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Seeds: The groundskeeper’s backyard secret? Fake lawn
Stu Varner knows a lot about lawns and how to make them look great. He’s worked professionally at local golf courses for decades.
Currently, he’s a groundskeeper at Haggin Oaks in Sacramento.
His own front lawn in Folsom is a flawless patch of tall fescue, deep-rooted and a little long – all the better to survive trying times with less water.
His backyard features his own fast-as-felt putting green surrounded by banks of azaleas and Japanese maples under the shade of massive redwoods.
His inspiration? Augusta National Golf Course, home of the Masters. That Georgia golf mecca is almost as famous for its azaleas and lush landscaping as for its lightning-fast greens.
“I’ve been in the golf business for 50 years,” he said. “I started as a groundskeeper, then worked in the pro shop, ran the concessions. I’ve made the full circle. I’m back to groundskeeping. The golf course is where I get many of my ideas.”
Blooming throughout April, the azaleas thrive in Varner’s private Folsom oasis. But the backyard putting green? Not so much.
“I tried re-planting sod three times, but it just refused to grow,” Varner said. “We have too much shade.”
“No matter what he did, nothing would grow,” added Kathy Varner, his wife. “We didn’t want to cut down the trees.”
So, the groundskeeper found an alternative – and the secret to his own always-perfect backyard green. He went artificial.
The Varners replaced that challenged sod with synthetic lawn. Said Stu, “No mowing, no water, and it looks great. This is a sign of the times.”
See for yourself this weekend during the Gardens of Folsom tour, hosted by the Folsom Garden Club. The Varners’ home will be one of six private gardens featured on the tour, which celebrates the club’s 80th anniversary.
“Gardening teaches you to be flexible,” said Dianna Leight of the Folsom Garden Club. “We gardeners are always learning.”
During this drought, gardeners are employing some creative solutions to keep gardening while saving water, she added. The Varners’ artificial lawn is one of those drought-minded alternatives.
Water saved from eliminating lawn can go to other plants such as the thirsty coastal redwoods, noted Varner.
“It’s a lot less work, too,” he said. “You can clean off leaves with a blower. It’s real simple to take care of.”
Said Kathy, “We’re very timely (for a garden tour) with the drought. We looked at (artificial grass) years ago, but it looked, well, fake. Just in the last few years, it’s really changed. Now, I love looking out my kitchen window. I know I’ll always see green.”
The couples’ dogs – Reggie and Murphy – love the “lawn,” too, she said. “They don’t seem to mind and (the turf) is very pet friendly; no problems. It drains really well.”
Surrounding the lawn is a private woodland, also on a low-water budget. A white gazebo nestles among Japanese maples, flowering shrubs and bright perennials. Tadpoles make the most of a rock-lined frog pond, one of several water features Stu Varner created out of local rock.
“This is all Stu; he’s the gardener,” Kathy said. “When we moved in, there was nothing but dirt.”
The Varners recently joined the Folsom Garden Club, which is going strong at age 80.
“I like the camaraderie,” he said. “Everybody shares a common interest. You get a lot of ideas.”
Said Leight, “Our garden club keeps growing by leaps and bounds. When I joined 10 years ago, we had about 25 active members. Now, we have 140. As different people come in, our network grows.”
Part of that growth mirrors Folsom’s own. Newcomers want to learn from those who have found success in their own backyards.
“You need something to help you learn,” Leight said. “The club is good for that. During the tour, we’ll have master gardeners at each garden to help explain what you’re seeing and answer questions.”
As for real grass, Varner has tips for that, too.
“Fescue lawns should be kept high,” he said, using his own front lawn as an example. “That especially helps in drought times to keep moisture in. Aeration also helps. Fescue lawns hold up better in low-water (conditions) than other grasses.
“In Folsom, we can only water twice a week,” he added, noting current water restrictions. “But our ground holds moisture well and we deep-water.
“In fact, the lawn probably looks better (than in past non-drought years).”
Real turf can get by on less water, but it still needs sun, he noted. As for the artificial turf, it’s just fine in the shade.
And water? Save it for the redwoods.
Prickly opportunity
Dr. Norm Klein has one of the best collections of cacti and succulents in California (or anywhere), growing at his Rancho Cordova home. Passers-by risk getting pricked to pose among his scores of specimens in his front yard.
He’s inviting the public to see his private collection during the Carmichael Cactus and Succulent Society’s annual visit. His garden will be open for free tours from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Just drop by 11139 Mace River Court, Rancho Cordova.
This open garden is a warmup for the club’s annual show at the Carmichael Clubhouse May 17-18.
McKinley garden party
More than 1,200 rosebushes are in full bloom now at Sacramento’s McKinley Park Memorial Rose Garden. And they need a little help from their friends to keep looking this spectacular.
Next Saturday morning, the Friends of East Sacramento will host a morning “garden party” amid the roses on H Street near 33rd Street in McKinley Park. At 8:30 a.m., the Friends will offer a garden volunteer “appreciation breakfast” with coffee and treats; first-time volunteers are welcome. From 9 to 11 a.m., the volunteers will spruce up the garden, “dead-heading” spent blooms and other tasks to keep the roses looking their best.
Anyone interested in helping is welcome to join in the party; no rose gardening experience necessary. Bring gloves and pruning shears. Questions? Call (916) 212-4534.
Call The Bee’s Debbie Arrington, (916) 321-1075. Follow her on Twitter @debarrington.
Using ICT To Protect Europe’s Landscapes
(CORDIS) — How can both policy makers and citizens make better use of ICT in order to protect Europe’s landscapes? This is the question posed by E-CLIC, an innovative EU-funded project designed to encourage greater citizen involvement in the protection of nature.
Through social media platforms and competitions, the project aims to promote learning, stimulate discussion and, ultimately, get people engaged in the formulation and implementation of landscape policy.
A specific aim of the project has been to highlight the importance of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), the first international treaty to be exclusively devoted to all aspects of European landscape. The ELC covers natural, rural, urban and peri-urban areas, and concerns ‘outstanding’ landscapes well as every day or degraded ones. It encompasses protection and management, as well as raising awareness of the value of a living landscape.
One means of achieving this is through the use of social media tools, which can connect policy makers with the general public and help to create a sense of community. Indeed, a virtual E-CLIC community has already been set up, where citizens can go to discuss, share and network with others interested in landscapes. Examples can also be added to the existing E-CLIC best practice database, while the E-CLIC project can be followed on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
The second key innovation of the project has been the launch of competitions in the six project partner countries – Estonia, Greece, Germany Slovenia, Spain and the UK – as well as international competition open to all EU Member States plus Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. Participants from eligible countries are invited to submit an idea / project based on the use of ICT to solve a landscaping challenge. The challenges for the international category, for example, are: urban sprawl/inner urban shrinkage; post-industrial landscapes; and extensification / intensification of rural landscapes.
In order to take part in the competition, participants must join the E-CLIC online community, choose one of three landscape challenges, and complete the appropriate online registration form for their category. Resources are available to help entrants with their proposals, and entries can be submitted by individuals or teams. Deadlines for the national competitions vary between May and august, while the deadline for international submissions is 30 May 2014.
Selected finalists will be given the chance to present their ideas at the E-CLIC International Conference to be held in Estonia in 2015. From the 18 national winners (three from each participant county) and three finalists from the other European countries, three eventual winners will be selected by a jury of experts.
Ultimately, through the effective application of ICT, the E-CLIC project aims to change peoples’ perception of EU landscape policies and encourage citizens to think about the impact such policies can have on their lives and everyday activities. It also aims to promote understanding of the ELC at schools and universities, and create a database of interactive learning tools that may help demonstrate the challenges faced by landscapes.
About the author: Eurasia Review
Eurasia Review is an independent Journal and Think Tank that provides a venue for analysts and experts to disseminate content on a wide-range of subjects that are often overlooked or under-represented by Western dominated media.
Despite the combined Eurasia and Afro-Asia areas containing over 70% of the world’s population, analysis and news continues to be dominated by a U.S. slant, and that is where Eurasia Review enters the picture by providing alternative, in-depth perspectives on current events.
Chelsea Flower Show 2014: promise of peace in war-inspired gardens
“I had the idea in October 2012 at the Imperial War Museum,” Rowe says.
“Standing in front of John Nash’s painting Over the Top, I had a eureka
moment to do a garden to mark the centenary.”
The idea had a personal resonance for Rowe. Her paternal grandfather went over
the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and was wounded. He
returned to the fighting, and also saw action in the Second World War,
landing in Normandy on D-Day. On the other side, her maternal grandmother
left a box of papers in which she revealed that she had served as a nurse
behind the front line, and been awarded a Military Medal for gallantry.
“Those were the inspirations,” she says. “They took me to Flanders and the
Somme a couple of months later, in early December 2012. I thought it was
amazing that you could still see traces of the trenches, mines and bomb
craters that had been created over the course of the war. The lines hardly
moved, and the landscape was completely destroyed. The topsoil was removed,
trees were stumps and there were crevasses in some areas.
“The tie-in with the ABF charity is this whole idea of no-man’s-land – what
today’s soldiers should not have to come back to. I’m trying to bring
together ideas of the landscape recovering with the human spirit and body
recovering – it’s quite conceptual, really.”
Rowe: ‘I’m trying to bring together ideas of the landscape recovering
with the human spirit and body recovering’
This concept will take form in three stages. The front of the garden, inspired
by mine craters, has a large water basin as its focal point. This will be
surrounded mostly by moisture-loving and waterside plants, such as reeds and
irises, and a group of three river birches (Betula nigra).
“They are majestic, and also they are pioneer trees, the kind that come in
when an area is disturbed,” Rowe says.
The central part of the garden is a “lost” area, inspired by the village
gardens that became overgrown when their populations fled or were killed.
There will be peonies, euphorbia and a field maple, among other ornamental
plants. Finally, the end of the garden aims to evoke the chalky downland of
the Somme, with the kind of woodland that inspired the war poets. Three wild
cherries will provide structure, while Wildflower Turf, the firm that made
the mound for the Olympic opening ceremony, is providing the mix of flower
and grass for the hillocks. Unifying the garden is “quite a long, slightly
Brutalist, gently sloping wall” – a reminder of trenches, tunnels and
pillboxes. Other details will be made from Portland stone, the material used
for many of the First World War headstones.
In contrast to all this period inspiration, Matthew Keightley of landscaping
firm Farr Roberts has designed a garden for the Help the Heroes charity,
“Hope on the Horizon”, which addresses the war in Afghanistan. Keightley,
29, has a brother serving in the RAF Regiment who has been deployed for his
fifth tour. Last time he was fighting as a helicopter gunner, covering
medical evacuations.
Matthew Keightley’s garden for Help the Heroes
“Talking to him got me thinking about how all we hear about is the tragic
wounding and then, much later, the soldier who has recovered heroically,”
Keightley says. “I wanted to represent the recovery process through a
garden.”
Keightley is unusual in never having designed a show garden before. He is more
of a hands-on, practical landscape designer. Another unusual aspect of this
project, sponsored by The David Brownlow charitable foundation, is that
rather than being broken up or sold off, as is often the case with Chelsea
show gardens, “Hope on the Horizon” will form part of a larger landscape at
the Help for Heroes facility Chavasse, near Colchester.
“The challenge is to adapt it so it doesn’t look like a 15m x 10m plot plonked
in a landscape. The whole thought process has to be positive,” he says. “Not
just for people looking at the garden but for the soldiers using it to help
with their recovery.”
The garden is arranged along two axes, in the shape of the Military Cross. At
one end is a sculpture by the Scottish artist Mary Bourne, depicting the
horizon. The hard landscaping is in granite, which becomes more refined as
you move through the garden, to represent soldiers growing physically
stronger.
The planting, meanwhile, is intended to represent psychological well-being. It
becomes more deliberate as you progress through the plot.
It will also be a tactile space, he says. “I am using herbs that will release
a scent when the soldiers brush past, and plenty of grasses that can be
touched. There is an avenue of large hornbeam trees, to frame the view.”
Other plants include acanthus, agapanthus, geraniums and poppies.
Keightley: ‘I am using herbs that will release a scent when the soldiers
brush past, and plenty of grasses that can be touched’
Battling this symbolism, of course, are the usual weather issues that affect
every Chelsea designer.
“It has been a mild spring, so I have had to make some amendments – some of
the digitalis, for example, flowered too early, and I will replace them. But
I staggered most of the planting to give myself options,” says Keightley.
He hopes that the garden won’t be seen as gloomy. “It’s obviously poignant
that this is the anniversary of the First World War. But the garden is a
celebration of the soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan, rather than
dwelling too much on the past.”
*Exclusive
offer for Telegraph readers: enjoy tickets to Chelsea Flower Show, a
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Lisa Heyer: Ramp up curb appeal with gardening ideas from HouseLogic.com
Lisa Heyer
Posted: Thursday, April 24, 2014 6:15 am
northwestgeorgianews.com
Spring is underway and for many it’s time to get outdoors and reconnect with nature. Gardening enthusiasts who want to deepen the shade of their green thumb can find helpful information and how-tos just a click away at the landscaping and gardening section of HouseLogic.com, the comprehensive website for homeowners from the National Association of Realtors.
“HouseLogic.com has all the tips, advice and inspiration you need to make your garden really stand out this year,” said Pamela Geurds Kabati, NAR senior vice president of communications and HouseLogic spokesperson. “Whether your gardening plans are as simple as pulling weeds and raking leaves or as large-scale as a complete overhaul of your backyard, HouseLogic.com offers valuable insights on how to make it happen.”
According to the 2013 Remodeling Cost vs. Value Report, gardening and landscaping efforts pay off; curb appeal projects are rated among the most valuable home improvement projects. A pleasing exterior with well-groomed shrubbery can really make a home stand out.
Visitors to HouseLogic.com will find tips and ideas for beautifying their yard in articles like “Five awesomely easy landscaping projects”. Users can also check out “10 must have landscape tools” for help planning their projects. Another interesting article explores the benefits of spending time outdoors and “Gardening as a cure for depression”.
HouseLogic also helps homeowners avoid landscaping pitfalls with resources like “11 trees you should never plant in your yard”. This slideshow highlights trees that are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth and can help owners make more informed decisions when deciding what trees to plant.
HouseLogic is an award-winning, free source of information and tools from the National Association of Realtors® that helps homeowners make smart decisions and take responsible actions to maintain, protect, and enhance the value of their home. HouseLogic helps homeowners plan and organize their home projects and provides timely articles and news; home improvement advice and how-tos; and information about taxes, home finances, and insurance.
Article prepared and submitted by Lisa J. Heyer, owner/broker with Jackson Realty.
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Top Ten Bee-Friendly Tips: #1-Use Native Plants in Your Landscape
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Top Ten Bee-Friendly Tips: #1-Use Native Plants in Your Landscape
Posted by: Rhonda Hayes
Updated: April 23, 2014 – 3:21 PM
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Use native plants in your landscape. Sounds pretty straightforward. But with so much emphasis on food-growing gardens the past few years, it’s sounds a little decadent to plant pretty flowers, almost like a guilty pleasure.
Yet that’s what bees need. Lots and lots of flowers. Hopefully lots of native flowers that they are best adapted to for gathering nectar and pollen. Insects and plants that have evolved side by side have the best synergy when it comes to pollination. These plants have adapted in accordance to color, flower shape, bloom time, and the insects have adapted with their body parts, diet and reproductive cycles to benefit from each other.
So it sounds pretty easy, you just look for the native plant label and there you go. Well sort of.
Bee on native sunflower Photo by Rhonda Fleming Hayes
Whenever there’s an opportunity marketers will find it. Lots of plants are labeled native, but in a country as broad and diverse geographically as America, you’ll find not every plant can be native to every place in America. A plant native to Oregon might not be the best for a Minnesota bee. So when you’re shopping online or in person, do a little google search on the side with that plant. Try to find plants local to the upper Midwest, and more so to Minnesota. That’s not to say other plants will be of no value, but those plants will also have the best chance of surviving and thriving in our climate and growing zone. More plant labels and catalog descriptions are starting to identify bee-friendly plants.
So are all non-native plants bad for bees? Not necessarily. There are lots of “exotics”, plants that have been brought here from other countries that flourish in our state that bees find attractive. You have to go no further than Minnesota favorites like lilacs and hostas for example. But do avoid “double” flower forms and sterile versions of bedding plants and ornamentals that have little to no food value left in them.
A great way to figure out what bees like is to go looking for bees. What do they seem to go for? Bees do well when they have different flowers blooming as the season progresses. Bees benefit from large swaths of the same flower so they don’t have to spend as much energy foraging.
Now after all this, some people still don’t want to use native plants. They say they’re weedy looking or invasive. Not necessarily. There are design strategies for dealing with these objections, like using some straight lines, employing traditional plant spacing, choose clumping forms, and limiting the number of species. For more detailed ideas I highly recommend the Landscaping with Native Plants of Minnesota by Lynn Steiner.
Still have questions about using native plants in the landscape? Feel free to comment or email through The Garden Buzz.
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Los Gatos: Students’ goal is to make Ghana a more ‘healthy, beautiful’ place
With a goal of making Yamoransa, Ghana, a “healthy and beautiful” place to live, a group of Los Gatos High School students plans to head there this summer for a work project. In fact, the high school’s Garden for Ghana Club was formed earlier this school year with just that in mind.
Club president Brooke Ahmed started the club after interning last summer with Alrie Middlebrook at the California Native Garden Foundation in San Jose. Middlebrook travels to Ghana annually to help people in the tiny African nation implement sustainable environmental practices.
In Yamoransa, the students will cultivate eroded land into beautiful landscapes and productive gardens. They’ll be working alongside scientists and students from Ghana’s Central University planting trees, flowers, produce and botanicals that will “correct” the eroded land.
“We are thinking now of landscaping ideas and plants to grow,” Brooke said. “That includes plants that are useful for solving deforestation problems. Other plants can help with Yamoransa’s erosion problems; they have a lot of rain there.
“The people of Yamoransa don’t have a healthy, balanced diet,” Brooke added, “so our purpose is to educate them and help them become self-sustaining.”
But to get to Ghana, the students need travel money. So a fundraiser is planned for May 18 at the Los Gatos Adult Recreation Center, 208 E. Main St. The event is from noon to 3 p.m. and will include brunch and guest speakers. In addition, members of the high school’s various bands are being lined up to entertain guests.
The 20 students who are members of the Garden for Ghana Club have just started fanning out around town, asking local merchants to support their fundraising effort by donating items that can be raffled off during the brunch. Early sponsors include retailers Nuance and Jennifer Croll, along with the Purple Onion.
The students hope to gather more donations for their auction–including items like wine, spa treatments and dinners from local restaurants.
Brunch tickets are $25 and can be purchased by emailing Alrie Middlebrook at alriem@me.com. People who wish to donate to the auction should also contact Middlebrook.
Bright IDEAs: IDEA Competition to award $30K to local entrepreneurs
Seven finalists remain for the sixth annual Ingenuity Drives Entrepreneur Acceleration (IDEA) Competition organized by the Northwest Minnesota Foundation. The competition aims to encourage new ideas by awarding money to companies with innovative concepts that are easily marketable.
At an awards banquet Thursday night at the Sanford Center, three $10,000 awards will be given to three of the seven finalists. Those seven were whittled down from an initial pool of about 20 entrants, said Marty Sieve, NMF vice president for programs. Although NWF does much of the the legwork with the competition, winners are decided by a board of 12 representatives from the event’s sponsor groups, such as local banks and schools, he said. The selection committee looks not just for a good idea, Sieve said, but a good team of entrepreneurs to bring the idea into a bankable reality.
“It’s not strictly a business plan competition… it’s not just a theoretical thing,” Sieve said. “We are evaluating the competence of the entrepreneurs themselves… the real life prospects for bringing this product to the market.”
The ‘Bedraptor’
One of the finalists is Bemidji inventor John Szurpicki, who recently received a patent on a new soil tilling blade called the “Bedraptor,” which is designed to to dig narrow trenches around the borders of landscape beds.
The idea for the blade came to him years ago when he operated his own landscaping company and couldn’t find the tool he wanted, no matter how hard he searched.
“I contacted all my dealerships that I would buy equipment from,” he said. “Everything that they had me try was more a gimmick, and the things that did work were just too doggone big.”
Szurpicki came up with a prototype working in his garage, taking a conventional blade design and adding angled horizontal blades that both cut the earth and heave it neatly into the landscape bed. However, rather than selling the new tool himself, Szurpicki plans to license his product to a bigger corporation that can manufacture and market his invention. The competition has already helped put him into contact with the right people, he said.
“Thanks to the IDEA Competition, I’m in communication with (farm/lawn implement company) Toro… I’m having some conversations with them to see if they have an interest,” he said.
Szurpicki previously was an IDEA competition finalist in 2010, he said.
Other finalists include Addy-Olly in Thief River Falls, Berd’s Innovations in Red Lake Falls, CR Data Solutions in Bagley, Gifts of the Grove in Laporte, Lamplighter Hockey in Warroad and Skyrocker Telescope in Roseau.
Past Bemidji winners include Jeff Sullivan in 2012, Mark Landes and Jennifer DeBarr, also in 2012, the team of Jason LaValley, Jorge Prince and Roger LaValley in 2011, Jeff Sullivan and Arnold Kleinsasser, also in 2011, Eric Thorsgard in 2009 and David and Bonnie Ekstrom, also in 2009.
South Bend City Cemetery preservation project gaining momentum – WSBT
There’s a renewed effort to clean up South Bend’s City Cemetery, one of the most historic sites in Michiana.
The headstones are engraved with familiar names, like Studebaker, Sample, and Colfax, people who helped create the South Bend we know today.
But look closer and you might think their contributions have been forgotten.
Many headstones are toppled over and parts of the cemetery are in disrepair, but a growing group of volunteers, genealogy geeks, history buffs, and people who just want to see a change are hammering out a plan to restore dignity to City Cemetery.
They have a lot of work to do as evidenced when someone asked during a preservation project group meeting Tuesday night if the cemetery is even safe to visit.
“I think you need to be cautious,” said Steve Nemeth, who oversees the cemetery for the South Bend Parks Dept., “I would recommend you go with another person, but I don’t think it’s horrible.”
Their goal is to someday treat the space like a park. Yes there are graves, but it’s one of the larger green-spaces in town.
They envision new trails, plaques, benches, and nicer landscaping, among other ideas.
“It will help revitalize that area,” said Oliver Davis, South Bend Common Council member, “using the graveyard to bring back life to the whole area is a very interesting concept, but it really does.”
Right now they’re just trying to figure out what needs to be done and how much it’ll cost.
Ultimately much of the work will fall on the shoulders of volunteers and donors who see so much potential in South Bend’s past.
Youth to pitch business ideas
Hamilton Spectator
Inner-city youth eager to start their own businesses will make their pitches Wednesday.
Mentors in Greater Hamilton Teaching Youth (MIGHTY) is a partnership between the Industry-Education Council of Hamilton and Innovation Factory.
About a dozen students from Cathedral High School, Parkview, Delta and the Strengthening Hamilton Aboriginal Youth program will pitch their business concepts to a panel of judges.
Among the business ideas are photography services, an organic body scrub, landscaping and a mobile car-detailing operation.
The panel will make a choice and attendees at the by-invitation event will also make a people’s choice, said Cesare DiDonato, executive director of the IEC. The hope is that more community members will offer mentorship to the students, he said.
During about 13 weeks of the program, participants were taught the basics of starting their own business through a series of workshops with alumni of McMaster, Mohawk and Redeemer and IEC staff.
All the participants have applied to the provincial government’s Summer Company program.
This was the first year for the program, which is meant to encourage inner-city youth to explore entrepreneurship as a viable career option. The IEC has received provincial funding to run the program again next year.
The Hamilton Spectator