Here, you’ll find our latest newsletters and articles, landscaping and horticultural tips. Most of the work is also published in Landscape Trades - a national publication for landscaping professionals.  Many of these articles demonstrate our focus on eco-friendly techniques.  We have always believed that, through educating others on sound and eco-friendly landscaping practices, we are building a richer, more sustainable community.

• Terraseeding by Sean James

  A Blanket of Goodness!

  Soil is interesting stuff.  It’s not just soil y’know.  That’s just what we can see and feel, mostly.  It’s all the life in it that makes it truly fascinating!  Obviously there are the worms and insects that turn the soil but those white threads that we see occasionally, the ‘fairy rings’, the mushrooms, the soil fungi you can see only if you’re looking for them; those are amazing!  There are also the bacteria which are constantly breaking down organic matter that nature drops on the soil.  It’s a whole world down there…and we brutalize it on a regular basis.  We remove all the fallen organic matter.  We also compact with mowers and bobcats, (my personal over-used favourite) and with foot traffic.

  Miffed Landscaper?

  Am I sounding a bit grumpy?  I DO try not to do that.  Actually I’m starting to see great things on a regular basis such as homeowners and landscapers amending the soil with regular additions of Composted Pine Mulch, compost from their own or municipal supply, aerating, additions of mycorrhizal inoculants when planting…and more.  We are learning…slowly.

  Of all the soil flora and fauna, mycorrhizae are the most important.  They steal sugars from the plants but in exchange, they massively increase the plants ability to uptake water and nutrients.  This increases the plants ability to feed and cool itself.

  Fungi and beneficial bacteria are the largest part of the nutrient cycle, taking fallen leaves and turning them into basic building blocks the plants use to grow.

  One of the easiest and most cost effective ways of applying organic matter is to have compost or composted pine mulch (CPM) blown down.  It can save a contractor thousands of dollars on a job and it’s good for the plants!  A highly organic mulch, as opposed to a wood mulch, does plenty to keep water in, moderate soil temperature, reduce weed growth and make weeding easier and it looks great.  It also supports the aforementioned soil micro-ecosystem.

  One of the best applications of blown down mulch is ‘Terraseeding’.

  How Cool is That?

  Terraseeding does all of the above but most importantly, it protects the seed during establishment.  It’s also a nifty way to apply seed itself!  Several years ago, my company dormant seeded - late fall seeding which is intended to germinate in the early spring - a lawn with a mix of perennial rye and tall fescue, which is a particularly sun-tolerant mix.  Not only did it germinate in one of the driest spring/summers in my memory but it didn’t need irrigation until mid-July!  It was a lesson for me if ever there was one!  Awareness of the process is spreading.  According to Andy Crockett of LandSource Organix, “The practice of applying Native Grass and Wildflower seed mixes with the Terraseeding process has become popular in the last 10 years.  The process involves applying the seed and compost based soil mix in a single application using an Express Blower truck.  The seed is computer calibrated at the target seed rate and is evenly distributed through the growing medium layer.  Typically, at a 25mm depth.” 

  Many seeds are disrupted during their establishment by rain or irrigation moving the seed around before it fully roots.  Stability and organic matter are key.  Again, Andy offers, “With Native plants, the stability of the organic soil bed allows seed to remain in place until optimal germination conditions occur.  Native plants in particular, favour the warmer soil temperatures consistent with organic soil mixes relative to conventional topsoil.  This makes them especially well suited to Terraseeding.”  Remember, it’s mostly not flowing water that causes erosion, but rather the impact of individual water droplets that causes erosion.  Watch it on slow motion film.  It’s an amazing enlightenment.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  (Yes, I repeat myself.  Apparently, I have a script of life.  Hey… I know what works!)  The most important thing we can do for our landscapes is to regularly apply organic matter.  Composting gardens and Terraseeding are the best ways we can do that.  They’re easy and, in the long run, they save us money and, occasionally for professionals, make us money.  The sub-lesson?  Doing good for the environments can be good economics.  Everyone wins!  Even if one doesn’t believe in ‘green’, perhaps the other green ($) can motivate.  Either way, it’s good for us as a society and the planet as a whole.

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• Of Art and Function by Sean James

  Many folks think practicality should overrule beauty, and I’m certainly a fan of ‘practical’, but I don't see the need to sacrifice aesthetics to have a beautiful, practical garden.

  As a landscape designer and instructor, it’s encouraging to hear more people asking about designing with edible or native plants. Sometimes, they’re the same thing—I’d forgotten how delicious the baby pods of our native milkweed are when boiled and served with a bit of butter!

  Any type of planting can be beautiful if the basic rules of form and texture are followed. I tell my customers and students that flowers come and go, but texture will make or break your landscape. Some edibles, such as red cabbage, have excellent texture and amazing leaf colour. Asparagus has the finest foliage imaginable and turns a rich gold in the fall.  Natives, including little bluestem and switchgrass, have wonderful form and winter interest. Cup plant is stately, bold and gigantic and it blooms for a long time. Both natives and edibles deserve a place in any bed or border. Garden designing is art, similar to painting or sculpting. You wouldn’t hire a painter who didn’t have access to a particular colour, would you, so why limit your plant palette to just ornamental trees, shrubs and perennials?

  When people plan their veggie gardens, they often picture rows of different kinds of edibles, all grouped together—all the tomatoes together, separated from all the corn and from all the beans. If they’re slightly more visionary, they think of blocks of veggies with some tall accents of corn or teepees of beans.  Unfortunately, folks rarely envision drifts of kale, marigolds, eggplants, nasturtiums, with an airy wall of asparagus and a central accent of bold, glossy-leaved corn. Intermingling perennials such as spring-blooming rockcress and late-season asters and black-eyed Susans would extend the season. These also support and attract pollinators to work their magic on your veggies and flowers.

  My company was called upon to put together an ornamental landscape that was entirely edible. I set my mind to design in drifts and to research native and non-native perennials and woody plants that were edible, to compliment the standard veggies. Kale, asparagus and eggplant added form and colour, and since it was a small yard, I used vining tomatoes, beans and espaliered fruit trees to add height.  It was as beautiful as any landscape I’ve ever created and the homeowner was thrilled enough to hold a garden party for their permaculture group when it all started to fill in.

  There’s even a place for edibles in formal gardens. I recently saw Swiss chard and red cabbages planted in formal beds surrounding a restaurant near me and the effect was enchanting, yet practical.

  Just as edibles can be easily incorporated into a garden design, so too can native plants.  When people hear the term ‘native garden’, they often picture a large, unruly meadow. Certainly that can be a beautiful sight in Mother Nature’s large garden, but it might create havoc in a home garden. Creating a meadow isn’t the only way to use native plants in a garden. For instance, native trees such as red oak and hackberry, (unfortunate name – great tree), will encourage birds which feed on the tiny insects that live in the canopy.  They’ll also be better adapted to our local soils and climate and therefore longer lived.  I have a native peach-leafed willow outside my office window and oriels and waxwings come down right to eye level to feed on the willow-leaf beetle which doesn’t even really hurt the tree.

  One of my customers wanted to replace all of the turf in her yard with a cottage garden of native plants. The soil was almost pure sand. Many designers consider parameters such as sandy soil and a native palette to be restrictions, but I believe it’s just a question of knowing your plants. I start every job by making a list of all the plants I can think of that suit the site and the customer’s goals. (Every site has restrictions, but I still always find I have more plants than I can use, giving extra freedom to design.) From there, I begin composing the landscape, pairing what works best together and focusing on texture and foliage colour first, then bloom period. In this case, I used, among other things, a groundcover of Canada anemone backed by turtle head and Carolina rose to ensure low maintenance bloom all year and added highlights of spotted geranium and fringed aster for colour.  The customer was away for the summer and upon her return was amazed at how good it looked, even after two months.

  Nurseries are beginning to offer a broader selection of native plants and, somewhat happily, demand is actually outstripping production capacity. Consumers are embracing both of these trends, and this makes our landscapes more eco-friendly, providing food for nature and humans, and welcome habitat as well.

  If you feel you don’t know much about natives or edibles, try a few next year. You’ll quickly gain confidence and be eager to try a few more. Your comfort levels and the sustainability of your garden will increase every year, along with the beauty and satisfaction offered by the visiting butterflies and the homegrown tasty treats at your supper table.

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• Better than Burning Bush – 5 Native Shrubs that Offer Amazing Fall Interest by Sean James

  I can never get over how at least half of the customers I meet with ask for Burning bush in their landscapes.  It’s not that they’re not impressive in October and November.  It’s simply that they only offer a few weeks of ‘kaboom’ and nothing else.  Better plants do exist – plants which offer multiple season’s of interest.

  In my garden, red chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia ‘Brilliantissima’, is brilliant red in November, then reveals bright red berries in the winter and has many white flowers in the spring.  The locally native black chokeberry, Aronia melanocarpa, has a similar white flower then orange fall colour and black berries.  Birds like both.  Many seasons of interest beats a few weeks.

  Another beautiful native is fringe tree, Chionanthus virginicus, which has beautiful white flowers in the spring and large yellow leaves in the fall.

  One of my surprise, and rare, treats is a special cultivar of moosewood maple – Acer pensylvanicum ‘Erythrocladum’.  It has its traditional striped bark in the summer and large leaves which turn soft yellow in the fall.  In October the bark turns pink and by November and through winter the bark is bright red.

  If you can plant it in masses, the white flowered, white berried grey-twigged dogwood, Cornus racemosa, has a rich glossy purple fall colour and then, when the leaves fall, the peduncles form a red haze over the bush lasting for another month.  In addition, this, like many natives, supports biodiversity by feeding pollinators and a huge variety of wildlife, sheltering them and even helping them survive throughout the winter.

  It’s always best, even with traditional burning bush, to choose these plants when they’re in their fall glory so you know you have the Best.  Even with cultivars, there are differences between specimens. 

  Outside my office window is a larch which I never noticed until it was in fall show and it looked like a Forsythia tree!  I have a trembling aspen which also lights up gold.  My Fothergilla is a riot of different reds, yellows and oranges.

  The point is that variety is desirable.  Whenever we use lots of one plant, (Ash, Euonymus, Daylily, Hosta, Juniper, Black Pine, Paper Birch), some insect or disease is going to come along and knock things down.  The more different types of plants we use, the less that’s likely to happen and the more interesting our landscapes will be.  We try and use at least one type of plant outside our regular pallet in every design.  Your customers will appreciate the diversity, the longevity of their landscapes and the increased number of birds and butterflies visiting their landscape.

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• Pervious Pavement: Providing a Nice Home for Stormwater by Stu Campana
  

  Where does stormwater go? Typically, I think, it congregates wherever it is most likely to end up in my boot as I’m on my way to work. Unless we are fans of wet socks, we don’t generally think of stormwater as a valuable resource.

  If collected properly, however, stormwater recharges groundwater tables: ensuring us a renewed supply of clean drinking water. If not collected - as is more often the case - stormwater may contribute to downstream flooding, sewer overflow, pollution of clean water and erosion of stream beds.

  Here’s the cool part: you can collect stormwater through the pavement in your driveway. Pervious (or porous) pavement systems allow stormwater runoff to pass through the pavement and percolate into the ground without any flooding, polluting, eroding or overflowing.

  When water turns to snow and ice (as occasionally occurs in this wonderful country) it infiltrates directly into the pavement, facilitating faster melting times. Recall the old joke, at which we laugh to keep from crying; there are only two seasons in Canada: winter and road work. Freezing and thawing have a major impact on the lifespan of a paved surface, cracking and warping it with each successive freeze and unfreeze. Porous asphalt avoids much of this strain, and can have a lifespan twice that of conventional pavement.

  Pervious pavement consists of cement, gravel and water, without the fine aggregates contained in conventional pavement. The resulting 15-20% of void space allows water to slip through into the underlying stormwater storage bed, itself resting on uncompacted soil so as to facilitate infiltration.  

  Being louder than conventional pavement at high speeds, you won’t see pervious pavement on the highway, but it’s ideal for driveways, pathways and parking lots. Its long lifespan ensures that economic benefits will accrue along with the more obvious environmental ones.

  Instead of collecting stormwater in your shoe, consider gathering it for your water table instead.

   

  Further reading:

  http://www.lid-stormwater.net/permpavers_benefits.htm

  http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/menuofbmps/index.cfm?action=browse&Rbutton=detail&bmp=135&minmeasure=5

  http://www.stormh2o.com/october-2006/concrete-pavement-communities.aspx

  http://www.h2ocapture.com/Learn/Porous-Pavement.aspx

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• Push a Garden: They're Smarter than you Think by Stu Campana
  

  Gardens don’t seem very intelligent; maybe slightly brighter than your refrigerator and more or less on par with your teenage son. One can be forgiven for thinking that a garden would have a difficult time managing itself.

  And yet, nature does some interesting things if left to its own devices. Give your garden a little push in the right direction during the fall and you will be surprised by the springtime results.

  For example, try leaving your perennials standing. They provide wind protection for predator insect eggs, which, if they survive the winter, will gleefully munch on all of your garden pests.

  Inviting more insects into our gardens requires that we resist all of our strongest inclinations (mainly swatting), but it is a concession that makes more sense if we think of insects in the context of resilience.

  Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to bend without breaking. And the best way to get there is to increase its biodiversity.

  Similarly, you might think of your stock portfolio as being resilient to losses if it is well balanced. One stock may crash due to market fluctuations or financial predators, but the others will remain unaffected, thus ensuring that you don’t lose your shirt.

  Monoculture removes that crash buffer, leaving your garden at the mercy of disease, drought and predators (although they seem a little more benign when compared to their financial cousins). Insects, pleasant and unpleasant, remain essential components of biodiversity.

  The argument in favour of monoculture has always been ‘efficiency’. Many farmers now plant a single crop, because mixing or alternating plants requires more planning and different equipment. It is often perceived, in the short run, to be less profitable. These monocultures may be efficient, in a narrow sense of the word, but they are not resilient. A disease that might otherwise affect only one species among many now carries the potential to wipe out a farm’s entire yield. Farmers fight back with pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), but such measures serve to create new problems, further exacerbating the resilience problem. Biodiversity is nature’s defence, and you can employ it in your garden.

  Mix your vegetables with your ornamental plants and you will attract beneficial pollinators and useful slug-eating predators. It sounds chaotic and unmanageable, and yet nature does a wonderful job of maintaining a balance. The pollinators keep the garden thriving year after year and neither predator nor pest will ever gain such an upper hand as to throw the entire ecosystem off balance.

  Late fall is a great time to think about your garden. Waiting until spring to clean it up and to plant a wider variety of (possibly native) plants will do wonders for your garden. Think about resilience. Think about biodiversity. Then just give it a little push.

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