Oakleaf Green Makes an Appearance (Literally) On the Shelves Your Local Bookstore Again

Posted January 7, 2010 by Andrew

You heard right: Oakleaf Green and I are back for seconds in the February 2010 issue of Fine Gardening magazine, available at better bookstores and magazine sellers everywhere!

This issue’s article is a review of my terrific little electric chipper, the McCulloch MCS2001. This isn’t your grandfather’s chipper! It’s light duty, and does a terrific job with small brush. It’s already contributed good things to my town’s local ecosystem, as I used it to chip up an entire grove of burning bush at a site this summer, and that is no exaggeration. What’s better is that it’s electric, so no gas is required.

I should also mention that not only will you see me in this issue, you’ll actually SEE me. As in there’s a full color photo of me running the chipper.

Support the good folks at Fine Gardening! Want to replace your grove of burning bush with a garden? Contact me!

Filed under Practice Makes Perfect | Comments Off

Oakleaf Green Hits Newsstands Nationwide in Fine Gardening

Posted July 31, 2009 by Andrew

That’s right, folks, Oakleaf Green and I make our national print debut in the October issue of Fine Gardening magazine, which actually hits newsstands right about now. My former journalism professors, English teachers, and my mother will be so proud! Check your local listings, e.g. Barnes & Noble, Borders, or similar.

Tremendous thanks to Associate Editor Michelle Gervais for giving me the opportunity to contribute! My article is a regional report on fall perennials for the Northeast. My perennial picks were all U.S. natives, and three out of the four are drought tolerant as well. (White baneberry is somewhat so once established.)

Fall is perhaps my favorite plant season, and we’re talking about WAY more than leaves here, people. I hope you’ll consider adding some of these fall perennials to your garden — and contacting me to help — AND I hope you’ll support the fine work of the folks at Fine Gardening.

Filed under Practice Makes Perfect | 5 Comments »

In Search of the Drought-Tolerant Hanging Basket

Posted June 15, 2009 by Andrew

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post was featured on About.com’s Guide to Container Gardening — thanks so much, Kerry! If you’re not familiar with Kerry, she’s terrific. Be sure to click that link and check her out.

I’d like to add containers to my repertoire, but I find annuals a necessary part of container gardening, and as a sustainable gardener annuals have never been my thing. Even so, they’re a lot of fun, and I reasoned if purchased from an organic grower, grown sustainably through the season and composted in the end, what’s the harm in a few here and there? Our old house and others who inhabit it beg for hanging baskets every year, so I decided to start there.

Step one was done: I’d found materials and an organic grower. Three wire hanging basket frames came from the local flea market for a grand total of $1. (Logistically AND financially sustainable, eh?) At a fabric store, I bought inexpensive burlap to line the baskets that will eventually break down. I decided to buy plants from Goose Cove Gardens of Gloucester, Mass., the only organic nursery I know of.

Then came the more difficult part: what to plant, and what to pot up my plants in that would feed them through the season and ensure I won’t have to water every day — one of my personal pet peeves. I chose an organic mulch/compost mix, often sold as “dark performance mulch,” reasoning that between the soil the plants were potted in and the compost, there’d be enough medium for their roots, and the mulch would retain moisture.

Even so, drought tolerant plants were in order. I needed plants sun and shade, and I asked friends on Twitter for ideas. We generated a shopping list I took with me to Goose Cove, and here’s what I ended up with:

Sun baskets:

• Dorotheanthus ‘Mezoo Trailing Red’
• Portulaca in a peachy pink
• Osteospermums, lavender and purple
• Ornamental pepper, Capsicum annuum ‘Black Pearl,’ whose drought-tolerant status I’m least sure of
• And special for the front door basket, Hyacinth bean, Lablab purpureus.

Shade basket:

• Thunbergia alata ‘Suzie’ in yellow
• Begonia ‘Illumination Salmon Pink’
• Begonia ‘Nonstop® Apple Blossom’ in white
• Nicotiana alata ‘Perfume Mix,’ again, skeptical of this one and drought tolerance, but I needed something tall, so we’re giving it a shot.

My question: how long can the pots go without water from me? It’s been about a month now, and so far so good. I watered the day I potted them up, but I’ve let Mother Nature take it from there. Thus far there’s been enough rain to sustain them — July and August will be the true test. If things begin to wilt, I’ll water from my rain barrels, but I’m hopeful everyday watering, at least, is a thing of the past.

Filed under Practice Makes Perfect | 5 Comments »

Knowing When To Make A Change

Posted April 13, 2009 by Andrew

The pieris had stood in that spot for probably half a century. Like most of the foundation planting I found when we moved into our home, it was hugely overgrown. Some I renovated and some I left, but the pieris… I wasn’t sure.

I’ve never been a fan of Pieris floribunda, sometimes known as Japanese andromeda, a popular evergreen here in the Northeast. Yes, there are cultivars with exciting flowers and foliage, but this was the straight species or thereabouts. I didn’t like the particular shade of red its new growth took on in the spring, nor the electric chartreuse it changed to as the season wore on. I didn’t like the messy seed clusters that hung on indefinitely — indefinitely — after flowering. I didn’t much like it at all.

Still, I thought it deserved a shot. Pieris are slow-growing, so I knew this was a venerable plant. I pruned it into tree form, exposing a multi-trunked base with nicely colored bark. I liked that. I picked out all the dead seeds. I stood back and stared. I thought it over. I thought it over some more.

After a year of thinking it over, I didn’t like the plant any more than I had from the start. It was time for the pieris to go. A red ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Summer Wine’) had caught my attention, and I thought it would be the perfect successor.

On a bright fall afternoon, I took the pieris down. As a nature lover, it hurt me. Who was I to dispose of an organism that had thrived in this spot since before I was born? As a designer and a gardener, I knew it had to be done. Rarely do we have the opportunity to choose the plants that come with our homes, and when plants that have been chosen for us puncture an otherwise harmonious design scheme, it’s decision time.

But that’s not the end! Yes, good garden plants can often be moved, but if not, they can always be reused. The stump of the old pieris pictured is going to be the base of my new birdbath. I’m recycling its branches into rustic fencing, and all the rest of it went to the town compost. Taking out the pieris may have been a long-contemplated design decision, but facilitating its rebirth in many forms was a no-brainer, and something I consider a responsibility — as a designer, a gardener, and a human being.

Filed under Practice Makes Perfect | 3 Comments »

Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants

Posted March 12, 2009 by Andrew

Brooklyn Botanic Garden publishes some great stuff, and Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants is a standout. Invasive species from foreign lands with no natural predators here continue to overwhelm our native flora and fauna, and this book is an illustrative, accessible reference of better plant options, good for homeowners and pros alike.

When I moved to Topsfield in the winter of 2007, I was itching for spring so I could see what was growing in my new backyard. Well, spring came, and with it came the invasive plants. I found bishop’s weed, European buckthorn, Japanese knotweed, dame’s rocket, Norway maple, burning bush, Japanese barberry. I found a few treasures, but not many, and they were greatly outnumbered by the interlopers.

2009 is the first year Norway maple, sycamore maple, a number of honeysuckles and (most notably) burning bush are no longer for sale in Massachusetts. Some folks won’t be happy about this, and I can relate. The first plant I came across when I opened the BBG book was one of my all-time favorites: butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).

The first place BBG lists it as an invader is Massachusetts.

I was puzzled. I knew butterfly bush was invasive in the Pacific Northwest and the UK, but here? My beloved buddleias?

Turns out that while butterfly bush can be an aggressive reseeder, it isn’t listed by the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group as invasive, likely invasive, or potentially invasive. This means it hasn’t escaped cultivation so much as to land itself on the Massachusetts Prohibited Plant List.

At any rate, I now know firsthand the flood of emotions over learning a favorite plant has been deemed an invasive: heartbreak that it has; irritation because seriously, the government is telling me what I can’t plant in my garden; guilt that my knee-jerk reaction is to prioritize a plant I love over our native ecosystems.

Granted, my butterfly bushes haven’t proven invasive, but to homeowners who love burning bush, for example: I feel your pain. To you I say we will work this out. Burning bush is beautiful, but there are others that are just as much so, if not more, that can do things burning bush never dreamed of. There’s serviceberry (top left), which has great spring flowers and a berry rumored to make an excellent pie. There’s Virginia sweetspire (middle), whose fall color is, in my opinion, even better than burning bush, and which also has an amazing floral display. And then there are blueberries (bottom). Blueberries! I ask you, what’s not to love about blueberries?

Let’s all have a cathartic sigh over the invasives we love and work on moving forward. I can help. Brooklyn Botanic Garden can help. Call us, and read the book.

Photos from MOBOT.

Filed under Green Reads, Practice Makes Perfect | Comments Off

A Rain Garden Mnemonic

Posted February 23, 2009 by Andrew

I needed a quick way to tell friends the reasons to reduce stormwater runoff on their property by installing rain gardens, rain barrels and such, so I made up a mnemonic:

Now Stormwater Can Percolate Down In Time.

• Nutrients from fertilizers cause excessive aquatic plant and algae growth, which depletes oxygen in water. It’s been implicated in red tide blooms, and elevated levels in drinking water can be a danger to humans.
• Sediments like eroded soil and sand from roads bury aquatic ecosystems and make water cloudy. Other pollutants often hitch a ride with them as well.
• Chemicals like pesticides and heavy metals threaten life underwater and above, including us, and they’re are resistant to breakdown.
• Pathogens are bacteria associated with fecal matter that cause diseases. Often result in beach closures and shellfishing bans.
• Debris that floats is plain old litter. It’s bad for aquatic life, and it’s ugly, people.
• Invasive species are exotic plants and animals that threaten to take over our native ecosystems. As the presenter at my NOFA course said, they’re the only pollutant that multiplies! More on them later.
• Thermal pollution is water that’s been heated on roads, etc., in the summer, that burns native species while helping aforementioned invasives to spread.

Spread the word to YOUR friends!

Filed under Practice Makes Perfect | Comments Off