The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden is one of two formal gardens at the White House. The other is the Rose Garden.

 

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The University of Minnesota Extension, Anoka County Master Gardener program is sponsoring the 2012 Home Landscaping and Garden Fair Saturday, April 14, 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the Bunker Hills Activities Center, 550 Bunker Lake Blvd. N.W., Andover.

The public is invited to attend this one-day horticulture/gardening event.

The content of the classes includes university-based research and recommended best practices for flower, vegetable and native gardening, trees and shrub care, plus disease and pest control.

There is an exhibitor fair featuring a variety of artists, local garden centers and landscape companies and others who will be selling garden products, plants, books, garden art, jewelry and more.

There will be two guest speakers this year.

Attendees will learn from University of Minnesota professor Dr. Jeff Gilman as he unravels the myths and truths about organic gardening based on his book, “The Truth About Organic Gardening.”

Gardeners tend to assume that any organic product is automatically safe for humans and beneficial to the environment — and in most cases this is true, according to Gilman.

The problem is that it is not always true and the exceptions to the rule can pose a significant threat to human health, Gilman said.

All gardening products and practices — organic and synthetic — need to be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they are safe and whether they accomplish the task for which they are intended, he said.

Preventing Lyme Disease will be presented by Dr. Elizabeth Maloney, who will focus on the virus that is spread by black legged ticks (also known as deer ticks) and management strategies for people, pet and property protection.

Maloney is a family physician and president of Partnership for Healing and Health, Ltd.

She develops accredited CME programs on Lyme disease for physicians and other health professionals, as well as Lyme disease training programs for private organizations and government agencies.

Master Gardeners who specialize in specific horticultural areas will teach the other classes that include, but are not limited to: Gardens of the Night; Woodland Gardens; Healthy Lawns: Lush Lawn Carpets vs. Low-Maintenance Rugs; Eat Your Weeds?…What? and more.

Creative garden craft classes will also be offered including a Build a Nesting Platform for Insect-feeding Birds and Cake Decorating with Florals.

All supplies will be provided and participants will take home completed projects.

Registration to be part of this event is required (space is limited).

The early registration fee is $25 per person, $45 for two. Early registrations close April 6, 4:30 p.m.

The late registration/walk-in fee after that date is $30 per person as long as space permits.

A material fee will be added to the optional craft classes. Box lunches can be pre-ordered, or people can bring bag lunches.

For more information, go to www.extension.umn.edu/county/anoka or call 763-755-1280.

If gardening is important in your life, flower and garden shows should be on your calendar. Garden shows entertain, educate and inspire gardeners and homeowners. They whet our gardening appetites and tantalize us with new plants and products.

The shows also offer access to an amazing pool of knowledge. Professionals and specialists are available to answer your questions and consider your problems. These people, who work in garden centers, nurseries and landscape firms, won’t have that kind of time once gardening weather arrives.

Last weekend, 12,000 people attended Plantasia at the Hamburg Fairgrounds, and many others went to GardenScape in Rochester. Here is some feedback from those shows and the Philadelphia show, which I attended:

GardenScape in Rochester: This show (March 15-18) had a few twists: a Wegmans Tasting Garden, early-bird tours for $25 at 7 a.m. (guided by Master Gardeners) and programs on its Main Stage.

Crowds loved the daily “Designers’ Challenge,” in which three designers drew plans for challenging landscapes. It was an impressive glimpse into the skills and visions of landscape designers and how differently each one looks at the same problem. Audiences also flocked to floral design demonstrations.

GardenScape had more than 100 vendors (nearly all specifically garden/ landscape-themed) and interesting landscape displays, most notably from the Rochester Parks Department and Twin Oaks Landscape with Oriental Garden Supply.

In its 21st year, the show is produced by the GardenScape Professionals Association.

Plantasia, WNY’s Flower and Landscape Show: I am a member of the WNY Nursery Landscape Association and am associated with many of the vendors,

individuals and designers. But I can still share some comparisons and observations.

The show has been held for 11 years, in Hamburg since 2004. This year it featured 175 vendors and 15,000 square feet of gardens or landscapes.

This season the strongest features of the show, from my viewpoint, were the landscape and garden displays — far surpassing prior efforts. While I understand that part of a landscaper’s living comes from “hardscape” sales (walks, walls, pergolas, water features and entertainment areas), in some years the show featured more rocks and pavers than plants.

But no more. Every display showed well chosen flowering shrubs, trees, perennials (even roses) and annuals — the latter grown by McKinley High School students. What a joy to see flowering redbuds, Chionanthus (Fringe tree), serviceberries, rhododendrons and Japanese pieris, among the bulbs and other flowers.

I hope that viewers know that many plants in the show, seen blooming together, will never see each other’s flowering face in a real garden. The plants are “forced” for these shows — induced to flower prematurely.

The landscape or garden displays are created by 14 companies: Adams Nurseries, Beyond the Basics, Chevalier Outdoor Living, the Cutting Edge Complete Landscaping, Degroff Outdoor Structures, Landscape-Tec, Menne Nursery and Garden Artistry, A Growing Business, Dore Landscape Associates, The English Gardeners, Innovative Landscapes, McKinley Continuing Education, Murray Brothers Nurseries and Restorff’s Landscape Service.

The Philadelphia Flower Show: The grand dame of them all, the Philly show is the oldest in the country and the largest indoor flower show in the world. All gardeners should see it sometime.

The Pennsylvania Horticulture Society runs it, with deep roots and great wealth behind it, and a lot of the show is about garden club competitions and floral demos. One tours vast aisles showing large container designs, front door scenes, miniature art made from flower parts, jewelry made from plants, and judged demos of houseplants, tropicals, succulents and terrariums, as well as perennials. It’s a flower show first, with an enormous, wonderful (exhausting) vendor area where you can find every possible kind of container, garden art, tool or product, plus garden-themed jewelry and clothing.

The display gardens are built around a theme each year (Italy, April in Paris, Hawaii) and are avant-garde, creative, whimsical and huge, sparking our imaginations. The entrance usually makes visitors gasp.

But this year I didn’t gasp so much. Honestly, I enjoyed Plantasia first and Rochester second, more than Philadelphia. The Hawaii theme in Philly made for spectacular mountains of orchids and lush tropical scenes — a volcano and giant waterwall with light show no less. But except for limited native plants and woodland displays, there were few garden visions, landscapes or yard and patio scenes that a Northeast gardener could apply back home.

Plantasia was lush with residential scale landscapes, gardens and outdoor living areas one could photograph and decide, “We could do that, Honey!”

In your lifetime, be sure to see the Philadelphia Flower Show or other huge shows in this country or England (an entirely other dimension). But every year, see our own shows where the take-home inspiration is useful and the learning is terrific.

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Sally Cunningham is a garden writer, lecturer and consultant.

Westporter Stacy Bass has what many of us might call “a good eye” for design — both indoors and out.

During the last several years, this noted fine-art and magazine photographer has built a coterie of followers with her keen sensitivity for architecture and the landscape that surrounds it.

Now, Bass has finally realized “a dream,” focusing her camera lens on 18 of the region’s most stunning private properties — and the result is “In the Garden” (Melcher, $50). The 224-page hardcover coffee-table book, which will be debuted at public book signings later this month and at bookstores in May, is divided into 18 chapters — each featuring one garden accompanied by an essay from New York journalist Suzanne Gannon. A variety of garden types — from untamed meadows to formal English-style designs — are included. The book is dedicated to her husband, Howard Bass, and her four children.

“Happy and proud” is how Bass, laughing, describes her current state. “The book represents the high points of my photography … and it always makes me smile” when eyeing a copy. “Just as an object, I love that I made this beautiful thing,” she said.

All the gardens are in Connecticut, including ones in Fairfield, Westport and Greenwich. Each was selected by Bass because they are among the favorite gardens that she previously photographed.

Born in New York and raised in Westport, Bass gravitated to photography in college, graduating with a political science/photojournalism degree from Barnard College at Columbia University. After graduation, she attended the Maine Photographic Workshops, studying with such masters Jay Maisel, Joe Baraban and William Albert Allard.

Bass said she was “emboldened by the experience,” and despite knowing that making a living in photography is no easy task, she embraced the field with a passion, presenting her first solo exhibition in 1988.

But the realities of life intruded, and Bass headed for New York University’s School of Law, focusing on copyright, trademark and art law — and subsequently used her legal training to become vice president of Savoy Pictures Entertainment, a publicly traded motion picture and television company (working there until the company was purchased by Barry Diller’s USA Networks).

In 2004, when her youngest child was entering kindergarten, Bass said she realized “it was time to reinvigorate my passion for photography and perhaps this time transform that passion into a viable and thriving career.”

It was purely by luck that Bass would come to find her niche in garden photography.

In the introduction to her book, Bass writes:

“A link to my newly launched website found its way to the in-box of a (most) talented art director, Amy Vischio, and in time, she offered me an assignment — to photograph the landscape and gardens at a beautiful and stately home, high on a hill, overlooking the Long Island Sound.”

The experience left her “transfixed and wanting more.”

From the get-go, Bass said she has been fascinated with capturing light, color and the “essence of a place or moment” in each photo she takes, shooting almost entirely with natural light, often shortly after sunrise.

In this way, she attempts to capture a distinctly “lit-from-within” aesthetic.

Bass said she is excited about going on tour with the book, which she hopes will appeal to photography buffs, interior/exterior designers, landscape designers and garden historians.

“And let’s hope gardeners, too, will be inspired by it,” she said, laughing.

In the book material, New Yorker Suzanne Gannon is described as an award-winning journalist who covers interior design and gardens, culture, food, wine, fashion, antiques and luxury, and soft-adventure travel. Her work has appeared in such publications as Town Country, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Art Antiques, The Wall Street Journal, Interior Design, AtHome, Coastal Living, Delta Sky/NWA World Traveler, Preservation and Newsday. She has been a guest on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” and has worked as a stringer for McClatchy-Tribune News Service. This is her first book.

A listing of Bass’ book signing and speaking events is posted on her website: www.stacybassphotography.com.

Some of her public events:

New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, N.Y., 20th Anniversary Antique Garden Furniture Show Sale, Saturday, April 28, noon to 2 p.m.

Westport Public Library, 20 Jesup Road, Sunday, April 29, 2 p.m.

New Canaan Beautification League, New Canaan Library, 151 Main St., Wednesday, May 2, 9 a.m.

Archivia Books, 993 Lexington Avenue, N.Y., with reception, Thursday, May 3, 6 to 8 p.m.

Dovecote, 56 Post Road East, Westport, with reception, Wednesday, May 9, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Garden Education Center of Greenwich, 130 Bible Street, Cos Cob, Tuesday, May 15, 10 a.m.

pasboros@ctpost.com; 203-330-6284; http://twitter.com/PhyllisASBoros

29 March 2012
Last updated at 09:35 ET

Christopher Barnes was the leader of the gang

A gang of men who “fleeced” two vulnerable people from Essex out of £150,000 for gardening work have been jailed.

The six men, trading as Chris Landscaping Limited, charged a woman from Leigh-on-Sea, now 90, £44,000 for minor gardening work.

They also collected cheques for more than £113,000 from a 74-year-old disabled man, police said.

The group were sentenced at Basildon Crown Court on Wednesday.

The men, four of whom are from Tilbury, posed as landscape gardeners to trick their victims into paying for work they had not completed or that was of a poor standard, Essex police said.

Christopher Barnes, 35, of Jay Gardens in Chislehurst, Kent, was the leader of the gang who would befriend his victims over a number of months, taking his two young children to visit them.

Short garden path

Barnes would then turn up unannounced and demand money for work he had not been asked to carry out, police said.

The group targeted their two victims over a five-year period, at one point charging the 90-year-old woman £15,000 for a short garden path.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The fact people have preyed on these people over a long period of time, persistently, is despicable”

End Quote
Det Con Mike Buckingham
Essex Police

They also charged the 74-year-old man thousands of pounds for staining his fence and cutting his hedge, the court was told.

Barnes used the money to lead a “luxurious lifestyle” police said, living in a house with stables, enjoying a fleet of four cars and frequently travelling on holiday to Florida.

Police launched an investigation after a neighbour of one of the gang’s victims raised concerns over the amount of money paid to the men.

The men were found by tracking down cheques paid into their bank accounts.

Sentencing them Judge Owen Davis said they had “fleeced them and when one was sucked dry, they moved on to the next”.

‘Despicable’ crime

Barnes was jailed for five years and nine months for deception and fraud.

Daniel Chuter, 48, of Feenan Highway Tilbury, was sentenced to four years in jail for deception and fraud.

Allen Logan, 51, of Thackeray Avenue, Tilbury, was jailed for four years and six months for fraud.

William Brazil, 48, of Sullivan Road, Tilbury, was jailed for nine months for deception.

Christopher Chuter, 56, of Jay Gardens, Chislehurst, Kent, was jailed for six weeks for money laundering, suspended for two years.

Danny Palmer, 32, of Stephenson Avenue, Tilbury, was jailed for four months for money laundering, suspended for two years.

Det Con Mike Buckingham, speaking after the sentencing, said the men had targeted their victims because they had very few friends and family and were vulnerable.

“The fact people have preyed on these people over a long period of time, persistently, is despicable,” he said.

CLEANING PRODUCTS IN CONCENTRATED FORM /pp S.C. Johnson is now offering some of its most popular cleaning products in concentrated form./pp The company recently introduced 2.9-ounce bottles of Windex, Fantastik, Pledge, Scrubbing Bubbles and Shout Carpet concentrates. A bottle of concentrate is mixed with water to fill a trigger spray bottle./pp The bottles use 79 percent less plastic than a standard bottle, and the smaller amounts of liquid require less fuel to transport, the company says./pp The concentrates are available only online at www.scjgreenchoices.com. You can buy a single bottle of concentrate for $2.50, a trigger bottle for 50 cents or a starter kit for $5, containing two bottles of one type of concentrate and a trigger bottle. Shipping is $3./pp QA: NEW PLUMBING VALVES ADVISABLE/pp Q: I live in a condominium that’s about 40 years old. A plumber was repairing something the other day, saw that the main water valve had some corrosion and said he thought it should be replaced. Also, he discovered the water pressure was about 85. He said anything above 80 can damage the pipes, so we should get a water-pressure valve installed. Both of the repairs are about $700. Is it worth spending the money?/pp A: Yes, Wadsworth, Ohio, plumber Cathy Geary said, but with a couple of caveats./pp Geary said older-style main valves can sometimes continue to work with some corrosion, but you’re taking a chance. Should a pipe leak or burst, you might not be able to shut off your main water supply./pp A water-pressure valve is also important, because water pressure that high will wear out your fixtures, she said. Water pressure of 50 to 55 pounds per square inch is average, she said, and fixtures aren’t made to handle pressure higher than 70 psi./pp However, Geary wondered why your condo complex doesn’t have a main water-pressure valve for the whole complex. You might want to check whether it does, and if so, suggest it might not be working properly./pp She also thought your estimate looked high and suggested you get quotes from other plumbers./pp ON THE SHELF: BOOK FOCUSES ON RAIN GARDENS/pp As the cost of sewage treatment rises, reducing stormwater runoff becomes a more pressing issue./pp One of the most attractive ways to address the problem is a rain garden, a landscaping feature that collects runoff and helps to clean the water naturally./pp Horticulturist Lynn M. Steiner and hydrology scientist Robert W. Domm introduce readers to this form of landscaping in “Rain Gardens: Sustainable Landscaping for a Beautiful Yard and Healthy World.” They explain the benefits, offer instructions and tips on installing a garden and help readers choose the right plants and keep their gardens looking their best./pp Along the way, they offer a little education about ecological issues, teaching readers ways to avoid polluting water, solve drainage problems and capture and reuse the water that falls in the form of precipitation./pp “Rain Gardens” is published by Voyageur Press and sells for $24.99 in softcover./pp Have a question about home maintenance, decorating or gardening? Akron Beacon Journal home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge will find answers for the queries that are chosen to appear in the paper. To submit a question, call her at 330-996-3756, or send email to mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. Be sure to include your full name, your town and your phone number or email address.

INSLA

Liesl van der Walt keeps her hand on the organic garden at Babylonstoren

Heart-shaped prickly pears, a chamomile lawn, a meditation garden with a secret and a kooigoed recliner – these are just a few of the places in my latest discovery, the garden at Babylonstoren.

After walking around with head gardener Liesl van der Walt, I felt like a little girl who had come across a secret garden.

It’s a large garden, all 300 varieties of plants, trees and flowers are edible, and it’s beautiful. But mostly, it’s full of surprises.

There’s a small apple tree grown from a cutting from the tree under which Sir Isaac Newton purportedly sat when an apple fell on his head, and the notion of gravity came to him.

“We love trees, their history and their stories,” says Van der Walt.

There’s also a tree redolent with persimmons with a giant mosaic below it; 49 pillars have scented roses climbing on them; guava trees over 80 years old.

You’re walking through a food garden, practical, yes, but also beautiful – the way the lettuces are planted, the trees are pruned, the beds laid out.

There are avenues of guava trees, carob trees and olives, a citrus orchard; there are blocks of ripe aubergines and green peppers, hedges of quinces. Sweet potatoes make a lush groundcover next to neighbouring rosemary, growing below the Frantoio olives.

There are walled gardens, hedged gardens and open lawns, a garden for the birds and the bees filled with millet, sunflowers and Jerusalem artichokes.

“While it’s important to feed our body, we must also feed the mind and soul,” says Van der Walt.

The garden, which is open to the public, is part of the Babylonstoren farm near Paarl, a formal garden inspired by the original Company Gardens which were planted by Jan van Riebeek to supply fresh produce to passing ships.

It was designed by Patrice Taravella from France and, despite its formal structure, it’s surprisingly creative, with the wild living happily alongside the pruned.

Van der Walt first became involved when invited to help with the indigenous fragrance garden, drawing on her 20 years experience working at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

“It’s been an interesting growth for me, growing food plants. And combining that with a number of food plants from the veld (such as sour figs),” she says.

Everything in the garden must have a use – culinary, medicinal or for fragrance – and it’s enlightening to see how much can be grown in small spaces.

“I’m fascinated by diversity – if we grow pumpkins, we grow as many varieties a possible,” she says. So, for example, there are six different prickly pears in the labyrinth; different granadillas (including a bananadilla and guavadilla); 13 kinds of figs. The citrus block includes sweet oranges, kumquats, navels, the Cape rough lemon, and limes.

Fresh produce is harvested daily and used in the restaurants on the farm. “The menu is dictated by what I grow, and there’s a strong bond between me and the chef,” says Van der Walt. What comes from the garden is used creatively in the kitchen. For example, the Kei Apples are on the dessert menu, pears decorate the table and the flowers of the spring onion are sprinkled on the scrambled eggs.

The eggs, too, come from the garden’s chickens, which also clean the straw bales of wheat seeds before they’re used for mulch, so you don’t get sprouting wheat seeds, and provide manure for the compost.

The waste from the kitchen is fed to the compost, which is used for the vegetables, which come back to the kitchen. Gravity feeds water into waterways from the stream into the garden.

The garden is organic, requiring hands-on attention so that problems, such as an insect infestation, can be addressed quickly.

The farm dates back to the 1690s, and the garden was established on the oldest cultivated part of the farm, below the homestead and along the natural river. The dam was enlarged, topsoil brought in and the hard landscaping done in 2007.

The garden is only three years old and this is its third summer, and for many fruit trees it’s their first crop. The trees are grown in the traditional European way, carefully trellised and pruned, with fruit forming next to the main stem.

Van der Walt spent time in France with Taravella learning the old intensive ways of farming.

“I’m getting to know the microclimate and plants, and learning all the time,” says Van der Walt. Berries have been a new venture for her, “and it’s a wonderful new world”.

Herbs abound, and are collected along with flowering plants and made into Tussy-Mussies (little bouquets), sold at the shop. And, of course, there are many varieties of each herb.

The indigenous fragrance garden is a treat, the three ponds are for trout and tilapia.

There is so much to see here, so many layers, and it’s worth taking a tour.

It may be a garden for food, but it is foremost a garden, bringing joy and inspiration, says Van der Walt.

And the secret of the meditation garden? The mulberry trees – the secret the East kept from the West.

l The garden is open Wednesday to Sunday, with guided tours at 10am. Entrance is R10.

GRAND BLANC TOWNSHIP, MI – Landscaping, new flooring and a better foundation are all part of future renovations for the Historic Perry McGrath Home in Grand Blanc Township.

By next month, officials hope to have structural, electrical and plumbing upgrades completed on the home, said Grand Blanc Township Supervisor Micki Hoffman. Recent renovations at the home, 5078 Perry Road, also include the creation of two bathrooms.

“Our ultimate purpose (for the house) is for … meeting place for small groups and education for small kids,” Hoffman said. “We’re doing it piece by piece so we can afford it.”

The historic home, built around 1825, was purchased by the township in 2006, saved from demolition and slated for preservation. The house is thought to be the second settlement in the Grand Blanc area.

Since then, a lot of work has been put into the 2,645-square-foot house, including roof work and the removal of lead paint, but Hoffman said there are still several years worth of work to be done on the home before it’s completely finished.

The second floor of the building will not be open to the public any time in the near future, but the goal is to have the lower level public-ready within the next two years, she said.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 28, an Arbor Day event is planned in which the public can tour the home, learn the history of the property and the family that lived there, look through a display of artifacts found there and witness the tradition of planting a tree.

Ginny Knag, Grand Blanc Historic District Commission president, said she is proud of all the improvements done to the house so far.

“We’ve made a huge amount of progress. It actually looks like a home. It looks like it’s cared for. … It was just kind of shabby looking,” Knag said. “We’re getting really close but we’re not there yet.”

Landscaping of the 20 acres around the house will soon be the next target for a makeover. The plan includes vegetable gardens, a variety of plants and an area for weddings or other events. The first phase of the landscaping will be a butterfly garden.

With the help of a $500 grant sought from from Keep Genesee County Beautiful, Hoffman hopes to see the butterfly garden work begin within the next month. In the next three years, she hopes to see all the landscaping plans completed.

“This is a place that people can come … paint, sit down and read a book and just be in nature,” Hoffman said.

Knag said the commission members want to incorporate plants, shrubs and vegetables that would have been found on the property in the early years, as well as have some new ones.

All the renovations done on the house are important for the sake of preserving the past, Knag said.

“It’s important because it’s part of our earliest history. And there’s very little of our early history left. It’s important to save a little bit of the old to move into the future,” she said.

View full sizeProposed Phase I for the landscaping project at the Historic McGrath Perry Home in Grand Blanc Township.

Renee Stambaugh, owner of Native Plant Consulting and Native Gardens Nursery, handed growing tips of a vine called Smilax, a native vine commonly known as greenbriar, to a few people in a crowd of about 50 as they walked path in Washington Oaks Gardens State Park on Saturday.

“Eat the tip,” she instructed the lucky few.

Although skeptical, they nibbled on the greenery.

“It tastes like asparagus, doesn’t it?” she said.

One person nodded. “It tastes green,” said another, but he kept on eating.

The occasion was a special “walk and talk” program, “Wake Up and Plant the Natives,” about how to use native plants in the home landscape.

“Smilax is a valuable native vine,” Stambaugh said. “Some have thorns, others don’t. Train it to grow somewhere in your landscape. You shouldn’t have to buy it, it will probably show up in your yard.”

Stambaugh said she had three purposes for conducting the program.

“I want to educate others about native plants, make these plants available to you and teach others to do what I do,” she said. “Please share this information, tell people there are ways to get native plants, particularly to save water. I would like to give you permission to turn off your irrigation system. We want to free our yards from life support.”

Landscaping with Florida native plants offers a number of benefits in addition to saving water according to Stambaugh. Natives that have evolved in North Florida are hardy, require no special water, are less vulnerable to pests and the vagaries of Florida weather. She pointed to the State tree, the Sabal or Cabbage palm as an example.

“Three Sabal palms in a landscape will shade your roof from the west side,” Stambaugh said. “They will not blow down in hurricanes, they are salt tolerant, they will not freeze back and you do not need to water them. Why are we bringing in palms from Madagascar and every other country and then watching them die after a hard winter.”

Florida native plants are those plants that existed in Florida prior to the coming of Europeans, before 1513. For those who wanted to use them in their landscaping, however, acquiring native plants was difficult in the past.

“You have to be careful when buying native plants,” Stambaugh said. “You may go to a nursery, ask them where the native plants are and they will point you to a group of plants. However, they didn’t tell you to which county they are native.”

During the walk, Stambaugh stopped to discuss a number of Florida natives in Washington Oaks Gardens, from the larger trees of the canopy to ground cover and how natives can benefit the home landscape, but must also fit the landscape.

“A red cedar tree gets 40-feet wide, ” she said. “If you don’t have a 40-foot landscape, don’t get a red cedar. You can limb it up (cut the lower limbs), but that’s not what it’s meant to do. It’s in the bottom two feet in which the St. Augustine hairstreak butterfly exists. So everyone who cuts out those lower limbs has eradicated the habitat for that butterfly.”

By the same token, she suggested that St. Augustinegrass may not be the best choice for a landscape.

“St. Augustinegrass is happy at four feet tall; it doesn’t tolerate being four inches tall very well and never will, ” Stambaugh said.

“Grass does not grow in the shade no matter how many sod people tell you there are three types of St. Augustinegrass and one type grows well in the shade.”

She recommended a couple of alternative native groundcovers, all of which flower as well.

“Sunshine mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa) is a hardy and beautiful ground cover with pink flowers,” Stambaugh said. “One plant will cover a 20-foot diameter area. You can mow it, but why would you? You’d cut off the flowers. Don’t irrigate it, if you water it twice a week, you’ll kill it. Other good native ground covers are dune sunflower and Gaillardia (Indian Blanket). They all like hot dry areas and are salt tolerant.”

Carol Giles of Palm Coast was enthusiastic about the program.

“We’ve been to Washington Oaks before, it’s a lovely spot,” Giles said.

“We came here to one of the lectures before. It was very good. She’s fantastic.”

Stambaugh recommended “Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants” by Gil Nelson as one of the best books on native landscaping in Florida.

For more information of using Florida natives in landscaping go to Stambaugh’s web site at nativeplantconsulting.com.