T is for Thoreau on the A to Z Challenge.

Henry David Thoreau’s cabin – and me 2010

T is for Thoreau, author of Walden and many many journals in which “[he omitted] the unusual - the hurricanes and earthquakes – and described  the common.”  He had always recorded the weather and the natural scene in a sporadic and fragmented way, but in July of 1852 he declared a year of observation, a ‘year’ that lasted through 1861.  Amidst the the poetry of his prose, and his record of his own responses to the world, he began a careful record of the passing seasons, noting temperatures, leaf break, frost, and blooming seasons of many plants.

I love Walden and reread it from time to time, but I have not read much in the journals. It was with some surprise that I read in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review an essay by Andrea Wulf about the use that modern science is making of the journals. “Richard Primack, a professor of biology at Bsoton University, has collaborated with colleagues at Harvard to use the observations in Thoreau’s journals as the basis for groundbreaking studies in climate change,” she wrote.

Walden Pond

What the scientists have discovered is that the average tempeature of our springs  is 48 degrees, but Thoreau recorded an average of 42 degrees during his day. Also the first flowering of 32 species of flower has moved to 11 days early. Early blooming flowers have been more affected by the change in temperatures, than later blooming flowers, but the change is undeniable.

I wrote more about Walden Pond and my visit in 2010 here.

I have written about Andrea Wulf’s brilliant and engaging books about gardens and plant and American history here in a review of The Brother Gardeners featuring America’s first botanist John Bartram and his botanical adventures, and a review of The Founding Gardeners about Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madision here.

To see what else begins with T click here at the A to Z Challenge.

S is for Sustainability on Earth Day 2013

Tom Benjamin

S is for Sustainability this Earth Day. Yesterday I introduced Tom Benjamin who designs sustainable, low maintenace landscapes to an attentive audience at our local ‘Little e’ (not the Big Eastern Exposition in Springfield) where the theme was saving energy.  The topic was Reduce Your Lawn and Increase Your Leisure. Since I have been writing about low-mow landscapes I was interested to hear how Tom calculated the benefits.

There are many. The first benefit, according to my husband, is less of his labor. But Tom pointed out that there are 40 million acres of lawn in the US. That is an area larger than the state of New York. Most of those lawns are fertilized, dosed with herbicides and irrigated. There are financial costs to all those aspects of growing a lawn, but there is also an environmental cost. Lawns use more fertilizers than farmers, and the run off from those fertilizers wash into our water systems. In addition, lawns do not support any wildlife, insects or birds.

In addition, an hour of power lawn mowing produces more air pollution than 5 automobiles driving for an hour. And, of course, there is the  gas and oil that it takes to run a power mower.

So, the question is, if we are looking for sustainability in our domestic landscape, how can we accomplish this. First there is hardscaping, patios and walkways, but make sure some of those use permeable paving materials.  We want to keep as much rain as possible on the land where it falls.

We can plant shrubs and trees and groundcovers that are drought tolerant and will not need irrigation. More money saved.  Using native shrubs, trees and groundcovers will also support the web of life. Sustainability means supporting biodiversity. This is a big topic and  fortunately there are a number of books that can help gardeners make sustainable decisions when they begin to reduce their lawn. After the  talk The audience spent a few minutes looking at the books I had written about. Energy Wise Landscape Design: A New Approach for Your Home and Garden, by our own local Expert Sue Reed is a book that Tom uses as a text in his teaching. Beautiful N0-Mow Yard: 50 Amazing Lawn Alternatives by Evelyn J. Hadden and Lawn Gone: Low Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternaatives for your Yard by Pam Penick deliver tons of information and inspiration.  In her book The Edible Front Yard: the Mow-less, Grow More Plan for a Beautiful Bountiful Garden by Ivette Soler takes a delicious tack on reducing lawn. I also want to  mention Covering Ground: Unexpected Ideas for Landscaping with Colorful, Low Maintenace Ground Covers  by Barbara W. Ellis. All of these books will give you ideas about ways to increase the sustainability into your landscape and garden.

How much lawn do you need?

To see what else begins with S click here.

P is for Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden

Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden

P is for the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. I last visited this garden in November of 2009 when there was still plenty of bloom on view although you wouldn’t know it from this photo of the view from the entry to the Gazebo where Awakening roses twine around the beautiful iron framework.

Peter Kukielski, Former curator

I had gone to meet Peter Kukielski, self-taught rosarian, and the then curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, transforming it into one of the most environmentally-friendly gardens in the world.  He more than tripled the number of roses in this garden which seemed miraculous. I asked him how he did that. He looked at me with just the trace of an impish smile, leaned toward me and said very softly, “I planted them closer together.” Surprise and laughter from me. A simple answer.  Last year Peter co-edited The Sustainable Rose Garden with Pat Shanley and Gene Waering, and is currently working on a new book.

Carefree Delight, a Griffith Buck Hybrid

Kukielski looked to the hybrid roses created by Dr. Griffith Buck at Iowa State University. Dr. Buck’s goal was to create winter hardy  roses that also had bood disease resistance.  I have several Buck roses including Applejack which greets people as they come up our road, and Quietness which is a miracle on the Rose Walk. Many of those beautiful roses are still available from Chamblee’s Nursery and Antique Rose Emportium.

Distant Drums, a Kordes Hybrid

He also looked to all the Kordes hardy, disease resistant hybrids.  Nearly thirty years ago the German government outlawed many of the common herbicides and pesticides and other chemicals that were commonly used on roses. That means German hybridizers began work right away to develop roses that could thrive without that help.

The Fairy, an Earth Kind rose

He not only looked at Earth Kind roses, he began a trial garden at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden to locate and name more Earth Kind roses. Texas A & M set up a test garden, planting a number of roses and caring for them for one year, then giving them no further care for nine years. Those that  did well were named Earth Kind roses because they were disease resistant and did not need supplemental irrigation. The Fairy, a old trooper of a a floribunda. Lots of gardeners appreciated The Fairy’s hardiness and exhuberance long before it became an Earth Kind Rose.

I want to make the point that roses have changed. There are plenty of hybrid teas that still need a lot of fussing, but for those of us who have no inclination to fuss because of the work, or because we don’t want poisons in our garden there is a whole new world of beautiful roses that we can happily have blooming in our gardens. Do you have any roses in your garden?

To see what else begins with P on the A to Z Blogger challenge click here

J is for Juniper – Revealed in The Drunken Botanist

The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart

J is for Juniper which is essential for the making of gin. Read all in The Drunken Botanist. Author Amy Stewart, author of of other tell-all tales of plants and insects, Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, and Wicked Bugs: The Louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Diabolical Insects recently published her new book The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Make the World’s Great Drinks.

Her description of juniper includes a kind of sexy description “[Junipers] are dioecious, meaning that each tree is either male or female. The pllen from a male shrub can travel on the wind over a hundred miles to reach a female.”  There is more information about the plant, the berries which take two to three years to ripen and the chemicals like a-pinene, myrcene and limonene that make up its essential flavor. Of course, to make gin the juniper berries. They are combined with coriander and lemon peel – that also contain those same compounds.

All gins are not the same. There are differences between Distilled gin, Genever,  Gin, London gin, Mahon, Old Tom Gin, Plymouth gin and sloe gin. Sloes(Prunus spinosa) are tart berries and they can be macerated in gin to make sloe gin. To find out the properties of the other gins you’ll have to go to the book.

The Drunken Botantist will also tell you all there is to know about alcoholic drinks made from agave (tequila) to wheat (beer). It will not surprise you to know that Amy Stewart’s garden includes a bar for imbibing.

For more about the letter J on the A to Z challenge click here.

G is for Gardening Projects for Kids on A to Z Challenge

Gardening Projects for Kids by Cohen and Fisher

G is for Garden Projects for Kids: 101 ways to get kids outside, dirty, and having fun by Whitney Cohen and John Fisher of LIfe Lab in Santa Cruz, California.

Surely, my regular readers would not expect me to get through a whole month of posts without including a book or two. And this book from Timber Press is a doozy.  Garden Project for Kids is not only about growing veggies, but about other designing the garden so that there is room for a fairy garden, a swing, birdhouses, a bed where they can just dig. The beautiful photos in this book suggest that it is for the parents of very young children, but it seems to me, that once you get children out into the garden, it will be hard to get them out of the garden as they gr ow. There is always something new to see in the garden, some thing to taste, something to wonder at, and something to turn into a science project at school. Young gardeners will never want for a science project. Have you discovered your Soil Horizons? Geology! Mathematics!

What with people talking about a ‘nature deficit’ among our children, and the prescence of so many screens in our life, parents and friends sometimes wonder who we are going to get kids back into the outdoors. Garden Projects for Kids will inspire and support the parents of young children about all the ways the garden leads to healthy playtimes. Of course, there is just plain playing in the dirt, which can lead to planting in the dirt, which can lead to harvesting and eating good treats, but it can also lead to looking at bugs, looking at all the life to be found in a square foot of ground, how to make birdhouses out of plants you have grown, and how to pound flowers into art. Lots more too.

To see what else begins with G today, click here.

Kiss My Aster by Amanda Thomsen

Kiss My Aster by Amanda Thomsen

With snow on the ground in Heath it is hard to believe that spring is here and gardening season has begun. I have seedlings planted and sitting on my new heat mat in the guest room, but not a shoot in sight. Yet.

Since this spring is somewhat delayed there is still time to think about planting a small vegetable garden, even if you have never had one before. Or maybe you wish you had a flowery place to sit outside. 0r maybe you wish you had shade and a cool place to relax. The wild and witty Amanda Thomsen of the famous Kiss My Aster blog has just given us Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Fantastic Yard Totally Tailored to You. This book for the beginning gardener with it jolly cartoon-ish illustrations will help you sort out what kind of gardener you might be to garden design.

Thomsen has real insight into the mind and psyche of the new gardener. You can tell because on Page 14 she asks, “Overwhelmed? Don’t be. You’re just reading a book. Wait until you’re knee deep in quick set concrete before you freak out.” Does that tell you what kind of gardener she is?

For all her smart aleck frivolity and word play, Thomsen walks you through figuring out what can grow in your area, including taking a camera tour through your neighborhood to see what other people are growing This tour will give you inspiration and information Then you can show the photos of the plants you like to the people at the garden center, get them identified and buy them. She is full of slick tips like this.

Kiss My Aster is helpful to the gardener when she is planning to make her yard more beautiful and/or needs more information about starting a vegetable garden. In either case Thomsen gives brief information about individual plants, trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals for sun or shade. Herbs, too.

Thomsen doesn’t think you necessarily have to read this book from beginning to end. She even encourages you to look here and there. “To create the privacy of a hermit, turn to What Neighbors? Page 75” or “For a new and improved be, border or berm, turn to Soil Yourself page 62” or “Got a problem? Consult Weeds Happen page 154.” She includes a sustainability quiz. You get the idea.

Amanda Thomsen is great fun, but she gives good information and advice. She doesn’t think you have to do everything yourself. She is happy to suggest getting in some temporary help to do heavy jobs. She pays attention to the limits of resources, human and natural. She is even willing to hire a professional gardener or a garden coach. Sometimes the garden coach can be a good friend, or a good friend who knows a good gardener. That’s my additional advice.

When I have talked to people about starting a garden, or wanting to ‘do something’ with their yard, I always start out by asking what they want. Do they want a vegetable garden? Keep the first one small, I always say. Think about what you like to eat and plant that. Dig in compost before planting. And then I tell them they can get good compost locally from Martin’s Farm or Bear Path Farm. They don’t have to wait until they have made their own.

If they want to do something with their yard I ask what they like to do in their yard? Or what would they like to do? Do they want a patio where they can barbecue and visit with friends? Do they want a privacy barrier between them and their neighbor? Do they want flowers but don’t know a daisy from a phlox?

After identifying what they want in their yard, patio, vine covered fence, or a flower garden, I usually ask how much time they have to garden. Couples with children at home usually have less time than couples whose children are grown, although they may have responsibilities to older parents. What are your family responsibilities? Community responsibilities?

After you consider your desires and your constraints, it is time to begin. I recently came across a quote from the avant-garde composer. John Cage (1912-1992). He said “Begin anywhere.”  I liked that. We might hesitate, but begin. What’s the worst that can happen? Change is the nature of a garden. It will change itself. Or you can make changes. Either way, change in the garden is inevitable. Begin and learn. Begin and embrace change.

Between the Rows  March 30, 2013

Bringing Nature Home at the Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium

Dr. Douglas Tallamy

Dr. Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, was the keynote speaker at the Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners Spring Symposium last week. His talk focused on the need for more insects to make our gardens – and the world – healthier and more ecologically balanced. “A mere 1 % [of all insects] interact with humans in negative ways. The other 99 % pollinate plants, return the nutrients tied up in dead plants and animals to the soil, keep populations of insect herbivores in check, aerate and enrich the soil, and as I keep stressing, provide food either directly or indirectly for most other animals,” Tallamy writes in his book and illustrated in his talk.

Bringing Nature Home

His enlightening talk covered a lot of ground, but two ideas made a particular impression on me. The first was the idea of the environmental carrying capacity of our local landscape, and ultimately of the whole earth. The term carrying capacity refers to the amount of resources needed to sustain a certain population. It is easy to understand that a given population of insects, or birds or whatever, will decline when the food they require decreases.

So, what happens when, for example, the emerald ash borer, which is a threat inMassachusettsright now, were to kill all the ash trees? Forty-four insect species rely on the ash tree to survive. No ash trees; no more 44 insect species. And that means reduced food for the creatures who depend on those insects so their populations will decline as well. Insects are the very bottom of the food chain and we usually do not consider how important they are to the wildlife that we enjoy. At least, that is true for me.

Tallamy said many people ask him why insects can’t eat some other tree or plant? He explains that over thousands of years plants and insects have evolved together. The insects’ digestive systems have adapted/evolved to digest the particular chemicals in a plant’s foliage. They cannot immediately adapt to a new plant. That is one of the reasons that invasive plants can take over. The food web of insects, birds and wildlife cannot keep the invading plants in check.

The second idea Tallamy put forth is that not all native plants are equal. Some plants support many more species of wildlife than others. This was an eye opener for me. I have been talking about the benefits of native plants for a long time, but this idea never occurred to me. As you might expect, trees are the most productive in having what it takes to support many insects and birds. Trees are big. But even here, some trees are more productive than others. In his book, and on his website, www.bringingnaturehome.net, Tallamy lists the 22 of the best woody plants beginning with oaks that support 534 species, down to the chestnut which supports 125 species. Black cherries, maples and willows are also highly productive.

If we don’t have the room to plant an oak or two, we might be able to fit in a crabapple or some blueberries. We can plant asters, morning glories and lupines in our ornamental gardens. We can not only marvel at and admire the lupine meadows that some people in our area have cultivated, we can thank them for supporting 33 species of wildlife.

Those lupine meadows also remind up that birds and other pollinators need clumps of productive native plants. Their eyesight is not always good so they need big clumps of a useful plant to catch their attention. Tallamy pointed out that 80% of our food crops are pollinated by animals. It is clear that supporting that wildlife is very important in our area where there is a growing number of farms.

Lately I have been talking about the benefits of reducing the size of our lawns. Tallamy said that 92% of landscape-able land is lawn, lawn which is a monoculture that does not support wildlife. He suggested that if we reduced the amount of lawn in theUnited Statesby half we would have 20 million acres that could be put to native trees and other native plants. This would certainly increase the carrying capacity of our neighborhoods and our nation.

Suburban yards can play an enormous part in restoring the health of our ecosystem. A whole neighborhood that includes a substantial number of native trees, shrubs and other plants can make a significant impact.

I am so grateful to the Western Massachusetts Gardeners for bringing us this excellent program that included Ellen Sousa of Spencer and the author of The Green Garden, as well as workshops on making compost, hypertufa containers and bentwood trellises that not only make our gardens healthful and productive, but beautiful as well.

Their Spring Symposium is their big educational effort of the year, and there are two more Symposia coming up on April 6 in Holyokeand April 13 in Lenox. Check their website http://www.wmassmastergardeners.org/ for complete details. However, they hold soil testing events, phone and email hotlines where you can get your questions answered, and lots of question answers right on the website. They even have a speakers bureau that can send a speaker to your club, or class, or other organization. If this is of interest to you send an email to toigraham@charter.net for more information.

Now I am wondering how many of us will find a place to plant an oak. Or a crabapple.

Between  the Rows -  March 23, 2013

Ready, Set, Grow! Timber Press Giveaway

With Ready, Set, Grow! Timber Press is giving away books, lots of books, and a Moleskine journal to record your success as you put all the inspiration and advice  to work in your garden for the next three months. Each month, March, April and May they will be giving a library of books away in a lottery. All you have to do is click here and enter.  Whether you win the library or not, by checking this website you’ll get weekly tips on seed starting, cool weather crops and more as the season progress.

The Speedy Vegetable Garden

The Speedy Vegetable Garden which I wrote about here is just one of  the March books you could win, PLUS other bo00ks like Sugar Snaps and Strawberries, The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids: 101 Ways to Get Kids Ouside, Dirty and Having Fun,  The Anxious Gardener’s Book of Questions, and How to Buy the Right Plants, Tools and Garden Supplies. And even more books than that. No more troubling questions. Only anwers right at your fingertips. Or bedside. Or potting bench.

Don’t forget, there is a different lottery with different books every month.  April and May are coming up. And lots of free advice along the way. Check it out.

Lawn Gone! by Pam Penick

Lawn Gone by Pam Penick

Lawn Gone: Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard by Pam Penick  (Ten Speed Press $19.99) will get you thinking about how to reduce or remove your lawn, not only because there are more sustainable alternatives, but because there are so many beautiful alternatives.

A greensward of fine turf is a pleasant thing, but it is a lot of work! And, in the end, not all that interesting or useful. How much more pleasant are paved walkways and a patio, perhaps with sweet smelling thyme between the pavers, where you can sit with friends. How much more pleasant and calming is a burbling fountain or fish pond. How much more pleasant is it to look at native wildflowers growing in the shade rather than patchy grass that does not thrive there.

Pam Penick is the award winning blogger who lives inAustin,Texas where she is very familiar with the problems of drought, and Lawn Gone is full of water-wise plants and designs. Yet these days all of us are interested in water-wise plants because you don’t have to live inTexas to suffer through periods of drought that turn lawns brown unless they are kept well watered. But concern about water usage is just one element that makes Lawn Gone so useful.

There are many reasons for wanting to reduce a lawn. Some of us are getting older and the work of maintaining a beautiful lawn becomes more onerous. My husband is certainly tired of spending hours every Saturday mowing the lawn. Some of us worry about the uses of herbicides and pesticides and the dangers of runoff after rain. Some of us want to support the local food web by having plants that attract pollinators.

Whatever your reason, Penick has practical advice and instructions about ways to create beautiful spaces without a lawn. Groundcovers are an easy answer. These range from the familiar foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia, to ferns, and plants like hostas that don’t always come to mind as a groundcover.

In fact, many perennials and small shrubs cover the ground and add great interest when planted over a generous area. While visiting in Boston last week, my husband and I took a walk and looked at a lot of urban yards. One large front yard struck me as particularly interesting because even at this time of the year, when the snow is just melted, it was easy to imagine how lovely it will be soon when the rhododendrons and azaleas are in bloom and the ground is covered with plants like the low and mysterious (as in I have no idea what it is) variegated plant that was a hint of the greenery to come. This yard shaded by a large tree would not be hospitable to a lawn, but they had used the shade to create a beautiful natural woodland garden. I cannot believe there will not be spring bloomers very soon.

Some of Penick’s chapter titles will tempt you to imagine a new yard of your own. For example: Ponds, pavilions, playspaces and other fun features and Designing and installing your hardscape, immediately set my mind buzzing. Other chapters indicate the sticky issues that gardeners may have to deal with like working with skeptical neighbors or homeowner’s association regulations or city codes.

She also explains ways to eradicate lawn, and gives you the names of grass substitutes in the sedge and carex families,

Because we have a large-ish country garden, with a too large country lawn, usually referred to as the flowery mead, my husband was very happy to see me reading Lawn Gone! He dreams of the day our lawn will be gone. I have to point out to him that we have already put some of Penick’s suggestions into practice.

We now have the 13×30 foot piazza and welcome platform (hardscaping) in front of half the house. The steep bank that was so hard to mow at the other end of the house is now the floriferous Daylily Bank. Daylilies are a fabulous groundcover.

Daylilies on August 1 after bloomin all of July

Adjacent to the Daylily Bank I have been planting the Rose Bank with hardy Knock Out roses, rugosas and tough roses from friends’ gardens. At the eastern end of the front lawn I have been planting barren strawberry and tiarella as ground covers. I’ve also found that common thyme is an aggressive spreader in the lawn and makes a good ground cover that only needs mowing a couple of times a year. I admit my efforts at lawn reduction are slow and limited, but I am continuing.

I do want to point out that removing a lawn for a low maintenance landscape does NOT mean a no maintenance landscape. I have a friend who planted hostas as a groundcover but learned that every spring she still has to weed out the maple seedlings that are such a curse in her neighborhood.

Part of the reason for living in an area likeFranklinCountyis its natural, and cultivated, beauties. We want to be outside socializing or relaxing in solitude. We don’t want to be a slave to a lawn. In this book filled with beautiful photographs Pam Penick gives us numerous ways to achieve the goal of a sustainable, low maintenance yard. ###

Between the Rows  March 9, 2013

We Have a Winner!

We have a winner! Catherine,  who has a new house and will be putting in a new vegetable garden,  wins this useful and instructing blook which comes with best wishes from me and Timber Press!