Designing your landscape can be one of the most rewarding projects you’ll ever do. It’s also one of the best garden-related things you can do during the long, cold days of winter.

Good gardens don’t just happen; they’re the result of careful planning. As anxious as you’ll be to rush to the garden center, now’s the time to pause and develop a real understanding of your property’s features and how they can be used to create enjoyable outdoor spaces.

Consider doing these steps:

— Base map. A sketch of your yard, showing property lines, the house’s orientation, driveways and paths. Start at the front corner of the house. With a 100-foot tape, measure the distance out to the curb and across to the nearest property line, and draw onto graph paper. A scale of 1 inch equaling 10 feet works well, but pick whatever works for you and stay consistent through the drawing. The larger the grid paper, the easier it will be to write in all your plans and ideas. If you can find it, 18- by 24-inch grid paper is great.

Continue measuring from all corners of the house to the property’s boundaries. Draw an arrow indicating north. Locate doors and windows; gas, electric and cable utilities; trees and shrubs; and any neighbors’ features near the property line that might affect your design, such as large trees, fences or buildings.

— Site analysis. Make a basic inventory of the property’s strengths and weaknesses. A site analysis can be sketched in a single day, but it would be better to record how the area changes throughout the year. Note all significant features like sunny and shady spots, prevailing winds, drainage problems, existing vegetation, good and poor views and all utilities and easements. Make several photocopies of the base map with site analysis notes.

— Preliminary designs. Now use the copies to come up with three or four preliminary designs. Let your imagination run wild with gazebos, vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. For each design draw a bubble diagram roughly indicating the shapes and locations of these features. Exact items and perfect graphics aren’t necessary; just “bubble in” rough ideas.

Do pay attention to your site analysis, however. For example, a vegetable garden needs a flat, open area with lots of sun. Don’t place it under a huge tree. Consider how the elements relate to each other and the house, too. For example, a compost pile should be close to the vegetable garden but out of view. Or a patio shouldn’t get blasting, summer sun without some kind of cover. It’s going to take several tries to fit the odd pieces smoothly into the jigsaw puzzle, but finally a practical plan will emerge.

Look over your preliminary designs and note the features you like from each. Put them all together on a new, more detailed base map while paying attention to that site analysis. It’s critical that the garden’s features all cooperate. Here is where you need accurate dimensions, too. Find the mature spread of that shade tree; measure exactly how long that front walk will be; count the number of shrubs needed for the hedge. You may find you have to make a hybrid of several different ideas to get everything to work together. Above all, consider the mature size of the plants and trees you want to add. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for lots of work and expense later.

When you find your perfect design, draw it on a clean base map. As an option, you can color the different features for easier visual reference, then show it to other gardeners or even a professional landscape designer. A fresh set of eyes is an insurance policy that you haven’t overlooked something that could really cost you later.

— Next, work out a budget. Don’t let money limit your creativity, but be realistic. Actual costs might mean a change in the design. But instead of going back to the drawing board, consider building one part of the plan at a time. Figure what you most want and can do immediately and what can wait until next year. You may find you can have it all — but just not all at once.

Good landscape design isn’t difficult, but it involves a definite process. Planning, patience and looking to the future are characteristics of gardeners, anyway. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can create the landscape of your dreams.

Adapted from an earlier The Gardener Within column. Joe Lamp’l, host of “Growing a Greener World” on PBS, is a master gardener and author. For more information visit www.joegardener.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.

Landscape Designer and Harvard resident Rochelle Greayer has a green thumb when it comes to growing new businesses. Several years ago, Greayer started a blog about landscape design called Studio ‘g’. Her growing list of followers is attracting enough advertisers to supplant her design business.

A year ago, Greayer and her business partner, Susan Cohan, launched an online magazine about landscape design called Leaf Magazine, which has a growing list of followers as well.

Greayer is also one of the founding members of the Harvard Farmer’s Market, which recently completed its sixth and most successful season.

The latest endeavor for the designer and mother of two is the launch of her first design class — to be held in partnership with floral designer Roanne Robbins — in Greayer’s barn on Pinnacle Road.

For more information, visit her web site.

Leaf Magazine just celebrated its one-year anniversary. How did it get started?

My business partner and I knew each other through online networking. We’re both landscape designers. She’s down in New Jersey. We’re both active in online activities related to landscape design, as professionals working in the industry. We’re both bloggers and we’d seen trends of online magazines being able to emerge because the technology made it more simple to create that magazine feeling. And it’s fairly inexpensive technology and we didn’t have any in our area [of landscape design].

What is Leaf Magazine all about?

When I moved here eight years ago from where I lived and worked in England, it was so different coming here, because it’s such a gardening culture over there. There are about eight beautiful magazines [in the U.K.] covering the industry in whichever way you can imagine.

Here we have a couple but they’re small and struggling. We really saw a hole in the market for a practical magazine that was inspiring but in a way that is attainable rather than completely aspirational. Not necessarily being a hard-core gardening magazine, we’re much more about design in the same sense that an interior magazine would be — they’re really lifestyle magazines.

We saw that as a real pull — having a garden and living in a way where you’re eating directly from your garden, you care about environmental issues, you like to be outdoors — you just have this nice lifestyle that extends beyond your front door.

How big is the staff of the magazine?

We have six people who work on the magazine now. My partner, Susan Cohan, and our advertising sales person and our graphic design person all live in the New Jersey. Myself and our copy editor and one of our contributing editors are up here, between Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

A lot of people ask how we manage with everyone working from home in different places. That’s totally not the way most magazines operate. The way we make it work is we use online tools and Skype and chat all the time.

How often does a new issue come out?

Right now we’re at three times a year. That’s what we’re planning for next year. We’re definitely looking for publishing business partners that might help us financing-wise and industry-wise to grow it. Right now we’re growing organically, which is great, but we’d love to maybe speed it up a bit and take on a partner so we can do four or six issues a year.

Tell me about your blog, Studio ‘g’:

It’s might be one of the biggest in the industry about garden design. Blogging seemed like a great way for me to organize myself creatively. It quickly evolved to attract a lot of readers.

About a year and half ago – really it was the same time that I started Leaf – I’ve made it really the only thing I do. I’ve stopped taking on design projects and continuing to grow the blog by adding revenue there and make a living off of that.

You’re starting to offer design classes. What’s that all about?

I have this bigger end game in mind of offering classes in related topics as an extension of the blog and Leaf. The first one features Roanne Robbins, who was a vendor at the Farmer’s Market. She’s a contributor on Leaf as well as a contributor on ‘g’. She and I will be running the class.

I have a barn where I live on Pinnacle Road by Carlson’s, and I’ve always wanted to use the barn to have classes and events there. So we’re running our first class on Nov. 14. You can learn from Roanne how to make beautiful Thanksgiving centerpieces from cuttings from your garden, and cut flowers you might buy at the grocery store.

We’re also trying to focus on going for a walk in the woods and how to gather things and how to use things that you might just see around. To me the reason you would want to come is because it’s a nice place with nice people to hang out for two hours — almost like going to the spa for two hours. It’s almost like spoiling yourself.

 

October 18, 2012_Solana Beach, California_USA_

McCarville admires the variegated colors of Kalanchoe ‘Fantastic,’ a hybrid variety of a succulent commonly called “flapjack” or “paddle” plants. Water-wise succulents are increasingly popular landscape plants.” Hayne Palmour IV • U-T photos

A milk weed plant from South Africa at Cedros Gardens in Solana Beach.

Horticulturist and landscape designer Jason Chen shows the flower of a “Giant Dutchman’s Pipe” vine plant at Cedros Gardens in Solana Beach.

Yellow blooms of the perennial sunflower “Maximilian” frame Cedros Gardens owner Mia McCarville and horticulturist/landscape designer Jason Chen. The flowers are part of the “cottage garden” area of the nursery, which is in the Cedros Design District of Solana Beach. Hayne Palmour IV • U-T

Penny Lingo

Special to the U-T

‘We don’t want to eat three meals at one time, then fast for a week,” said Mia McCarville, owner of Cedros Gardens in Solana Beach. “Plants are the same.”

Slow-release fertilizers, like most organics, she said, feed the plant with a steady stream of nutrients instead of a big gulp. “We try to use organic.”

Organic gardening is just one of the earth-friendly practices championed by McCarville and horticulturalist Jason Chen, the garden’s resident landscape designer.

Healthy soil is filled with microbes, essential for supporting plant life. “Chemical fertilizer is very easy to use, and it produces instant results,” said McCarville. But the high levels of chemicals kill the microbes and thus the soil, and then seep into the groundwater. “That will end up in the lagoon and then in the ocean.”

“And then it ends up (back) here,” Chen added. “It’s a big circle.”

McCarville’s experience with growing plants began in her early childhood when she helped her parents in their garden in Japan.

Her advocacy for the use of organic materials and water-saving practices has grown steadily in the past two decades, since she moved up from a smaller nursery to open her current business in 1993.

Though she said she is “is pretty much self-taught,” the knowledge she has acquired over the years enables her to offer her customers sound advice on plants and garden procedures, and consultations on design.

Chen, who holds a degree in ornamental horticultural design from North Carolina State University, came on board about two years ago. He estimated that design work is about 40 percent to 50 percent of their business. He’s learning a lot, he said, from working with McCarville.

The two agree that every plan must be tailored to the wants and needs of the client; at the same time, consideration must be given to conditions such as soil type, and the size and orientation of the space. “We have to know how the plants develop in the garden, how they’ll look year-round, before we can put it in the design,” McCarville said. “Sometimes we have to tell (clients) what they don’t want to hear.”

Both Chen and McCarville are enthusiastic about using edible plants in landscape design.

Chen cites citrus as an example of greenery with benefits: “It’s beautiful, it’s evergreen, and you can sometimes get fruit year-round.” Some hybrids grow well on the coast: Cara Cara pink navel oranges (Citrus sinensis ‘Cara Cara’), Valencias and all the Mandarin varieties.

For smaller spaces, options include planting one of the dwarf varieties or training a plant against a trellis on a flat plane, known as espalier. “We’ve had a couple clients that want to espalier,” Chen said. The spare, regimented look can complement a contemporary architectural design.

“Something new to this area is cherry trees,” McCarville said. “There are two varieties, and you have to plant both for pollination, but they both have wonderful fruit. Royal Lee (Prunus avium ‘Royal Lee’), and its companion pollinator Minnie Royal (Prunus avium ‘Minnie Royal’) have medium-large cherries similar to Bings in flavor. They are adapted to milder climates with moderate summers and winters that provide at least 200 hours below 45 degrees – less than half the chill needed for traditional cherries.

WINTER GARDEN, FL, Nov. 17, 2012 — Playground to enhance family well-being

WINTER GARDEN, FL, Nov. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – A dream is now a reality for
special needs children in Winter Garden as their drawings were turned
into a new playground today. In less than eight hours, the play space
was built with the help of more than 200 volunteers from Foresters^TM, UCP of Central Florida and non-profit KaBOOM!. Annually, the
playground will serve 700 children and their families in the local
community.

“Foresters believes in providing opportunities for families to spend
quality time together,” said Bruce Burak, National Sales Manager, US
Branch, Foresters. “A playground is an important piece for the
revitalization of a community. Not only does it provide a first step
towards keeping children healthy, but it’s a safe, central location for
the entire neighborhood to get together.”

Planning for the playground began at a Design Day event held in October
when local children and community leaders met with organizers from
KaBOOM! and Foresters to design their dream playground. The children’s
drawings were then used to create the final playground design.

Since 2006, Foresters has invested over $7 million with KaBOOM! with
almost 100 playgrounds built or planned across the U.S. and Canada.
Over their 15 year lifespan, these playgrounds will provide more than
2.6 million children and their families with an opportunity to spend
quality time together. Foresters is a KaBOOM! National Partner and a
founding member of the KaBOOM! Leadership Circle – a group of
organizations providing long-term guidance and support to KaBOOM! and
its mission.

“Without the collaboration of UCP, KaBOOM! and Foresters, UCP’s Winter
Garden children would be limited on play,” said Dr. Ilene Wilkins,
CEO/President of UCP of Central Florida. “Now, children of all
abilities will be able to learn, grow, and play on the accessible
playground. The playground provides therapeutic benefits that will help
our children develop and reach their full potential.”

Thanks to the work of Foresters, UCP and KaBOOM!, children and their
families now have a 2,500 square-foot playground to call home that
includes features such as slides, swings, and accessible features for
children of all abilities.

About UCP of Central Florida
UCP of Central Florida is the expert for children with special needs and
provides support, education, and therapy services for children, with
and without disabilities, ages birth through 21. Services are offered
at seven locations throughout Central Florida: downtown Orlando, East
Orlando (2), Kissimmee, Lake Mary, Pine Hills and Winter Garden. More
than 2,400 children and their families received services provided by
UCP last year. For more information about programs and services, visit www.ucpcfl.org or call (407) 852-3300.

About Foresters
Foresters™ is a life insurance provider with a difference.  The
fraternal benefit society, founded in 1874, supports family well-being
through quality products, unique member benefits and inspiring
community activities. Foresters shares its financial strength with over
one million members in Canada, the United States and the United
Kingdom.  For more information, visit foresters.com.

Foresters™ is the trade name and a trademark of The Independent Order of
Foresters, a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto,
Canada M3C 1T9; its subsidiaries are licensed to use this mark.

About KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to saving play. Children
today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a
fact that is having disastrous consequences on their health,
achievement levels, and overall well-being. To fight this play deficit,
social entrepreneur Darell Hammond founded non-profit KaBOOM! in 1996
in Washington, D.C. with a vision of creating a great place to play
within walking distance of every child in America. Since then, KaBOOM!
has mapped over 90,000 places to play, built more than 2,200
playgrounds, and successfully advocated for play policies in hundreds
of cities across the country. KaBOOM! also provides communities with
online tools to self-organize and take action to support play on both a
local and national level. Hammond chronicles the founding of the
organization and the importance of the cause of play in his The New York Times Best Seller KaBOOM!: A Movement to Save Play, now out in paperback. The book details how businesses and communities
can work together to save play for children across the country. All
author proceeds support KaBOOM!. Headquartered in Washington, D.C.,
KaBOOM! also has offices in Chicago and San Mateo, Calif.For more
information, visit www.kaboom.org.

SOURCE Foresters

Order Reprint

Designing your landscape can be one of the most rewarding projects you’ll ever do. It’s also one of the best garden-related things you can do during the long, cold days of winter.

Good gardens don’t just happen; they’re the result of careful planning. As anxious as you’ll be to rush to the garden center, now’s the time to pause and develop a real understanding of your property’s features and how they can be used to create enjoyable outdoor spaces.

Consider doing these steps:

— Base map. A sketch of your yard, showing property lines, the house’s orientation, driveways and paths. Start at the front corner of the house. With a 100-foot tape, measure the distance out to the curb and across to the nearest property line, and draw onto graph paper. A scale of 1 inch equaling 10 feet works well, but pick whatever works for you and stay consistent through the drawing. The larger the grid paper, the easier it will be to write in all your plans and ideas. If you can find it, 18- by 24-inch grid paper is great.

Continue measuring from all corners of the house to the property’s boundaries. Draw an arrow indicating north. Locate doors and windows; gas, electric and cable utilities; trees and shrubs; and any neighbors’ features near the property line that might affect your design, such as large trees, fences or buildings.

— Site analysis. Make a basic inventory of the property’s strengths and weaknesses. A site analysis can be sketched in a single day, but it would be better to record how the area changes throughout the year. Note all significant features like sunny and shady spots, prevailing winds, drainage problems, existing vegetation, good and poor views and all utilities and easements. Make several photocopies of the base map with site analysis notes.

— Preliminary designs. Now use the copies to come up with three or four preliminary designs. Let your imagination run wild with gazebos, vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. For each design draw a bubble diagram roughly indicating the shapes and locations of these features. Exact items and perfect graphics aren’t necessary; just “bubble in” rough ideas.

Do pay attention to your site analysis, however. For example, a vegetable garden needs a flat, open area with lots of sun. Don’t place it under a huge tree. Consider how the elements relate to each other and the house, too. For example, a compost pile should be close to the vegetable garden but out of view. Or a patio shouldn’t get blasting, summer sun without some kind of cover. It’s going to take several tries to fit the odd pieces smoothly into the jigsaw puzzle, but finally a practical plan will emerge.

Look over your preliminary designs and note the features you like from each. Put them all together on a new, more detailed base map while paying attention to that site analysis. It’s critical that the garden’s features all cooperate. Here is where you need accurate dimensions, too. Find the mature spread of that shade tree; measure exactly how long that front walk will be; count the number of shrubs needed for the hedge. You may find you have to make a hybrid of several different ideas to get everything to work together. Above all, consider the mature size of the plants and trees you want to add. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for lots of work and expense later.

When you find your perfect design, draw it on a clean base map. As an option, you can color the different features for easier visual reference, then show it to other gardeners or even a professional landscape designer. A fresh set of eyes is an insurance policy that you haven’t overlooked something that could really cost you later.

— Next, work out a budget. Don’t let money limit your creativity, but be realistic. Actual costs might mean a change in the design. But instead of going back to the drawing board, consider building one part of the plan at a time. Figure what you most want and can do immediately and what can wait until next year. You may find you can have it all — but just not all at once.

Good landscape design isn’t difficult, but it involves a definite process. Planning, patience and looking to the future are characteristics of gardeners, anyway. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can create the landscape of your dreams.
   
Joe Lamp’l, host of “Growing a Greener World” on PBS, is a master gardener and author. For more information visit www.joegardener.com. Adapted from an earlier The Gardener Within column.

Burpee Home Gardens announced that more than 6,100 combos were created virtually this year through the My Garden Designer mobile design tool, revealing consumer trends and preferences for gardening habits, color choices and variety selection.

In 2012, the top three mixed variety designs selected by the home gardeners are:
-Begonia Dragon wing Pink, N.G. Impatiens Celebrette Grape Crush, and Dichondra Silver Falls
-Coleus Henna, Calibrachoa Isabells Yellow, and Petunia Suncatcher Midnight Blue
-Snapdragon Snapshot Plum Blossom, Alyssum Clear Crystal Purple Shades, Petunia Pop Rocks White

My Garden Designer also revealed top color-combo choices:
-White, pink and purple
-Cream, pink and green
-White, red and green

While designing containers is a growing category, 52 percent of the designs were selected for in-ground garden bed applications, while 48 percent of designs were for containers. When it came to sun versus shade, 68 percent of gardeners designed for full-sun applications with shade containers accounting for the remainder at 32 percent.

Launched in Spring 2012, Burpee’s My Garden Designer creates container and flowerbed planograms for home gardeners. Through quick selections on color, gardeners create “filler,” “spiller,” “thriller” arrangements. The tool also suggests multiple designs, theme arrangements, creates a plant shopping list, and includes a where-to-buy store search.

To trial My Garden Designer and Burpee Home Gardens other mobile web tools, visit the demonstration page at m.ballhort.com/bst.

To learn more, visit www.ballhort.com/BurpeeHomeGardens.
 

Olive Garden will open at 990 Norland Ave. in Chambersburg, Pa. on Monday, Nov. 19 at 11 a.m. – creating 170 new jobs.

The Olive Garden in Chambersburg is the newest Olive Garden in the family of more than 800 local restaurants.

The 7,441 square-foot restaurant can host up to 246 guests and features a design that is inspired by traditional farmhouses found in Tuscany, Italy.

Olive Garden design teams traveled to Italy to work with Italian architects Fabio and Lucia Zingarelli and the result is a restaurant design that recreates the warmth and simple beauty of a Tuscan farmhouse.

The Chambersburg Olive Garden has a rustic stone exterior, typical of the buildings in the Italian countryside, and an interior accented by Italian imports designed to make the dining experience here a tribute to the restaurant’s Italian inspiration. Ceilings supported by exposed wood beams, stone and wood accents throughout, and terra cotta tile highlight the interior.

In addition, the bar top is crafted from lava stone and hand-painted by artisans in Italy with a design created exclusively for Olive Garden. Vibrant imported fabrics decorate windows and dining seats, while hand-painted plates, adorn rustic stone and stucco walls.

The restaurant also will feature a number of sustainable design elements, including recycled building materials, enlarged windows to increase natural light, low-water landscaping and energy-efficient equipment. These enhancements are part of the

Sustainable Restaurant Design initiative launched by Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden’s parent company.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead the Chambersburg restaurant and a great team at Olive Garden,” Joshua Bingham, general manager, said in a news release. “In addition to our Italian specialties, including signature items like our homemade soups, garden fresh salad and warm, garlic breadsticks, the menu at the Chambersburg Olive Garden will feature a variety of Italian favorites and new offerings, such as our Lighter Italian Fare entrees with less than 575 calories each.”

Bingham brings extensive experience to his new position. He has been in the restaurant industry for 13 years, most recently as culinary manager of the Olive Garden located at 10 Wilson Ave. in Hanover.

To recognize Bingham’s role as head of the Olive Garden family in Chambersburg and to emphasize the importance the company places on its general managers, Olive Garden honored Bingham by setting his name in stone. Travertine marble imported from Tuscany was chiseled with Bingham’s name and placed prominently by the restaurant’s front door.

Olive Garden is now accepting applications for employment. Applications can be placed online at www.OliveGarden.com/Careers.

Click photo to enlarge

EUREKA — Learn how to improve your garden soil at the Eureka Sequoia Garden Club’s monthly meeting Friday, at the First Covenant Church Carriage House, 2526 J St.

Preceding the program will be the monthly Floral Design Workshop from 10 to 11 a.m. presented by Mary Lou Goodwin, club president and owner of Eureka Florist.

The theme this month is “We Are Thankful” and will introduce the “Reflective Design” concept of flower arranging, incorporating a reflective object such as a mirror. Each person attending the workshop should bring flowers, green foliage and a container to create the themed arrangement.

The meeting starts at 11 a.m. with the program, followed by a sack lunch at noon, with refreshments and dessert (bring your own sandwich). The meeting will adjourn at 1:30 p.m.

This month’s program features Duncan McNeill, territory manager for Kellogg Supply Inc., distributors of Gardner Bloome Natural Organic Garden Soils.

Whether it’s a backyard garden retreat or a patio garden in the middle of the city, the use of natural and organic products can help grow the garden to its best potential. McNeill will discuss using fortified natural soil amendments to help break up clay soils and improve drainage. Amendments can improve physical soil structure and help balance pH when mixed with existing garden soil.

Founded in 1925 by H. Clay Kellogg, the company’s goal is to perfect organic soils, mulches, amendments, potting

soils and fertilizers. Samples of garden products will be given away.

Also at noon, the owners of the “Jewels on F Street” have been invited to attend the meeting to receive Certificates of Recognition for their use of plant material, design principles and maintenance of their front yards.

These landscapes were selected by club members Anne Van Zandt and Mary Lou Goodwin, both of whom are recognized by the National Garden Club as Landscape Design Consultants.

These “Garden Jewels” were recently selected from the front yards along the 39 blocks of F street in Eureka. These homes or businesses include those of Ritchie and Dianne Phillips, David and Josephine Tom, Dr. Brian and Nancy Craig, Carl and Kim Regalo, Duncan Consulting Co., Dr. Joanna Marcuz, Dottie Sweet, William Bachelor and Tom and Monta Genter.

Visitors are invited to attend the program and to participate in the flower arranging workshop.

The Eureka Sequoia Garden Club, founded in 1967, is a member of the California Garden Clubs Inc. and the Humboldt District, California Garden Clubs Inc.

Its goals are to create and promote interest in horticulture, gardening and floral and landscape design; to encourage and engage in civic beautification and the improvement of roadsides; to aid in protecting California’s native plants, wildlife and natural beauty; and to promote, and participate in, projects and programs that conserve natural resources.

For more information on the club, its activities and monthly programs, contact Goodwin at 442-1387.

Regional Garden Clubs met for a daylong meeting on October 18 at Southern Ohio Medical Center’s Friends’ Center. A seasonal flower show, an out-of-town designer, and members wearing costumes add up to a “Halloween Party”, hosted by Portsmouth and Green Triangle Garden Clubs. Members from all regional clubs, including gardeners from Scioto, Pike, Adams, and Lawrence attended, many were unrecognizable in very unique costumes. On a rainy fall day, there was good fellowship, artistic floral designs, good food, and creative costumes.

A short business meeting was conducted by Regional Director, Sue Thomas of the Waverly Garden Club, as she acknowledged guests from the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs, including Geri Rea, 2nd Vice President and Stephanie Patrick, OAGC Counselor. The flower show engineered by Irmalee Gampp and Carolyn Wilcox of the Minford Garden Club, filled half of the meeting room with beautifully arranged floral displays. Winning blue ribbons were: Wilcox, Jean Moore of Willow Garden Club, Sherrill Day and Eva Worlery of Green Triangle Garden Club, Diane Reese of Slocum Garden Club and in the Junior Division, Ella Gullett, Portsmouth Jr. Garden Club. Wilcox also received Best of Show honors and the Design of Distinction was given to Diane Reese. After a pleasant lunch break, the afternoon session featured a Study of Holiday Floral Designs, with guest designer, Naomi Ormes. Ormes is the State Design Chair of the Ohio Association of Garden Club. She demonstrated several types of fresh, floral arrangements, all with a fall theme.

A panel of judges chose three winning costumes, after a modeling review. The costume style show was narrated by Alison Barrett and the winners were: Bev Norman, Linda Warfield, and Melody Pontious. The afternoon ended with a raffle and door prizes.

Portsmouth Garden Club

The September meeting of the Portsmouth Garden Club was held at Gatti’s with Donna Chabot, President in charge of the meeting. It was announced that area clubs will be decorating at Shawnee Lodge for the Christmas holidays, but the work days will begin on Tuesday, December 13th . and extend to the 14th. Chabot announced that the club has been asked to participate in Portsmouth’s 200 Birthday celebration in 2015. New club officers for 2012-13 were installed.

?The horticulture report was given by Linda Warfield and dealt with a recently identified virus that is killing roses, the rosette disease. It has transferred from the multi-flora (wild) roses to many ornamental roses. The disease is transmitted by a tiny mite. The mite travels on the air currents from plant to plant. There is no effective means of control, except to destroy the affected plant, therefore early detection is key.

The horticulture specimen, a German Chamomile presented by Brenda Wooten received the blue ribbon.

In October the club traveled to the Stockdale area for a meeting, featuring water gardening. This outstanding, water-garden belongs to Ken and Lanita Babst, who also have a collection of beautiful tropical fish. The water-gardens consist of four separate ponds, located below a large crystal lake. Water moves from pond to pond through a series of fountains, and rock spillways, producing a lovely trickling sound. Each pond is uniquely planted with an abundance of water plants, in addition to the colorful fish, the Babsts have added a gazebo overlooking the entire pond areas.

During the short business meeting, Donna Chabot received the special reports.

Green Triangle Garden Club

Green Triangle Garden Club met at Cornerstone UMC for the October meeting, which was chaired by President Sherrill Day. Day received the business reports and detailed assignments for the Fall OAGC Regional Meeting, where the club will serve as host.

Day provided the program, which was a design workshop featuring the construction of a floral arrangement in two vases. The vases do not need to be identical, but must be arranged as to mirror one another, with a connector. The connector may be plant material, or something relate to the design. The goal is the mirror effect.

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 15, 2012 — /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Homegrown food is in for a radical change, and so is keeping fish. Back to the Roots, an urban mushroom farm in California, is launching a new home aquaponics kit via Kickstarter on November 15th. The Aquaponics Garden is essentially a self-cleaning fish tank that also grows a range of fresh produce in a garden on top. The fish water fertilizes the plants, and in turn the plants clean the water for the fish. 

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121115/CG13539)

Back to the Roots aims to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter in order to produce the kit and make it the first product that allows people to grow food on the kitchen counter in a closed-loop system. For a $50 pledge, backers can be the first to receive the aquaponics kit when it is ready in late February 2013.

Other Kickstarter rewards for supporters include a permanent etching of the backer’s name on the kits as a thank you, and a locally-sourced meal for 20 cooked by Back to the Roots. BTTR needs 2,000 pre-orders to fund the initial costs of production and meet minimum production quantities from its manufacturer.

The Back to the Roots Aquaponics Garden brings this new approach to households through a sleek design and space-efficient 3 gallon tank.  The seeds, pump, and pebbles are included. Just add water and fish (many common types work in the system!) – nature and the ecosystem take over from there.

Back to the Roots will be one of the few companies on Kickstarter that has a previous product and a passionate, strong following. The urban farm, founded by Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley, has been totally bootstrapped and funded solely through sales and grants thus far.

Velez and Arora express their passion for the project in the closing of their Kickstarter video. “We believe this Aquaponics Garden has to be launched – it can inspire so many people, in so many different ways. We’re confident that if you help us do it, we can make this a success and create a movement around it. There’s nothing more important right now than taking back our food…. taking back our health.”

Foodies, gardeners, families, teachers, or anyone else interested can be one of the first people to have a Back to the Roots Aquaponics Garden by visiting the Kickstarter page.  

About Back to the Roots

Back to the Roots is an Oakland, California based urban farming company that manufactures grow-your-own oyster mushroom kits with soil made from recycled coffee grounds. The company was founded in 2009 by two Berkeley soon-to-be graduates, and was off the ground with their first order from Berkeley Whole Foods Market. Back to the Roots Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden allows anyone to grow fresh mushrooms and fresh food on their kitchen counter in just ten days. To date, they’ve diverted over 1 million pounds of coffee waste from the landfill and reached over 10,000 kids with the grow-your-own mushroom garden and sustainability curriculum. To see the kit and learn more about how to make a difference, visit www.backtotheroots.com. 

Media Contact:

Megan Yarnall Back to the Roots, 215-962-9881, megan@backtotheroots.com

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SOURCE Back to the Roots

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