dolphins, are exposed. While the impacts of plastic inhalation on dolphins’ lungs are not yet known, people can help address the microplastic pollution problem by reducing plastic use and working to prevent more plastic from polluting the oceans.
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Leslie Hart, Miranda Dziobak
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This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.
“New York City has a secret,” says urban ecologist and founder of NYC Wildflower Week Marielle Anzelone. “The Big Apple boasts more open space than any major city in the United States; more than Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia combined. Even Manhattan, known for its taxi cabs and towering skyscrapers, has rare beetles and 150-year-old tulip trees. The five boroughs collectively host over 40 percent of the state’s rare and endangered plant species.”
And yet New York City, along with most of the developed world, is in the midst of a biodiversity emergency. In response, a number of major international metropolises—San Francisco, Paris, Singapore, Freetown, Sydney, São Paulo, to name just a few—have adopted biodiversity plans to devote resources to address the problem, but New York City has not. “It’s the only major global city without a comprehensive biodiversity plan,” says urban forester and founder of Local Nature Lab Georgia Silvera Seamans, PhD., who along with Anzelone, is on a mission to get the city’s government to change that. With the goal of “increasing access to nature and protecting and restoring biodiversity and natural habitats,” they launched the New York City Biodiversity Task Force earlier this year. This coalition includes field biologists, environmental justice organizations, civic institutions, and nonprofits, including Perfect Earth Project, representing all five boroughs. “To be truly resilient, New York City needs a clear ecological mandate,” says Anzelone.
Silvera Seamans and Anzelone believe that ecology is an underutilized urban resource. They want to see “biodiversity elevated to match the scale and urgency of climate concerns in the city,” arguing that investments in biodiversity can “beautify and cool neighborhoods, support pollinators, boost mental health, advance environmental justice, and deliver nature-based solutions for climate action.” Healthy, functioning ecosystems are essential to the air we breathe and the food we eat. I spoke with them to learn five simple things we can all do in our communities to help protect biodiversity.
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“Irises were my first love,” says horticulturalist Kelly D. Norris, the garden author and designer known for his “new naturalism” garden style. He started out managing his family’s iris farm and eventually became a noted iris expert, writing A Guide to Bearded Irises. However, it’s not just the dizzying array of bearded irises that Norris fell hard for: He loved the beardless native irises, too. “The farm I grew up on was not far removed from native prairie remnants, including some that bordered the river. All of the little swales where they’d dug for the railroad tracks and disturbed the floodplain were home to large colonies of Iris virginica,” he remembers. On one occasion, teenage Norris took a potato fork to dig up a patch of irises in the path of development.
Indigenous irises often get less attention than their cultivated counterparts, but as gardeners aspire to plant more natives and design landscapes that better manage rainwater, American irises deserve a second look. Unlike imported irises, native irises are low-maintenance: They don’t require fertilization, and once established they will spread and come back bigger year after year. Even when not in bloom, many native irises have foliage that offers substantial architectural quality. And while we do not yet know about specific host plant relationships, they are beloved by bees, moths, and butterflies.
Native irises, and blue flag irises in particular, are often well-suited to rain gardens and bioswales, which mimic their natural habitats near ponds and streams. Writing for the Ecological Landscape Alliance, Dr. Catherine Neal, a horticulture professor at the University of New Hampshire, noted, “Blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) is a plant that seems to be highly adapted to the lowest area of the rain garden—we have seen it survive where many other species have failed.” Norris has personally been experimenting with breeding native irises, hoping to tease out selections from wild populations that could have a little more horticultural interest in bioswales and green infrastructure. “We need a plant palette for that,” he says.
There are only 28 native iris species in the U.S. (although that number may vary slightly depending on who you talk to), but because they hybridize easily both in nature and with human assistance, there are hundreds of garden forms in cultivation. Plantsman Bob Pries, an iris hybridizer and longtime member and spokesperson for the American Iris Society, encourages gardeners interested in native irises to join Species Iris Group of North America (SIGNA). “They have a seed exchange, which is one of the easiest ways for people to get seeds of a lot of these plants,” says Pries. (Iris lovers might also explore the Society’s Iris Encyclopedia, which lists about 80,000(!) different cultivars of irises, mostly non-native, that have been registered.)
Here’s a primer on the irises native to the United States:
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We’ve been writing about Tama Matsuoka Wong for more than a decade—first in 2013 when we joined her for a foraging (and eating) adventure on her 28-acre property in Hunterdon County, NJ, then again in 2017 when she co-authored the cookbook Scraps, Wilt + Weeds with Danish chef Mads Refslund (of Noma fame). And more recently, earlier this year, we were swept up by her new book, Into the Weeds, which lays out her “wild and visionary way of gardening.”
All of which is to say, we are unabashed fans—of her forage-focused recipes, of her let-nature-take-the-wheel gardening philosophy, of her passion for plants that are often misunderstood and loathed. “Some are ecologically invasive plants, some are just ordinary garden weeds, and some are native plants that aren’t on the list of showy ornamentals but are part of a vibrant natural plant community,” she says.
Below, the self-described “garden contrarian” shares why she thinks planting doesn’t have to be a part of gardening, which tool she uses to maintain her meadow, and why she always has crates in her garden.
Photography courtesy of Tama Matsuoka Wong.
In New Jersey, mucking about in the garden dirt with my mother, and picking wild berries. My mother grew up in Hawaii, climbing coconut trees and she always told me she loved the feel of the earth in her hands.
It’s an oldie but goodie: Bill Cullina’s Native Trees, Shrubs & Vines: A Guide to Using, Growing, and Propagating American Woody Plants. I still have my dog-eared version of Weeds of the Northeast by Richard Uva. I’ve also read multiple times H is for Hawk by British author Helen Macdonald and My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer’s Eden by Israeli writer Meir Shalev. They inspire me. And, of course, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
@andrew_the_arborist. @minh_ngoc.
Wild, wonder-filled, wabi-sabi.
A survivor plant in its natural habitat and community: whether desert, chaparrel, bog, pine barrens, highlands, low country.
Callery pear tree (bradford pear tree).
Rhus typhina (staghorn sumac).
Nothing is forever. Plants thrive when and where the conditions are uniquely suited. We can’t over-think, over-design, and over-control these conditions, especially now with changing and unexpected weather conditions. Just be grateful when a plant has an amazing year.
My mission is not popular: Weeds, by definition are not popular.
The idea that everything in a garden needs to be planted, that we need to “install” a landscape.
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This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.
We all know our choices matter. What we buy, where we shop, whom we vote for—and how we garden. But how do we know what to choose? “We typically think of gardening as a neutral activity,” says Tim Johnson, the CEO of Native Plant Trust. “But over the years, I’ve come to realize that gardening can be a radical activity. It anchors our attention and connects us to a place, making us keenly aware of where we are.” As more gardeners are interested in following sustainable practices, it’s helpful to understand why these practices are important and how they impact our greater community. Perfect Earth Project talked with Johnson recently about what ethical horticulture means, what you can do to “put the landscape back together,” and how to embrace your inner garden radical.
Photography courtesy of Native Plant Trust.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: How can you be an ethical gardener?
A: We can approach gardening at two ends of a spectrum. We can treat it like an engineering activity, where we’re sort of installing a thing and then trying to hold the thing static. Or we can see it as an extension of our community and self. If we think about what’s important to us, there are opportunities within the garden to live our personal ethics.
I am hopeful that gardeners as a collective are working towards what’s intrinsically better for the environment—moving away from synthetic fertilizers towards soil management or skipping high maintenance cultivars for lower maintenance native plants, for example. The choices I make in the garden are an extension of the choices I make as a consumer, as an omnivore, as a citizen.
Q: How should you go about choosing plants?
A: I first ask myself, what am I looking for a plant to do in the landscape? And generally, this means how attractive is it, what is its shape, and what is its form? But I’m also thinking about the ecological function that a specific plant brings. For example, I have minimal shade, really sandy soil at my home, and really terrible grass. Part of the reason I have really terrible grass is because I refuse to do the traditional thing of keeping it a monoculture by fertilizing and applying herbicides to it and watering it constantly. And so that means that crabgrass moves in and things get challenging. Instead of moving backwards towards chemical-based turf science in the landscape, I am asking, what does my landscape need to thrive?
I’m thinking about three things. For one, adding strategic shade throughout my landscape because more shade means less watering. Two, what are the plants that are going to survive in my sandy soil? Instead of trying to fertilize, I can find plants that work well in a low-resource environment, like prairie dropseed. And lastly I’m thinking about lawn removal. I’ve been planting micro clover, which is a nitrogen fixer, and is also more drought-tolerant than turf grass. Plus, it looks fantastic.
The ethics behind this is I want to reduce resources, mainly the amount of water that’s going into my landscape. I also don’t want to use chemical fertilizers. I want to stick with primarily compost-based ones. In the long run, I’m thinking about the places where I need fertility, how to use plants to develop that fertility over time, and plan for a succession in the garden.
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On a quiet side street dotted with older homes and industrial buildings in downtown Petaluma, California, is a secret garden: the unexpected Balinese-inspired “backyard” (you’ll understand why this is in quotes as you read on) of commercial photographers Stephanie Rausser and Lawrence Cowell. The space is thoughtfully named “Alchemy,” for the way it seamlessly combines gardening, cooking, and design. “Each element enhances the others to create something greater than the sum of its parts,” explains Lawrence.
Join me as we take a tour of this magical space:
Photography by Stephanie Rausser and Lawrence Cowell.
Alchemy’s slender 34-by-100-foot lot was weed-infested and bordered by droopy fences when Stephanie and Lawrence purchased it in 2005. Originally, the couple intended to build an office there for their photography business, but life and work and kids have a way of slowing—and altering—plans. Not to mention, the space lacked basic essentials like electricity, sewage connection, and water hookup. So, instead of building their office, the couple bought a two-story townhouse a block away that is now both their home and office. “It was a big decision as the townhouse has no outdoor space, but we convinced ourselves it could work if we could make Alchemy work as our ‘backyard’,” remembers Stephanie.
Over the past three years, the once neglected space has evolved into more than just a yard. Today it exudes a thoughtful combination of beauty, productivity, and sustainability.
Alchemy has become a place to harvest fruits and veggies, collect eggs—and do some serious barbecuing with friends and family. “Our neighbors often see us carrying eggs, flowers, and vegetables from Alchemy to our home down the street,” says Stephanie.
The Javanese design accents were inspired by the couple’s three-year sabbatical in Bali. They, along with their two children, moved to the island in 2017 and promptly fell in love with the region’s unique design elements that are now peppered throughout Alchemy. “We had furniture built in Bali and in October 2o2o, our 20-foot container from Bali arrived. Several of the pieces in the container were especially made for Alchemy, the most important being the gladak [a traditional Javanese wood house] and pergola,” shares Stephanie. The gladak stores all of their utensils, cups, plates, and tools so that they don’t have to haul items all the way over from their home kitchen when they want to dine outdoors. “We have an actual kitchen at Alchemy, with a sink with running water and a propane stove, and the lights run on solar power.”
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Rebecca McMackin is an “ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer” (her description) and an incredibly engaging, deeply knowledgeable plant nerd (ours). (Just check out her Ted Talk entitled “Let Your Garden Grow Wild” from earlier this year.) As Arboretum Curator for Woodlawn Cemetery, she manages one of the best tree collections in New York State. And as a garden designer, she creates inspired landscapes that make both people and pollinators happy. In fact, her garden for the Brooklyn Museum, a collaboration with Quick Takes alum Brook Klausing, just won the Perennial Plant Association’s Award of Excellence, in part because of its use of native plants to create habitats for the birds and bees.
We’ve interviewed Rebecca before (see 9 Radical Ways to Face Climate Change), and today, we’re thrilled to be able to share her perspective again, Below, the biodiversity crusader talks about her love for spying on bugs (“so much drama”), her admiration for dead wood (“so hip, so helpful”), and her disdain for orange Rudbeckia (agreed!).
Photography courtesy of Rebecca McMackin.
I had my first garden when I was 6. I grew up on a small farm in Connecticut, where we gardened as a way of life. I grew carrots and Celosia. I remember how sweet the carrots were. You just can’t buy carrots as good as you can grow them.
Carol Gracie was a mentor to me. I had read Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast, had my mind completely blown, and promptly began a respectful stalking mission that resulted in years of friendship. Carol was a marvelous observer and her books taught me to see flowers differently. They weren’t about plants in the traditional sense. They were written from the plant’s perspective. Carol explored what flowers were doing with their lives. She shared not only how they were shaped but why, who they were trying to attract, and how the plants communicated. I’ve read her books countless times and use them as references often. Truly the best ever.
I love Adrian Smith’s account: @dradriansmith. He does the simplest thing—taking slow-motion videos of insects taking off from a table—and it’s just glorious. There’s so much drama. The clumsiness of beetles, the leap of a moth, the absolute miracle that something like an oak treehopper can actually get airborne after spinning around three times. It’s hilariously entertaining, but also helps people understand that these animals live full lives, with struggles and victories.
Wild. Beautiful. Butterflies.
Southern magnolia. Nobody does it better.
Euonymus alatus. Why is it legal to sell this plant? How broken is horticulture that we can’t phase out plants causing actual harm. Get this guy out of the trade already.
Aquilegia canadensis. Adorable. functional. Adaptable. and charismatic.
Less is more. I hate this one. I want all the plants in every garden. But they really speak to people much more when there are only a few flowers blooming at a time.
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While spring may seem like a long way away—summer doesn’t even technically end until September 22—there are things you can do over the next month or so to prepare your garden for a successful spring.
Fall is a great time to amend the soil and put down compost (better, some argue, than spring). This is particularly helpful if your soil is heavy and compacted. Work it into the soil with a garden or broad fork, gently. This is best done while plants are still standing and you can identify where they are to avoid damaging them. For more on soil amendments in autumn, see Fall Fertilizing: How to Prepare Your Lawn, Shrubs, Trees, and Perennials for a Restorative Winter Sleep.
Now’s the time to revamp your garden or just fill in the holes. The cooler temperatures mean less evaporation. Transplant shock happens when the fine, hair-like feeder roots are damaged during the transplant process. Less transpiration means less need for water from the roots and less stress for the plants. You will still need to water your new plants, just less than if you planted them in the heat of summer. Additionally, the cooler air temperatures and warmer soil support new root growth. See Fall Gardening 101: Autumn Can Be an Ideal Time to Plant for more on this topic.
Did your black-eyed Susans over-perform this season? Are your hostas starting to take over? Now’s the time to divide them and get free new plants! See Time to Thin Out the Garden? How to Divide (and Multiply) Popular Perennials for how to do it right.
Address next spring’s FOMO by planning now and planting the bulbs you want blooming in your spring garden. Order and plant bulbs a few weeks before the first average frost date for your growing zone. Most bulbs will ship at the right time to be planted. Easy and smart choices for bulbs are daffodils, hyacinths, and crocus.(See Your First Garden: What You Need to Know Before You Plant Bulbs and The Garden Decoder: What Does It Mean to ‘Naturalize’ Bulbs? for tips.
Seed saving is all about prepping your garden for spring. By saving seeds you are helping your garden grow for next year. Literally. While seed saving can be specific to the plant, in general you should wait until the seed heads and pods are completely dry. Some will rattle like baptisia, others will fly away on the slightest of breezes, like milkweed. Some seeds—many native plants—may need cold stratification and stored in the refrigerator for a period of time. Do your research and store your seed properly. Mark your calendar now for when to sow in the spring.
Everyone knows that a peony will flop over with its massive blooms unless you surround the plant with a peony ring before it gets too big. But they are not the only ones in need of support. Joe pye weed, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, any number of taller perennials that bloom profusely, need support. Find those splayed perennials now and make a list with locations for next year so you’ll be ready to prop them up before they get too large.
Take away and trash any diseased plant material. Do not compost them because home compost piles may not reach the proper temperature to kill pathogens. Leave the leaves, though. They provide food for your plants, keep moisture in the soil, and provide shelter for pollinators and insects that help with pest control. And resist the urge to “tidy” up perennials and grasses by cutting them back. Leave at least some of them intact (including the seed heads) for overwintering creatures in need of food and shelter. For more on this topic, see 6 Nature-Based Garden Tasks for Fall.
See also:
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The disease is spread by two types of mosquito. The first is a species called Culiseta melanura, or the black-tailed mosquito. This mosquito tends to live in hardwood bogs and feeds on birds like robins, herons, and wrens, spreading the virus among them. But the melanura mosquito doesn’t often bite mammals. A different mosquito species, Coquillettidia perturbans, is primarily responsible for most of the human cases of the disease reported in the US. The perturbans mosquito picks up the EEE virus when it feeds on birds and then infects the humans and horses that it bites. Toward the end of the summer, when mosquitoes have reached their peak numbers and start jostling for any available blood meal, human cases start cropping up.
Andreadis, who published a historical retrospective on the progression of triple E in the northeastern US in 2021, said climate change has emerged as a major driver of the disease.
“We’ve got milder winters, we’ve got warmer summers, and we’ve got extremes in both precipitation and drought,” he said. “The impact that this has on mosquito populations is probably quite profound.”
Warmer global average temperatures generally produce more mosquitoes, no matter the species.
Studies have shown that warmer air temperatures up to a certain threshold, around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, shorten the amount of time it takes for C. melanura eggs to hatch. Higher temperatures in the spring and fall extend the number of days mosquitoes have to breed and feed. And they’ll feed more times in a summer season if it’s warmer—mosquitoes are ectothermic, meaning their metabolism speeds up in higher temperatures.
Rainfall, too, plays a role in mosquito breeding and activity, since mosquito eggs need water to hatch. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which means that even small rainfall events dump more water today than they would have last century. The more standing water there is in roadside ditches, abandoned car tires, ponds, bogs, and potholes, the more opportunities mosquitoes have to breed. And warmer water decreases the incubation period for C. melanura eggs, leading one study to conclude that warmer-than-average water temperatures “increase the probability for amplification of EEE.”
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Zoya Teirstein
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If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply drinking water for the downstream city of Fort Collins, home to around 170,000 people. Although the water looked clear again several weeks later, Charles Rhoades, a research biogeochemist at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, says he is still seeing contaminants from the fire in the watershed.
Recent studies have found that while some watersheds begin to recover within five years of a fire, others may be fundamentally altered, never fully returning to their pre-fire conditions. And with wildfires becoming more common, much larger, and burning for longer as the world warms, hydrologists, ecologists, and water-management officials are scrambling to understand and mitigate the consequences fire-contaminated water can have on humans and ecosystems.
In a healthy forest, there’s a lot of “litter” on the ground—pine needles, dead leaves, debris. “It acts like a sponge,” says Rhoades. “As rainfall comes in, it moves through that layer slowly and can trickle into the soil.” When fires scorch the land, they burn that vegetation and organic matter, leaving behind a bare landscape that’s highly susceptible to erosion. Instead of filtering into the ground, rain will slide right off the surface, moving quickly, picking up soil, and carrying it into streams and rivers. Not only does this cause sediment build-up, but it can disrupt the water chemistry. Rhoades found elevated levels of nutrients, like nitrogen, in rivers almost 15 years after a high-severity fire. These nutrients can lead to harmful algal blooms, although they don’t directly impact drinking water quality. But other sites show increased levels of heavy metals like manganese, iron, and even lead after a major fire, which can complicate water-treatment processes.
Other regions across the western US, like Taos, New Mexico, and Santa Cruz, California, have faced similar issues, as wildfires increase in frequency and duration due to climate change and decades of fire-suppression practices. For much of the 20th century, the US Forest Service and other land management agencies aimed to keep all fires from burning, believing it was the best way to protect forests. But naturally occuring, low-severity fires improve forest health, preventing the accumulation of dense underbrush and dead trees that act as fuel.
“We have this huge buildup of fuel on the landscape from 140 years of fire suppression, and we know that the consequences of that—combined with increases in severe weather—make the likelihood of really intense fire behavior much higher than it used to be,” says Alissa Cordner, an environmental sociologist and professor at Whitman College in Washington state and volunteer wildland firefighter. “We also have more and more people living next to forests and migrating to places in the wildland-urban interface.” Any municipality is at risk of water contamination if a wildfire burns through its watershed.
“Consumers rarely know about all this stuff that’s going on under the hood,” says Rhoades. After a wildfire, water providers work tirelessly to ensure residents don’t experience the effects in their taps, which requires collaboration between land agencies, like the Forest Service, USGS, and local governing bodies. They perform regular water testing, install sediment-control structures, and sometimes, alter water treatment protocols to deal with the increased load of contaminants.
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Hannah Singleton
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SALEM — New tree plantings are coming to Salem State University to help provide shade to Harrington Campus, after recent efforts to plant trees have been celebrated at other parts of SSU.
The Healey-Driscoll Administration announced recently that it’s investing more than $1 million in grants to support tree plantings and expand urban tree canopies in gateway cities, such as Salem and Lynn. The two neighboring cities combined for a $310,931 from the Greening the Gateway Cities (GGCP) implementation grant program.
Salem State’s share of the grant, worth $31,950, will bring 36 new trees to the Harrington Campus, while $120,000 goes to the city of Salem to plant 100 trees along entry routes, $123,981 to Lynn to plant 110 new public trees and prepare 80 new tree pits, and $35,000 to local nonprofit Salem Sound Coastwatch to help recruit residential properties into the program and find other high-priority planting spots in the area.
Salem State recently partnered with the Department of Conservation and Recreation through the GGCP to plant 50 trees of diverse species on North Campus, at the O’Keefe Complex, Stanley Building, and along the bike path, with more trees to come this fall. The new grant funding allows the university to plant trees on the Harrington Campus, where students have specifically requested more trees. The Harrington Campus was previously ineligible for the GGCP, as it’s not within an environmental justice area.
Bringing trees to campus “is transforming the landscape of Salem State for the future and is an important part of Salem State’s climate resiliency strategy,” said Tara Gallagher, sustainability coordinator in the university’s facilities department. “They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the second-best time is today. So, it’s never too late.”
The program strives not just to plant trees, but to make sure those that are planted receive initial watering and treatment support, and that species planted are also diverse. Plantings last year brought Honeylocusts, Basswoods, Red Maples, and others in the areas around the Canal Street parking lots and the multi-use path that runs through the area.
“Planting trees in urban areas helps neighborhoods that lack tree canopy and suffer from the urban heat island effect of being hotter than surrounding areas in the summer,” Gallagher said. “Tree planting also brings stormwater management, wildlife habitat and other benefits, as well as beautifying our campus.”
Rebecca Tepper, secretary to the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said expanding the state’s forest canopy “is one piece of the larger puzzle to combatting climate change in Massachusetts.”
“With continuous heat waves leading to higher energy bills and greater greenhouse gas emissions, our Greening the Gateway Cities Program leverages our state resources and engages residents to help plant trees and enhance public health,” Tepper said. “Reducing the urban heat island effect is a top priority, and our non-profit partnerships through the GGCP will help cool our neighborhoods, towns and cities.”
As part of its efforts to advance and educate on sustainability, Salem State also held three events earlier this month to talk about low mow zones, the importance of trees in urban areas, and learn about pollinator habitats.
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By News Staff
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This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.
“We have declared 2024 the year of milkweed,” says Andi Pettis, director of horticulture at Governors Island. For the past couple of years, Pettis and her team have been busy incorporating milkweed into the island’s plantings. They’re focusing on the three species native to the ecoregion: butterfly weed (Pettis’s favorite because of the “incredible variation in color from golden yellow to almost scarlet”), mauvy common milkweed, and hot pink swamp milkweed. Her goal is to finish planting 5,000 milkweed plants this year. “Showing the relationship between monarch butterflies and milkweed is an easy way for us to connect people to the benefits of native plants and show them why it’s important to support wildlife even in an urban environment.” The efforts have paid off. They’ve been noticing more and more monarchs on the island. You’ve heard it before: If you plant it, they really do come. (See Monarch Butterflies Are Nearing Extinction: 5 Ways to Help.)
Planting milkweed is just one of the many initiatives that Pettis and her team are doing to bolster biodiversity. “Climate resiliency and sustainability were sort of baked into the design of the park,” she says. Created by the design firm West 8, with Mathews Nielson Landscape Architects, the park features 120 acres of hills, meadows, and forests in the middle of New York Harbor. “It was a reuse project really—an old military base turned into a public space with new parks,” she said. “But there was no horticulture staff when I was hired [six years ago].” Pettis, who trained at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and had risen through the ranks at The High Line to become director of horticulture before moving to Governors Island, had to build a team from scratch and began to rehabilitate areas where maintenance had been deferred for years. Today, she and her team have introduced 52 native plant species to the island, planted habitat for butterflies and birds, and brought in sheep to tame the rampant spread of invasive species. “We’re working with nature here,” she says. “It’s not a short fix, but it’s working. We’re in this for the long haul.”
Pettis talks about this bustling and beautiful urban island park and shares how they’re bringing biodiversity back. [This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]
Photography by Sarma Ozols, unless otherwise noted.
A: The park was designed for sustainability and climate resilience. West 8 built hills and these kinds of swales and berms to raise part of the park out of the 100-year floodplain. Working with Matthews Nielsen, they created a lot of naturalistic areas based on coastal maritime plant communities and filled the park with a lot of native trees. I think there are 53 different species of native trees planted on the South Island alone!
We have made it clear that we are choosing plants that mimic our coastal maritime shrublands and grasslands native plant communities. We’re also focusing on those that benefit biodiversity and wildlife. In areas where we have managed to retake the land with these native plant communities, we’ve seen huge upticks in the native insect populations.
A: As temperatures warm, we are definitely experimenting with plants that would be considered more Southern. For example, we are considering planting live oaks on the island. We are also growing pawpaws, persimmons, and magnolias that are all doing really very well.
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When we asked Christin Geall for “the real reason she gardens,” the floral designer, writer, photographer, and educator responded with a literary quote: “I’m borrowing from Joan Didion who said the following about writing, but you can switch up the verb: ‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.’ ” To Christin, gardening isn’t just about growing plants; it provides a lens through which to understand the world.
A trained horticulturalist (via the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), committed environmentalist (double major in Environmental Studies and Anthropology), and thoughtful writer (MFA in Creative Nonfiction), Christin now travels widely to teach, speak, and write. Below, she shares the reasons she’s conflicted about modern-day gardening, the sure-fire method of extending the vase life of cut flowers, and the garden she calls “humbling, inspiring, and if you read his poetry as a part of your visit, transformational.”
Photography by Christin Geall, unless otherwise noted.
I loved bugs as a child and made circuses for caterpillars from twigs, leaves and flowers. When I was very young, I discovered ants on peony buds. I suspect they were at my height and I remember watching them, not knowing why they were there or why they seemed so busy. Today I know it is a kind of mutualism—the ants eat sugars from nectaries and protect the flowers from other insects.
The Phaidon books FLOWER: Exploring the World in Bloom and PLANT: Exploring the Botanical World. They’re art history books predominantly, but packed with botanical, political, and historical insights. This isn’t really a plug, but I often return to my first book [Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style] when I’m feeling flat about my writing. If I can appreciate decent sentences about plants, it helps me write more of them. It’s the same with gardening to some degree—if I look at pictures of past successes, it fuels my hope for the future.
@sustainablefloristry out of Australia.
Productive. Collected. Confused.
Amaranth: I love it as a cooked vegetable and know it is fabulous as a cut flower, but just looking at those seeds makes me itch. Tied for first place in the cringey cultivated category is Chinese Forget-Me-Not (Cynoglossum amiable), which has seeds capable of sticking in your socks (through multiple washes) and is the bane of pet owners. It’s one to be careful with, given its pioneering+settler instincts.
I went to South Africa last year and swooned over so many plants, it felt like a rapture. (I’ve still not recovered).
This is a tough one to write: gardening today isn’t very ecologically-friendly. Or at least not the type of contemporary gardening that demands raised beds, hardscaping, irrigation, fencing, greenhouses, soil amendments, bedding plants, lawn care, plastic, netting, pumps, lighting, etc., etc. As gardeners, I think we all should consider what our hobby or work demands of the earth. Western culture gave us the idea that we could or should have our own little Eden and, more recently, that gardening or floral design is a form of “self-care.” It would behoove us to challenge these individualistic notions and consider less consumptive ways of engaging with nature. Basketry and forest bathing hold promise.
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