Tag: Ecology

NYBG’s Plant Studio: Online Classes for Beginner Gardeners at the New York Botanical Garden

If you’re a gardener in the New York City area, you’ve likely toyed with the idea of taking a class at the New York Botanical Garden to stretch yourself in new directions—maybe even towards a new career. But if you’re anything like me, you never enrolled because while the garden is inspirational, it’s a big schlepp from where I live. Starting this winter, I and other distance-challenged gardeners may get our chance to study with NYBG after all.

NYBG’s Continuing Education program has just launched a new series of online classes that they are calling Plant Studio. Unlike their rigorous certificate program, these classes are “bite-sized” and offer a flexible schedule, with pre-recorded content dropped weekly via an online education portal.

Photography courtesy of NYBG.

Above: A classroom at the New York Botanical Garden.

Up until 2020, the NYBG had never offered online courses because the institution placed emphasis on hands-on learning. “We have over 700 classes, workshops, and lectures a year, and about 60,000 students annually,” says Kay Chubbuck, NYBG’s Vice President for Education. “The Garden had been very focused on hands-on experiential education up until the pandemic, which makes sense for a program that offers garden design and floral design.” But when the pivot to online learning inspired many non-New Yorkers to sign up for classes, NYBG was compelled to take another look at its course offerings. “We found that there was an even broader audience of people not just in the New York Tri-State area, but even globally around the world.”

Above: One of the five Plant Studio classes offered is called “Orchid Design.”

The Garden will continue to offer their in-person certificate and continuing education courses, as well as online courses that are taught live and synchronously via Zoom. What’s new are the five classes within Plant Studio. Chubbuck describes them as being targeted at the “plant curious” (versus the certificate classes for the “plant serious”). “They’re designed for people who like plants, may be curious about plants and always wanted to learn a little bit about landscape design or how to do a floral arrangement but didn’t have the time,” she notes. The classes are pre-recorded content and run two, four, or six weeks, but they are not fully self-paced—and that’s intentional, says Chubbuck. “These classes have start dates and end dates; the assignments have due dates. That kind of scaffolding sets people up for success. If there are no deadlines, it can be hard to really be motivated.”

Above: The Plant Studio classes are all online.

The team at NYBG settled on their first five Plant Studio classes—Plant Science, Landscape Design History for Beginners, Orchid Design, Container Gardening, and Pruning Basics—after surveying existing and potential students. The six-week landscape design course, for example, is an easier and abbreviated version of one of the Garden’s most popular Continuing Education classes. These courses are also designed to be season-less and non-place specific. “We wanted courses that could reach as many people across different planting zones, different time zones as possible,” says Chubbuck. For example, a class like Container Gardening, you can do anywhere. There’s also a hands-on element to some, like the Pruning and Container Garden classes, for which students will complete their own projects at home.

Above: Some Plant Studio classes, like the one on “Pruning Basics,” require completion of at-home projects.

Plant Studio also offers gardeners an opportunity to meet key figures in the garden, who don’t have time to teach a conventional class. For example, Marc Hachadourian, the Director of Glasshouse Horticulture & Senior Curator of Orchids at NYBG, co-teaches the orchid class. Registration for spring is open now, and Chudduck says we can expect another five classes to (hopefully!) be introduced before the end of the year.

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January 31, 2024
A-Gas Develops One of the First Carbon Credit Projects for Washington State Department of Ecology Cap-and-Invest Program

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio, January 30, 2024 (Newswire.com)
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A-Gas, a leader in the lifecycle management of refrigerants, announces it is one of the first two carbon projects approved for issuance of Ecology Offset Credits by the Washington State Department of Ecology, the regulatory agency responsible for the state’s compliance carbon market.

A-Gas collected refrigerant gases from Washington State via their Rapid Recovery on-site refrigerant recovery service, Rapid Exchange on-demand cylinder swap service, and from distributor partners. Once collected, A-Gas destroyed the refrigerant gas in their proprietary plasma arc destruction units, PyroPlas®. A-Gas PyroPlas® is the only plasma arc destruction technology in the United States approved for generating carbon offsets. A-Gas PyroPlas is the cleanest end-of-life technology because it can destroy Ozone Depleting Substances to an efficiency of 99.9999% with de minimis emissions and no adverse environmental impacts.

Now, the 109,180 Ecology Offset Credits issued by the Department of Ecology to A-Gas (A-Gas 2-2023; Project ID: ACR902) can be used by covered entities towards meeting their emission reduction obligations in Washington’s program.

ACR was the Offset Project Registry for the project, issuing the serialized Registry Offset Credits to be converted to Ecology Offset Credits. The project was also verified to comply with the California Air Resources Board Compliance Offset Protocol for Ozone Depleting Substance Projects, which was adopted by the Washington Department of Ecology to generate the Registry Offset Credits.

“A-Gas is proud to be one of the first project developers for Ecology Offset Credits. Our purpose is to effectively manage the lifecycle of refrigerants to protect and enhance the environment. With the issuance of these credits, A-Gas is providing Washington organizations with a transparent mechanism to build a more sustainable future,” stated Brooke Willard, Carbon Program Director for A-Gas.

“Carbon markets offer the least-cost pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while also supporting other priorities, such as clean air and healthy communities,” said Mary Grady, executive director of ACR. “We’re pleased to be the first Offset Project Registry to issue carbon credits in support of the State of Washington’s commitment to climate action.”

About A-Gas

A-Gas (US), headquartered in Bowling Green, Ohio, is a trading subsidiary of A-Gas International (headquartered in Bristol, UK) and is the world’s largest refrigerant recovery and reclamation company. The company’s core business offers environmental solutions and lifecycle management services for ozone depleting substances and global warming agents, including CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs, and Halons in the HVAC/Refrigeration and Fire Suppression Industries. For more information about A-Gas, please visit www.agas.com/us

Source: A-Gas

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January 30, 2024
A Meadow Front Yard for Martin Architects by deMauro + deMauro

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.

“Mother nature is the ultimate landscape designer. We’re just her helpers,” says Emilia deMauro, who, along with her sister Anna, runs the East Hampton, NY, landscape design firm deMauro + deMauro. Their approach to design is imbued with a sense of community and responsibility to preserve the beauty of the native environment.

The sisters grew up shuttling between the rolling hills of rural Northeastern Pennsylvania, where their artist dad lived, and the farm fields and overgrown thickets of the east end of Long Island, where their mother was farming and gardening. “Both of those landscapes play a huge part in our designs,” says Anna, who studied at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. “There’s something so beautiful in the wildness. We’re constantly pulling from those memories.”

They found kindred spirits in architect Nick Martin and his wife Christina. The couple believed strongly in “pivoting away from green lawns that require chemicals and continual labor, and, most important, that strip our community of habitat for creatures big and small,” says Christina. They hired the sisters to design the landscape outside of Martin Architects, Nick’s new Bridgehampton office on the Montauk highway. A busy thoroughfare, situated just past a gas station and across from a bank, didn’t deter them from achieving their joint vision: a self-sufficient oasis, lush with native plants and alive with birds, butterflies, and wildlife, that looks beautiful year-round.

Photography by Doug Young, courtesy of deMauro + deMauro, unless otherwise noted.

Above: For the meadow in front of Martin Architects, the deMauros devised an interspecies matrix planting. They densely planted small perennials (grasses like prairie dropseed and wavy hair grass, and flowers including slender blue iris, gray goldenrod, and white heath asters) approximately 12 to 18 inches apart to help with weed suppression and water conservation.

The property was neglected when the Martins bought it. “To transform the space, we removed the asphalt driveway, regraded the land because the pitch was so bad, with the goal that it wouldn’t need irrigation,” says Nick. He also tried to reuse as many materials as possible.

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January 25, 2024
Jinny Blom: An Interview with the Author of 'What Makes a Garden'

The second book from landscape designer Jinny Blom, What Makes a Garden, draws on all aspects of gardens and garden culture. Jinny knows her stuff, has opinions, and sometimes upsets those of her followers on social media who want only loveliness. Having praised the writing of provocateur Julie Burchill (who wrote in her Spectator column, “It’s time to end the rewilding menace”), Jinny was shocked by the viciousness of the response. It seems that some things are off-limits for landscape designers, and one is suggesting to gardeners that their ecological thinking might be fuzzy. Never more in demand, with clients who could choose anybody in the world, Jinny takes time out to talk to us about garden design, and the R-word.

Photography by Britt Willoughby Dyer, from What Makes a Garden.

Q: In your latest book you say: “We limit spaces between trees and shrub groups to 650 feet as that is as far as many small birds can fly without having to take cover.” How much do ecological considerations affect the layout of your gardens?

Above: A garden that Jinny designed for Hauser & Wirth at their hotel the Fife Arms in the Scottish Highlands.

A: An awful lot. We work very closely with ecology, and detailed information like this determines much of what we do. We just amalgamate the information into our designs rather than having it displayed only as the science.

Q: Does the term “pleasure garden” still have currency today?

Above: A reconfigured garden (and estate) in the Cotswolds, England.

A: I don’t know, because I’m not sure what’s happened to pleasure—we’re living in grumpy times. I personally feel that gardens are places for pleasure, which I would define as the sort of freedom that you get from being outside—not signaling every move and every action—but just sort of being. My sense is that the old meaning was just that: in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens [which had their heyday in 18th and early 19th century London], you would be strolling around—pleasurably dressed, with pleasurable friends doing pleasurable things in a pleasurable place. Pleasure was the whole purpose.

Q: Do you find that more and more people are still getting switched on to gardening, even post-pandemic?

Above: An English country garden, designed by Jinny Blom.

A: Definitely. Because here’s the crux of it: If you actually go outside and do it, your feelings and your responses to nature and gardening change very quickly. If you’re a kind of armchair warrior, then that’s something different. But really gardening—everybody I know who does it finds so much pleasure and excitement in it. The great optimism is giving people access to their own little patch of earth to mess around with; I think it’s very important.

Q: “Rewilding” means different things to different people. What in your view are the good bits?

Above: Steps into the garden at the Fife Arms, Braemar, Scotland.

A: I don’t see it as a big political thing, another cause for rage. It’s been going on for a very long time—people naturalizing areas or enjoying a naturalized area, except that it would be gardened and cared for; it would be ‘kempt,’ rather than unkempt. Anybody with a patch of land (I do it myself in my tiny garden) could have a patch of long grass with things growing in it. It’s not something you’re fiddling with all the time, it performs in a different way, and it gives a different kind of pleasure to look at. And then, five feet to the left, there might be quite a well-attended border, which is doing something else. So really, it’s about the pleasure of diversity in gardens. Anything that’s going to engender more habitat or more diversity for other creatures is definitely part of where most gardeners are coming from.

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January 23, 2024
Marcescence Definition: Why Do Leaves Stay on Trees in the Winter?

You go for a long walk in the woods on a quiet winter day. All you hear is the crunching of snow as your boots hit the trail. The breeze picks up. And then you hear it. It starts out as a rustle, grows to low a rattle, and then, suddenly, it’s a crackling cacophony.

It’s wind blowing through the leaves—but it’s winter, right? And shouldn’t the leaves on the trees be gone by now? Yet, there they are—brown leaves hanging onto the branches. It may not make sense to you, but it can be normal for some trees, and it’s called “marcescence.”

Photography by Joy Yagid.

What is marcescence?

Above: A stand of young beech trees at the forest edge offers an unexpected mid-winter sight: leaves still on trees.

Marcescence is when deciduous trees hold on to most of their dead leaves until spring. Only certain trees do this, mainly beeches and oaks, but also hornbeams and witch hazels and, sometimes, Japanese maples. The leaves may turn color in the fall, but they won’t fall off. Instead, they persist, wrinkled and brown, until new growth finally pushes them off the branches.

What causes marcescence?

Above: A Japanese maple with marcescence after an ice storm.

We are used to seeing bare trees in the winter in the northern part of the country, where deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall. Some, like sugar maples, put on a colorful show before they go. The process for how trees lose their leaves is called abscission. Hormones in the tree, activated by the dwindling length of daylight, are prompted to start cutting off nutrients to the leaves; by mid-autumn, they start to fall. However in marcescence, the tree cuts off nutrients but the leaves do not separate from the tree. They remain on the tree until spring.

Why does marcescence happen?

Above: Red oak leaves hanging on till spring.

No one knows for sure, but scientists have a few guesses. First, it may be to protect next year’s leaf buds from being nibbled on—younger trees and the lower branches of older trees are more likely to experience marcescence. Food for forest animals tends to be scarce in the winter. Deer will nibble on just about anything. Keeping the dead leaves on the tree is thought to protect the tender buds from being eaten. Second, marcescence may occur when there’s a need to for moisture. The withered leaves can both collect dew and direct rain to fall down within the drip line of the tree’s feeder roots. Even though it’s winter, the tree is still alive and still needs water. Third, once the leaves finally fall in the spring, they can form a layer of mulch that will lock in the moisture around the feeder roots and eventually provide the perfect closed loop fertilizer. They are exactly what the tree needs, since it came from the tree.

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January 19, 2024
The Bug Snug: An Easy DIY Insect Habitat by OmVed Gardens

Every so often a DIY project comes across our Instagram feed that stops us in our tracks–as was the case when Omved Gardens shared a video tutorial on building a “bug snug” for hibernating insects. Here was a truly easy to do-it-yourself project that uses materials gardeners likely have on hand (sticks and twine) and solves a common problem (what to do with extra cuttings and slow-to-compost twigs), all while supporting wildlife. We bookmarked it straightaway, but what was even more intriguing was that within a few weeks, we saw other gardeners recreating the bug snug or reposting OmVed’s video on their own feed: This humble garden DIY had gone about as viral as a garden post could go.

Founded in 2017 on a formally tarmacked piece of land in north London’s Highgate Village, Omved Gardens is an educational garden and community space with a focus on biodiversity and permaculture. John Gaffney, the landscape gardener at Omved, says inspiration for the bug snug came from a visit to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley Garden last fall. “When leaving the gardens I noticed these pyramidal structures dotted around the car park,” says Gaffney. “There were signs posted explaining the purpose of these interesting structures and how they were made.” The towers of sticks support insects and invertebrates by providing a safe place to hibernate, and the hollow stems of dead plants, in particular, make excellent little hideaways.

So when Gaffney was left with piles of sticks and hollow stems after preparing Omved’s wildflower beds for winter, he decided to make a smaller-scale version of the pyramids he’d seen at Wisley. “As gardeners, it’s very easy to want to get in the garden and clean up all the mess and the cuttings off the floor. But actually what wildlife wants is a bit of mess,” Gaffney says. And not only are the structures functional and attractive, he notes, they have made for great conversation starters about how to “prepare” for winter and the need to leave a bit of untidiness around for wildlife.

Here’s how to create your own bug snug.

Photography by Will Hearle, courtesy of OmVed Gardens, unless otherwise noted.

Step 1: Build the frame.

Above: Gaffney demonstrates how to create the frame for the bug snug. Stills from video by Will Hearle for OmVed Gardens.

Choose a position for your snug in a sunny spot if possible. Gather three sturdy wood poles of equal length; Gaffney used hazel, but says you can use any straight pieces of wood, including bamboo canes. You can make your snug any size (OmVed’s snugs stand about chest high). Gaffney tied the poles together informally; if you want to get fancy, you can use a clove hitch to create a proper tripod lashing. Once you’ve secured the poles, they should stand up by themselves, but you can knock them into the ground with a hammer or mallet to make the pyramid more secure.

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January 11, 2024
5 Gray Wolves Released In Colorado In Effort To Restore Population

In a move that reignited tensions between conservationists who advocate for a balanced ecosystem and livestock farmers who see the new additions as a threat, five gray wolves were released into the wild in Colorado in an effort to restore the predator population there, the first time this has been done since government-sponsored programs eliminated wolves from the area a century ago. What do you think?

“Isn’t there a nicer predator we could release?”

Cora Meagher, Cheese Ager

This Week’s Most Viral News: New Year’s Eve Edition

“I wish my state could support wildlife.”

Jay Mattingly, Salt Separator

“Wow, so even wolves get welfare now?”

Mary McCallip, Data Compiler

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January 1, 2024
Whole Egg Planting, Seaweed Slug Repellent, A Bug Snug, and Other Trends to Try

While I definitely don’t consider myself a trendsetter—or even a person who follows trends—my interest is always piqued when I learn of new gardening approaches and tricks. Here, I’ve rounded up a few of my favorites that I plan to try this coming year. (And if you’re ahead of the game and have already given these a go, let us know how it went in the Comments.)

1. Lay seaweed down to repel snails and slugs.

Above: Whole seaweed is purportedly a great soil amendment—and snail and slug repellent. Photograph by H Matthew Howarth via Flickr, from Seafood for the Garden: Make Your Own Organic Fertilizer.

Liquid seaweed is a well-known wonderful organic fertilizer, but how about whole seaweed as pest control? Researchers are experimenting with seaweed to fight various plant invaders, and so are gardeners. Some claim that this briny treasure from the sea works as an excellent snail and slug repellent. Plus, it benefits the soil with ready-to-use trace minerals and helps block out weeds—and it’s free if you live near a beach! The theory goes like this: Since seaweed holds a lot of salt, it will repel slugs and snails, which detest salt. Furthermore, when seaweed dries it becomes crackly and crisp, which soft-bodied slugs and snails also dislike.

I plan to gather some fresh seaweed and use it like a wet mulch around vulnerable plants, or place it around the perimeter of a garden bed. The recommendation is to layer it about 4-inches-high because it will shrink as it dries. If you’re planning to give this a try, I’d suggest keeping the seaweed away from stems and leaves (as they don’t enjoy the salt either) and collect only the seaweed you need (as seaweed provides shelter and food for various marine life).

2. Add edimentals to the garden.

Above: Chives, with their purple pompom flowers, are pretty and edible. Photograph by Clive Nichols, courtesy of Harry Holding Studio, from Edimentals Are Trending. Here’s Why You Should Include Them In Your Garden.

As you probably guessed, this is the joining of the words edible and ornamental, the idea being that a plant can be both tasty and decorative at the same time. As someone who loves to multitask, I’m drawn to plants that adopt the same behavior. Edimentals can be annuals, perennials, trees, or shrubs. Looking closer, options include edible leaves, berries, fruits, roots, or flowers.

What I appreciate about edimentals is that harvesting becomes more like foraging as the plants are dispersed around a garden instead of living in a designated patch or bed. The other positive aspect is that most edimentals also attract pollinators. Here are some plants I will add this year: Artichokes for their bold architectural leaves, perennial herbs like chives (which have charming pink flower heads), and Nasturiums whose flowers can be tossed in salads.

3. Crack an egg into a planting hole.

Above: Raw egg is said to be a cure for all sorts of ailments—including nutrient-weak soil. Photograph by Justine Hand, from Gardening 101: How to Use Eggshells in the Garden.

This idea came from a client of mine who swears by this technique, an old trick that has been passed down for generations of gardeners. I knew about adding crushed egg shells to compost bins and as a topdressing, but this method—in which you add a whole, unbroken raw egg to the bottom of your planting hole—is new to me. My client found that when she did this in a few pots, she discovered the egg-filled pots looked greener and grew larger than the egg-less pots (her controls).

This form of direct composting theoretically results in boosted soil nutrients, especially calcium and beneficial mycorrhizea. Some other sources say that buried eggs are excellent for tomatoes to prevent blossom end rot. I understand that this technique is not a quick solution as the decomposition process needs time to occur and that I could be encouraging raccoons or other curious creatures to investigate if they detect an odor, but I am willing to try. (Side note: As someone who is mildly allergic to eggs, I don’t feel bad repurposing them for the betterment of plants.)

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December 22, 2023
Composting in the Winter: Tips to Ensure Mature Compost in Spring

It’s still important to keep your ratio of “greens” (moist materials, including kitchen scraps) and “browns” (dry materials, leaves, shredded paper and cardboard) during the winter months. Merkleson keeps a separate pile of leaves that he adds to his bin whenever he puts in kitchen scraps.

5. Don’t turn it.

When the temperatures drop, you should stop turning the pile because you’ll be contributing to heat loss. “Once the temperatures in the pile go below 40°F, there is not much microbial activity, so no need to turn,” adds Helen Atthowe, the author of The Ecological Farm. That said, if you hit a warm spell, go ahead and flip the pile to aerate, says Merkelson. Note: If you maintain a hot compost pile (most homeowners have a “cold” pile), the Growit Buildit! blog, in a tutorial about hot composting in winter, recommends continuing to turn your pile once a week.

6. Cover up.

Above: Photograph by Meg Stewart via Flickr.

Covering the pile can also help retain heat. Merkleson says you can cover your pile with leaves, cardboard, or straw to keep it warmer longer, but avoid covering the active pile with a plastic tarp, so it can breathe and receive moisture. Atthow notes that there are felt-like compost covers you can buy that breathe better than plastic tarps, as well. If you’re fortunate enough to have a stash of mature compost, it’s fine to leave it outside to overwinter, but Merkleson recommends you do cover that with a tarp. If not, “rain, sleet, snow washes through the compost and leeches out the nutrients,” he cautions.

7. Consider a backdoor bin.

Above: Photograph by Sue Thompson via Flickr.

“It’s not always necessary to go out in bad weather to keep composting,” says Merkelson, who personally doesn’t like to trek out to his pile in the worst winter weather. Instead, he throws food waste into an indoor Bokashi bin (an anaerobic method of composting). But Merkleson notes you don’t need a Bokashi bucket to avoid trips to your compost pile. Take advantage of the cold temperatures and place a food waste bucket outside, preferably next to the back door. “If it is freezing or close to freezing, you can just leave your food scraps in a sealed container for weeks or even months” until you’re ready to take them out to the pile, he says.

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December 19, 2023
Native Bees: How to Help the At-Risk Pollinators

“The priority in gardening is no longer just about mastering an aesthetic,” says Bishop. “There is a shift toward being more mindful and ethical. We need to embrace the natural systems that we’ve just forgotten about.” Here’s what you can do at home.

Above: These tiny masked bees are solitary, nesting in twigs and stems. Since they’re so small, they prefer small flowers, even “ones we might not really notice, like those found in an alternative lawn” says Kornbluth. Because of their size, they can go deep inside flowers to get nectar. Not particularly hairy, they don’t carry pollen on their bodies, like other bees, but carry it in their “’crop,’ the upper part of the digestive tract.” This masked bee was spotted foraging on snakeroot in Bishop’s garden.

Grow native plants in your garden.

Native insects coevolved with native plants. They’re part of an intricate food web system. For most organisms, non-native plants are like “plastic fruit in a fruit bowl,” says Kornbluth. “It may look good, but they won’t be able to eat it.” While nectar-eating insects are able to enjoy the sugary, calorie-rich nectar from a wide range of flowers, “pollen, which bees need to feed their young, is more likely to come from the local native species that they have been coevolving with them for many thousands of years,” says Kornbluth. (At Perfect Earth Project, we advocate for at least two-thirds native plants in your garden.)

Don’t use pesticides.

Even organic ones. Pesticides (and that includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) don’t discriminate and will kill all insects—not just the ones you’re targeting. When selecting plants at the nursery, ask if they’ve been treated with pesticides of any kind, especially neonicotinoids, a systemic insecticide that is absorbed by the entire plant rendering every part poisonous to pollinators.

Above: Male longhorn bees feature very long antennae. These bees are specialists of Asteraceae, and especially love sunflowers. Look for them buzzing about in July and August.

Provide nesting spots.

Native bees nest in the ground and in stems and wood piles. “It’s important to remember that the standing dead vegetation you see is full of bees,” says Kornbluth. Try not to cut back stems when flowers are done blooming, but leave them for the bees. If you’re concerned about how that’s going to look, visit The Battery, says Bishop, and see how pretty it is all winter long. “Embracing a plant’s complete life cycle—from seedlings in spring to seed head or grass mound in winter—is a Piet Oudolf trademark,” says Bishop of the visionary Dutch landscape designer who created the garden’s master plan. “By not deadheading, we allow the life cycle to stay on display and integrate into design year-round. And this decay becomes abundant living matter and nest material for pollinators.” It’s also beautiful. “I love the aesthetic: the decay, structure, and different textures of every plant—they each have their own kind of personality,” says Bishop.

But if you must cut some stems back, Kornbluth advises leaving last year’s stems as high as you can. While you’re at it, leave the leaves. In addition to feeding the soil, fallen leaves provide insulation for ground-nesters, like bumblebees and mining bees, as well as other hibernating organisms. “It prevents the surface of the earth from getting too cold, which impacts their survival over the winter,” says Kornbluth.

Look and learn.

“Do a small insect safari at home,” suggests Kornbluth. Bishop has been doing this in her own backyard in Westchester, New York, and happily admits the glee she feels when finding new species in her garden. “Give yourself the opportunity to be meditative and peaceful,” says Kornbluth. See who’s coming to eat. What do you notice about them? What plants are they visiting? When are they appearing? Share what you find on iNaturalist. “The whole process is very eye-opening, engaging, and connecting.”

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December 14, 2023
Three Sisters Garden: What Is It and How Does It Work?
Below the surface, the root structure of each crop is also a finely tuned machine. Corn roots are shallow and take up the top layer, bean roots travel deeper, and the squash roots take residence in the empty spaces. This interlocking root system helps establish a symbiotic relationships with fungi and bacteria. “The bacteria fix nitrogen into a form that plants can use, and fungi form mycorrhizae that improve water uptake and nitrogen and phosphate acquisition,” says Beronda.

What are the benefits of the Three Sisters garden?

Above: A well-balanced complete meal. Photograph by Chris Feser via Flickr.

Today, commercial agriculture spits out vast monocultures consisting of either corn, wheat, or soybeans, and while this one-crop method makes planting and harvesting easier, it doesn’t lead to higher productivity. “Growing plants that have complementary characteristics can lead to more sustainable growth,” writes Beronda. Basically, the benefits of this diverse Indigenous agricultural practice are productivity and a resilience gained by reciprocal relationships. Another positive aspect of the Three Sisters is that these three food sources together to make a complete and balanced meal. Corn is full of carbohydrates, beans are loaded with protein and have amino acids that are missing from corn, and squash possesses vitamins and minerals that corn and beans don’t have.

How do you plant the Three Sisters?

Above: A Three Sisters Garden mound at a community garden. Photograph by Renee via Flickr.

Just like all great relationships, timing is everything. Because these crops are warm season plants that detest frost, plan on installing these three crops in the spring when night temperatures are in the 50 degree range. Here’s what to do: Find a full sun spot and mound your soil about 4 inches high to help with drainage and soil warmth. You will be directly planting all three types of seeds together in the same mound but not at the same time. (Directly planting a seed will encourage a stronger root system and the plant won’t have to deal with transplant trauma.) Plant in this order: corn, beans, then squash.
1. Plant 4 corn seeds first, 6 inches apart, so it can grow above the other sisters (make sure you get a tall variety).
2. Next, plant 4 beans 3 inches from the corn, 2 to 3 weeks later (or when the corn is a few inches tall). Good options are pole beans or runner beans (not bush beans).
3. Once the beans send out climbing tendrils (approximately 1 week later), plant 3 squash seeds 4 inches apart at the edge of the mound. Pumpkin, Butternut, winter squash or other vine-growing types work well. The reason you plant the squash last is that you don’t want the large squash leaves shading out your baby corn and beans before they grow up a bit.
Regarding spacing, make sure each plant has ample room to grow and not be crowded which could make them susceptible to pests and diseases. Also important is to plant enough of each crop for proper cross pollination. This is especially crucial for squash plants that need the help of insects to pollinate their flowers and for corn that appreciates a family of fellow corn. The other alternative is to plant all this in several rows, instead of a mound. A 10 x 10 foot square is the minimum size to ensure proper corn pollination.

Any other ‘sisters’ you can plant?

While the traditional sisters are corn, beans, and squash, you can substitute tall sunflowers, watermelons, zucchini, and amaranth, for example. The important thing to remember is incorporating plants that work in harmony together, that complement and help each other to become the best (and tastiest) they can be.

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November 22, 2023
Hilltop Hanover Farm: Saving Local Native Seeds for a Resilient Future

This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening.

“A seed contains the past and the future at the same time,” said the poet and writer Ross Gay, in a recent interview in The Nation. Hilltop Hanover Farm, a Perfect Earth Project partner in New York’s Westchester County, understands this firsthand. Through their native plant seed initiative, they are preserving the past by cultivating the plants that have been growing on this land for millennia, while sowing a resilient and biodiverse future.

Native plants have become a buzzy topic in recent years, and not just for their good looks. People are beginning to understand how vital they are to a healthy and robust environment. But to provide the greatest benefit, restore depleted lands, and give insects, birds, and other animals the food and habitat they really need, we must look beyond the plants that are native simply to North America, and be sure to include species local to our specific regions.

Photography courtesy of Hilltop Hanover Farm, unless noted.

Above: Showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) is one of the keystone species Hilltop Hanover grows in production. This fall-blooming beauty can reach six-feet in height and is a favorite of birds, who love to eat their seeds.

Hilltop Hanover is doing just that, led in their work by Adam Choper, the farm’s director, and Emily Rauch, the native plant programs manager. The farm is part of a new group called Eco 59, a seed collective formed to grow and collect valuable local natives of the Northeastern coastal zone (ecoregion 59) for conservation and restoration in Westchester County, and to preserve them for the future through the Northeast Native Seed Network. “We’re working together as a collective to figure out supply chain issues, find out where the gaps are, and find a way to get the seed out into the world,” says Choper.

Above: The farm crew helps harvests seeds of coastal plain Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium dubium) by hand.

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November 16, 2023
Garden Design to Help Absorb Stormwater and Prevent Flooding
As rain events have become more intense and more frequent, you may have noticed stormwater from the street flooding your property, rainwater from downspouts carving gulleys into your yard, or a wet patch that never seems to dry out. All of these issues can be addressed with plants.

Jeff Lorenz, the founder of Refugia Design in Philadelphia, is known for designing immersive, native landscapes, but he’s also developed something of a knack for creating gardens that effectively manage stormwater. Refugia’s style is naturally well-suited to the task: The native plants that they work with are good at Lorenz’s three rules of stormwater management:
1. Slow down stormwater, allowing the ground to absorb the initial surge.
2. Spread the flow of water across the surface.
3. Soak water back into the aquifer with the help of deep-rooted vegetation.
Above: Refugia’s garden for the Bryn Mawr Film Institute manages runoff from the roof and neighboring parking lot through a mix of diverse flowering perennials and grasses with a variety of root depths.

Plus, planting densely, as Refugia does, is a stormwater management trick in its own right. “Rain gardens seem complicated, and sometimes they are for good reason, especially in larger applications, but for most residential settings, just creating larger, more vegetated planning beds has a great impact on stormwater issues,” says Lorenz.

Below, he offers tips on how to have leverage your garden to help with stormwater management.

Photography by Kayla Fell, courtesy of Refugia Design.

Reduce your lawn and increase your beds.

Above: The site at Bryn Mawr Film Institute before Refugia’s landscape redesign. The first order of business was to reduce the “green concrete” of lawn and replace it with resilient plants with a variety of root structures.

“Reducing your lawn has a massive impact on stormwater,” says Lorenz. “We call it green concrete because it has very little absorption quality.” Consider expanding garden beds. Fall is a great time to plan for this, as you can pile up leaves on the part of the lawn you plan to turn into new beds come spring (see Why (and How to) Leave the Leaves). Two places Lorenze says you should definitely consider expanding your beds are where downspouts flow out, and anywhere your border beds are close to a low, wet point in the lawn. “Bring your garden bed out to incorporate that low point.”

Rethink how your care for your lawn.

Above: Refugia dramatically reduced the amount of lawn in this front yard, replacing it with plants that will help to soak rainwater back into the ground while simultaneously increasing biodiversity in the landscape.

For the lawn you do keep, consider tweaking your care routine. Let the grass grow higher and mow less often. “If you have a thicker, taller vegetation above ground, that’s going to help slow stormwater down,” says Lorenz. When it’s time to reseed, consider reseeding with fine fescues (and gradually transitioning the whole lawn), or if you’re open to a bigger change, replacing the turf with a full fescue or sedge lawn. Lorenze notes that in trials at the Mt. Cuba Center wood’s sedge (Carex woodii) was the best performing sedge lawn alternative for the Mid-Atlantic that can tolerate moderate traffic. (For more on this grass-like perennial, see Trend Alert: A Carex for Every Garden.)

Irrigate less.

Your irrigation might also need some rejiggering. “We discover a lot of properties that are always at a point of saturation because they’ve got these robust sprinkler systems that are keeping the ground wet,” says Lorenz. The ground loses its ability to absorb water in an actual storm, if it’s already saturated, but if it has the chance to dry out a bit and it has more absorbing capability. Dialing back your watering schedule will also have a positive impact by reducing the water your yard consumes. The ultimate goal is not to irrigate at all, says Lorenz, “We aim to make irrigation systems redundant, by using plants resilient in your area, that don’t require long-term coddling.”
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November 15, 2023
Sea Ranch Lodge Landscape Designed by Terremoto to Blend In

To a certain sector of the design world, Sea Ranch is a legend—but many people have never heard of it. A planned community two hours north of San Francisco, Sea Ranch is a prime example of 1960s West Coast modernism. Its minimalist cedar-clad buildings sit on a seemingly untouched stretch of the Sonoma Coast, thanks to the original master plan by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.

Halprin and the developers imagined Sea Ranch “living lightly on the land” and wrote strict rules about the landscaping to enforce this vision. Over time, though, the property surrounding the shared public buildings, including the Sea Ranch Lodge, lost its definition and become a hodgepodge of plants with confusing pathways.

When the Sea Ranch changed hands in 2018, the new owners hired Seattle architecture firm Mithun and interior designer Charles de Lisle to update the communal buildings, and California landscape architecture firm Terremoto to redesign the landscape surrounding them. While the building refresh received accolades in the design media, the landscape went mostly unmentioned. “People said, ‘It looks like it’s always been there,’” says David Godshall, a partner at Terremoto, “I say that’s hard!” In fact, the Terremoto team went to extraordinary lengths to make the new plantings meld seamlessly into the surrounding land. “The wildness is what makes Sea Ranch so wonderful,” says Story Wiggins, the lead designer on the project. “Our goal was to embed the buildings further into what is this existing epic landscape.”

Here’s how Terremoto achieved their subtle redesign.

Photography by Caitlin Atkinson, courtesy of Terremoto.

1. Read the fine print of the surrounding land.

Above: A photo of the nearby coast that the Terremoto team took as part of their research.

Before any sketches were drawn or plants chosen, the Terremoto team familiarized themselves with the Sea Ranch property and the surrounding area. “We would go on hikes to see what we really loved and what felt good,” says Wiggins. “We were trying to mimic what’s there in a very basic way, and not getting too fancy with it.” Terremoto didn’t just make a list of the plants they saw in nature, they noted the patterns in which they grew and even studied the way that rocks were scattered in the earth. Wiggins suggests that any home gardener could do the same by going to a piece of preserved wilderness near their own home and taking notes and photos.

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November 8, 2023
Fall Fertilizing: How to Prepare Your Lawn, Shrubs, Trees, and Perennials for a Restorative Winter Sleep – Gardenista

In addition to fall being a great time to get new plants in the ground, it can also be an ideal season to fertilize your lawn, trees, shrubs, and perennials. But you have to do it correctly: During these cooler months, plants are slipping into dormancy and not actively growing. Depending on how severe or mild your winter is, they can be anywhere between completely dormant to growing very, very slowly. If you fertilize right, you’ll be giving them the best send-off to their winter sleep.

Before you start, you may want to get in touch with your local cooperative extension. They can help you get a soil test (you can’t help your plants if you don’t know what they need). And they can tell you the first frost date for your area (for practical purposes, fertilizing should be done before the first frost). They know your climate best and can give you advice specific to your location.

Note: We don’t recommend using synthetic fertilizers because of the large environmental impacts associated with them, including water contamination from run off and decimation of soil microbes. Restoring soil health naturally should always be the first option.

Here’s what you need to know about fertilizing (naturally) in the fall.

For the Lawn

Above: Mulching your grass clippings and fallen leaves turns them into free, non-toxic fertilizer for your lawn. Photograph by Eric Ozawa, from Ask the Expert: Edwina von Gal, on How to Have a Healthy, Toxic-Free Lawn.

The best and easiest way to fertilize is to do one last mow with a mulching mower and leave the clippings on the lawn. Mulching the clippings back into the lawn can provide up to 50% of the needed nutrients for the grass. To make up the rest of what your lawn needs, there are two low-cost and environmentally sustainable ways to fertilize. First, you can aerate the lawn and top dress with compost. Second, if you have fallen leaves, mulch them into the lawn as well. Just remember to rake them around so they aren’t too thick. It is a smart idea to keep the nutrients created on your property, on your property. (See Ask the Expert: Doug Tallamy Explains Why (and How to) Leave the Leaves.)

A more expensive, less eco-conscious option is to use organic lawn fertilizer. While organic fertilizers are certainly better than chemical fertilizers, there are still manufacturing and transportation costs to the environment. If you go this route, follow the directions exactly. More is not better.

For Trees and Shrubs:

Above: Leave the leaves around your trees. Photograph by Janet Mavec, from Garden Visit: Jewelry Designer Janet Mavec’s Bird Haven Farm in NJ.

A closed loop is the best type of fertilizer. Keep the leaves from the trees under them. They have everything the trees need—for free. They help on so many levels. They act as mulch and keep the moisture in the soil, which in turn helps the microbes that break down the leaves, making their nutrients available to the trees. The leaves also become winter homes for good bugs. Just be sure to keep the root flare exposed; piling the leaves up the trunk can cause can cause the bark to rot. No trees on your property? Organic compost is your next best choice.

For shrubs that were healthy over the growing season, a leaf well around the base will be enough. If they didn’t do well over the summer, they may need a bit of help. Aerate the soil and add some compost and water well.

If you want to add store-bought organic fertilizer to your tree or shrub, you may want to consider consulting with an arborist first. It’s easy to over-fertilize and cause damage. Leave it to the professionals.

For Perennials:

Above: Don’t apply store-bought fertilizer to your perennials in the fall; this can bring them out of dormancy too early. Photograph by Joy Yagid, from Time to Thin Out the Garden? How to Divide (and Multiply) Popular Perennials.

Yes, leaves again. Really. And compost. Both the leaves and the compost break down slowly. Nobody is in a rush here, it’s winter and nothing is growing. The idea is that the nutrients will be ready and in a form the plant can use once it wakes up in the spring. If you’re concerned about burying your plants too deep in leaves, lightly cover what remains of your almost dormant plants, but pack the leaves thickly around them.

There are no other real options. If you use synthetic fertilizer while they are going into dormancy, they could come out of dormancy early during an extended warm spell—and then when a cold snap follows, the new growth may be killed. This can weaken the plant, causing it to fail to thrive in the spring or even die.

Our gardens are part of a larger ecosystem, so it’s important to prioritize soil health and natural methods over synthetic fertilizers. Aeration of compacted soil and addition of organic matter will have a better and a longer-lasting effect on plant health.

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November 7, 2023
Log Pile Habitats: Beloved by Nigel Dunnett and Other Garden Designers

The artful log pile has become a frequent feature in designer schemes, from the increasingly wild gardens of the Chelsea Flower Show to heritage gardens and newly created private spaces. A biodiversity-boosting stack will provide food, shelter, and a safe haven for all sorts of bugs—beetles, spiders, ladybugs, overwintering bees, newts, and small mammals including mice and shrews. Build it and they will come.

Log piles can provide stunning sculptural elements, too, rationalizing tricky areas, creating repetition through a space, or dividing an area with an informal boundary. Neatly built and thoughtfully placed, the best of these can be more beautiful than a hedge and, not to mention, require less maintenance. Any type of wood will do—simply source logs from your own garden maintenance or tree pruning, or use a neighbor’s prunings. Just remember to avoid removing existing fallen deadwood that is already providing useful habitats.

Placed in a cool, slightly shady spot, the pile will stay moist and provide a base for moss, ferns, and woodland plants which can be added directly into nooks and crannies. A log pile that is positioned across a shady area and a sunnier spot can provide different types of habitat at once.

Above: Nigel Dunnett’s log piles in autumn with a haze of Deschampsia, as well as Euphorbia characias ‘Wulfenii’, and rudbeckias. Photograph by Nigel Dunnett.

Arguably the master of the sculptural wood pile is Professor Nigel Dunnett, whose repeated stacks often feature on his Instagram account. The hugely influential British planting designer’s one acre garden has stunning views of the surrounding Peak District and takes inspiration from the dry stone walls dotted across that landscape, as well as the wavy hedges at Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo in the Netherlands. But for Dunnett, the stacks also help define and rationalize his sloping site and connect it with the hilly landscape beyond. Over the growing season, the logs become immersed in naturalistic planting, where they play a supporting role. But in winter when the herbaceous plants die back the log stacks are revealed and become a valuable sculptural feature—and a winter home to myriad species.

Above: In deep winter, the forms are revealed. Photograph by Nigel Dunnett.

Dunnett isn’t the only designer harnessing the biodiversity-boosting power of logs. They feature frequently in the designs of Tom Massey too. He created an entire boundary using lengths of logs interspersed with panels of cross-sections at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show in his Royal Entomological Society garden, a space squarely aimed at the study of insects and ways we can support them in the garden. In 2021, the designer created sculptural log walls from biochar ash logs in his Yeo Valley Organic Garden.

Above: Blackened ash logs in the Yeo Valley Organic Garden by Tom Massey at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer. (For more on this garden, see Sustainable Gardening: Lessons from Chelsea Flower Show’s First Organic Garden.)

Above: The wildlife-friendly log pile can become a platform for planting. At Tattenhall Hall in Cheshire, England, all the garden’s prunings are used in dead hedges or log walls. Here, a fallen tree in a woodland area becomes the support for a vigorous ‘Rambling Rector’ rose. Photograph by Clare Coulson.

Above: Landscape designer Edwina von Gal incorporates similar habitat piles into her designs. Taking planting right up to the piles creates more shelter and food for visiting wildlife. Photograph by Melissa Ozawa, from Habitat Piles: Turning Garden Debris Into Shelter and Sculpture.

Above: Neatly stacked woodpile create a sculptural feature. Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer.

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November 3, 2023
How to Leave the Leaves: Tips from Expert Doug Tallamy

As leaves fall and the call to “leave the leaves” rises—from major news outlets to your next door neighbor—you may find yourself scratching your head as to how, exactly, to leave the leaves.

The slogan is a fun way to get people to consider a serious problem. We are in the sixth great extinction event in the history of the earth, which is directly affecting our food web. When one species goes extinct or its population declines severely, it can have a negative ripple effect on other species and the ecosystem as a whole. How does this tie into leaving the leaves in your own backyard? How does it help? And how do you do it?

Doug Tallamy can explain. He is an entomologist, a conservationist, and a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. He’s even written a book, Nature’s Best Hope, which is a blueprint for saving the earth one backyard at a time. (It’s on Gardenista contributor Melissa Ozawa’s list of favorite gardening books: see In Gratitude: How a Gift from a Boss Led to a Love for Gardening Books.) Below, Doug gives us the low-down on leaving the leaves.

Photography by Joy Yagid.

Q: Why do you think people don’t leave the leaves?

Above: We’ve been conditioned to think that we have to clean up the leaves, but fallen leaves are not only beautiful, they help the soil.

A: We do what we observed when we were kids. It’s been part of our culture to get rid of the leaves. You either burn them or you put them out in the curb for the city to take away, but you have to take them off your lawn and do something with them.

Q: What’s the easiest way to start?

A: Well, there is a conflict between having that perfect lawn and and the leaves that fall on the lawn. So people say “I gotta get the leaves off the lawn.” [The solution is to reduce] the area you have in lawn. The perfect way to start doing that is to create beds under the trees that you have. And you do that by raking the leaves into those beds. And in the beginning when you’re trying to actually smother the grass, [to make the beds] you rake a lot of leaves, you make it pretty thick. My son bought a house and the first fall, he called me up and said, “Dad, I got too many leaves. What should I do with them?’” I said: “Put them in your flower beds.” He said: “I don’t have enough flower beds.” I said: “Exactly.” You increase the amount of flower beds and that’s where the leaves go. The extra ones that just don’t fit in those flower beds can go into a compost heap.

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November 1, 2023
Fort Tilden at the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens: A Natural Haven

Looking out the window of a descending airplane can give the impression (in the United States at least) that the approaching airport has been carved out of abundant wilderness, a preview of the topography characteristic to the region. Tall conifers surround Seattle, Washington, while Ashville, North Carolina is nestled into densely wooded mountains. Arriving in New York, however, is always a surprising reminder that the five borough city is a vast wetland made up of islands, creeks, and sandy beaches. And unless you take a long subway ride to Coney Island or Jones Beach, you may never make the connection between what you see from the air and your experience on the ground.

In New York City, there are brownfield sites that have been consciously re-landscaped into parks, such as Freshkills Park, a former landfill area on Staten Island. Others have quietly settled back into obscurity, their usefulness expended. Fort Tilden on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens is one of the latter—lightly maintained and gently steered by interested parties. It’s a haven for rare birds and supports a thriving ecosystem in a landscape that is far from pristine.

Photography by Valery Rizzo for Gardenista.

Above: Fort Tilden is located on Rockaway peninsula, in the southeast corner of New York City.

Fort Tilden is part of a network of parks spread around Jamaica Bay and Rockaway. They are maintained by the National Park Service, with litter-clearing drives and park improvement organized by the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy (JBRPC). Rockaway and Jamaica have a high-density population, yet the undeveloped salt marsh islands that make up the urban estuary of Jamaica Bay cover 18,000 acres, with the Atlantic-facing barrier peninsula of Rockaway stretching across 12 miles.

Expect to find re-planted dunes, a maritime forest, salt marshes, freshwater ponds, as well as an un-signposted network of semi-derelict buildings. In amongst this, a slowly disintegrating military base decommissioned in the 1970s lends some Cold War atmosphere. For residents of Queens and the outer reaches of Brooklyn, Fort Tilden is easy to get to; for those closer to the center of town, NYC Ferry runs from Wall Street to Rockaway, a very scenic journey of just under an hour.

Above: A coastal garden could be as simple as this. Seaside goldenrod and American beachgrass.

Dunes are increasingly valued for the job that they have been carrying out for millennia as a natural (as opposed to industrial or military) coastal defense network. Seaside goldenrod withstands salty winds and has a strong root system, reaching at least 14 inches in depth at maturity, that stabilizes sand—with the help of American beachgrass. Like prairie plants further into the interior of this continent, these grasslands are also highly effective at storing carbon underground.

Above: A welcoming party of Virginia creeper, grasses, and invasive meadowsweet lurk around the chainlink fences of Fort Tilden.

Invasive plants such as Asian bittersweet and multiflora rose are a fact of life in America’s public spaces. Clearing these smothering plants as part of a group effort can feel cathartic; at Fort Tilden and Jamaica Bay, volunteers add beneficial natives to plants that are already there, while tackling invasives during the summer months. A further kind of clearance is that of trash, much of which comes in from the ocean, having been swept out via tidal rivers. Members of the JBRPC pick up about 10 tons of trash from these beaches and waterways per year. Another key actor is the American Littoral Society, which organizes dune grass plantings up and down the East Coast. It is an effective organizer, reeling in corporations, private groups, and school groups “to protect life, limb and property” from the effect of storms.

Above: Leftover concrete forms random areas for easy navigation through the dunes of Fort Tilden.

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October 27, 2023