Michigan Orchid Society’s 60th Annual Palm Sunday Orchid Show: Display of orchids, plus orchids and orchid supplies available for purchase. Speakers will discuss repotting and growing orchids. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sun. United Food and Commercial Workers Union Hall, 876 Horace Brown Drive, Madison Heights. Free. Carolyn Butcher: 248-417-1024. www.miorchids.com.

Northville Novi Garden Club Meeting: “Ponds” presented by Joe Barson, Barson’s Greenhouse. 6:30 p.m. social, 7 p.m. meeting Mon. Northville Art House, 215 W. Cady, Northville. Membership: $25 single, $35 couple. Connie: 248-380-0500. gardenersnorthville-novi.org.

Yardeners of St. Clair Shores: “Landscaping to Preserve Water Quality” with Mary Gerstenberger, consumer horticulture coordinator at Macomb MSU Extension. 7 p.m. Mon. St. Clair Shores Public Library, 22500 E. Eleven Mile, St. Clair Shores. Free. 586-415-7110. There also will be an opportunity to pre-order rain barrels ($55, $60) to be delivered on May 10 at Selinsky-Green Farmhouse.

Mt. Clemens Garden Club: Presentation by Telly’s Greenhouse on new plants and flowers for 2014. Noon Wed. Mt. Clemens Public Library, 150 Cass, Mt. Clemens. $3 nonmember free. RSVP. Marge: 586-228-8921.

Southeast Michigan Butterfly Association (SEMBA): “Garden Design” with Carolyn Sohoza. Discuss ways to begin, expand and enhance your garden to attract wildlife, especially butterflies. 7 p.m. Wed. Nankin Mills Nature Center, 33175 Ann Arbor Trail, Westland. $3 for nonmembers. 734-223-5510. www.sembabutterfly.com.

Heirloom Vegetables: Organic gardener, Jean Smith, will share her passion for growing and cooking with heirloom tomatoes, lettuce and more. 6:30 p.m. Thu. Telly’s Greenhouse, 3301 John R, Troy. $5. Register. 248-689-8735. www.tellys.com.

Night Hike at Heritage Park: Listen for nocturnal animals and observe a full moon in the night sky. 8:30-9:30 p.m. Fri. Farmington Hills Nature Center at Heritage Park, 24915 Farmington , Farmington Hills. $3. Register or pay the night of program, but space is limited. 248-477-1135. https://recreg.fhgov.com.

Signs of Spring Hike: See the tree buds opening, new bird arrivals and more. Dress for the weather. 1 p.m. Sat., Lake St. Clair Metropark, 31300 Metropolitan Parkway, Harrison Twp. $3. Register. 586-463-4332.

Next week

Invasive Plant Workday: Removing garlic mustard is a great opportunity for community service hours and master gardener hours. Bring gloves and water. 1 p.m. April 20. Seven Ponds Nature Center, 3854 Crawford, Dryden. 810-796-3200. www.sevenponds.org.

Ann Arbor Bonsai Society Meeting: With Greg Afman discussing his experiences in Japan, his bonsai apprenticeship, and the American/Japanese perspective on bonsai. 7 p.m. April 23. Matthaei Botanical Gardens, 1800 N. Dixboro, Ann Arbor. Free. 734-647-7600. www.annarborbonsaisociety.org.

Meadow Brook Hall Garden Club: “Not Just Another Pretty Plant: Using Plants for Improving Water Resources,” With Tom Fernandez, PhD, MSU. Coffee and refreshments at 9:15 a.m., program starts at 10 a.m. April 25. Coach House adjacent to Meadow Brook Hall, Oakland University, 280 S. Adams, Rochester Hills. Guests, $5 donation. Membership fee is $30 a year, $45 for couple. 248-364-6210. www.meadowbrookhall.org/join/volunteering.

Detroit River Cleanup: Cleanup of the shores and small islands in the lower Detroit River. Sponsored by Friends of the Detroit River. 9 a.m.-2 p.m. April 26. Trenton Rotary Park, 1 Harrison, Trenton. Call for more information. 734-676-4626. www.detroitriver.org.

International Herb Day Celebration: Herbs bring joy and well-being and are used in food, beverages, medicine, beauty products, crafts and more. There will be cooking demonstrations, gardening tips, seminars, activities and a wide variety of plants and products for sale. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. April 26. MSU Hidden Lake Gardens, 6214 W. Monroe (M-50), Tipton. $5, free for HLG members. 517-431-2060. www.hiddenlakegardens.msu.edu.

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Not only does springtime signal the start of chirping birds and blossoming buds, but it marks the time that we can finally escape to the outdoors without getting slapped with a polar vortex. And, as these 11 gorgeous gardens from our friends at Porch.com prove, a backyard can be just the retreat you need from the daily grind. While we’d be content with a deck chair and a patch of green grass, these stunning spaces boast incredible landscaping, views and even a few water features. To see even more photos, click on the project name under each picture.

Which one would you like to call your warm weather retreat?

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As a young surveyor and before serving as our country’s first president, George Washington developed the ability to measure up a landscape and to take advantage of its natural features. He also had an eye for spatial awareness. Washington learned by observation, by reading, and by the study of new styles of landscape design.

Later, he put those skills to use creating a landscape plant for his now-historic home, Mount Vernon in Fairfax, along the banks of the Potomac River, according to Mount Vernon curators.

The public can see Washington’s vision and purpose for the estate’s grounds in a new exhibit “Gardens Groves: George Washington’s Landscape and Mount Vernon.” The exhibit includes five 18th-century views of Mount Vernon – oil paintings of the river and land fronts of the mansion. Two special drawings that detail the layout of the grounds will be on view through Sunday, Aug. 17, while the entire exhibit can be seen until January 2016.

“These artwork records record details of the landscape we would not otherwise know, information that continues to inform our ongoing research and restoration efforts,” says exhibit curator Adam Erby.

Built in stages 1758-1778, Washington’s estate and its gardens are owned and operated by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, which was founded as a preservation group in 1853.

When George Washington returned to Mount Vernon after the American Revolution, 1775-1783, he found the estate needed extensive repairs and improvements. The buildings and grounds surrounding the mansion lacked a cohesive design because they had happened over time out of necessity rather than beauty, according to curators. Instead, he wanted a plan for “pleasure grounds” that enhanced the site’s natural beauty, which featured the crest of a hill overlooking the Potomac River.

The landscape

Three of the four primary gardens — the upper or pleasure garden; the fruit garden and nursery; and the botanical garden — have all been restored to their 18th-century appearance, using recent research and archaeological evidence as guidelines.

“The lower or kitchen garden remains as it was implemented in 1937, based on research at the time and its design is reflective of the Colonial Revival landscape movement,” says Dean Norton, director of horticulture

Washington included a modern greenhouse in the upper garden, according to curators.

Completed in 1789, the building housed his semi-tropical and tropical plants during winter months. In the spring, container plants were put out in the garden. Tall triple-hung windows allowed beneficial southern light, and could be opened to allow good air flow. A heating system with a stove room on the north side of the greenhouse attached to a series of flues that ran under the stone floor, heating the floor of the greenhouse.

Original gardens

The lower or kitchen garden was the first space created in 1760. It was a garden of necessity, benefiting survival and good health. For 254 years, vegetables, fruits and berries have been cultivated within those garden walls.

The upper garden began in 1763 as a fruit and nut garden but became a pleasure place when Washington began his new landscape plan. Pleasure gardens — plots of flowers were grown for beauty and not for use — were not that common in the 18th century. Even in Washington’s pleasure garden, flowers were only grown in borders that surrounded larger beds of edibles.

The botanical garden was Washington’s own experimental space. He fondly called this small space his little garden and kept detailed records as to what he planted and where, according to curators. The space was intended to try out different types of plants that might be “Virginia-proof,” or could survive the harsh conditions of both winter and the summer.

The area known as the fruit garden and nursery began as a failed attempt at a vineyard, according to curators. Today, fruit trees are planted in the arrangement that Washington recorded in his diaries. The nursery area was where plants that required more space were planted: grasses, vegetables and ornamentals.

Diary notes

At age 16, in his “Journal of my Journey over the Mountains” he wrote “… about 4 miles higher up the river we went through the most beautiful Groves of Sugar trees spent the best part of the Day admiring the Trees and the richness of the land.”

Washington loved nature and upon return from the Revolutionary War he decided to mimic nature by creating a naturalistic garden. He spent 18 months on the design. Once it was completed, he returned to his passion — farming — and let the gardeners he hired take care of day-to-day maintenance.

Through his letters and diary entries, Washington left a great deal of information about his plans for Mount Vernon Estate. And there are a few drawings, for example, the arrangement of greenhouse spaces and the ha-ha wall (a landscape barrier that keeps grazing animals from entering turf spaces) on the east lawn.

By Matthew Appleby
Thursday, 10 April 2014

London garden centre The Chelsea Gardener has bought Anthony de Grey Gardens, Trellises and Garden Lighting businesses.

On Wednesday, expert plant pathologist Margery Daughtrey will give two talks in Westchester on plant diseases that home gardeners and landscapers should be on the lookout for in 2014, including ones that affect white pines, boxwoods, roses and impatiens.

At 10 a.m., she will give a lecture titled “Flourishing Gardens vs. Plant Diseases and Pests” at the Scarsdale Library as part of the 2014 Home Gardening Lecture Series sponsored by the master gardeners of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester. Advance tickets cost $15, and walk-ins pay $18. For more information, visit http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/westchester/ or call 914-285-3590.

At 7:30 p.m., she will present a talk titled “Bees, Trees, and Berries: How global plant movement and change can affect our gardens” at the Chappaqua Library as part of the twice-yearly Rocky Hills Lecture Series. She is returning for an encore presentation after a very well-attended talk at the library in October.

In Chappaqua, she will be introduced by Scot Medbury, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Admission is free, and there will be light refreshments available before the lecture.

Daughtrey, who is based at Cornell’s Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead, has 35 years of experience as a plant pathologist and is known for her research on new ornamental plant diseases. She is particularly good at explaining complicated science in layman’s terms, without talking down to her audience.

One of the things she’ll be covering, especially in her Chappaqua talk, is the return of white pine blister rust in the Northeast, “after such heroic efforts have been made to control it in the past,” she says. “This disease alternates between currants and pine trees, in one of the world’s strangest life cycles. The fungus has apparently acquired the ability to attack previously resistant plants.”

Of particular interest for homeowners with extensive boxwood collections — they are so reliably deer resistant — will be her update on the new boxwood blight disease.

And she will have the latest on impatiens downy mildew and the rose rosette virus that has been devastating some large collections of roses. “I’ll describe some of the natural — or should I say unnatural? — history of that disease, and how to recognize it and deal with it.”

The Scarsdale Public Library is at 54 Olmsted Road. For more information, call 914-722-1300. The Chappaqua Library is at 195 S. Greeley Ave. For information, call 914-238-4779.

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If you are a busy person with a lawn and worry about water shortages — and the size of your water bill — this article is for you.

Lawns consume a lot of water and time, and the chemicals often used to “treat” them can be bad for the environment. Lawns themselves are also known as “green deserts,” as they do nothing to support wildlife.

But there is a better, and easier, way to landscape your yard: Replace your lawn with drought-tolerant natives and other Mediterranean zone plants that are adapted to summer-dry climates like ours. You might even qualify for a water district rebate. (Visit montereywaterinfo.org for details.)

But, you might ask, isn’t it difficult to remove a lawn? Won’t drought-tolerant plants be higher maintenance — and also brown and ugly in summer? And will I have to become a native plant geek to figure out what to plant?

Happily, it’s pretty easy to replace a lawn, and with a little planning, your drought-tolerant garden will offer year-round color and interest. You don’t have to become a native plant expert, and your new yard will take much less maintenance than a lawn.

Does this sound too good to be true? The city of Santa Monica’s Garden/Garden Project put it to the test. In 2004 (and again in 2013), the city installed landscaping in two similar gardens — a traditional lawn-based landscape and a sustainable, drought-tolerant native landscape. Then they tracked the costs and benefits over the years. In round figures, compared to the traditional garden, the sustainable garden uses about one-fifth of the water, takes a quarter of the maintenance and creates about three-fifths of the green waste.

How to lose your lawn

The easiest way to rid yourself of your pesky lawn is called sheet mulching. You can do it in a weekend. You lay double layers of overlapping newspaper, cardboard or builder’s paper over the entire lawn, wet it down to ensure good contact, and add three to four inches of mulch on top of that. Builder’s paper is a good choice. Available at large hardware stores, it is heavy kraft construction paper and comes in long, 3-foot-wide rolls. You can plant through the mulch immediately. For this method to succeed, you must deprive the lawn of all light so that it decomposes. To make sure that no light seeps in, you must remove a little bit of the lawn — cut back the sod six to eight inches from all walkways, and sheet-mulch this area, too.

Another way is to cut the turf to a depth of about six inches using a rented sod cutter and turn it root side up. You can pile the sod up to create one or more planting mounds, which add visual interest to a garden. Mounds are generally around a foot and a half to three feet high and can be (for example) oval, kidney, or teardrop shaped. Compact the mounds and add soil as needed to grade the sides to a smooth slope. Then add three to four inches of mulch, such as small sized redwood bark, over the entire area (including the mounds), and add plants.

For larger lawns, you can use a combination of these two methods. For Bermuda grass, however, you may have to resort to more drastic methods such as solarization, covering the lawn with black plastic sheeting until grass and seeds “cook.”

If you plan to replace your lawn with a patio, you’ll have to remove the sod and prepare the ground as you would for any patio project. In her Soquel garden, Lynda Haworth used widely spaced field stones with tough ground cover between, using Dymondia and creeping thyme. She piled up the sod to decompose. Sod is mostly soil and can’t be recycled at the county landfills, so it’s best if you can use it on-site.

What to plant

What to replace your lawn with can be a daunting question, but fortunately many local landscape designers and even some nurseries can provide a drought-tolerant planting plan for your garden at a reasonable cost. The most eco-friendly gardens use local native plants in the mix, so if that’s appealing to you, be sure to let the designer know. Plan in hand, you can then buy and install the plants with confidence, or pay for those services, too, depending on your budget.

When planting through the mulch, dig holes not much wider or deeper than the root ball. Loosen up the roots and plant so that the root crown (where root turns into stem) is at or slightly above grade (ground level) for good drainage. Fill around the plant thoroughly and firmly to ensure you don’t leave air holes. Keep the mulch a few inches away from the root crown to avoid problems with fungus. Water the plants in well, so the entire root area gets a good soaking.

If you have an interest in gardening, you can create your own planting plan. There are a lot of great books to help you, such as “California Native Plants for the Garden,” “Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates,” “The Western Garden Book” and (most pertinently!) “Reimagining the American Lawn.”

Group plants with similar needs for water and sun. Allow room for them to grow to their mature size. In their first year or two, drought-tolerant shrubs may stay quite small (while underground they are growing extensive roots). In the third and fourth years you’ll generally see more rapid growth. You can fill the spaces between young shrubs temporarily with faster-growing plants.

To mitigate the summer brown phase of many lovely spring bloomers and summer-deciduous shrubs, select some plants that bloom in summer and fall, as well as some evergreen shrubs.

Local nursery staffers as well as volunteers in groups such as the California Native Plant Society and Friends of the Arboretum can offer informed advice. Both organizations are holding their spring plant sales Saturday.

How to care for it

A well-designed drought-tolerant landscape will last years without a lot of attention. Avoid fertilizing and overwatering. Now and then, add more mulch, and pull weeds. You can leave seed heads on for interest and bird food, or deadhead to encourage more blooms. An annual pruning will keep the plants more attractive and healthy. Water infrequently but deeply. Avoid watering in the heat of day, to avoid problems with fungus.

A newly installed drought-tolerant landscape needs more frequent watering than a mature one. As a general rule, during the first year, water once a week in dry weather, and in the second year, once a month. By the third year your landscape may need no supplemental watering, depending on the plants you choose.

Before you know it, your garden will be alive with the sights and sounds of nature. You’ll be delighted — and all you wanted to do was save on your water bill.

Summer-blooming natives

Here are some planting ideas. These plant families feature summer bloomers that shine while your garden’s early bloomers slumber through summer.

Salvias: Ground cover (such as ‘Bee’s Bliss’) to mid-sized shrubs (such as Salvia clevelandii). Lavender to blue flowers from spring through summer, and wonderful scented foliage.

Monkeyflowers (Mimulus): Shrubby mid-sized perennials. Many cultivars with blooms from orange and salmon to rose-pink and maroon. Can bloom almost year-round in coastal gardens.

Buckwheats (Eriogonum): Very low to medium sized perennials. Rosy-red, pink, white, and yellow blooms are attractive into fall.

Penstemons: Small to medium sized perennials. Red, blue and lavender blooms.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): Medium-size perennials. White to salmon pink blooms.

Dudleyas and Sedums: Low growing succulents. Mainly yellow, some pink blooms.

California fuchsia (Epilobium canum): Llow to mid size mounding perennial. Scarlet blooms into October.

Saturday plant sales

What: Side-by-side plant sales held by the Santa Cruz County chapter of the California Native Plant Society, and the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum

What’s for sale: California native plants, as well as ones adapted to the Mediterranean climate

When: Saturday. Society members and members of Friends of the Arboretum have access 10 a.m. to noon. Public access noon to 4 p.m.

Where: The Eucalyptus Grove at the UCSC Arboretum, access near Empire Grade Road and Western Drive

Payment: Cash and checks accepted. Arboretum sale also accepts cards.

Details: For the CNPS sale, visit cruzcnps.org. For Arboretum sale, visit arboretum.ucsc.edu.

WEST CAPE MAY – Judi Bernard and Cindy Franklin worked side by side for years with complementary landscaping and garden center businesses.

Franklin, of Middle Township, started her garden center in 2001. Bernard, of Cape May Point, ran a landscaping business for more than 20 years.

Bernard bought plants from Franklin, who, in exchange, referred landscaping and mowing jobs back to Bernard.

In 2005 they decided to join businesses with Cape Island Home Gardens in West Cape May.

“We have a lot of avid gardeners here. I just did a talk for the Cape May Garden Club,” Bernard said. “And practically everyone there has bought plants here.”

The serene setting at Cape Island does not come by accident. Bernard and Franklin work hard each winter to create a pleasing environment for customers at the acre-large garden center. By early summer, the center will be one meticulously sculpted garden full of take-home potential for Cape May County’s landscapers and homeowners alike.

Bernard said they even play classical music because the plants seem to respond well to it.

The best way to illustrate how people might make creative use of the center’s many shrubs, flowers and decorations is to show them, Franklin said.

“We have a certain niche. We try to carry more native species,” Franklin said.

To that end, they offer more than 175 native plantings for people’s gardens or flower beds among the “10,123 plants” they advertise on their sandwich board that sits on Broadway. Most of the garden center’s plants are grown in nearby Cumberland County.

Store mascots Maggie and Piper add to the garden center’s welcoming atmosphere.

The business gets a lot of birders and butterfly fans who want to attract backyard wildlife, she said. She and Bernard are into birding as well and often stop what they are doing to admire a passing eagle or cooper’s hawk.

Landscaping and lawn maintenance is a growing industry in Cape May County. As its population gets older, fewer people are either interested in or able to maintain their yards themselves, Bernard said.

Landscaping is a male-dominated business, Bernard said.

“But I don’t find any problems with anyone. I’m on the Bobcat as much as anyone. I just moved a ton of stone this morning,” she said. “You have to treat your people with respect or you won’t be respected.”

Cape Island partnered this year with Dellas Agency in Cape May to landscape and maintain its rental properties.

“Our landscaping business is increasing at about 5 percent per year,” she said. “We get new contracts every year.”

The long winter has cut into the garden center’s pre-season work. In keeping with tradition, the shop opened on March 20, the first day of spring, but closed a few days later when a storm dumped 8 inches of snow on South Jersey.

“Anyone in this business is a month behind. That makes it harder,” Bernard said. “You bring in new products and you have to pay for them.”

The shop is open 10 months of the year through Christmas. Its inventory changes monthly with the seasons.

Bernard spends a lot of her time planting window boxes for patios, decks – and windows. These are especially popular for homeowners who do not have room for a flower garden.

Heidi Kates, of Middle Township, bought spring flowers to plant at the Queen Victoria Bed and Breakfast in Cape May.

Kates said she always tries to mix in some pink flowers for owner Anna Marie McMain’s favorite color.

“We usually stick with the same thing – the tried and true plants,” she said.

Contact Michael Miller:

609-272-7217

MMiller@pressofac.com

Susan Barton will present “Lessons from the Roadside: Sustainable Landscaping in the Backyard” on Saturday, April 19, from 10 a.m. to noon at the South Coastal Library, at 43 Kent Avenue in Bethany Beach.

Using the lessons learned by managing roadside vegetation along Delaware’s roadsides in the Enhancing Delaware Highways project for more than 10 years, the talk will suggest methods for incorporating sustainable landscape design and management into the home landscape. It will also cover other local projects, including the water management plantings in South Bethany.

Barton is an extension specialist and associate professor in the Plant Soil Sciences Department at the University of Delaware. She has worked closely for the past 12 years with DelDOT to research and implement new roadside vegetation management strategies. She has also worked with partners to develop the Plants for a Livable Delaware Program, designed to provide alternatives to known invasive plants species and to promote sustainable landscaping.

Barton teaches Plants Human Culture, Nursery Garden Center Management and Students of Our Environment and coordinates the Landscape Horticulture Internship. She also works closely with the nursery and landscape industry, writing newsletters, organizing short courses and conducting horticulture industry expos with the Delaware Nursery and Landscape Association.

Barton received the Nursery Extension Award in 1995 from the American Nursery Landscape Association and the Ratledge Award for service from the University of Delaware in 2007.

There will be a drawing for a $50 gift certificate from Lord’s Landscaping in Millville at the event.

The presentation is one of a series sponsored by the Delaware Botanic Gardens at Pepper Creek, whose mission is “to create a world-class, inspirational, educational, and sustainable public botanic garden in southern Delaware for the benefit and enjoyment of the public.” For more information, visit their website at delawaregardens.org.

The urban farming course at Madison High School isn’t just about playing in the garden.

To hear students tell it, it’s about being outside. It’s about escaping the monotony of a classroom. And educators say it’s also about learning skills teens can apply in the real world.

The class, which started this year, is part of a nationwide push to give students career and technical education skills. Across the country, CTE has become a buzzy acronym meant to signal innovation and connections to industries.

But sometimes, courses like urban farming can simply be a way of keeping kids engaged by letting them get their hands dirty.

“I just think it really helps students’ self-esteem and gives them a lot of worth,” said Susan Wiencke, the urban farming and sustainable agriculture teacher at Madison High School. “They can do something. They have a skill that means something.”  

Career and technical education

Armed with a tool belt filled with Sharpies, pencils, pruners and a weeding knife, Wiencke led her classes outside this week to take advantage of 63-degree weather.

Throughout the afternoon, students worked on gathering kale and cutting up compost. They watered plants, including kale, onions, peas, and leeks in the 19 raised beds they helped create and plant.

Near the garden’s chain-link fence, Shatoya Allen worked on the bed she planted in the fall. Dressed in jean shorts and a grey crocheted sweater, Allen pointed out the peas and the three different kinds of kale she helped plant.

“It’s a lot of work,” she said, “but I think it’s worth it.”

Later, the 17-year-old asked whether she would be able to make kale chips to share with her classmates. She learned the recipe in the farming class.

Wiencke’s class joins about 108 other agriculture career programs from the state, but it also stands out.

Typically, the state-approved agricultural program classes are in rural areas. But more and more suburban and urban districts including Portland, North Clackamas, Hillsboro and Sherwood have started their own courses.

Reynold Gardner, the agriculture and natural resource education specialist for the Oregon Department of Education, said he’s eager to see more urban districts taking on the subject.

“It’s providing students the connections with their food and an understanding of the nutritional and entrepreneurial aspects of the agriculture industry,” he said.

In Wiencke’s class, the entrepreneurial skills are as important as the gardening aspect. By the end of the year, the school will be conducting its own plant sale.

The proceeds will help fund the program, which is partly paid for by about $2,000 in career and technical education grants from the federal government.

Connections to food

Wiencke, who volunteered as the school’s garden coordinator for three years, ran a gardening and landscaping business called Black-Eyed Susan for six years before selling it in 2012. She began teaching this year, taking on the sustainable agriculture class and piloting the urban farming course.

With her glasses and edgy haircut, Wiencke admits she can fit the Portlandia stereotype that may accompany a term like “urban farming.”

But she says students in her program don’t necessarily fit that image.

About two-thirds of Madison students are in families with incomes low enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

The school is also in an area that has fewer options for fresh food. Students have easier access to chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell.

“A lot of students here don’t live in close proximity to a big grocery store where they can buy good produce at cheap prices,” Wiencke said. “Many of their parents don’t shop at New Seasons.”

Wiencke said she doesn’t expect to cultivate master gardeners.

Instead, she takes satisfaction hearing of students who use recipes they learned in class or planting gardens at home. A student once took her by surprise when he spouted out information about the three nutrients that make up fertilizer during a field trip.

They may not want to grow up to follow in her footsteps, but she likes to know they’re learning.

— Nicole Dungca
Follow @ndungca

A landscaper was seriously injured Wednesday morning in Palm Beach Gardens after he was struck by a 10-foot tree that was being lowered into a hole for planting, Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Keith Bryer said.

The man, believed to be in his mid-20s, was taken by helicopter to St. Mary’s Medical Center in serious condition.

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Bryer said the man was standing in the hole as the tree was being lowered by a lift. The strap gave way and the tree dropped around 10 to 15 feet before the root ball struck the landscaper, Bryer said.

Fire rescue workers responded to the call at 10:40 a.m. and had to dig the man out of the hole, Bryer said.