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MASTER GARDENERS COLUMN: Long weekend great time for yard, garden work

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As we start our efforts to conquer our yards, landscaping, and gardens this long weekend, let us stop to remember why.

Many of us create gardens to honor those who have fought in wars and conflicts to make our country what it is today. Many of us create gardens to honor loved ones that are no longer with us. Many of us create gardens just because we are proud to bring beauty to others. Whatever the reason, as we try to cram three weeks of delayed gardening into three days, let us remember that in this country we are allowed to make it beautiful.

Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend usually starts with surveying what needs to be done and figuring out what tools and supplies we are going to need besides the lawn mower and weed whacker. If family and friends are expected on Saturday for a relaxing day of food and conversation, you’re already a few days behind, so just stick with the lawn mower.

Don’t scalp your lawn! The best length to keep your grass is 2 to 3 inches high, which helps retain moisture and helps to smother the weeds. By the time your guests arrive your “play” area will be nicely mowed, and by the time your guests leave it really won’t matter what the rest of your landscaping looks like after food and fun.

If you’re lucky, and don’t have guests arriving until Memorial Day, you have a chance to get into more gardening activities. You’ll probably have time to spruce up your garden mulch. If you put it on thick enough to start with, (at least 3 to 4 inches), you should be able to “fluff” it with a rake to exposed the original color of your mulch and give it a fresh look. If it’s been awhile since you last added mulch, now is the time to add some more BEFORE your plants get so big that it’s hard to get the mulch under them.

In addition to taking care of your mulch, you’ll probably have time to take a look at your evergreens to see if there is any life below the winter burn, (that’s the brown stuff at the end of the branches that makes it look like it’s dying). If you can see green, cut back the brown and expose the green. It may take a little time, but it’s worth not having to dig up the bush/tree, roots and all and replace it with another. If you don’t see any green by June 10 — get it out, it’s not coming back. If you plan on replanting an evergreen, try not to plant it in exactly the same spot, as it will take some time for the roots that you can’t get out a bit of time to break down.

Now if you have any time left over after mowing, mulching, and pruning, you can always start on adding some annuals or perennials to your landscape. If you live any place where deer have been seen, just make sure that you plant deer resistant plants, (dusty millers, cosmos, sages, coneflowers, and thyme are just a few examples). Check out the UW-Extension Learning Store website for more information and deer-resistant plants. Remember, deer-resistant doesn’t mean that deer won’t eat a particular plant, it just means that they like that plant less over a larger majority. It’s a little like rabbits. If you have rabbits in your yard and also a vegetable garden, don’t try get rid of your dandelions. Rabbits prefer dandelions over lettuce and other garden vegetables.

So take the time to enjoy your Memorial weekend, gardening or partying, have a safe weekend, and keep the green side up.

Filed Under: gardens and landscaping

Hershey Gardens’ newest garden is the work of a 10th-grader: George Weigel – The Patriot

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Hershey Gardens is sporting a new 10-by-15-foot kitchen garden, designed by Kylie Wirebach, a 10th-grader at Conrad Weiser High School in Robesonia, Berks County.

Wirebach is the winner of a first-time scholarship design competition that Hershey Gardens and Hampden Twp.’s Ames True Temper Inc. staged this year for 10th through 12th graders in 12 midstate counties.

The kitchen garden is already in place just inside the main entrance to the Gardens’ 1-acre Children’s Garden and officially opens June 8 at 2 p.m. with an awards ceremony and “grand unveiling.”

Wirebach’s design was picked by the contest judges as the best of 17 entries submitted by 23 students at 10 different schools.

View full sizeKylie Wirebach planting a tomato at her kitchen garden at Hershey Gardens.Mindy Fetherman 

As part of the prize, Wirebach got to build her winning design with the Hershey Gardens staff.

The garden stays up for the 2014 season.

Wirebach also won a $1,200 prize, a collection of Ames True Temper tools for her school and a 1-year membership to Hershey Gardens.

Her design features 27 different edible varieties planted in a layout of three sizes of raised beds, two hanging planters and five trellises arranged in a novel zigzag pattern at the back of the garden for taller crops.

Wirebach says she first researched which plants made good “companions” with one another, then laid out groupings by space needed and similarities in growing habits (viners, root veggies, bushy herbs, big-leafs, etc.)

“I wanted to make it easy for people to get to them all but also save space,” she said. “The vertical trellises and square-foot-garden-style beds cleared room up for walking and kneeling space while putting the plants in their most comfortable fit. Finally, I hoped a zigzag line of towers and a crescent-shaped hideaway might give it a little more pizzazz.”

Wirebach says she spent weekends since last September researching kitchen gardens, using “a big stack of gardening books that my grandma gave me a while ago.”

She also used books from her school library and drew on her own first-hand experience growing radishes and cantaloupe last summer.

View full sizeKim Frew, left, of Hershey Gardens, looks over the kitchen garden design plan with Jodi, Kylie and Tabitha Wirebach.Mindy Fetherman 

“I love art and design as well as science and plants,” Wirebach said. “My dad is a graphic designer, and my mom is pretty creative, too. My grandpa got a degree in landscaping, so I got those interests from them.”

She’s thinking about a career in either writing about plants or animals or as a curator at a zoo or aquarium.

The design contest’s second-place prize-winner was a team of Cortland Daily, Emma Daily and Victoria Brame from the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Connections Academy cyber school.

Third place went to Hannah Fertich of the Adams County Christian Academy in Gettysburg, and fourth place went to Abigail Albright of Cumberland-Perry Vocational-Technical School in Silver Spring Twp.

Admission to the kitchen garden is included with admission to Hershey Gardens, which is $10.50 for adults, $9.50 for ages 62 and up, $7.50 for ages 3-12, and free for members and children under age 3.

Next year’s design competition will invite students to submit plans for a butterfly way station. Ames True Temper is again sponsoring the competition.

Details are on the Hershey Gardens website.

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Gardening: Landscape you want, garden you get

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I have been helping people design, install and renovate their gardens for well over 30 years now – with landscapes ranging in scope from modest residences, townhouses, estate gardens and commercial rooftops.

If three decades of landscaping has taught me anything, it’s that many of the design mistakes people make are relatively common.

So I thought that I would share a few of these with you today, in hopes that you can avoid them and achieve that perfect garden space sooner, rather than later.

• How big does it get? I have seen a giant redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) planted in a foundation bed because this was the garden designer’s signature tree and there was nowhere else to put it. Needless to say, it had to be removed within just a few years (it grows to an average of 150’ tall) and it should never have been planted there in the first place. Had it been left, those vigorous tree roots would have quickly plugged the foundation drains and heaved the sidewalk. So, always purchase a plant that will mature to fill the space you have.

• Pretty isn’t always practical. Everyone loves the English cottage look, but when I ask them if they are prepared to weed constantly and divide perennials, that enthusiasm seems to wane. The other problem with a primarily herbaceous border is its lack of winter appeal – which translates into four to five months of dead sticks and dirt. A better approach is a mixed border with a blend of perennials, broadleaf evergreens (such as Pieris ‘Little Heath’) and even a winter-flowering shrub such as witch hazel or hamamelis.

• Fruits or vegetables? There are far too many permaculture websites out there extolling the virtues of growing vegetables below fruit trees. The truth of the matter is that it is very difficult to grow edibles of any kind under fruit trees due to shading or root competition for available nutrients and water. That said, many fruit trees can be espaliered or flat-trained against fences or garage walls a few feet away from raised vegetable beds so that they can both peaceably co-exist.

• Do you really need it? When it comes to hard landscape features such as decks, patios and gazebos, far too often they are installed without any thought as to how much they will be used. Case in point: I can recall a rather exclusive British Properties landscape where a beautiful custom-made gazebo (worth $25,000) was built overlooking a lake. In all the years that I took care of that garden, I never once saw it being used by the homeowners, but I did enjoy eating my lunch there.

• Shade-loving grass is an oxymoron. While there are seed or turf blends (with more creeping red fescue) that tolerate partial shade, no lawn survives without sun,  it just slowly morphs into moss.

Your best option here is to convert that shaded lawn space using dwarf broadleaf shrubs such as Christmas box (Sarcococca humilis) or evergreen groundcovers like Japanese spurge (Pachysandra terminalis).

For those of you looking for a little more garden design inspiration, I will be giving a talk on “The art of gardening” at the ACT’s Tea Garden fundraiser on Sunday, June 1 at 1:30 p.m. Part of my presentation will include a rarely-seen image of 10-year-old me complete with 1970s checked shirt, a Beatle’s haircut and aerodynamic ears – that alone should be worth the price of admission.

– Mike Lascelle is a local nursery manager and gardening author (hebe_acer@hotmail.com).

 

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Special Section on Outdoor Living: Into the garden, go

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What’s a growing trend for 2014? Restoring and sowing “balance” in life – and the garden, according to the Garden Media Group.

While to some that may mean practicing yoga near the euonymus, to many it also means making more thoughtful choices for this year and beyond.

Homeowners still want their outdoor spaces to look beautiful – lush plants, inviting furniture, chic accessories – but they also want to invest their time and money into high-quality, eco-friendly products with a smaller carbon footprint, the group reports.

And they want that outdoor space to do double duty – a place for solitude but also for socializing. Balance, remember?

Among the gardening trends highlighted by the group:

• Composting: Recycling food scraps to create compost is the new recycling.

• Growing fruit: There’s much interest in planting things like raspberries and blueberries for crafting cocktails and smoothies, hops for home-brewing and grapes for homemade wine.

• Bee-friendly gardening: Environmentally aware consumers are interested in planting native, pollen-rich flowers, trees and vegetables to provide safe shelters.

• “Fingertip” gardening: Gardens are going high-tech with mobile apps and technology. Suntory Flowers’ Virtual Container Designer app is one example.

Locally, Jeffrey Salmon noted another interesting trend in landscaping: Homeowners are requesting smaller flowering trees – patio-size trees – rather than big shade trees.

“People want to keep the sun in the yard,” said Salmon, president of Arbordale Nurseries Landscaping, 480 Dodge Road, Getzville.

Other landscape trends: Planting edibles into the landscape – using blueberries as a landscape foundation plant, for example. Salmon also noted a decline in plastic edging. It’s being replaced by natural products – perhaps local stones from places such as Medina. People want local, natural products, he said. Plants, stones, mulch.

“I think Buffalo people have accepted that we don’t need to truck the mulch from five states over. We can use the stuff here,” Salmon said.

Miniature fairy gardens continue to be hugely popular. And water gardens are evolving and maturing – with homeowners putting more thought into their placement and maintenance.

“People want them to be easier to care for,” Salmon said.

As for flowers, “I think tropicals are going to be a big deal again this year. Mandevilla seems to be one of the hot plants; it has been the last couple years, and it is again this year,” said Mark Yadon of Mischler’s Florist and Greenhouses, 118 S. Forest Road, Williamsville.

Container gardening also remains a popular option – including ready-made.

“You will see a lot of multiple types of plants – maybe three different plants – in one container, which makes it easy. You can just take that combination and pop two or three of them into a window box and instantly be done. Or put it into a basket or container of your own, and you have it already mixed for you,” Yadon said.

“We’re finding that more people want stuff done for them. We’re selling a lot more mixed containers that are ready to go out the door rather than people buying their own components and making the container themselves,” Yadon said.

“It’s big. It’s instant. It’s now,” he said.

email: smartin@buffnews.com

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Roses for a dry land: Species, old garden roses are tough, low-water

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Which rose?

In Colorado, where the stunning landscape is also challenging and water consumption is a perennial concern, knowing which roses will fare well with the least amount of water can be the best way to narrow the field

People assume that all roses take a lot of water but the truth is that a lot of the species roses, as well as a lot of the modern shrub roses, really require less water than traditional hybrid tea roses, says Matt Douglas, owner of Denver’s High Country Roses.

“Many roses, primarily the species roses, can be incorporated into landscaping in nearly xeric conditions,” he says. “These include the Rosa glauca and the Rosa woodsii. The drought-resistant woodsii is not considered the most beautiful, but it fits the bill for low water needs.”

His personal favorite is Rosa glauca, or redleaf rose.

“It’s a fantastic shrub; once a year it blossoms with tiny pink buds,” Douglas says. “It can grow up to 6 feet and will survive in nearly waterless conditions once established.” A similar rose is the Austrian copper, which produces an orange flower, blooms once a year, and does well in this climate.

Rosa glauca also is a designated rose for Plant Select, the cooperative program administered by Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University in concert with horticulturists and nurseries throughout the Rocky Mountain region and beyond. Plant Select (plantselect.org ) identifies and distributes the best plants for landscapes and gardens from the intermountain region to the high plains.

“This is a great resource for anyone who wants to identify plants that will thrive here,” Douglas says. Another Plant Select-designated rosebush is “Ruby Voodoo.” It’s “a double-bloom, very fragrant, modern hybrid that is a good choice for a first-time rose gardener,” Douglas says.

For history lovers, High Country’s repertoire includes five varieties of Fairmount roses. These are roses found in east Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery and propagated about 20 years ago. At its 1890 founding, Fairmount (fairmountheritagefoundation.org) was the largest developed landscape of its time west of the Mississippi.

High Country Roses owner Matt Douglas says roses will do well in dry conditions if you choose well-adapted varieties.

These rose varieties, known for their wonderful fragrances and beautiful hips in fall, include the Ghislaine de Féligonde, an old-fashioned rambler that forms a large shrub with few thorns. It blooms in apricot and ages into a pale yellow. The highly popular Fairmount Red, closely related to a hybrid perpetual, blooms in crimson magenta with cabbage-style blooms. And the Fairmount Proserpine, of unknown origins, offers a deep fuchsia double bloom with a tight knob of center petals.

Both the Jeremiah Pink and JoAn’s Pink Perpetual live up to their names with gorgeous pink blooms. JoAn’s is a repeat bloomer, growing up to six feet tall.

“Old Garden Roses are classified as those that existed before 1867 and are known for their hardiness and fragrance,” says Patricia Carmody, executive director of the Fairmount Heritage Foundation. “We know that landscape architect/Fairmount Cemetery designer Reinhard Schuetze planted 380 roses of all kinds in 1891, the first year of planting at Fairmount. A lot of other roses were planted by families and took over some of the monuments, so we divided some and moved them to our Rose Garden/Gazebo area.”

The Fairmount Arboretum houses one of the largest known collections of Old Garden Roses in North America.

“We have 400 rose bushes here, many of which still need to be identified,” said Carmody. “Some have study names given to them from a survey done in the 1990s. One rose is called the Mae Fair, found planted next to the grave of a woman named Mae Fair.

Fairmount’s goal is to propagate more of the roses found on its grounds to preserve their genetics. Funds from its rose sales, and its upcoming tour in June, will go toward that project.

And the tour should be a barn-burner this year, Carmody said. “With all the moisture we received this past winter, everything is really popping.”

Grow with the (low) flow

If you really want to grow without much water, buy a rose that blooms only once in the spring, when moisture is at its highest, advises Sharron Zaun, a Boulder gardener and member of the Rose Society. “After it blooms, you can enjoy it as a shrub.”

Old garden roses are good choices, she says; try Banshee, which is very tall and exceedingly fragrant with pink, double blooms, and purple fall foliage. Other good, tough choices:
Rosa arkanasas and Rosa hugonis, a.k.a. the Father Hugo rose, a once-blooming, extremely hardy plant with yellow blooms.

“These species roses occur in the wild, all over the world,” Zaun says. “We have native roses in Colorado, along the streams, and we have taken these species to breed.”

All roses will grow in Colorado’s clay soils, but they do like good drainage, she notes. “Add an organic material such as compost to nourish your roses and help them retain water. Consider planting them in raised beds, which also helps with drainage.” For the best results, she says, choose a rose bush that is on its own roots, not a grafted rose.

And remember to think roses beyond the growing and blooming season. One of the reasons Rosa glauca is so prized is that after the bloom, its silvery red foliage is lovely all summer long. The hips — where a rose holds its seeds — are orange.

“I can look out my bedroom window in the middle of November and see these orange hips against the gray landscape, and it’s beautiful,” Douglas says.

How to move a rose

A garden is an ever-changing work of art. Trees grow taller and provide more shade. A neighbor puts on an addition that makes your favorite rose struggle for sun. Or you want to relocate a rose to where its charms can be more easily enjoyed.

Loddie Dolinski, a senior horticulturalist for the Denver Botanic Gardens, who is in charge of moving several roses to a new rose ellipse garden, has felt your thorny dilemma. Here’s her advice on how to move a rose.

The best time is very early spring. But Dolinski knows that you can’t always do it at the best time. If you can’t, do it in the best way.

First, cut the rose back. “Down to about a foot tall is best,” she says.

Dig up as much of the root ball as you can, slowly and gently, with the soil fairly moist so the job is easier. Pot up your cut-back, dug-up rose with good, fresh potting soil. If the roots are too large to fit in the pot, you can prune them back so that they’ll fit easier and won’t be damaged (a clean cut is better than a bad scrape).

Store your potted rose on the north side of a building to minimize temperature fluctuation. Water and check on it frequently; pots can dry out fast, especially in drying winds.

In the new location, dig a hole at least twice as wide as the root ball. Plant at the same depth as in the original location or an inch deeper. Dolinski says don’t go overboard on amending the soil in the new location, but do be sure to place a graft two inches below the soil surface. Water well; then put a layer of mulch or compost on top (not touching the canes).

Keep an eye on it until it sprouts new leaves. If shoots come from below the graft, prune them out.

Susan Clotfelter, The Denver Post

Rose-growing primer

Matt Douglas of High Country Roses serves up his best tricks for keeping your roses in tiptop shape:

  • Be choosy. Always be sure to select the right plant for the right climate. Roses shouldn’t have to struggle to live. A stressed plant automatically needs more attention and more water.

  • Location, location. Pick a spot for your roses that will ensure enough sun, but not so much sun that it will dry them out. Aim for about six hours of direct sun each day.

  • Drink in the morning. Water early! It’s important for the growing day and also helps with disease control. One cause of fungal disease in roses is wet leaves at night.

  • Sparing sips. The biggest mistake rose lovers make is overwatering. Roses are happiest when they get wet, and then dry out, Douglas says. Avoid “wet feet” on your roses; make sure they get water and then have time to dry.

    FAIRMOUNT CEMETERY’S OLD GARDEN ROSE TOUR

    June 14 starting at 9 a.m. with guides Panayoti Kelaidis and Peggy Williams. $25; advance ticket sales only. Fairmount, Heritage and Old Garden Roses will be for sale before and after the event; the tour is about two hours long, with a presentation in the gazebo followed by a walking tour. fairmountheritagefoundation.org/rose-tour/ or 303-322-3895.

    • Filed Under: gardens and landscaping

    Landscaping giants ValleyCrest and Brickman to combine

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    The nation’s largest landscape services business, ValleyCrest Cos. of Calabasas, has agreed to merge with another industry giant, Brickman Group Ltd. of Maryland.

    The new company, which has yet to be named, will be a landscaping behemoth with more than 22,000 employees and annual revenue of about $2 billion.

    Each serves large-scale clients such as corporations, universities, hospitals, housing communities, hotels and resorts. They also landscape and maintain parks and other grounds for public entities.

    The transaction is expected to close by the middle of the year. Upon completion, Kerin will be chief executive of the new company. Roger Zino, now chief executive of ValleyCrest, will be vice chairman.

    ValleyCrest is dominant in California and Florida, Zino said, whereas Brickman was established and grew biggest in the Northeast and Midwest. The two companies do compete in some of the same markets, however.

    “We have known and respected one another for many years,” Zino said, “and have always shared a commitment to superior customer service, a relentless focus on employee safety and support of the environment and communities in which we live and work.”

    Brickman is currently owned by New York private equity firm KKR, and ValleyCrest is currently owned by affiliates of MSD Capital, the investment vehicle for computer magnate Michael Dell and his family.

    After the merger, KKR will have majority ownership of the combined company and MSD Capital will retain a significant minority ownership interest. The new company will maintain offices in Calabasas and Rockville, Md., Zino said.

    ValleyCrest was co-founded in 1949 by Burton Sperber, who was still active as chairman of the company when he died in 2011.

    Sperber had a passion for horticulture and preferred to be called “head gardener” even as his company grew into a national firm.

    Benefiting from the post-World War II building boom in Southern California, Sperber’s privately held company grew steadily as it did landscaping for residential developments, schools and freeways.

    What initially began as a small nursery with three employees had grown to more than 150 locations around the world, with 9,000 employees and nearly $835 million in annual revenue at the time of his death.

    ValleyCrest did work at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles, the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida and Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

    roger.vincent@latimes.com

    Twitter: @rogervincent

    Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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    Natives Are A Competitive Advantage At Homestead Gardens

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    Homestead Gardens Perennial AreaNative plant sales have become a big part of our success at Homestead Gardens, due in large part to our location. We are next to the Chesapeake Bay and Severn River near Annapolis, Md. When any of the homes in Anne Arundel County that are along the river begin a landscaping project, they have to reforest with native plants. It’s a county law. Based on the amount of landscaping they do, they have to reforest with many trees and shrubs.

    On our website, we have a link to “Marylanders Plant Trees” (trees.maryland.gov), a state-run program that offers tips on the proper native trees to plant along with a coupon to our stores and others that participate in the program.

    As a result, we attract a lot of business from these waterfront homes. It’s made natives a category that has increased every year that we’ve been open.

    We Commit To The Category

    We have two locations: our main store is in Davidsonville and our smaller second store, where I am the nursery manager, is in Severna Park.

    At the Severna Park location, I have all the natives in one area where people can shop for that entire category in one spot. I try to give it as much size as any other individual category, although it’s growing quickly enough that it now has more space than my azalea department. It takes up a fair percentage of our plant yard, about 10 percent overall.

    I try to display all the native trees with the shrubs. To draw attention to it, we have included concrete statues of a Maryland Terrapin, a popular mascot in our area.

    A lot of people are stunned that we have the native selection that we do and how much they can choose from. Most people are used to seeing two to three options at the other stores they might visit. They come here and there’s 50.

    Lately, our best-selling varieties are the ones that attract birds, such as serviceberries and viburnums. Any plant that is tied to outdoor birding is becoming more popular. These varieties may include Amelanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance,’ Cornus sericea ‘Baileyi,’ Cornus alba ‘Ivory Halo,’  Viburnum nudum ‘Brandywine’ and Viburnum dentatum ‘Blue Muffin.’

    We maintain about the same margin for our native plants that we do for the rest of our materials. Just-in-time deliveries tend to work best for us. We use about 10 to 12 different vendors for this category. All of them offer natives along with several other plant types.

    We Help Our Customers Make The Right Decision

    Because our county is giving many of our local residents a list of shrubs to choose from, we have a built-in customer base. They simply have to decide which to buy, and we can help them make this decision.

    In many cases, they’ll want northern or southern-type native plants, things that don’t handle our conditions well. A lot of it is based on where they grew up around the country. I try to steer them toward trees and shrubs that are hardier for our local climate.

    Water restrictions are always possible in our area, although it’s been a few years since they were enacted by the county. If Northern Virginia or Southern Maryland experience a drought during the summer, watering regulations may be put into effect. This is when having those native plants in the landscape can be beneficial.

    We will soon be doing more marketing on our website for our native selections. We have a new web designer, and he is creating a section that will list the native plants we carry.

    Customer Service After Planting

    In the summer of 2002, Homestead Gardens hired Gene Sumi as its garden horticulturist. Sumi, who started working at an early age in his father’s landscape maintenance business in Garden Grove, Calif., had worked for many years with the Behnke Nurseries Company in Beltsville, Md.

    Today, Sumi is the educational coordinator at Homestead Gardens, where he manages educational programs to benefit customers and staff. Included in these programs are garden seminars and workshops held on and off the nursery premises, coordinating group tours at Homestead Gardens and overseeing the Golden Spades, a gardening group for senior gardeners that meets monthly at Homestead Gardens’ Davidsonville and Severna Park locations.

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    Tickets available for annual tour of private gardens

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    Smith County Master Gardeners, a volunteer organization of Texas AM AgriLife Extension Service, announced it will have its annual Garden Tour on June 7.

    Four private gardens in Tyler will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., rain or shine. Each garden has a different setting, from causal, to a shady hillside to a formal garden of individual rooms. Each of the gardens offers interesting landscaping ideas that could be an inspiration for homeowners looking for designs for their own gardens.

    This fundraiser helps support many projects the Master Gardeners sponsor in the Tyler area.

    Tickets to tour all of the gardens cost $10 in advance, cash or check. Tickets on the day of the tour are $12 each.

    Advance tickets may be purchased up to June 6 at Brookshire’s on Rice Road; The Potpourri House, 3320 Troup Highway; Blue Moon Nursery, 13062 Farm-to-Market Road 279, Chandler; Rubicon Wild Birds, 19456 Texas Highway 155 South, Noonday; the AgriLife Extension Office in the Cotton Belt Building, 1517 W. Front St., Suite 116, Tyler.

    Tickets may also be purchased by mail if ordered by June 1. Send a check for the total tickets ordered to MG Garden Tour, 1320 Oak Hill Lane, Flint, 75762. Credit cards may be used on the day of the tour only.

    For more information, call the Smith County Master Gardeners at 903-590-2980 or go to the website http: //scmg.tamu.edu.

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    Feed Fayetteville plants community garden in downtown commercial zone

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    Feed Fayetteville director Adrienne Shaunfield and volunteers plant vegetables, fruits, and other edibles in landscaping beds at the newly constructed First Security Bank in Fayetteville

    Staff photo

    Bushes, shrubs, flowers, and greenery. All of these are common to find in the landscaping beds at businesses along College Avenue.

    Now, in downtown Fayetteville, one local business is hoping to put that real estate to a better use.

    First Security Bank, located at 11 N. College Ave., has partnered with local non-profit Feed Fayetteville to turn their landscaping beds into one of the first commercially-zoned community gardens in Fayetteville.

    Volunteers work to plant a new community garden at First Security bank Monday

    Staff photo

    The bank donated five 15-foot beds at their new bank to the cause, and Feed Fayetteville earlier this week filled them with vegetables, nuts, fruits, herbs, and edible flowers that they’ll harvest regularly and distribute to local community meals and food pantries.

    City urban foresters and the University of Arkansas’ Department of Horticulture provided guidance on what to plant.

    The initial planting included hazelnuts, raspberries, blackberries, cucumbers, thyme, eggplants, squash, bee balm, tomatoes, and lavender.

    Peter Nierengarten, Fayetteville’s director of sustainability, said he hopes more businesses will be inspired by the community garden

    “We wanted to be involved because of the visibility of that location,” he said. “We wanted people to see that edible landscaping can be not only functional, but it can be attractive as well.”

    Feed Fayetteville director Adrienne Shaunfield said that while her organization plans to make sure the food harvested in the gardens is distributed where it is needed, she wouldn’t be upset if residents who needed it found the garden themselves.

    “I’d say that falls well within our mission of reducing food insecurity in Fayetteville,” she said. “We’re excited to be a part of it.”

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    School invites all to tour its garden program

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    Brampton Guardian

    BRAMPTON— Brampton’s Louise Arbour Secondary School is hosting its Community Gardening Open House Thursday to celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity.

    Families and public in the school community are invited to attend the event, featuring guest speaker Gino Piscelli of the Region of Peel, who will speak about Fusion Landscaping. This trend in landscaping and garden design brings together traditional gardens and modern, eco-friendly plants, flowers, colours and textures.

    There will also be multilingual-guided tours to view a student-designed greenhouse, native species garden, vegetable garden, hybrid utility vehicle, solar heater and recycling depot.

    Activities for children, such as nature crafts, seed planting and vermicomposting (composting with worms), will be demonstrated as well.

    “The activities at this event will appeal to all generations in our school community,” principal Linda Galen said in a news release. “Newcomer community members will feel welcomed and included by our multilingual tours. We look forward to an evening which unites our school community in a common vision of social justice and environmental stewardship.”

    Funded by the Ministry of Education Community Engagement grant, the EcoSquad at Louise Arbour has worked over the past four years to green the school grounds and create environmental awareness.

    The goal is to have students consider green choices in their daily lives and career choices, said Carmelina Crupi, event co-advisor.

    The open house is organized to highlight those career pathways Louise Arbour students can study and educate the community about the eco-friendly choices they can make in everyday life.

    Local and partner organizations, including Cathy’s Composters, EcoSource, Toronto Region Conservation Authority, FarmStart and Canadian Tire, will also be present to provide information and connect with the school community.

    Piscelli’s presentation will begin at 7 p.m. and end at 7:30 p.m. A draw for a tablet and other door prizes will also be held.

    Louise Arbour Secondary School is located at 365 Father Tobin Road in Brampton.

     

     

     

     

    Filed Under: gardens and landscaping
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