A Yard & A Half just completed a pro-bono installation of a design by David McCoy for The Children's Room, a grief counseling agency for young people.  The project, coordinated by COGDesign, made the front page of today's  Waltham's Daily News Tribune.

Fine Gardening's most recent newsletter included a great watering tutorial.  Check it out -- knowing when, how, and how much to water can:

• improve plant health, growth, and appearance
• prevent disease and aesthetic problems such as mildew or leaf-scorch
• save money on excessive irrigation (or replacement of dead plants!)
• minimize run-off of plant nutrients

Proper watering is the best way to protect your investment in your plants!  Determining the needs of individual plants and parts of your property will take some time, so we've provided some basic guidelines in our watering guide, available on our website and with all new A Yard & A Half installations.

Greenscapes is a great local non-profit advocacy group that educates homeowners about creating water-wise landscapes.  Started in the South Shore to protect coastal watersheds, they now partner with towns throughout Massachusetts to spread a mainstream, science-based message of environmental stewardship.

Full of monthly landcare tips, Greenscapes' beautiful 2009 Yard Care calendar is now available online as a PDF, or you can pick up a copy at the library or Town Hall of one of their community partners.

Conspicuous consumption is out; the ecological homestead is in.  We're all dropping gym memberships, burning calories instead by adding value to our home landscapes.  We're building lots of raised beds for first-time veggie gardeners, installing outdoor kitchens to redefine "dining out", and engineering rain-water recovery systems to prepare for increasing water bans.

Enter the natural swimming pond.  Using a densely-planted "regeneration zone", similar to a bog filter in a standard habitat pond, swimming ponds clean water using plants rather than chlorine.   While initial installation costs are comparable to a conventional in-ground pool, annual maintenance is greatly reduced, offering an excellent return on investment.   Conventional swimming pools must be emptied in winter and refilled in spring, detracting from the landscape when not in use.  In contrast, a swimming pond's waterfalls and diving boulders give structure to the garden, even in winter when they become ice sculptures.  Because they are built into the ground, they integrate seamlessly with the surrounding landscape, and can be designed with wading/beach areas rather than dangerously steep pool sides. 

But do they work?  Since the 1980s, Europeans have enjoyed constructed swimming ponds.   In testing, swimming ponds have repeatedly met or exceeded water quality standards in the United States and E.U.  Nigel Dunnett and Andy Clayden feature the concept in their recent book, Rain Gardens: Managing Water Sustainably in the Garden and Designed Landscape.

Congratulations to designer Christie Dustman on being selected as March's Landscape Designer of the Month by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers!  Her featured design, a 3-tiered water-feature with a kid-friendly pond and a bluestone entertaining area, was installed by A Yard & A Half. 

Boston Natural Areas Network invites you to their 34th Annual Gardeners Gathering

Saturday, March 28, 2009
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Curry Student Center, Northeastern University
Click Here for Directions Free Event, All Welcome
Walk-in Registration

Community Gardening Workshops for Beginner and Experienced Gardeners. Networking, Door Prizes, Info Gallery, Community Garden Awards, and More! All invited to join with more than 300 community gardeners to welcome spring.

Click for 2009 Gardeners Gathering Event Card.

Click for 2009 Gardeners Gathering Schedule with Workshops.

WBUR's Bottom Line featured a story last week in honor of the start of the spring home-selling season. In it, local realtor Hannah Abrams suggests that, where would-be sellers once made improvements to their homes to raise the sale price, now they may need to invest even to bring in potential buyers:

According to Re/Max Realty studies, landscaping offers a high return on investment, and is frequently reported to add 15% to the home's value.  in addition to improving purchase price, well-landscaped homes attract more buyers, and tend to sell more quickly.

Some easy pre-staging fixes to enhance curb appeal:

• Clean & reseal paver driveways
• Weed and mulch planting beds
• Prune deadwood from trees, and clear away branches overhanging structures or driveways
• Redesign or add planting beds at entranceways
• For condos and brownstones, add planters with seasonal annuals

Spring is here with a wealth of gardening fun for the spiritually (and materially) impoverished among us!  I walk away from my laptop for 24 hours worth of appointments and classes, and look what accumulates:

1. Northeast Nursery is now offering landscape plugs and small trees & shrubs for native restoration projects.  Seed-grown from stock collected in the northeast for maximum hardiness.  Woody plants are available in 1-3 gallon sizes, and perennials in quarts and plugs.  They also stock bulk compost, available for residential delivery. 
2. There was a session at South by Southwest 2.0 (SXSW) today on social networking for sustainable and local food.  Crazy.  Check out the summary or the tweets.  Lots of great ideas being generated!
3. Vertical planting for edible greens and herbs.  I've seen this demo'd at NE Grows, but here's a DIY version.
4. "Go Grants" from Quaker Oats -- $500 mini-grants to launch local anti-hunger initiatives.  Lots of interest from community gardeners.
5. New Victory Garden movement is picking up steam:

Interested in growing your own food or learning to manage your ornamental beds organically?  NOFA presents a day of workshops throughout the state on all the esentials of organic gardening:

Starting garden beds Seed Starting Organic soil fertility

Organic soil amendments Mulches and cover crops Weeds, disease and pests

What to plant when Crop spacing Succession cropping

Learn more & register at http://www.nofamass.org/programs/practicalskills/workshopday.php.

Also, NOFA summer conference will be at UMass Amherst Aug. 7-9, 2009.  It's a great family activity, with a kids' conference, country fair, horse show, dances, and of course, lots of classes.  We'll announce when registration opens.

As RJ Ruppenthal notes, a growing number of people are learning to grow their own food. Even Martha Stewart featured CSAs and small-space gardening in her most recent supplement.

R.J. Ruppenthal » Blog Archive » The Smackdown Has Begun

Posted using ShareThis