Gone are the days of the superficial landscape. Modern gardens must provide much more than aesthetic value. Gardens also must improve our environment by filtering water, providing habitat for native fauna and absorbing greenhouse gases.

Mark Richardson, the horticulture director of the New England Wild Flower Society, gave a talk on “Redefining the American Landscape” on Nov. 4 at Bemis Hall. The Lincoln Garden Club and Greening Lincoln co-sponsored the lecture, which was open to the public and attended by about 60 people.

Richardson focused on the new directions for public, private, and commercial gardeners. Like the LEED certification for new buildings, The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) certifies landscapes that meet specific environmental standards.

Formal gardens and elaborate greenhouses, like those at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, are beautiful to visit but they are “water and energy hogs,”according to Richardson.  He contrasted Longwood with the Swarthmore College campus which has many conservation elements.  Swarthmore’s new building project earned gold LEED certification and the landscaping earned SITES awards. 

SITES creates guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable landscape design, construction, and maintenance practices. This new certification encourages elements such as permeable pavements and reflective surfacing to contribute to improved storm water management and reduction of heat island effect.  Native plantings and rain gardens reduce the need for water, fertilizer, and chemical treatments.  Vegetation on “green roofs” reduce run-off and lower heat and cooling costs.

 For home gardeners, Landscape for Life, based on the SITES principles, fosters eco-friendly landscape practices for small gardens as well as large private and public projects. The areas of focus include:

 Hydrology – Design a site to capture and use rainwater optimally

 Soils – Preserve or restore healthy soil to maximize water retention and healthy plants

 Vegetation – Use native plants; Remove invasive plants as much as possible; Position plantings to reduce heat islands and maximize storm water management

 Materials – Reduce, reuse, and recycle; Use certified woods and purchase local materials; Consider human health and environmental impact when selecting materials

  Human health and well being – Provide spaces for mental restoration, social interaction, and physical activity

For further information on these initiatives and on the New England Wildflower Society, visit these web sites:  www.sustainablesites.org;  www.landscapeforlife.org; www.newenglandwild.org.

 

 

The Lincoln Garden Club promotes sustainable gardening and members have written a series of sustainable gardening tips.  The articles are designed to demystify the process of developing sustainable gardening practices. Look for these articles in The Lincoln Journal, on the Garden Club website (www.LincolnGardenClub.org), and in the Sustainable Landscaping section of the Greening Lincoln website (www.GreeningLincoln.org.)

 

Malbis gardener Robin Sapin has visited various tropical locales and spent hours recalling fondly the good feelings of inviting lushness and vivid images she relished in those gardens.

Not content with happy reminiscences, however, Robin took note of the plant groupings and designed and labored to recreate a tropical palm garden to accent the newly installed pool in her backyard. She has effectively taken her vacation home with her and made it into a permanent place of peace and relaxation for herself and husband David.

“I have a real passion for landscaping,” Robin shares. “My parents taught me how to care for our yard growing up, and I have extended that early knowledge at each home we have lived in over the years. We moved a lot and I usually tore out the existing plants and designed and installed my own garden to reflect my likes.”

This Northfield, Ohio native, along with her businessman husband visited the Fairhope area several years ago, and when their kids finished high school, joined so many others and relocated into our beautiful area.

The Sapins and their four adopted dogs left the cold Ohio climate, with its limited gardening choices, and moved into their new home near Malbis two-and-a-half years ago.

“I am basically a self-taught gardener,” Robin says. “I am so grateful to now live in the South. I laid out my garden hose to form beds in the bare front yard, had 21 truckloads of soil hauled in, rented a tiller and went to work. I did the front yard first and indulged my love of the amazing colors of flowering plants that can be grown here year round.”

Her welcoming front yard is evidence of that love with camellias accenting her front door, colorful Encore azalea varieties tucked invitingly in spots and knockout roses budding in hues of pink and red. Large crepe myrtles and palm specimens command attention near the street.

“My husband travels a lot in his work,” Robin shares. “Shortly after we moved here, he left on a three-week extended trip. While he was gone, I worked in the front yard from 6 a.m. until dark every day, getting the beds ready and planting. When he pulled into the driveway after those three weeks, the front yard was done and he was quite pleased to see it.”

Her neighbors tease that maybe she got carried away —”There’s no grass left,” they tell her laughingly.

Robin says she loves enjoying flowers year round in Baldwin County. This certainly wasn’t the case in Ohio, where often, even in July, “you would have to go in and put on a jacket to do any gardening, and in fall and winter, forget growing anything.”

With the front yard completed, Robin set to work creating her tropical paradise in the backyard around the inviting focal point, her new swimming pool.

“This backyard was bare-a blank canvas,” Robin explains. “A canvas ready for decorating. I took a couple of months to plan and design the tropical oasis I envisioned.”

She placed large, mature palms in first — each weighing between 900 and 1000 pounds — with sturdy men and a fork lift. She chose cold-hardy varieties, like triple and double Pindo palms, Washingtonians, Sables and Sago palms to include the variation in texture and height that she so loves.

The result is impressive: a vista of tropical tranquility including more than 30 palms that bespeaks of the luscious paradise Robin has dreamed of.

She has included new favorites around and under the palms — Encore azaleas, double knockout roses, the autumn-hued orange and red crotons and the tropical touch of hibiscus. But it is the majestic palms that steal the show.

“I love my palms, and I love my flowering plants that give me color all year — the camellias, the roses, the azaleas and hibiscus,” Robin shares. “I was never able to enjoy such beauty in Ohio.”

In the side yard garden, Robin indulges her new successful passion of growing and sharing citrus. She grows Meyer lemons, satsumas, two orange varieties and Key limes and is already sharing the bounty with grateful neighbors.

“One of my neighbors,” she explains, “is a professional baker, and when I brought him some of my Meyer lemons, he made me a lemon meringue pie on the spot.”

And so, among a colorful, citrusy, palm-filled garden paradise, Robin Sapin joins the ranks of gardeners all over coastal Alabama who, through hard work and a love for the birds and breezes of nature, have nurtured their plants and grown closer to God in our beloved Baldwin County.

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All about palms

People have been fascinated by palms for centuries-they seem to be magical hallmarks of graceful, relaxed living. Even during the times of early colonization, explorers would return home with exotic palms as gifts for their sponsoring governments or royalty.

The palms’ broad variety — from short to tall, their thin to bulging-in-the-middle trunks, their round or long, feathery leaves and shows of color in varying hues — can create a stunning effect when planned well, as is the case in Robin’s garden.

Hyderabad was once home to gurgling fountains and splendid gardens. But today, most of the baghs have been usurped by landsharks while the few fountains left are lying in a state of neglect

Legend has it that Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah had imagined the then new city Bhagyanagar — which later became Hyderabad — to be a replica of the Quranic concept of the Garden of Eden, replete with boulevards, palaces, gardens and fountains. Popular historical travelogues written by the likes of Abul Kasim Ferishta, Tavernier and Thevenot unequivocally declare having not seen any city as grand as Hyderabad. And even as recently as 50 years ago, the city retained that aura of grandeur.

Princess Esra Birgin recalls being “amazed by the sight of gurgling fountains, splendid gardens that dotted the city, filled with deodis and palaces, built in a mix of Persian, European and Mughal styles,” when she first came to Hyderabad after her marriage to Prince Mukarram Jah in 1959.

The pristine gardens and fountains were instrumental in accentuating the mythical aura of the city. “Like most cities rooted in Persian architectural traditions, landscaping and water are an integral part of Hyderabad right from the Qutub Shahi era. The fountain at the base of the Charminar is perhaps the oldest public fountain,” shares city historian and heritage activist Sajjad Shahid.

A little ahead in the centre of the square was the beautiful Char-Su-Ka-Hauz, which later came to be known as Suka-Hauz and now Gulzar Hauz. The erstwhile Ameen Bagh was home to the most beautiful fountain of all. This fountain, built in the Greeko Roman style with impressive figurines, now lies defunct and is infested with stagnant rainwater at the parking area of the High Court. The state of the fountains in the Bolakpur Palace that has now been turned into the Telecommunication office in Kavadiguda and Mahaboopal Manzil in Jambagh, is no different.

“All the residences of nobility had huge gardens which boasted of impressive fountains as their centerpieces. Many of those beautiful gardens have become residential localities, which have just retained their names — Basheerbagh, Baghlingampally, Kundanbagh, Sitaram Bagh…the list can go on,” laments Anuradha Reddy.

The story of the Qutub Shahi garden located in the Naya Qila tells the tale of official apathy towards heritage of Hyderabad. “The ASI and authorities concerned colluded with realtors to reduce the garden size to 10 acres to make way for the proposed Golf Course which is being developed adjacent to the Naya Qila. A 1941 map designed by the then chief archeologist Yazdan, shows the garden spreading across 28 acres. Since filing the case, the ASI Hyderabad has gone on record stating that their assessment was flawed. The plan of the Golf Course presented to ASI Delhi clearly shows four holes of the Golf Course extending in the Qutub Shahi garden area,” states Dr Jasween Jairath, Save Our Lakes, Hyderabad.

Sajjad Shahid echoes similar sentiments. “The new protocol building that came up in Horticulture department adjacent to Jubilee Hall in Public Gardens is built on what was once a beautiful fountain and reflection pool. Parts of the lovely Afzalgunj Park — which is older than the Osmania Hospital — had to be razed to make way for a VIP entrance. Such is the insensitivity the government works with. Many such beautiful parks and fountains have disappeared in just the last three to four decades,” concludes Sajjad Shahid.

Yesterday at 12:01 AM

Maine Observer: Mom’s ashes resting in old Maine house

A mustard jar on a bedroom dresser might be just the right place for a small part of her – close to her son and his wife.

By Steven Price

My mother, who died in the spring of 2012, loved Maine, although she was born in California and lived most of her adult life in the Southwestern states. Her trips to Maine were few and far between, but always meaningful to her – a family marriage to attend, a rare chance to see her far-flung, eldest son.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Price lives and writes in Kennebunkport.

• Readers may submit original 500-word essays about Maine life via email for this column to mainevoices@pressherald.com. Submissions must include the full name, address and daytime phone number of the author.

A small part of my mother’s ashes now reside, oddly enough, in an 8-ounce Grey Poupon Dijon mustard jar that sits atop my bedroom dresser. The jar is right next to a small rock that I picked up when we spread my father’s ashes upon the ground of one of his favorite deer hunting sites in western Montana. My parents divorced when I was 7.

Most of my mother’s ashes, at her request, were tossed into the cold ocean waters that constitute the San Francisco Bay. For her, it was a kind of homecoming, a closing of her life’s circle.

This event was attended by a tight group of family members and friends, gathered together on a sailboat floating under a steel bridge.

My wife and I, on a longer trip down the California coast, took part of her ashes and deposited them under a tree on the Cal Poly university campus in San Luis Obispo (where she was born) and off the wharf in Santa Barbara (her favorite place on Earth). I hadn’t planned on keeping any, but I did, perhaps unwilling to completely part with her.

Seeing her ashes in a jar every morning and evening, I started thinking about what, exactly, I should do with them.

While Maine wasn’t the final resting place she asked for, I thought since this was a place quite special to her she’d like to be, well, part of the scene.

We have lovely gardens and landscaping in our yard, which she always appreciated. She loved the Maine woods, especially in the fall. She loved our ocean too, with its jagged, rocky coastline. I could have logically placed her remaining ashes in any of these places. But the more I thought about her, and what she did when she visited us in Maine, I came to realize that maybe she was already where she belonged.

Above all else, she loved our home, possibly the oldest house in Kennebunkport (the deed goes back to 1690), and she loved just puttering around its dark-paneled interior, drinking coffee, reading on the patio, doing her hair and makeup.

She was a homebody by nature, and the most self-sufficient person I’ve ever known. You never had to entertain my mother, she just took care herself, always happy to be her own best company.

Odd as it is to have her last remains in a mustard jar on my dresser, maybe it’s just the right place for her – close to me, my wife, and the old Maine house she loved so much. Today her ashes are still there, beside my father’s rock, close in a way they never were in life.

— Special to the Telegram

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The now complete water-conserving landscaping at the Army National Guard Facility. Photos courtesy of the Long Beach Water Department.

On the third anniversary of what City officials call “one of the state’s premiere water conservation programs,” Long Beach’s Lawn-to-Garden program officially completed its largest project to date: removing 53,000 sq. ft. of water-thirsty grass in front of the Army National Guard Facility and replacing it with indigenous, drought-resistant plants.

With this project’s completion, the program has now removed more than one million square feet of grass across Long Beach.

The incentive program, which was introduced in April of 2010, provides payments to residents or businesses for removing turf, amounting to $3 per square foot removed.

The lawn during renovation.

Though more than a thousand local homes have taken part in the program, commercial properties have been slower to participate, with only 16 commercial properties removing their lawns to date. The Department hopes that the size of the National Guard Facility’s project—the program’s largest to date—will attract more commercial properties to do the same.

Annually, grass lawns require more than six times the amount of water as do drought tolerant landscapes, meaning that as additional Long Beach homes convert to drought tolerant landscapes, long-term water savings will also increase. This is important largely due to water shortages across the state as well as a perpetually dwindling supply of imported water. Even further, indigenous gardens lack pesticides and chemicals associated with maintaining lawns while also decreasing greenhouse effects. 

Read more:

• National Guard Nears Completion on City’s Largest Lawn-to-Garden Project
• IN PICTURES: 2nd Annual Long Beach Lawn-to-Garden Tour
• Creating a Naturally Long Beach-Friendly Garden
• Long Beach Water Department Honored for Its Green Leadership

Click photo to enlarge

Marin

• The Marin Open Garden Project encourages residents to bring their excess backyard-grown fruit and vegetables to the following locations for a free exchange with other gardeners on Saturdays: Mill Valley from 10 to 11 a.m. on the Greenwood School front porch at 17 Buena Vista Ave.; San Rafael from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. in Sun Valley Park at K and Solano streets; and San Rafael from 9 to 10 a.m. at Pueblo Park on Hacienda Way in Santa Venetia. Go to www.opengardenproject.org or email contact@opengardenproject.org.

• West Marin Commons offers a weekly harvest exchange at 1:30 p.m. Saturdays at the Livery Stable gardens on the commons in Point Reyes Station. Go to www.westmarin commons.org.

• The Novato Independent Elders Program seeks volunteers to help Novato seniors with their overgrown yards on Tuesday mornings or Thursday afternoons. Call 899-8296.

• Volunteers are sought to help in Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy nurseries from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays at Tennessee Valley, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays at Muir Woods or 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays or 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays in the Marin Headlands. Call 561-3077 or go to www.parksconservancy.org/volunteer.

• The Marin Organic Glean Team seeks volunteers to harvest extras from the fields at various farms for the organic school lunch and gleaning program. Call 663-9667 or go to www.marinorganic.org.

• The SPAWN (Salmon Protection and Watershed Network) native plant nursery days are from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fridays and weekends. Call 663-8590, ext. 114, or email jonathan@tirn.net to register and for directions.

• Marin Open Garden Project (MOGP) volunteers are available to help Marin residents glean excess fruit from their trees for donations to local organizations serving people in need and to build raised beds to start vegetable gardens through the MicroGardens program. MGOP also offers a garden tool lending library. Go to www.opengardenproject.org or email contact@opengarden project.org.

• Marin Master Gardeners and the Marin Municipal Water District offer free residential Bay-Friendly Garden Walks to MMWD customers. The year-round service helps homeowners identify water-saving opportunities and soil conservation techniques for their landscaping. Call 473-4204 to request a visit to your garden.

San Francisco

• The Conservatory of Flowers, at 100 John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park, displays permanent galleries of tropical plant species as well as changing special exhibits from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. $2 to $7. Call 831-2090 or go to www.conservatoryofflowers.org.

• The San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, at Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park, offers several ongoing events. $7; free to San Francisco residents, members and school groups. Call 661-1316 or go to www.sf botanicalgarden.org. Free docent tours leave from the Strybing Bookstore near the main gate at 1:30 p.m. weekdays, 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. weekends; and from the north entrance at 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Groups of 10 or more can call ahead for special-focus tours.

Around the Bay

• Cornerstone Gardens is a permanent, gallery-style garden featuring walk-through installations by international landscape designers on nine acres at 23570 Highway 121 in Sonoma. Free. Call 707-933-3010 or go to www.corner stonegardens.com.

• Garden Valley Ranch rose garden is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays at 498 Pepper Road in Petaluma. Self-guided and group tours are available. $2 to $10. Call 707-795-0919 or go to www.gardenvalley.com.

• The Luther Burbank Home at Santa Rosa and Sonoma avenues in Santa Rosa has docent-led tours of the greenhouse and a portion of the gardens every half hour from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. $7. Call 707-524-5445.

• McEvoy Ranch at 5935 Red Hill Road in Petaluma offers tips on planting olive trees and has olive trees for sale by appointment. Call 707-769-4123 or go to www.mcevoy ranch.com.

• Wednesdays are volunteer days from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center at 15290 Coleman Valley Road in Occidental. Call 707-874-1557, ext. 201, or go to www.oaec.org.

• Quarryhill Botanical Garden at 12841 Sonoma Highway in Glen Ellen covers 61 acres and showcases a large selection of scientifically documented wild source temperate Asian plants. The garden is open for self-guided tours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. $5 to $10. Call 707-996-3166 or go to www.quarryhillbg.org.

The Trowel Glove Calendar appears Saturdays. Send high-resolution jpg photo attachments and details about your event to calendar@marinij.com or mail to Home and Garden Calendar/Lifestyles, Marin Independent Journal, 4000 Civic Center Drive, Suite 301, San Rafael, CA 94903. Items should be sent two weeks in advance. Photos should be a minimum of 1 megabyte and include caption information. Include a daytime phone number on your release.

The Watershed Awareness Calendar for 2014 is back from the printer. Drop by the Napa County Resource Conservation District and pick one up. (Call 707-252-4188 for address and hours.)

This year’s calendar includes information and ideas on how to manage and conserve storm-water runoff on your home property or business.

This month-by-month guide strives to help Napa County residents keep watersheds and waterways healthy. A watershed is an area of land with a common water course; all the water the land receives drains to the same place. Napa is blessed with three watersheds: the Napa River, Putah Creek and Suisun Creek.

Even if you live in town, you live within a watershed.

Watersheds collect water from rain and snow melt, absorbing it into the soil to replenish the water table. Runoff finds its way into storm drains, creeks, rivers and eventually to the bay and ocean.

These informative calendars are provided by the conservation district, The Watershed Information Center and Conservancy of Napa County and Friends of the River. All of these organizations are focused on protecting our natural resources and watersheds.

The calendar’s back cover offers a directory of local resources, including the Native Plant Society, The Land Trust, Carolyn Parr Nature Museum and the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. The list includes email addresses, websites and phone numbers.

The document also provides contact information for other organizations with resources to help businesses, homeowners and property owners replace thirsty lawns with more water-efficient landscaping or install other water-conserving or storm water-diverting systems.

If harvesting rainwater to irrigate your garden and reduce your water bill sounds good to you, consider the rebate plan offered by the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. This plan provides a rebate for installing rain barrels and cisterns and even reimburses some residents for designing and installing a rain garden.

Each month of the calendar highlights a different technique to help gardeners and property owners slow, spread and sink fast-moving storm water. These techniques can be used singly or in combination on your property.

One impressive and inspiring project is part of the sustainability plan at New Technology High School in Napa. New Tech’s landscaping is drought-resistant but still needs some water to thrive, so a 20,000-gallon cistern was installed to collect rainwater.This effort has reduced the amount of potable water used for landscaping by 63 percent.

Capturing 20,000 gallons may sound daunting, but Napa normally gets 20 to 60 inches of rainfall a year, providing plenty of opportunity for harvesting. One inch of rain on a 1500-square-foot roof generates close to 1,000 gallons of runoff. In one winter, your roof alone could shed 20,000 to 60,000 gallons of water.

Sometimes the goal is not to capture water but to slow its race over hard surfaces to storm drains or creeks. Often, this fast-moving water dissolves and transports pollutants along the way.

As you drive by Oxbow Public Market in Napa, you can’t see the bio-retention basins under the raised beds. But they are there, carefully designed to hold and slowly release water into storm drains.

Oxbow’s downspouts drain into the basin where the water is filtered before being released into storm drains. One rain chain leads the gutter water to a trench drain, watering a row of grass plantings, which also slows and filters the water before it enters storm drains.

The Yountville Community Center also showcases several best-management practices for storm-water runoff. Drain inlets along the side of the building are equipped with filters to keep debris from clogging pipes as runoff from the roof collects in a basin behind the parking lot. Landscaping takes advantage of swales, basins, drains and drought-resistant plants to maximize beauty while managing the large amount of runoff from the building roofs.

These are big projects, obviously, but even small projects can be effective. In this helpful calendar, you’ll read about permeable paving, swales and rolling dips. The many suggestions and photos will open your eyes to possibilities as you view sustainable residential developments and sustainably managed vineyards and hillsides. Even property owners with small gardens and yards can make changes that have a positive impact on our watersheds.

By Sarah Cosgrove
22 November 2013

By Neil Sperry

Last week’s first freeze of the season has spurred a lot of great color in our North Texas landscapes and woodlands. Driving home just a couple of days ago, I was reminded that we do have nice fall color here in Texas. Maybe not close to the standards of Vermont and New Hampshire at the end of September, but still handsome enough to be mentioned.

And so, I decided to backtrack my trip, this time with a camera. I thought it would be fun to see what color I could find within 5 miles of my house. Every one of these photos was taken within the past several days. Some are native plants, and others are landscape plants. The common thread through them all is one of lovely fall color.

But first, one caveat. Fall color is very short-lived, often just a few days before the plant drops its leaves. So let it be a consideration in your choice of landscaping plants, but don’t let it be the only or even prime factor. Buy plants that are attractive and dependable year-round.

Japanese maples are obviously not native to our locale. In reality, they grow natively where weather is cool and humid. But we’ve found them to do quite well in shade gardens in North and East Texas. Red-leafed types are brilliant in the spring as their new growth emerges. They’re colorful through the summer, although the shades are dulled by our heat. But, oh, when November and even December arrive, it’s an entirely different story. The red types turn brilliant red, and green-leafed varieties turn all shades of yellow, orange and red. If you’re looking for a colorful and lovely little understory tree to grow in the shade, this is one of the finest.

As a side note on Japanese maples, make plans to visit the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, specifically the outstanding Japanese Garden, between Thanksgiving and early December. There is no more spectacular fall color display in North Texas than what you’ll find down in that hollow. Take the family, the camera and all of your memory cards. You’ll want to have them all along with you.

Redbuds are not commonly known for their great yellow fall colors, but one young native seedling along my route really caught my eye. Its leaves were large and pretty much undamaged by a full season of Texas summer, and the sun brought out its brilliant gold colors. Most of us don’t grow redbuds for fall color, however. We’re in love with their long-lasting and gorgeous pink, burgundy or white early spring blossoms.

Shumard red oak is one of our finest landscaping trees for North Central Texas. Its fall color will vary, and this isn’t an especially brilliant year for many of the specimens, but several along my trek called my name as I passed. I like to recommend Shumard red oaks for landscapes, because I know you’ll be getting a superior landscaping tree that will contribute mightily to your garden design for 100 years or more. Fall color is just icing on an especially wonderful cake.

Crape myrtles’ summer color is renowned, but they’re also lovely in fall. Red- and purple-flowering types turn all shades of burgundy, orange, red and yellow. White-flowering types turn only to yellow.

Prairie sumac, also known as flameleaf sumac ( Rhus lanceolata), is native to Metroplex hillsides, and it’s a reliable source of crimson red foliage each fall. Tucker Reed, horticulture manager at the Dallas Arboretum, spoke about it last week on my radio program, describing it as a native alternative to Japanese maple — one that could handle full sun and chalky, alkaline soils. It grows to be 12 to 20 feet tall and not quite that wide, but it starts adding color even when it’s still a young tree. It also brings a pleasant light texture to a garden design.

Texas ash is another plant that turns eye-popping gold every fall. I know that gold isn’t the goal so much as red or even orange, but it’s hard to scoff at anything that brightens a garden so flamboyantly. Then again, it’s still an ash, and it’s still likely to develop serious issues before many years pass. So I choose to admire ashes on other people’s properties.

Those are the plants that I came across on my little driving journey this week. Missing are a couple of the other truly fine performers that you might want to consider. If you don’t mind short, productive life expectancies, Aristocrat pears are always ablaze in the late fall — usually Thanksgiving or after. They’re better than Bradford pears, because Aristocrats have much stronger branch angles, but they’re still probably only going to be good for 25 years or so.

If you’re one of the lucky people with sandy soils, sweetgums are fabulous every fall. In fact, of all the trees that grow natively in Texas (they’re from East Texas), sweetgums are best of the bunch for fall color. Unfortunately, for those of us with alkaline black clay soils, they soon develop severe iron chlorosis.

Well, I’m back home again and it’s time to file my report. I enjoyed having you along for the ride. I hope it was of value to you as well.

Neil Sperry publishes “Gardens” magazine and hosts “Texas Gardening” from 8 to 10 a.m. Sunday on WBAP AM/FM. Reach him during those hours at 800-288-9227.

Today’s landscape architects are licensed professionals who can take a patch of land or the grounds surrounding a skyscraper, hotel, office building or home and transform it into a Garden of Eden for all to enjoy.

Landscapers plan, design and install parks, recreational facilities, highways, airports and commercial as well as residential properties, integrating hardscapes – such as rocks, borders, terraces and pathways – with plants, grasses and trees. The state of Texas has a licensing program, and landscape architects must pass the Landscape Architect Registration exam.

Landscape architects and designers are finding plentiful work in greater Houston, thanks to the city’s mild climate and extended growing season.

Mark Garfield, owner and president of Ecosystem Management Co., a commercial and residential landscape designer and installer, said his area of expertise has been a lifelong passion as well as the focus of his education.

“I began as a commercial maintenance company, as many landscapers do, and then moved into installation and design, mainly in the greater Houston area,” he said.

He said Houston’s landscaping business, as well as others, have been fortunate in that the local housing market and the economy, in general, did not take a huge hit in recent years.

Anna McGarity, communications manager for Texas Nursery and Landscapers Association, an organization representing more than 1,200 companies, said members from growers and horticulturalists to landscapers and maintenance professionals are saying the economy is definitely better from a business standpoint.

“A recent annual conference and expo in Dallas attracted a registration of more than 6,000, and our organization is partnering with the state in a program called ‘WaterSmart,’ which is educating the industry and its customers about best practices and conservation of natural resources,” she said.

Garfield termed Houston’s job market for landscape architects, designers, installers and workers as healthy.

“We have large and small firms in Houston as well as freelancers and, so far, there’s enough work for everyone,” he said. “Homeowners have more discretionary income, so many are opting for landscape refreshers or at least making additions to existing designs.”

In Houston, for someone with a degree in horticulture or landscape architecture and design, the industry veteran estimated a median entry-level salary as around $40,000 to $60,000.

Hourly workers can expect $11 and up, depending on the employer.

“I would tell someone who wants to work in landscaping to get an education,” he said. “Learn the science behind landscaping, like pesticides, soil quality and irrigation. Then go to work for an expert your respect and learn the ropes.”

McGarity said landscapers are now in high demand for homeowners wanting to convert their traditional lawns and gardens to a more drought-resistant xeriscape.

“We are seeing more nurseries specializing in native and drought-tolerant plants as well as yuccas, cacti and other succulents,” Garfield said. “We’re also being requested to install drip irrigation and other water-conserving xeriscape elements, such as boulders, crushed granite and native plants into existing landscape designs.”

“Landscaping is no longer confined to knowledge of sodding, pesticides, irrigation, fertilizers and flowering plants,” McGarity said. “As more alternatives have become trends, a landscaper’s knowledge base has continued to grow, and I can tell you, like any engineer or designer, a landscaper’s biggest thrill is seeing a plan on paper not just come to life, but create an excitement among those who live in the home or work in the building with new landscaping.”