The year of bliss. That’s what the Garden Media Group, one of the top trend-spotting agencies in the U.S., has designated 2013 — the year when gardeners turn their backs on trouble and strife and more actively seek joy and bliss in their everyday life.

“Connecting with nature is a necessity, not a luxury,” says Suzi McCoy, head of the Pennsylvania-based GMG, which releases a Garden Trends Report every year.

“People today want to find bliss in everyday life. Being in nature — either in a garden or park or filling your home with indoor plants — adds immeasurable happiness and wellness to our lives.”

Ms. McCoy says more people are “fed up with complexities of modern life” and are turning their backs on fear and looking for ways to find greater happiness and turn the “ordinary into the extraordinary.”

In its 13th annual report, GMG looks at various emerging and existing trends across North America, as well as in other parts of the world.

Drawing on various research and marketing data, GMG says people are re-evaluating their values and priorities and redefining happiness. They are ultimately coming to the conclusion that gardening is a way to achieve joy and satisfaction, Ms. McCoy says.

People today want to find bliss in everyday life. Being in nature — either in a garden or park or filling your home with indoor plants — adds immeasurable happiness and wellness to our lives

The report also sees the horticulture industry becoming much more aggressive in its presentation of the benefits of gardening as a way to protect the environment, improve health, reduce crime, make the air cleaner and even help kids to become smarter.

Two of the important trend “wave makers,” says GMG, are top horticulture advocates Marvin Miller and Charlie Hall.

Mr. Miller is market research manager for Chicago-based Ball Horticultural, one of the biggest plant companies in the U.S., and president of America in Bloom, an organization that promotes beautification through education and community involvement.

Mr. Hall is a professor in the department of horticultural sciences at the Texas AM University.

Both men are considered highly effective advocates of the benefits of gardening to heal and restore, as well as a way to make the world more beautiful and improve living conditions, all of which result in a greater sense of well-being in a community.

Mr. Miller has produced popular videos demonstrating why plants are more than merely pretty objects, but actually help reduce crime, clean the air and improve health.

Mr. Hall has shown how quality landscaping is a way of increasing property values. He has also argued convincingly that putting money into parks and botanical gardens is a way to create new revenue streams from ecotourism for cities.

Both men, according to GMG, are having a significant impact on the thinking of leaders in government and community circles at all levels, and especially on consumers who agree that there are clear benefits to be gained from gardens.

In terms of specific gardening trends, native and drought-tolerant plants are expected to be even more popular in 2013.

There is also evidence of undiminished enthusiasm for small-space gardening, especially with an emphasis on growing plants in containers.

Gardeners are expected to be smarter spenders in 2013 — pausing to think more critically before spending and making fewer spontaneous purchases.

The rise of WINKs (women with no kids) as a distinct consumer demographic is expected to have an impact on sales of plants and general gardening items this summer.

Interest in firepits, outdoor kitchens and luxury outdoor living spaces is expected to continue in 2013, with a greater accent on professionally installed landscape components, such as customized seating and irrigation systems.

Demand for ready-to-place potted plants will increase, along with more interest in making better use of colour-injecting summer annuals and foliage plants.

But most gardening experts agree that the No. 1 trend in 2013 will continue to be the interest in growing edible plants, as more people decide to try their hand at growing their own food, either in vegetable, herb or fruit gardens, or in containers on decks, patios and balconies.

James Wong, a leading botanist at Kew Botanic Garden in London, is creating a stir within this edible-

gardening craze by focusing on growing unusual rather than traditional vegetables.

His book, Homegrown Revolution, has become a bestseller, in which he puts tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica), at the top of his list of unusual vegetables. This is a lime-flavoured tomato-like fruit that Mr. Wong claims knocks spots off the tomato.

He also focuses on harvesting fiddlehead ferns, day lily buds and bamboo shoots and talks about ways to use dahlia, fuchsia and hosta in the form of roots, berries and shoots respectively.

His other ideas for food gardeners include spraying plants with garlic to deter slugs and snails, sowing in sequence to sustain harvests, and practising multiple-crop planting to reduce weeds, attract pollinators and maximize yields.

There is also expected to be even greater focus on clever plant marketing in 2013 as nurseries explore more creative ways to sell plants.

Costa Farms, of Florida, the biggest supplier of indoor plants in North America, has already teamed up with Miracle-Gro to promote Plants for Clean Air (02 For You) as a way to raise awareness of how plants can be used to boost indoor air quality.

Van Belle Nursery in British Columbia has launched a Bloomin’ Easy blue-pot series of shrubs designed to guarantee success for beginner gardeners.

The nursery is also taking a technological leap by making it possible for consumers to access information and advice via their cellphones.

And Proven Winners, a worldwide promoter of garden-worthy plants, will continue to dominate the summer plant market with an expanded line of colourful combinations created specifically for small-space gardens.

It all sounds blissful to me.

Postmedia News

<!– http://media.gazettextra.com/img/photos/2013/05/20/Kindschi_Mark.jpg –>

Photo

Mark Kindschi

EDGERTON — Mark Kindschi soon will start wearing a one-piece suit with sting-proof gloves. It’s a fashion choice certain to turn heads at his job at Edgerton Hospital.

By June, Kindschi, the hospital’s human resources director, could have hundreds of thousands of new personnel to take care of at the hospital.

The hospital plans to establish an apiary—a honeybee colony, for the uninitiate—and Kindschi, a lifelong beekeeper, will be in charge of caring for the bees there.

The bees, eventually about 360,000 of them, Kindschi said, will live on the community garden grounds at the south end of the hospital campus. All they’ll need is a home, pollen and water.

Kindschi said hospital CEO Jim Pernau began discussing the idea a few months ago of increasing pollination at the hospital’s gardens, which are used to grow healthy food and herbs for local residents and to stock the hospital’s cafeteria and food and patient services with fresh produce and flowers in the summer.

“The gardens were new last year. He believed that we could have had better production had we had better pollination. That’s where the bees come in,” Kindschi said.

Pernau then learned Kindschi is a beekeeper. He approached Kindschi, excited about the potential of a bee colony at the hospital.

There was no question who would become the resident beekeeper.

“I’m the guy that’ll be taking care of the bees, that much is for certain,” Kindschi said.

Kindschi, an Edgerton resident, has been keeping bees for 35 years—since he was a high school student.

He said the hospital’s plans for an apiary include six commercial hives and would provide enough bee power to pollinate the 30-acre community gardens, some of which are divided into residents’ plots.

The same bees will pollinate flowers, landscaping and wooded areas all around the hospital’s 80-acre “healthy village” campus that winds outside the hospital along North Sherman Road.

The hospital’s bees also will benefit the flower and vegetable gardens for neighbors in the immediate area.

“The bees will cover a lot larger area, a lot more ground than just our hospital. They will provide pollination service for up to a mile and a half around the hospital,” Kindschi said.

The hospital is planning to plant a fruit tree orchard next year. The idea is to give patients and visitors a place where they can pick fruit off the tree and eat it on the spot.

The bees will be a boon to that plan, too.

The hospital’s apiary plans haven’t yet touched on honey production. Kindschi said that would be an ancillary part of the bee colony.

“If there is an excess of honey, we will harvest it and utilize it in the cafeteria. It’s not the primary reason for our beekeeping, but the honey will not go to waste,” Kindschi said.

“Italian bees are a pretty docile temperament honeybee. They’re a pretty nice and friendly honeybee. They’re not at all aggressive.

The bees will be most active from mid-spring to fall, but their hives on the hospital grounds will be their year-round home.

“They cluster up in the hive and shiver through the winters. Then in spring, they wake up and get going again,” Kindschi said.

Kindschi’s work as the hospital’s de facto beekeeper will be unpaid volunteer work. He’s also planning beekeeping classes at the hospital over the winter, and the hospital is considering letting him give tours of the hives so residents can see how beekeeping works.

“It’s surprising the number of people who have heard about this plan who come up to me and say, ‘Hey do you have an extra bee suit?'”

The hospital’s apiary plan is still being reviewed by the city, and it faces zoning and conditional-use hurdles before it can be put in place. City officials say the plan could get approval by mid-June.

Under proposed city rules, beekeeping would be allowed in big business and commercial tracts on the outskirts of the city—not residential areas, although some nearby communities outside of Madison allow backyard beekeeping.

For their part, the hospital’s bees are now living in Rock County—and they’re eager to get moving, Kindschi said.

“They’re at an undisclosed location,” Kindschi said, laughing. “No, not really. They’re on the rural property of a friend in the town of Fulton. They’re doing their thing out there, and as soon as we get this zoning issue approved, I’ll move them on the (hospital) property.”

What was once a cement basketball court in north Casper is now the location for 33, 4×8-foot rentable garden plots. Transformation to the Seeds of Sharing Community Gardens comes following hundreds of hours of volunteer hard labor from a wide range of local organizations.

Situated on the grounds of Winter Memorial Presbyterian Church off St. John’s Street, the community garden organizers held the first garden plot registration and neighborhood barbecue May 11. A second such event will take place June 8.

Raised beds rent for $10 for the season and include water and access to tools and compost.

North Casper resident Christopher Weber rented two plots for his family of five.

“I love gardening. We live in an apartment complex and there’s no place for us to have a garden. I lived out in northern California many years ago and was part of a big community garden there and spent a lot of time working the garden and learned to really appreciate not just the gardening aspect, but also the food. Your peppers, your tomatoes, whatever you’re growing out of the garden … it tastes better.”

With no grocery stores located in north Casper, Lori Lancaster, a member of Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church, said addressing that fact is one goal.

“North Casper is kind of a food desert when it comes to fresh produce. There aren’t any grocery stores here except for the Mini-Mart and so we thought it would be a good idea to bring the gardens to the community, both for the gardening and to provide them with fresh vegetables for their homes,” Lancaster said.

Shepherd of the Hills is one of three principle groups behind the project. They’ve provided leadership and hands and feet on the ground, as well as financial support. The initial vision came from members of the Winter Memorial Church. Casper’s Young Rotarians network, Rotaract, have been instrumental in grounding the vision.

Last summer there was a big push to transform the property. Volunteers transformed both a basketball court and the adjacent James Reeb Memorial children’s playground into raised-bed garden spaces.

Additional muscle came from the likes of the Natrona County High School football team and Casper firefighters. Concrete was taken up, dirt was moved, trees were planted, walkways created, raised beds constructed, and a storage shed built.

Grant monies purchased new equipment for the playground. That equipment now awaits installation.

“It was like a beehive here for a while, building the frames and it was fun,” said Sandy Patten, former member of Winter Memorial’s congregation. Patton worked two garden plots last year and donated much of what she produced to Joshua’s Storehouse. Joshua’s in turn has donated seedlings and seed packets for gardeners.

A grant from Home Depot bought construction materials like lumber, hardware and landscaping rocks. Home Depot volunteers also helped move in some very heavy stones that surround the beds.

Heather Webb, Rotaract Community Garden Committee, said the first season of growing began a little late and growers had to drag hoses out to their gardens from the church. This spring, however, thanks to a push from Rotaract volunteers, installation of water spigots next to the garden plots was completed.

A tool drive secured plenty of shovels, trowels, rakes and hoses — everything needed to make gardening possible. A compost pile molders on site.

Webb said they’re doing everything they can to keep the gardens pesticide- and herbicide-free, including an agreement signed by plot renters to keep the garden natural. “That way people will know what’s going into their food with no random chemicals sprayed on anything.”

Webb said they hope to make some beds easy access for elderly gardeners who find the rock walkways difficult to navigate.

Webb, also a member of the Downtown Farmers Market committee, said they spent time at the market questioning folks there about what they would want. “We actually set up a booth and asked people what they were interested in as far as a community garden and it was amazing how many people showed up and said, ‘This is where my neighborhood is and I would love that’. So I think the need and the want is really here,” Webb said.

Webb acknowledges the existing community plots at the Natrona County Agricultural Resource and Learning Center near the fairgrounds and said the Seeds of Sharing Community Gardens simply means more plots available at an affordable price.

“Many of the same people have been working those plots for years, which is really nice for them, but then the plots never seem to open up. So having these available to people, plus getting the soil in there, talking to gardeners about what’s going on in the ground, also builds a large sense of community when you’ve got people working side by side. You get people who’ve lived across the street from each other for years and now they can know each other from the garden. That’s a large part of the community garden project.”

A second garden plot rental event on June 8 invites anyone interested — you don’t have to live in north Casper — to take a look at the gardens and sign up. Plus there will be a barbecue hosted by volunteers from the Food For Thought Project.

Rotaract hopes to recruit a licensed contractor to install the children’s playground equipment this summer.

The next garden signup and barbecue happens from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. June 8 at the Seeds of Sharing Community Garden site, 900 St. John’s St.

For more information or to reserve a garden plot, call 235-3536.