Sustainable Gardening Blog

We gardeners don’t pay enough attention to buildings, much less out-buildings like garages and toolsheds, but damn, they play a greater role in making our properties look good - or not - than all the plants put together.  And my architect neighbor demonstrated that recently by building (and I mean building himself) what he calls a casita in his back yard. He also calls it the most overdesigned toolshed ever built, but I guess he couldn’t help himself.  (Hell, gardeners overdo gardening as a point of pride!)

Now check out the casa that inspired this casita, also designed and partially built by the same owner/architect.  At the top of the driveway on the left you can spot  its offspring.

Next up is some landscaping around the casita, and I’ve been asked to help.  (Oh, goody, another chance to pretty-up my street.)  And starting with a building that’s downright adorable, you just know it’s going to be fun.

[You’ve seen a glimpse of this house before and because it’s directly across the street from me, I see it all the time.]

Here’s what happens when you’ve been gardening your butt off in the same place for 20-some years, even if it’s a large garden like that of City Gardener Mike Welsh.  Because it’s all garden and no lawn and was allowed to seed freely for years, it had become jam-packed with more plants than it can grow well.  Just walking through his garden recently made me want to start pruning and yanking and giving all of his plants their own space.  But better yet, he asked me did I know anyone who could use his extra plants?

Well, it was a lucky day for the family on my street I’ll call the Empty-Lotters because that describes the large backyard that came with their recently purchased house.  After which purchase and paying for the changes necessary on the house itself, the plant-loving wife was sadly foreseeing emptiness outside her door for a long time to come.

So like the winners of a timed shopping spree, the family jumped into action.  Enlisting the help of kids and spending $20 for a U-Haul truck for several hours (plus a mileage fee for the 5 miles involved) here’s what they hauled home from Mike’s garden:

• 3 Chinese elm trees, 8-10 feet.
• 3 American dogwood, (Cornus florida), 6-8 feet.
• 8 Mockorange, (Philadelphus), full grown at 7-9 feet.
• 5 Coralberry (Symphoricarpus orbiculatus), mid-sized at 2-3.
• 6 pots of what Mike called "native orange" and which seem to be Osage-orange (Maclura pomifera), 1-foot.  One fine specimen in his garden is 15 feet and covered with small, colorful oranges and killer thorns. (In fact, the Empty-Lotters will be passing them along to any willing gardener.)

And next spring they’ll go back for as many Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ as they want after Mike does some serious dividing.  Have you ever noticed the lushing-up effect of large ornamental grasses in a garden?  I hope to be showing you photos next spring of the formerly Empty Lot, and maybe Mike’s garden, too.

So I suggest there’s a lesson here and it’s not just for people with empty lots but also for people whose lots aren’t yet full and lush and private. If you need plants, be on the look-out for freebies.  Like if you know of any long-time gardeners near you, tell them you’re willing to take some of their extra plants off their hands.  Offer to dig them yourself, ask for suggestions for growing them, and show a little gratitude.  Because often you’re getting what even money can’t buy - full-grown plants that don’t need 3 to 5 years before they fill out and start to look like something.

And if the free plants you’re offered aren’t your very favorites, take them anyway.  You can replace them over time with plants you like better, but at least you’ll have a GARDEN in the meantime.  (Likewise, I try to talk neighbors out of ripping out all the plants they don’t love in their newly purchased yards.  They should wait til they have plants to replace them, for crying out loud.  And who knows - if they’re not in such a hurry to get rid of those "boring evergreens," they might just come to appreciate them.)

PHOTO:  By Julie Wiatt of the Takoma Voice Newspaper illustrating my column about Mike Welsh, Takoma Park’s City Gardener.

I’ve noticed there’s nothing gardeners like more than talking about their tools - the ones that disappoint us and the ones we’re devoted to, almost weirdly devoted to.  Don’t even TALK about separating us from our favorites; it’s bad enough we lose them occasionally, despite our resolutions to the contrary.  If I only had a fiver for every trowel I’ve lost.

But no use rehashing all those sad losses.  Today I’m showing off my faves, starting with the best trowel ever.  It’s the one that’s tough enough not to bend when I exert my (uncanny) strength on it.  The one that digs easily because it’s pointed.  The one that doubles as a measuring stick.  Damn smart tool, and I use it even more than my beloved Felcos (#2, please.)  Doesn’t it look lovely here, posed like a garden ornament?  Well, why not.

Next up, my expendables.  You’ve seen these gloves praised before so I won’t repeat; I’m just happy to have found the four pair I just bought to replace the ones with missing fingertips.  But the steak knives are making their debut here as objects of my affection.  Best damn tool for dividing perennials I’ve ever found.  Liriope?  Slices through those roots like butta.  These and two others (total outlay, $2) should last me the next season.

See what optimistic, forward-looking people we gardeners are?  Planting those bulbs, laying in the supplies.  Getting ready for SPRING.

A bit of glamour came to the Takoma Garden this week.  From the new cable channel Retirement Living TV came a producer and his cameraman and soundwoman, filming me for a show about seniors who blog.  Okay, it’s not exactly HBO, but exciting by my standards.  I was one of four bloggers interviewed for an 8-minute segment, so my share of fame will be maybe 2 minutes, if I’m lucky, not the proverbial 15.  But hey, I’ll take it!  Unless and until I see a close-up of myself in living color and freak out.  See, I may be younger than their target audience of 60 and up but I’m still old enough to want long shots with me off in the distance like one of the shrubs, or at least no closer than these stills.  But TV producers rarely go for that approach.

Well, enough of my whining.  Here’s the blow by blow of the event, indoors and in the garden.

The interview itself was in my living room under a frightening battery of lights and with a microphone wire threaded seductively under my blouse.  The soundwoman heard the most amazing things - my cat scratching, the hum of the refrigerator, distant trucks.  Lord, what a noisy house I have - to trained ears.

The segment filming me at the computer was just weird.  Watch her type!  Watch her surf!  I scrolled through plenty of garden blogs, though, so it’ll be fun to see which ones (if any) are shown.

Now for the segments in the garden, I was told they wanted shots of me gardening - you know those totally fake shots we see on HGTV all the time of interviewees nicely dressed, accessorized and in full make-up doing their gardening chores.  Just like we do them all the time.  So I thought I’d set these folks straight - gardeners will laugh, I warned - and suggested they film me showing them around the garden, just like the much-missed Erica Glasner used to do on "A Gardener’s Diary."

But guess what.  They know more about producing a TV show than I do!  I know, that surprised me, too.  After it was explained that there would be nobody for me to show around the garden - no Erica asking me questions - I gave in and grabbed my Felcos, ready to do a little pruning.  (Their suggestion in an early phone call that I change into my normal gardening clothes was greeted with such derision on my part that mercifully, it wasn’t mentioned again.  Though it might have been fun to emerge in my typical paint-and-mud-smeared sweat pants, filthy T-shirt, beat-up clogs and unmatched socks, just to see if they still liked the idea.)

So, folks, one more pretend gardening scene.  They’ll be sending me a DVD but that’s so 20th Century - gimme a link!  It’s what a blogger’s readers expect, after all. 

Photos by Jimmy Daukas, an innocent passing neighbor.  The lower shot may look like I’m bossing these folks around but don’t you believe it.  For two and a half hours I did exactly as I was told.

Thanks to Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By for asking me to participate in the show.  She tells me the folks at RLTV are treating their viewers with a lot of respect and if they somehow got past her famous condescension-detecting device, they’re okay by me.

That’s Montana’s next senator I’m talking about, Democrat Jon Tester.  To quote Wonkette: "Our
nation has finally put a 7-fingered, buzz-cut farmer in the Senate.
God bless the United States of America."  But they missed the ORGANIC
part - Tester’s farm has been organic since the early ’80s when they
made the switch because "We needed to add some value."  Hear that,
stinky chemical farmers of America?  Also, herbicide spraying was
making them sick.  Especially toxic to his wife were the seed
treatments on conventional grain.  (They’re even nuking the seed?
Please, no more details.)  One nearby farmer offered his reaction:
"That Tester, he’s growing a bunch of weeds out there."  But they’ve
done well enough to close the family butcher shop, except to family and
friends. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve promised Before-and-After shots of my neighbor’s front yard, so I’m delivering.  Now if you look at the After shots below with your gardener eyes, you’ll be able to imagine the many azaleas and a fragrant viburnum in their glory next spring, followed by months of hydrangea blossoms.  People with regular eyes should check back here next spring for the full-color results.

Now because this is a lot and a half, there’s lots of extra garden space.  Originally the huge oak was surrounded by crappy-looking grass.  Later the grass had been banished and plants stuck here and there.  Overall, a hodgepodge.

The features of this no-cost make-over were:

• Removing the great expanse of blue tarp covering a mulch pile. 
• Moving large plants from the front of the garden to the back and corners.  Available for this were 5 full-grown azaleas and an unidentified viburnum.
• Putting full-grown hydrangeas in front of the large oak in the middle of the garden to hide the ugly cement moat-type thingie around its base.  They were moved there from unseen spots in the back yard.
• Dividing the hell out of the huge existing liriope clumps and using them to line the sidewalk and driveway.
• Using the existing octagonal pavers to create a little woodland walk around the tree and on either side of the driveway.  And sinking them to grade (they’d previously been sitting on top.)

To Design is Divine
Ha-ha-ha, like I really did a ‘"design" for this.  But it DOES hang together in a way that we love (that’s me and the neighbor, who still technically owns her property, although you wouldn’t know it from my behavior), and here’s why I think that is: 

• First, everything was removed.  That created the blank slate that I can’t design without - and how professionals or talented amateurs do it is beyond me. This is where holding gardens come in really handy.   
• The entire property was scoured for plants that weren’t being used to their best advantage or even seen at all.  (My property, too.)  And plants were mercilessly divided. 

There you have my formula for a no-cost make-over.  Just add mulch.

Photos:  Click to enlarge.

Amazing things happen when can-do people with a passion for gardening get together.  And somewhere in Washington, D.C., six of them have been getting together every Monday at 10.  The meeting place is a big, cozy kitchen in a big, ramshackle house in the big city.  Refreshments are fresh-baked scones and plenty of good coffee.

Since August these D.C. Master Gardeners have been brainstorming about creating some cool projects - DOING something with all their energy and their love of gardening. Brainstorming about forming some sort of organization, about attracting and putting to good use more and more people like them, with results that can’t possibly be known but will probably include school gardens and healing gardens and public events to teach composting and pruning and eco-friendly gardening and who-the-hell-knows what else.  And in the process creating comraderie and the fun of team accomplishment for people who’ve previously gardened by themselves in their own private places.

18 is the number that my friend Adrienne was told it would take to do fall clean-up of her lovely but tiny townhouse garden.  And at $50 an hour, that’s 900 bucks right there, before you add the cost of the mulch.

So she took a pass and sent me a desperate email:  Could she hire me to do it with her?  There was a hesitancy because she knows I don’t hire myself out as a manual laborer.  Got that, everyone?  But she’s one of my bestest friends, so the rules don’t apply.

Cut to the townhouse this past Sunday, a glorious sun-shiney day.  When I arrived Adrienne’s car had been topped-off with 10 bags of mulch, the limit of its capacity.  Before spreading it there was - I’ll admit it - a whole lot of weeding to do, yesiree.  And maybe 30 minutes of pruning.  But 3 and a half hours later it was all done and doing the math, that’s 7 work-hours, in this case 7 women-in-their-50s-hours.
 
So the question is:  Is it us?  Is it them?  Or is this landscape contractor ripping people off big-time?