Botany Buddy

It has been a long time coming, much longer than this post, but we are starting to see the pieces of our online tools come to life.  I hearken back to the journey of creating the original iPhone app and remember the emotional roller coaster it was.  Despite all the memories relived and the stress of dealing with the developers and Apple, when it finally hit the store, it was like seeing a Magnolia bloom in spring oozing with pollen.  The people we have met as a result have been like the friends you make at a garden party or your trusted allies at the local nursery.  They have pollinated our flower and created the fruit that will produce that cluster of bright red seeds for the Cardinals to harvest and spread the flowers all around.

When we started the iPhone app and worked with the developer, we realized quickly that there was nothing natural about the technology at all, no matter how smooth they make the interface look.  We realized that to continue growing and for technology to work with nature it must act like nature, be built like nature and grow like nature.  The pieces and parts must be able to work together to grow the ecosystem as a whole.  Unfortunately since 1992, when the USDA started building the first database, technology for horticulture has been moving the wrong direction.  The medium has been used to store, organize, and dictate what nature is rather than grow the information like the plant kingdom, has grown itself.  As a result the information is fractured, isolated and has not been allowed to grow and become the knowledge it wants to become. 

We experienced the stifling complexities of this paradox before the iPhone app was ever complete, but were limited by the technology of the device.  As users started giving us feedback, we saw the limited use of the iPhone to ATT and the iPhone platform create the same separations as traditional horticulture information on other platforms.  Nature is made up of symbiotic relationships that are not limited by species let alone by the brand of your computer or phone, and we realized to meet the needs of gardeners, growers, and the horticulture industry as a whole we had use the whole world as our ecosystem, just like nature does.  So just as we ran from the USDA and turned to Linnaeus as the inspiration for our data structure, we have moved from the native applications to a web based platform that can grow as freely as the Internet has itself.

Gardens are about growing… plants, places, people, minds, and relationships.  For growth to happen you have to learn, which requires listening, communicating, adapting, and experiencing.  Using data structures and technological devices that prevent and stifle this growth, have kept the entire industry from being able to grow technologically as well as the plants in their gardens grow themselves.  When it comes to reference sources for horticulture, rather than treating them as a growing medium, technology has acted more like a pre emergent or pair of pruners to control the growth of information.  In the end it has prevented or limited the experiential activities necessary to grow and has turned gardening on the web to a collection on limitless libraries and opinions.  Other than prolific and wonderful discussions in social media little has been done to grow the industry as a whole through the use of the information.

Some who will read this have seen what we are up to in our cyber-greenhouse, and have watched us toiling in the soil, and even seen some of the seeds germinate.  Finally the seeds have all germinated, their roots are reaching the edge of the pots and are ready to be potted up.  Like those first liners going to the wholesale market, that is who we have been working with first to bring this to market, and for some of those larger nurseries who do it all, we are planting our flowers in their greenhouses as well.  Soon it will be spreading nation, continent and world-wide just like those seeds on the Magnolia.

Like nature itself, the technology is proving that it can grow symbiotically with all these different groups regardless of their individual environments and species.  It is working, just like all of those original experiments that came from Linnaeus and those little bitty peas.  It is working because instead of fighting and controlling nature we worked with it, embraced it and emulated it.  We are able to grow all of these different tools for all these different people, because like nature we have one life force driving everything we do for everyone in our garden, and have used nature’s structural models to make it all work together.

We are not ready to release our individual or education tools yet, if you sign up for news on our main site we will keep you posted.  If you are in the nursery or landscape industry and looking for ways to better communicate with, or education your clients, staff, and end users feel free to contact us, and I’ll gladly give you a tour or the cyber-greenhouse and show you what we are growing for you.

Twitter can wear me out sometimes.  I am a little to ADD to keep up with everything that is going on in all those different directions.  There are some wonderful people out there that I have gotten to know and I am a better person for it.  Let’s face it though, many of them are as fake as they come, especially when in the form of some tweet machine or corporate face.  The odd’s aren’t much different than in the world of touchable, seeable, smellable beings, but they are often more obvious, because it is easier to see behavior in print over a timeline than in a personal encounter.  Every once in awhile though you meet someone in the twitterverse that reminds you who you are and of your own timeline.

A few months ago I stumbled into one of those in @rainbowirisfarm.  It wasn’t anything I heard him say or do, but the few encounters I have take me deep into my roots unbeknown to him.  Rainbow Iris Farm is in a little known corner of the universe known as Bedford, Iowa.  You may be asking yourself how one can find the iris for the corn, and that can be hard.  However, also in Bedford is a little place called Lake of Three Fires.  There aren’t many big lakes in the land of tall corn, because it is just too damn flat to hold water.  This isn’t a big lake, but it had something even harder to find in the midwest.  It had a beach.

I grew up over the border in a little town in Northwest Missouri, and my parents split up at an early age.  Some of the fondest memories of times with my father involved two places…his rose garden, and Lake of Three Fires.  When my parents split up, it was during the gas crisis.  Mom got the Bug, and Dad got the MG.  At first I lived with my mom, and on visitation weekends with my dad, one of our favorite things to do was load up the MG and head to Bedford.  We would put down the roof and my brother would get the front seat because he was older.  I would sit in the back where there was no seat on the little flat space that the roof folded down into.  Sometimes I would even make a fort underneath the roof where I could nap out of the wind on the way home.

We knew the journey had begun, not when the roof came down, but when he popped in the Eagles Greatest Hits 8-track.   That giant orange toupee would start blowing in the wind with those giant silk collars and gold chains flapping to the wind in the same rhythm.  We new good times were ahead, including the drive.  When we would get to the lake, Dad always told us he couldn’t swim, but in reality it was just that the hair tape wouldn’t stay on in the water.  Decades later I can remember the sight of him on those trips vividly, but I can’t remember for the life of me what that lake looked like.  I can remember the rose garden vividly.  Every time I see @rainbowirisfarm in the timeline, I see that drive and even smell the Aramis like it was happening right then and there.  Then I go back down my own timeline and always end up in the rose garden.

With father’s day weekend coming up I will be going to the rose garden at Biltmore for a leisurely photo outing.  I recently did photo profiles of every rose in the place.  That was an even bigger journey through time than my twitter encounters.  Ominously missing from the collection is a certain Mr. Lincoln.  Rose gardeners will know what a travesty this is.  I started to wonder if the absence it was a nod to the South then I realized that Peace and Olympiad were missing too.  Maybe Mr. Vanderbilt just had something against symbols of democracy polluting his aristocracy.  Regardless,  I will go and inevitably get lost in the sights, smells and memories of times past.  I might even go all the way and put The Eagles on my iPod Touch.  They rightfully deserve a place there with Botany Buddy since my memories of them are much a part what has brought it about.   Now if I could just get just get that MG since I no longer need a truck.

In the last three weeks I have been visited by about thirty friends from distant places dating back over thirty years.   Some of them I don’t even remember not knowing and even though I hadn’t seen some in five to ten years it seemed as though a single day had not passed.  Most have married or should have been allowed to, and some we here to see one get married.  About the only thing that was different was some of us were a little softer physically and mentally.  However none of us were any softer in our passions.  When you get a group of artists, musicians, chefs, designers, and gardeners together you know you are in for aesthetic overload.  I have to thank Michael and Anita for choosing Asheville as the location for their special day.  There couldn’t have been anyplace more appropriate for such a reunion.

It was definitely a spiritual time and this in particular is a spiritual time of year for me.  Lately I have been completely enthralled in my writing for the update, but I have also been rediscovering my camera.  Two days a week I have been spending in the field capturing what has probably been the best blooming season I have ever encountered.  This has allowed me to capture from bud to bloom to leaf and to seed hundreds of varieties of plants.  In the process it has reconnected me to the people who introduced me to some of the plants, and the people I introduced the plants to.  This has been a true rediscovery of myself and I can never thank enough the people that have allowed this happen, just like I can never thank enough the people who first made these introductions to me.  There is an old saying that it is bad luck to thank someone for giving you a plant, you just give them one back and give one to someone else.  Gardening is without a doubt about giving and bringing people together rather than thanking them and going on your way.  Things and people always seem to keep coming around like the seasons in a garden.

This spring has also allowed me to reconnect with people I have never met.  In my excursions  I have visited private and public gardens as well as nature herself.  I have even just cruised neighborhoods scoping out that one missing specimen.  Twenty years ago this is how I first honed my craft with mentors and friends like Duane Hoover of the Kaufmann Gardens and so many others.  However no one made me better understand my craft better than those I studied that came before me.  Tommy Church, George Kessler, Frank Lloyd Wright and John Brookes are some of my favorites, but nothing influenced me more than the biography of Fredrick Law Olmsted.  I had read books about his work, but this was the first one that was really about him.  It is no garden book.  It reads more like a Western novel about someone who eventually found his was in a garden, and he was always the first to admit that he was not a Landscape Architect, just a lover of the arts and the land.  As a product of the liberal arts myself, I always related to him the most.

This spring I have been spending two days a week scouring the grounds of The Biltmore Estate, camera in hand and brain in the clouds.  Like the kid I was learning my craft in the parks of Kessler, and finding my way in the gardens I was creating, it is like Olmsted and I are connecting again after all these years and no time has passed.  Along the way I continue to meet new people as they find me crawling out from under a plant, trying to get that perfect picture of the bark.  Every once in awhile when I look beyond the picturesque gardens and soak in the pastoral, I realize Olmsted put that there too and I continue to meet new plants.  There is no one more responsible for the introduction of some the worst invasive species to these mountains than Mr. Olmsted, but I have not doubt he loved the land as much as I do.

I am sure that if he knew then what we know now, he would have moved from defining sustainability as related to money, to creating things that are sustainable without it.  He saw the plants as a palet to fulfill the visions of his designs, strong in Architecture, but grounded in the patterns of nature.  They were like the books on a shelf or the art on a wall and he brought a greater appreciation of them to all of us.  He saw sustainability as a plan to care for the land buy using it to generate the money to pay for the art.  I am sure if he were alive today, he would see that the plants need to take care of the land so we don’t have to plunder it to pay for the gardens we create.  In the end, he made us more aware.  He just wasn’t aware of the consequences of his actions, but without them we would not have come to the awareness we have today.

As I near submission of the next update, I will not jinx things and thank Mr. Olmsted, Oregon State University or the University of Arizona, but I will be sure and give them some plants back.  Most importantly, I’ll be sure and share them with others, because plants and people definitely go together.  In the end, without growing together we will never learn together.

Alright, I admit that I am a sap for cheesy music (as well as the good stuff) and I have a weakness for great song writers.  Writing a great song is so similar to designing a great garden that I just can’t help it. Today it’s Billy Joel.  I have been writing in app speak for about a week straight without blogging, and breaking out the Greatest Hits was a sure fire way to get me back to my native tongue.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love the challenge of trying to hone together information into perfectly worded phrases designed to interact with on another on a technical level.  Writing an interactive book is actually great because it reigns in my run on sentences and teaches me to speak without analogies and innuendos.   However, is it me trying to change myself to try and please you…or is it me?  I think as long as I continue to be myself that I will come through in the end.  That is the key to writing a great song.  Finding the best in all of us, learning to bring it out and bring us together with the most efficient use of words, patterns, rhythm, is at the heart of music, writing, gardening and all the arts.

One of the key things I have learned to do in all of this is not change me and to be myself.  I learned a long time ago as a designer that when I did my best work, I let myself come out and tried to blend it with the essence of my clients and the space we were working in.  The same is true with plants.  Plants do their best for us when we put them where they want to be, not where we can make them do what we want.  As gardeners, too often we ask this of our plants and our spaces only to change ourselves too in the end.  By butchering them and controlling them to the point that they are no longer who they want to be (people, places, or plants) they cease to be the things we love and become all to unfamiliar.

So while we sit and reflect this winter and lust over catalogs to find the perfect plants for the prefect spots, let’s remember that the perfect plant is the one that can be who it wants to be and bring out the essence of the space and ourselves in the process.   If we do this we will get the gardens we want because those spaces, our needs, and the needs of the plants that will live there will bring us the diversity we crave.  If we don’t we will just ruin all the things we love about each other and our love of gardening.

We’ve all been in that bad relationship, and as designers in our desire to create and be something different we can make the greatest mistake of all  “She’ll promise you more than the garden of Eden.  Then she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while your bleeding but she’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be.  Blame it all on yourself cause she’s always a woman to me.” Sound like something we’ve all done to a shrub or two.  How often have we done this?   When will we learn that our plants, clients, spaces and selves are what and WHO they are.  Only when we learn to respect that and learn that we have to live together will we achieve that love we long for one another.    If we don’t we will just ruin all the things we love about each other and love of gardening.  So when we think of ourselves as gardeners let’s think of ourselves as cheesy songwriters.

“So don’t go changing to try and please me.  You never let me down before…Don’t imagine your too familiar and I don’t see you anymore…I would not leave you in times of trouble.  We never could have come this far…I took the good times.  I’ll take the bad times.  I’ll take you just the way you are.”

I saw this headline out of the Telegraph (UK) today: “Garden Centre Tells Men to Make Wives ‘Feel Special’ With a Clothesline“. If it hadn’t been attached to a tweet decrying the backlash, I actually would have thought, “What a great idea!”.  Of course once the retail chain was attacked for their callousness, they admitted their insensitivity and apologized; claiming that it was meant to be in jest and their catalogs were known for such dry humor.  ”Humor?” I thought…I was dead serious.  This is the kind of gift that would make my wife feel special.  In fact, such a gift has.

Three years ago, my wife started begging me for a clothesline.  Now being the obsessive compulsive designer, this was not quite jiving with my vision for the garden.  I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but the other reason was to being the obsessive compulsive one I also insist upon doing the laundry.   That way I know things are hung and folded the way I want, when I want.  A clothesline would about to add some serious effort to my weekly ritual and at a time of year when I need my rituals the most.  It also was going to add chaos to my rituals as suddenly the ability to complete my tasks was about to be controlled by the weather.  As a gardener it took me decades to get over this weather thing,  and I wasn’t looking forward to this inner struggle again.

However, we are “homestead gardeners” and in terms of our homestead palet, and our need to be green, She had a point that it did fit in.  So fate had it’s way and one day my fence guy (who like the article is from England) was here to install a beautiful new Three-board fence for our new extended goat pasture.  You see at the very front of our front yard and lawn is not a cul-de-sac for everyone to view our house from, but instead a series of three mini-pastures for us to rotate our goats and poultry through so they can “range”.  This new beautiful fence was to go right at the end of the lawn framed by two large White Oaks to take your eyes across the pasture over the valley and up the mountains on the other side to frame our view, and it does this quite well.

So after months of avoiding the clothesline and trying to buy off my wife with the fence project, The day had come to install the fence.  When James (the fence guy) arrived we had our usual chat and caught up on various projects before he drove down across the lawn to unload the materials for his guys.  They had been picking through the rock for a day already to dig the wholes so I thought I would stay away so they could complain to James and he could do his thing.  As I headed back to he house I didn’t even look at the materials as I have known James a long time and trust him with every bone of my body.  Back at my desk I looked out the window and to my surprise my wife was down there with him climbing in the back of the truck.  It turns out once he had unloaded our materials left in the bed of the truck were 2 (qty) 4″ welded steel “T’s” that he had removed from another job.

I knew I was in trouble.  My wife spent three years living in a mud hut in Africa in the Peace Corps and she is a very resourceful and determined person.  The game was on, and as James looked up at me in the window, a giant grin came across his face as he quickly lowered them down from the truck.  The last thing he wanted to do was take them home and have to put them up for his wife.   So there you have it…my wife was getting a clothes line and she was “Feeling Special”.  So for Valentines Day the gift that year that we can actually remember is my sanding those posts, painting them green, and setting them in concrete to string those lines.

Truth be had, I love that clothesline, and I love my wife.  It is an integral part of our homestead garden that sits centered between those Oaks right in front of that fence.  When the clothes aren’t on it, it looks more than appropriate with the goats behind it, the vegetable garden to one side and the woods to the other.  When the clothes are on it they add life to the landscape and their play in the wind exudes the freshness of the nature that surrounds us.  I have to say I love aesthetically arranging the clothes on it, and hanging them just right to prevent wrinkles from the pins and to get them to snap just right in the breeze so I don’t have to iron my linens.  This addition was perfect for my Monkish tendencies and our lifestyle.  That clothes line does make my wife “feel special”, and it makes me feel special too!

Anyone who doesn’t thinks that clotheslines can be romantic or make a spouse “feel special“, probably has problems enjoying a fine piece of chocolate or a tomato picked minutes before slicing.  The feeling of a fresh linen shirt touching your skin right off the line and the smell of fresh air that permeates it is one of the finer things in life.  Sliding between line dried sheets that don’t wreak of fabric softener as the cool breeze of night air drifts in through the window is one of the greatest “Rights of  Spring”.  Never mind all the environmental benefits that come along with it, If you can’t see how a clothes line can make on “feel special” than you must just have a hard time feeling yourself.

My wife is a landscape painter, and you can see her work here.   In the spring she opens the studio door and paints studies of the view.  One of my all time favorite pieces is this one of the clothesline.  If this doesn’t embody romance, then you must need a little more in your life.  It is not uncommon in the states to find people fighting for the “Right to Dry” as exclusive neighborhoods with soulless landscapes have banned them with their covenants.  My recommendation to you is if you do want to make your wife feel special get a clothesline, and try doing the laundry for her every once in awhile too.  It might just make you feel special too.

Since I started Botany Buddy and have been writing content for all of our upcoming applications, I have become somewhat addicted to reading all the old print trade magazines as well as blogs.  It seems like one of the hottest topics is and always has been lawns and the use of turf grass in design.  I have seen those that despise turf of any kind, those that don’t mind it as long as it is 100% organic, and those that think declaring your manifest destiny with acres of perfectly manicured turf is a symbol of the American way.  I hate to say it but you all my just be right, because what is actually the right thing to do may be dependent upon the situation you are in.

I always like to take nature as my guide.  Having spent the last five years designing and creating covenants for “sustainable” conservation properties, I have struggled with this dilemma myself and have come of with somewhat of a guide for decision making.  Like with everything else, I use nature as my guide.  If there was no place for grasses in our environment I seriously doubt we would have had the prairies, savannas, and wetlands to begin with.  All three of these situations are nature’s home to grasses, and they have very specific roles in the habitat of our wildlife and ecosystem as a whole.  Other than grazing,  The main roles of grass in all of these situation are erosion control, water filtration, and play.

Erosion control is pretty easy to understand, and there is a reason all best management practices in construction require very stringent seeding or sodding processes.  Once we killed the prairies, the winds blowing across the prairies would create the dust bowl and we learned this lesson the hard way.  Once grasses secure and protect disturbed soil the roots and thatch of the grass naturally convert the exposed subsoil into nutrient rich topsoil.  If you have ever lived in a brand new subdivision you see the emulation of this natural condition for the first ten to twenty years of its existence.  If you have lived and gardened in a 100 year old neighborhood you have enjoyed the benefits of the nice rich soil this process leaves behind.  Even in the woods, the herbaceous layer of perennials and in some cases grasses serve this same function.  The process of growing, dying back, and returning to the soil is emulated in our own lawn as long as we leave the thatch in place.

The other place grasses are most prevalent are in wetlands and river bottoms.  besides holding up the blooms of the beautiful wildflowers flowers for us to see better, grasses also are a vital filtration device for the water that flows through them.  This can be the same in our yards.  Running your storm water across a lawn is far better for the environment than channeling it in river rock or piping it to a storm water inlet.  Running water across 30 feet of healthy turf can remove 90% of the sediment and pollutants the water carries.  However this only works of you aren’t using even more pollutants to take care of the grass.  If managed responsibly, turf is actually one of the most ecologically friendly ways to manage surface water and drainage.  In the end the damage done poor drainage can be far worse than anything you can do with a lawn.

The final natural use of grassy areas I like to call “Play”.  If you have ever had the chance to see Elk emerge from the forest after an afternoon rain to engage in their courting rituals and graze you know exactly what I am talking about.  The same can be said for buffalo or deer, and it is not unlike watching  my daughter play games in the front lawn with a bunch of her friends.  The need for wide open spaces and battle our sense of claustrophobia is not only natural to us but most other species as well.  No matter how unnatural some can make a lawn look, wide open grassy spaces are very much a vital part of our natural landscape.  Unless a landscape is completely wooded they can look very unnatural without some form of lawn.  I have seen plenty of gardens planted to the gills.   Without a hint of negative space in the form of a meadow or lawn and they can look just as unnatural as a lawn.  Ground covers can provide this effect too, but if they grow lower than weeds it is impossible to keep them healthy and if they are aggressive enough to keep them out they are usually an invasive species.

In short the challenge to designing with lawns isn’t whether or not to do it.  The amount of sunlight and ability of the environment to support grass will determine that.  The challenge is finding the methods of installation and management that get it established quickly, and do more to benefit nature than we do to harm it in the process.  To guide you through these decisions I have put together this summary.  This in not a “How To”.  There will be an app for that.  Think of it as a “why to”…or to not.  I think you will find your answers come naturally and they will do more to help you succeed than any four-step program you buy and your local retailer.

Turf Grass Installation:

If you are looking for a traditional lawn, the two most common methods for installation are sodding and seeding. With soil preparation sodding typically costs from $1.00-$1.25 per square foot.  Seeding Usually Costs $.15 to $.25 per square foot.  However, this is very deceiving when you consider what it takes to achieve establishment.  To get seed to establish into a lawn in a landscape takes an average of 3-4 applications of herbicides, preemergents, and fertilizers per year.  It also usually requires at least one major aeration and renovation if not more, extensive watering, and frequent overseeding.  It also takes more water to establish the seed, and to maintain it in the hottest times of the year because it has less of a root system to support the blades.  This is just for one year, and it actually takes two full years of diligent, chemical ladent maintenance to beat the lifecycle of the weeds.   That is only if your timing is prefect and you don’t miss a beat.  Otherwise it can take longer.

There is no doubt that sod farms water incessantly, and pump tons of chemicals into the soil.  But the space that they pollute is limited.  They will typically get twenty or more harvests out of the same piece of ground.  They also tend to harvest and recylce their water and as a result are becoming more and more conscious of the the nitrogen levels and especially herbicides in it.  Due to the intense methods and irrigation, sod farms also produce a harvest ready turf in six to twelve months vs. two to three years.  This means it takes at the most 1/3 the chemical usage to achieve the desired thickness as it does to seed a lawn.  They are also strictly strictly regulated when it comes to run-off whereas homeowners are some of the biggest polluters with with their fertilizers running off right to the street and into the storm water system with no riparian buffer at all.  Numerous sources can be found to cite that homeowners use 10 times the number of pollutants on their lawns per acre than agriculture does.  This should make us think twice about how responsible we are.

Turf Grass Maintenance:

Mowing: The most environmental damage that results from lawns isn’t from having them, but rather how we take care of them. There are three main things to look at in the care of the lawn, mowing, fertilizing, pest/disease and weed control, and watering.  While treating pests, diseases and weeds directly contributes the most toxins to the soil and water, how you mow and water contributes to most to how much treating you need to do.  There is now greater deterrent to all of these other problems than having a healthy lawn in the first place.  Remember all of these other problems occur when what you trying to grow in the first place is weakened by not being allowed to do what it wants to do naturally.

Almost all turf grasses are bred from naturally occurring varieties that grow between six and twenty-four inches in height.  Now most of them have been bread to have thinner blades and can no longer hold themselves up naturally, but the closer we can allow them to get to that six inches the more they can do to take care of themselves and their space for us.  Other than specialty turfs like zoysia (which set you up for failure anyway), most common turf grasses shouldn’t be mowed shorter than three inches and should be allowed to grow at least two before mowing.  Not only will this make the grass perform better, but it will get tall enough to keep most weeds out, or at least hide them.  Your mower also pollutes, but that is a topic for another blog, hopefully the price of gas is starting to make you aware of that.

Chemical Treatments

Fertilizing: The two most common chemicals applied to lawns are fertilizers and herbicides.  Even organic chemicals, especially fertilizers, can create runoff if over used and pollute our streams.  Chicken manure is organic, and a great fertilizer, but you don’t want you well head next to the chicken house.  The best deterrent is to only use them when absolutely necessary.  Too often people throw down nitrogen every time their lawn looks a little yellow or brown.  Some times it just needs a simple trace mineral like lime or iron, or it just plain needs a break because it is too hot or cold out.  The only times that the need for nitrogen can be very obvious are in spring and fall when the grass is in prime growing season and it is still having problems.  Keeping grass growing in 100 degree temperatures is just as brutal as trying to keep yourself going and sometime we both just need a break.

Herbicides: Weed control is the second biggest polluter in lawn care.  It is also probably the easiest battle to lose.  That is why I recommend not even trying if you don’t have too.  My personal lawn is a mix of fescue, bluegrass and rye, but it also has some oxallis, nutgrass, and clover.  These weeds don’t get large enough to kill out the turf grass, and they provide fodder for the rabbits that keeps them out of my veggie patch.  When they go dormant in the fall, their thatch also creates a nice medium for overseeding the fescue that is slowly choking them out.   If you do have to treat something, only spot treat it, and only bother with things that can actually get big enough to kill out your grass or is a seriously invasive species like honeysuckle or crown vetch.

Pesticides and Fungicides: Aren’t used as often as other chemicals but can be just as dangerous to the water supply and wildlife even in smaller quantities.  Once again the question here is why bother.  Yes grubs will bring moles that tear up your yard, but grubs prefer clay and the moles help aerate and break it down.  Grubs also provide food for wildlife like wild turkeys and robins.  Treating fungus can slow down the organic processes needed to actually let your lawn and soil improve by itself, and the pesticides can kill the worms that provide the best fungicide and aeration of all.  Most of the problems you would treat for in the first place you can’t spot until the damage is done.  It is easily repaired with over seeding in the fall, and most disease and insect problems will usually run a natural course and disappear within a year.  In the end preventative treatments can do far more damage to your soil than the actual problems you are treating for, so think twice before applying or don’t apply at all.

Watering: I recently did a post on watering titled:  Plants Are Like People: Water With Love Even If It’s Tough. All of the same rules I go over there apply to turf.  A healthy turf can’t use more than an inch of precipitation a week, and should never be manually watered more often than once per week.  If you follow the instructions on the previous post you can get away with hardly watering at all.  We just came off of one of the worst droughts in the history of the Southeast, and in those years I never had to water my lawn more than once a month during the summer because I used the deep fall and winter  watering described in the previous post.  Also the taller you let your grass get the deeper the roots will grow.  If the roots are three inches deep, and you have watered deep enough to reach all the roots, you should be able to go three weeks without watering.  There are some common sense things you should do to prevent runoff like not watering the street or your driveway, but nothing is better for the environment than eliminating the need to water at all.

To wrap things up, lawns represent a vital part of our natural ecosystem.  They serve functions that are vital to wildlife and nature as well as our nature as human beings.  As long as we take nature’s cues on when to use them and don’t try to grow them where they don’t belong or want to be there is nothing unnatural about them at all.  What is unnatural is what we have been doing to them.

There is a dirty little secret in the gardening business that there are three things someone will spend 500 times what they spent on the plant on the supplies to grow them:  tomatoes, roses, and grass.  Next time you are in a garden center or big box store, look around and see what they have dedicated their space to.  Successful gardening is about getting plants to grow for us so we can focus on finding, growing and new plants.  If a lawn doesn’t do more to take care of the space it occupies either you are doing too much for it, or it shouldn’t be there in the first place.  There are natural uses and needs for lawns, we just have to take nature’s cues and think naturally about what we do with them.

When I started this post it was going to be an all out attack on Lawn&Landscape Magazine.  Over the past several months they have taken a corporate political stance that has ceased to be an educational service to their industry and turned into an all out chemical and economic attack on garden consumers and professionals.  Their publication has obviously become an effort to carry water for the equipment,  chemical and insurance industries that pay for all their advertising and write their content.  It has ceased to be an educational service to the industry.

The article that finally pushed me over the edge wasn’t the one last month on how limiting turf use to 4000 sf per yard was an attack on our ideals, or the one the month before on how landscape employees that are constantly exposed to chemicals and physical danger don’t deserve health care.  Instead it was this month’s on how the industry was being attacked because municipalities in Canada where restricting chemical use in residential and environmentally sensitive areas.  Their fear was that the socialist tendencies of these Canadians might drift south like a cloud of RoundUp and make us little salamanders in the states start caring about the future of our children and water supply.  The full article is here…water bucket and all:  Best Defense

As most of you who read me know, I have spent my entire career in the landscape design build business.  One of the things that has made this business great is that as long as I can remember is that nurserymen, landscapers, and gardeners are typically true tradesmen who learn, love and teach their crafts.  They are not just tradesmen, but true craftsmen.  Probably the most notable reason this industry has been able to grow as fast as the customers isn’t just the demand that has paid for it, but also the numerous organizations, associations, and schools that have collaborated and been a part of that education.  The main goal of all these groups is the advancement of the industry by networking and educating.  For the most part all the various state associations, the ANLA, and various other groups make this their calling.  These groups also have one other thing in common, they are all in the business of growing, and understand that to do it successfully you can never stop learning.  They also know that the most important part of learning is listening to their industry, and their consumers.

(This is where I originally paused to figure out how to handle this tactfully)  then…

This morning I woke up to this wonderful post from Garden Rant: “A Chemical Reaction” Makes the Case.  It chronicles the grassroots efforts of the Canadian people to protect their children and resources, and the woman who made it her life’s cause.  This is a wonderfully positive take on what happens when industry and government listen to the needs of their customers and in the end grow together for the benefit of both.  What happened in Canada is a case of consumers driving change and an industry growing to meet demand in trying times rather than screaming that they are under attack.  This is an example of what our industry has always been about when it is at it’s best.

Lawn & Landscape Magazine used to be dedicated to advancing and teaching a growing industry but has gradually become increasingly consumed with maintaining the status quo.  Now obviously for them the status quo is the never ending supply of equipment and chemical vendors who cover %70 of their publication with adds.  However, for the people in this business the future isn’t in buying up their vendor’s over saturated, unwanted, and unaffordable inventories, it is in learning their changing market’s needs and desires and adapting their businesses to them.  In short they need to learn, and education requires two things; listening and thinking.  Both of these Lawn & Landscape  has been too busy screaming how we are under attack to do.

Before I started Botany Buddy I had to go through some serious reconciliation.  I was giving up 25 years of designing landscapes usually for the sake of prestige and money.  It wasn’t necessarily desired by me, but by my clients who at least wanted to portray that image.  I was just paying for my gardening habit and overdosing on it with their money.  It was a viscous cycle, and for twenty years I watched the industry make the same mistakes as the clients.  Firms became more concerned about the appearance of the trucks and mowers than if the equipment best met the needs of their clients.  In the end, we even pushed this image to our clients, by focusing on the resale value of our product rather than how it made their lives or environment better.

Well as the false economy that paid for these false ideals has crumbled, a return to the values that started this industry are coming back.  In the last five to ten years sustainable landscaping has come into focus.  Everyday people are making decisions based upon their environments and lifestyles, and finding the essence in both rather than trying to create an image of a place that doesn’t exist.  Lawn & Landscape surely isn’t going to listen to little old Botany Buddy, and I’m sure after this Monsanto won’t let them promote my little $10 app.   That’s O.K., I didn’t get into this for them, I did it to return to my roots as a gardener, out of a love of the world around me, and to hopefully find a new way forward.  We may not be able to change the giant of industry, but maybe if all of us gardeners rant a little more, we can “uproot the gardening world” like the women of Garden Rant and change the world around them.

“There are places I remember all my life though some have changed, some forever not for better.  Some have gone, and some remain.  All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall.  Some are dead and some are living, in my life I’ve loved them all.” – The Beatles.

We all have those places, people and moments that will be with us forever.  The memories keep coming back like the chorus in our favorite songs or the the threads interwoven in our favorite fabric.  The same is true in nature and our favorite landscapes and places.  There is something in their presence that keeps coming back no matter how much they change or even if they are gone to remind us of the pure innocence yet wildness that takes us away in their midst.  When it comes to the plants and animals in those places I have loved them all, but there is one tree that all my life has emerged, returned and in some cases is gone, yet in my life I’ve loved it more.

The Beech is a magical tree for me.  As a small child growing up in a small college town, I lived next to one of the greatest gardeners the town had ever known.  I was about six years old and he was in his sixties, and in his yard was the only Beech in town.  He had planted that tree from a small mail order twig some forty years earlier.  It’s branches were rarely touched with a pair of pruners and draped all the way to the ground.  When he first took me inside of the canopy to show me the glory of the bark, it was like entering some hallowed Cathedral and once inside that seemingly old man turned into every bit of the six year old I was.  Like so many other people and places they are both gone from my life now, forever if not for better.  Yet I am sure that tree still remains, continues to provide magic to someone and sparks fires in the hearts of gardeners.

Like so many people that have come and gone from our lives, Beeches keep coming into mine.  When I first started learning the basics of design and a vast knowledge of plants under the tutilage of my first mentor (now the director of the Kauffman Memorial Gardens), one of our favorite journeys was to a giant Purple Beech.  It resided in the garden of an old science library with some of Cupernicus’ original handwritten journals and the toys he created to prove his theories.  That Beech’s bark still brought out the six year old in me.  When I first had my calling and knew for the first time I had to go into design, I was sitting under an American Beech originally planted by George Kessler as I was overcome by one his greatest designs.  From the comfort and protection of that Beech I was able to see how he had physically and emotionally moved me through the landscape and how I could someday do the same for others.  When I came to Asheville to buy a new home to settle, as we entered the Smokies from Tennessee, the golden leaves of juvenile trees in winter lit up the under story of the mountains.  They led the way like gold coins sparkling in the forest all the way through the gorge.

Now as I sit on the side of my mountain, many of those places and Beeches are gone forever, if not for better.  But for having known them I am a better person, and I have loved them all.  Just as is true for having known the people who introduced them to me along the way.  Now I am surrounded by Beeches, and the people and places I love are the fabric of my life.  Sometimes I take them for granted and need The Beatles to remind me they won’t be there forever.  As I built Botany Buddy this summer, when I needed to get away I would retreat through the grove of Beeches outside my back door to journey to the creek and escape.  Yet somehow, I managed to forget to include them in the original library.  For that I apologize to everyone, but especially to the Beeches.  Sometimes we just need our favorite songs to remind us of the love that surrounds us here and now because it might not be there forever.

“But of all these friends and lovers there is no one compares with you, and these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new.  Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before.  I know I’ll often stop and think about them.  In my life, I love you more.” - In My Life – The Beatles

As long as I can remember I have been hanging out in Garden Centers.  As a small child, my father was a competitive rose grower, so the smell of malathion is as iconic to my childhood memories as the smell of a bakery is to most people.  Of course I have gotten all green with age and what I can only assume is some sort of wisdom.  I can only think my father would have too if lung cancer hadn’t gotten him first.  Especially since he always swore it was the roses that gave it to him and not the Chesterfield Kings.  My father was a very ritualistic man, and no matter how much he loved those roses, spraying every other week, and fertilizing on the off weeks, there was one ritual that he loved even more.  It had to be rooted in his desire to find the prefect specimen, with the perfect color and shape, and then to manipulate it even more than he could the perfect rose.  That most monumental of annual quests was for the perfect Christmas tree.

I grew up in Northwest Missouri, about 30 minutes south of a little town called Shenandoah,  Iowa.  Most people don’t realize that for the first half of the 20th century Shenandoah, Iowa was the nursery capital of the world.  More nursery stock moved through that little town with nothing but a radio hall and the Tall Corn Motel than any place in the world for almost a half a century.  I grew up working for a company called Earl May.  Their headquarters was there and the location I worked at was one of the first satellite locations outside of Shenandoah.  Earl May grew into fame for having one of the first nationally broadcast gardening radio shows, and one of the largest distributed seed catalogs ever.  What has made it one of the largest grossing nursery retailers though wasn’t nursery stock at all.  It was Christmas and Pet Supplies.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s retail chains like Kmart and Pamida (not even Walmart yet) were emerging and with them came seasonal garden shops.  When garden centers realized they needed to stay open year round to compete and keep customer loyalty they started looking for seasonal sales to carry them through the winter.  Gone were the days of having roadside stands and taking winters off.  You had to be a part of the the buyers’ year round ritual to keep up us gardeners coming in.  Earl was a smart man and so were his offspring.  While everyone else was deciding whether to take on animal and livestock supplies or to set up a Christmas trees on their empty nursery lots in November, Earl May decided they wanted it all.  Instead of focusing on one, they went for both and instead of focusing on livestock, they went for pets.  They developed a chain revolving around the lifestyle of people who love living and love living things.  It was pet supplies, birding goods, and holidays of all sorts year round.  Garden supplies were relegated to less than 1/3 of the store’s floor space.  If people needed it weekly Earl carried it.  When I left the company at a height of 62 stores, they had some of the most loyal gardening customers I have ever known, but their two largest departments were actually Christmas and Pets.

My earliest childhood memories of hanging out in that garden center were not lining up to check out the first arrival of bare root roses in March, or buying my first radishes seeds.  It was the magic of walking under strands of clear white bulbs through a forest of  Scotch Pine and Douglas Fir.  We would run up and down the aisles hiding behind the tallest of trees, and drink hot cocoa or cider while dad analyzed every single tree in that place.  It had worked and Earl got me.  Of course as I grew, Earl grew.  Soon they had lights and ornaments, flocked trees and artificial trees, even to the point of carrying Macy’s famed Department 56.  All the way through high school and college and for another fifteen years beyond that, not only had I become and accomplished nurseryman and successful landscape designer, for two months out of every year, I became an Elf.  Through three different nurseries and almost thirty years of my life, I flocked trees, made wreaths, put them in stands, created arrangements, tied bows and decorated some of the most elaborate places you have every seen.  It was only appropriate that one day I would design the landscape on the Country Club Plaza, on of the most magical Christmas places of all.

As the leaves in the mountains of North Carolina begin to fall, the underlying green of the Rhododendron and Hemlock that makes them so special is coming through.  But if you go up high enough, above 4,000 feet, something else is happening.  If you drive high enough and get back into the most remote corners of  the hills you get beyond the the hardwood forests to places with names like Little Canada and Little Switzerland.  From these mystical mountain tops were you can see for miles on end, sometimes four states at a time.  It is a magical place where what at one time were natural balds on top of mountains have now been turned into special forests.   The trees are perfectly lined in rows, rarely get over 12′ tall and are perfectly pruned as far as the eye can see.  The rich dark green with the little splash of blue is unmistakable and with the shorter days as the sun goes down the stars come out like strands of clear white bulbs over the fields.  This is the origin of the Frazier Fir.  The most sought after Christmas tree of all.

Yes I am a cheesy romantic.  As much as I like to preach all my virtues of environmental awareness and tree hugging elitism, nothing excites me more than that in three short weeks I will take out my little girl and walk the aisles looking for that perfect specimen.  We will strap it to the roof, bring it home, cut off the stump and put it in water so the branches will lay perfectly open by Thanksgiving Day and the rituals will begin.  Of course I will hold back my excitement as I see it grow in her eyes over the coming weeks.  Mainly because I don’t want her to explode before Christmas day, but also because I know I look like a dork.  I will look weird enough at the annual Advent wreath making party when I break out my Felco pruners, floral wire, and perfectly pruned greens and berries.

In the meantime we’ll keep logs on the fire and marshmallows near by and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the best types of trees and how to be green through all of this.  But for now, the green that I am feeling is that cheesy looking elf suit that is permanently tattooed to my psyche.  That same suite in reality probably made me a gardener.  As much as I run from the chemicals that are the lifeblood of the garden center and loathe the grotesque commercialism that has taken over our holidays and lives as a whole, I also realize it has helped bring us a generation of gardeners.  For that I owe Earl a lifetime of memories and a lifetime more to come.

When people ask me how to water their plants I usually turn right around ask them for instructions on how to raise kids.  The point being you can’t know what to do for a plant until you get to know it like a person.  Raising plants is a lot like raising kids, and once you learn what works best for both of you the better off you both will be.  Too often people think that plants are like hardwood floors, that they need to be waxed at certain intervals, need to be kept perfectly clean, and that given the perfect routine treatment will always look shiny and new and age perfectly.  What they need to learn is that plants are like people and they need nourishment, security, and love; sometimes even tough love.

The overall goal of watering should always be to help plants get established quickly, and develop a healthy deep seated root system to deal with the trials and tribulations that lie ahead.  While you want to be diligent at giving your plants what they need to get established, you also want them to start to take less and less care from you.  If you have the right plant in the right spot, they should eventually be able to care of themselves.  That journey begins with security.  The best security a plant can have is not knowing that you will run out and water it at the drop of a leaf, but rather that it has plenty of water in the soil around it, not just in the hole that you put it in.

During the average growing season, most established plants can use no more than one inch of water per week.  To be able to stick to this you need to make sure that all of the soil in and around the planting area has a deep base of adequate moisture.  If it does, as the soil dries out immediately around a newly planted plant moisture will move from the surrounding soil to the soil in the hole through osmosis.  If you plant a plant into to an area where all of the surrounding soil is dry, when you water all of the moisture will move the other way and you won’t be able to retain moisture around the plant.  Whenever you are going to be planting an area, you should always water the entire area thoroughly.  Think of it as getting the nursery ready for that newborn you are about to bring home.  In the end it save you several trips to the store (or in this case hose).

The key to establishing healthy plants is the same as for kids.  You want to love them, but you don’t want to spoil them. Plants that are watered too frequently will not achieve the necessary root growth they need.  Instead, they will develop a shallow root system that you have to constantly water, and the roots will never get out on their own.  Nature very rarely waters more than once a week and manages to sustain itself and withstand times of extreme stress.  Even in those times of extreme stress nature will usually adapt and turn out stronger in the long run.  By having thoroughly watered soil, not only will moisture move toward the plant as it is needed, but the roots will move out to it in search of what they need. Watering too frequent and not deep enough will train the roots never to leave home.  Beyond just water needs deep watering will also help retain the nutrients in the soil by not washing them out of the soil because watering all of the time.

Anyone who knows what it is like to love a child should be well prepared to give a plant the love it needs.  Just like you want to make sure your child has everything they need to succeed in life you want to do the same for your plants.  The worst thing you can do for either of you is constantly react to circumstances.  In the end sometimes plants and children both need a little tough love.  Even if your plants have everything they need in the subsoil on the hottest of days they are going to wilt.  The last thing you want to do is run out there an water them.  That wilting action is triggering an natural response from the plant to dig in and grow the roots they need.  As long as that soil has the water the plant needs it will find a way to get it.  Just like your kids sometimes need to work through things, your plants need to do the same.

For those who need a little more specific information, these guidelines should help you be sure your plants to get established and encourage the  root growth they eventually need to make it without you.

Whenever installing a new plant be sure and water all of the soil around the hole. It is imperative that the root mass of new plants always be kept moist, as well as the soil around the holes they are in until active root growth begins. Adequate moisture needs to be maintained until the roots actually leave the hole that was dug for installation and penetrate the surrounding soil.  The best way to accomplish this is to actually water the hole you dug for the plant before you put it in it.   Actually fill the hole you have dug for the plant entirely with water and let it seep into the surrounding soil.  You will want to do this repeatedly until water begins to hold in the hole or seep out very slowly.  When you are planting the plant, water the plant while it is still in the container or burlap before putting it in the hole.  It is much easier to make sure it is moist before it is underground and covered with soil.  Once the water you put in the hole has drained, place the plant at the proper level,  and back fill the hole with soil halfway up around the root ball.   Once you have lightly packed the soil to hold the plant in place, fill the rest of the hole with water again.  Be sure and let the water soak completely in before back filling it the rest of the way.  Not only will this ensure the soil is wet, it will also remove any air pockets in the hole that could later cause roots to dry out or the plant to settle and lean.  Once you have finished filling the hole with soil, water it one more time.  The most common shortcut you will see a professional landscaper make is not following this entire process.  After 25 years in the landscaping business I would not be exaggerating if I said that 80% of the times that plants needed replaced or replanted it was because the installer skipped these simple steps and it wasn’t properly watered during planting.

Watering new plants after planting may be required more than once in the first week.  You should check daily to see if the plant needs water, but don’t water daily.  Stick your finger into the root mass of the plant as well as the soil around it and see if they are both wet.  If you find the soil is dry give it a little water.  If it is wet whatever you do don’t water even if the plant is wilting or showing signs of stress.  The only thing that will help it is growing the roots it needs to make it on its own.  Watering when it is not needed will actually prevent this.  You may have to water new plants a couple times a week in the first two weeks as the stress of planting can cause them to use more water, but ideally by the third week you should never have to water more than once a week.

Watering of established plants should not be needed (or performed) more than once per week, and combined with what nature gives they should not need more than the equivalence of 1 inch of precipitation per week.  If your soil is adequately moist beneath the  surface and all you need to do is supplement that top inch.  Watering too frequently will only keep the plant’s roots from reaching out for the moisture that is there.  In reality if you are using native species in a place with the proper light exposure, and in the right zone in terms of hardiness range, you shouldn’t have to water a plant at all after the first season.  In times of extreme drought you may want to water established plants, but good winter watering (the step below) should prevent the need for any sort of frequent watering.

Winter Watering isn’t something people usually think about.  However a plant has more of a chance of dying in winter from a lack of water than it does in summer.  The water that fills the tissue of a plant’s trunk and branches is actually what protects it from extreme freezing temperatures.  When matter freezes it expands.  When the cells of a plant expand, the gases inside can expand more than the tissue itself and cause the cells to explode.  If the cells are filled with water it displaces those gases and keeps them from expanding too far.  If a plant freezes when it is dry, it can literally freeze-dry the plant, making it impossible for the cells to retain water again.  The best way to prevent this is to actually water in the fall or early winter before the ground freezes.

Once the leaves and perennials are down for the season and you have chopped them up for mulch, it is actually the easiest and most efficient time of year to get water in the soil.  The water doesn’t roll off the foliage of the plants and lands directly where it needs to go.  It also is less likely to evaporate when using a sprinkler because the temperatures are lower.  Best of all the plant isn’t using it to grow (other than roots), so even in winter a good saturation can last a couple of months.  If you happen to get a warm spell in January or February, I actually recommend watering deeply a a couple of times over winter to establish that deep ground moisture before spring arrives.  It is much easier to do it in January than in the spring or summer than when the water is actively being used by the plants and foliage is emerging that deflects it.

Wilting and watering do not always go hand in hand.  I alluded to this earlier.  When a plant wilts, not only does it reduce transpiration, it is a natural reaction to reduce the amount of energy going to the leaves, and to divert it to other activities such as blooming, fruit production or root growth.  All of those are crucial to the survival of the species, and the plant will instinctively focus on those things when it senses stress.  Wilting is also a natural response in extreme hot and cold temperatures to reduce the amount of wind or light reaching the foliage to prevent desiccation.  More often than not, wilting is sign of healthy developmental activity in stressful situations.  If a plant wilts and is wet do not water it, the plant is just doing what it needs to grow the roots to succeed in life.  Think of it as tough love.

Stunted and shedding leaves can be indications of both positive and negative conditions other than moisture issues.  In the first months and even years after planting, leaves may shed or remain stunted and small to offset the lack of roots lost during transplanting.  Usually after several months or even a year, the same branches with stunted leaves suddenly show what seem like over-sized leaves, often three or four times the size of others. This is an indication that the roots are finally leaving the planting pit, and the plant is beginning to get established.  Burnt edges on deciduous foliage may be the result of a fungus rather than drought, which water will only exasperate.  When evergreens yellow and drop needles in the fall it is often a result of alkaline soil, and they are trying to acidify their own soil.  Watering them if wet will only cause root rot.  Just because you see these things happen it does not mean a plant needs water.  If you see these symptoms and the soil is moist you may need to dig a little deeper to find our what’s wrong.  We’ll have another post about how to do that digging later.

The main thing to remember when watering is the more frequent and less deep you water the more often you will have to water.  The sooner you learn what your plants really the need, the less you will have to give them, and the less they will eventually need. To some extent, your plants can be taught to live with your schedule, and the sooner you teach them to the better off you both will be.  Think of that deep watering you give your plants a couple times this winter as that Sunday afternoon pot roast or chicken and dumplings you make for your family on a cold winter day.  It will keep their little cells warm on those cold winter days, and help built the muscles they need get through the summer ahead.  It is also like the hearty soup that allows them to pull in all those nutrients from the soil below to fight off disease and stress.  Think of watering you plants as caring for someone you love…and they’ll be sure and love you back.  Plants are like people, so don’t treat them like a hardwood floor.