conservation landscape practitioners for a healthy Bay
as seen on houzz.com: green+midCentury=modern landscape Charlottesville. pervious sfRima pavers by Eagle Bay, with adequate runoff storage and infiltration capacity underneath, keep parking forecourt/party space dry all winter long, and work well with natural stone and the required blacktop on steep slopes. The pervious pavers slow down, spread out, and sink in rain, snow and ice from paved areas uphill.
made-for-mobile quick peek at projects on houzz.com via gentlegardener.houzz.com
new project on houzz.com
gentlegardener.houzz.com One small project, big ideas inspired by our teachers on gentlegardener.houzz.com.Big shout out to Julie Moir Messervy, inspiring designer and featured speaker at Piedmont Landscape Association here in Charlottesville, VA TOMORROW. #PLA at The Paramount Theatre, downtown mall, Charlottesville, VA. Where the professionals will be tomorrow! piedmont landscape.org
via www.youtube.com
On the doing of 'real stuff', Temple Grandin speaks truth to power, and to the powerlessness we mire ourselves in with endless 'abstractification": Policy makers with no experience on the ground with the things they aim to regulate, mathematical abstractification to create the "next credit default swap": these are the ills of our age.
I admire the plain spoken, the direct, the radically honest, and those whose craft leads them to create things of both beauty and usefulness. Temple Grandin is one of our heroes here on the farm, helping us see things as others see them: specifically, how cows see and process visual information and react to it: either calmly, or, not so calmly.
Today I spent 5 hours working with locally grown flowers, including some from my own garden, for a wedding; the ritual bathing of the stems in warm fresh clean water, the careful plucking of errant and unwanted leaves, the blocking of blooms by colour in buckets in shade, then in the cooler: violet campanula, fuschia gomphrena, magenta celosia, magenta phalenopsis orchids, plum and silver heuchera amethyst mist leaves, white orchids, white lysimachia, white achillea, white valerian, white and green false solomon's seal, the white spires of four foot tall pacific giant hybrid delphinium, the rounded cerebral shapes of 'annabelle' hydrangea in white and young fresh green, glossy green camellia leaves, the shock of the chartreuse heuchera 'citronelle'.
These hours grounded me back in the world of tangible, beautiful, and intricate things of Nature, the way with flowers requires a simplicity of Mind: to make a Bride's bouquet as she has dreamed of it, to make each vase hold flowers so that their complex beauty is a calm oasis for the eye in the swirl of a wedding party.
After getting to some sort of milestone with elected officials on a multi year design project, the respite was real. The design project was one so deceptively DIFFICULT, made so by endless abstractification by so many entities.
What could be simpler and cheaper? to clean up the runoff coming from urban and suburban roofs, driveways, yards, gardens in our #Chesapeake Bay watersheds (in our case, the Rappahannock), than to do it at the source, one yard at a time?
As it turns out: nothing. The obvious answer IS the correct one. The old ways, from Agricola to the CCC to permaculture, are still the best. Empirical and close observation of historical examples are more instructive than all the PDF's, tomes, trainings and mathematical models in the world.
But the ABSTRACTIFICATION of this obvious result by regulators, legislators, planners, city managers, stormwater engineers, soil scientists and model-makers is one of the most daunting educations I've ever undertaken: partly because of the acronyms, dependence on mathematical models rather than historical examples and what we already know works. It's positively Corporate in the endless torpor it generates.
The most difficult challenge of the process was not the constraint of using existing design methods, practices, and systems, applied to a tiny suburban lot with an oversized house on it and nothing but turf and a single tree on it.
The most difficult challenge was simply sticking to the simple task of avoiding re-inventing the wheel. If there are existing methods that have been shown to work, use them, and observe the results, rather than abstracting to something else.
We seem so addicted to making the Perfect the Enemy of the Good, and the Abstract the Enemy of the Practical and Useful. The result is a hovering helicopter like buzz: failure to launch - because we cannot ever get beyond the abstractification to create what Temple Grandin calls 'real stuff' coupled with failure to land - generating more and more options of where to fly and where to land, while burning fuel.
Thank you Temple Grandin for pointing out one of the useless vanities of our age. Given the applause from your young student graduating audience, it seems your admonition to 'create real stuff' hit home.
Young people want to do real work, real play, and make real contributions with their hands, hearts and heads. Despite being seemingly addicted to tiny devices that lead them into hours of abstractification, this younger generation seem to want to experience the real, the gritty, the useful, and do seem to want to have clean water and living streams, Bay and ocean. Give them a ploughshare, and they will use it. Give them an app, and they will use it too. Sustainable ag and farming in general is au courant among the young just now, perhaps for its geeky allure.
Give people a reason, and give them a job: cleaning up the streams of the Chesapeake Bay watershed in 6 states and DC by cleaning up their own little acre, one yard at a time.
Our green design team is acquiring acronym alphabet credentials behind our names at a clip. Gentle Gardener Green Design team collectively now comprises 4 Virginia Certified Horticulturalists (VCH), 2 Virginia Society of Landscape Designers certified designers (VSLD) 1 LEED* Green Associate, an MBA, a certified permaculture designer, the firm is licensed in Virginia as a Nursery Stock Dealer.
The latest credential is in: I am now certified by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation as a Nutrient Management Planner for Turf and Landscape, No. 714. We planners appear to have no clever acronym, but given how challenging the exam was and the prep class, I will probably answer to"Certifiable NutMan".
Taking our lead from agriculture, where conservation and Nutrient Management Plans have been in use for a good 20-30 years by farmers who are stewards of their land (and also poor
, unwilling to spend a penny more for fertilizer than they have to) , those of us certified by the Commonwealth to write plans for urban (that is, non-ag) turf and landscapes, have a tall order ahead of us. With sub/urban sales of fertilizer at some eight times the rate per acre of ag N and P and increasing right through the recession at about 6-8% per year, plus conversion of ag land to developed, it's no Miracle that our water quality problems Grow and GroW.
Virginia recently submitted its second draft Watershed Implementation Plan to reflect the myriad bottom up, stream by stream, watershed by watershed, plans by localities to clean up the entire #Chesapeake Bay drainage (VA is not alone; water 6 states and the District of Columbia drain to the Bay).
The Commonwealth of Virginia has just committed to managing over a half million acres of private and public sub/urban (that is, non-ag) lands via Nutrient Management Plans written by certified Nutrient Management Planners for Turf and Landscape. Right now, only about 15,000 acres of such lands have written three-year plans. In five years, by 2017, VA intends to have over 350,000 acres of private and public non-ag, sub/urban turf and landscape responsibly stewarded by three-year Nutrient Management Plans........twenty times the acreage we have now.
In January a small publication named The Wall Street Journal published the findings of the study indicating that the cleanup of the #Chesapeake Bay is, in fact, a jobs creator. We certainly intend for it to be so; we would like our clients and others to spend more on Gentle Gardener brainpower to write nutrient management plans for them based on sound science, and less money on over-fertilizing with nitrogen and phosphorus without a plan.
For a Nutrient Management Plan and sustainable site maintenance plan custom written for your landscape, please call 540 832 7031 or book at www.gentlegardener.com
Here's a copy of our media release for Historic Garden Week - let's make an historic leap forward in protecting soils and water in Virginia!
SUSTAINABILITY NEWS APRIL 2012 - for immediate release
April 17, 2012
BARBOURSVILLE, VA - Rockwell attains certification credential for stream-friendly landscape planning
Virginia R. Rockwell, owner and principal designer of Gentle Gardener Green Design, has been designated a certified Nutrient Management Planner for turf and landscape by The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Division of Stormwater Management. The certification demonstrates a planner’s expertise to competently compose and execute nutrient plans in line with the Commonwealth’s efforts to reduce fertilizer runoff from residential gardens, lawns, athletic fields, golf courses, commercial landscapes and university, town, city, federal and Commonwealth-owned lands.
A written plan for maintaining turf and landscape sustainably over three years is a new service now available to clients of the established Barboursville firm’s certified landscape designers and horticulturists. Gentle Gardener has long advocated responsible land stewardship practices including the use of proper and organic amendments, accurate rate calculations and precise application timing.
“The idea is to apply brains first, then apply fertilizer as needed. These practices improve effects on waterways, soil, plants, animals and people,” said Rockwell. She explains that runoff nitrogen and phosphorous in streams can be curtailed; Virginians can spend less by applying only what is truly needed, and improve the health of ecosystems and economies downstream. “Nutrient management planning makes good economic sense. We all depend on clean water for life and livelihoods,” she adds.
The goal for Virginia counties and cities whose streams drain into the Chesapeake Bay, as described March 30, 2012 in the latest Chesapeake Bay Watershed Implementation Plan, is to rapidly increase the acreage of turf and landscape managed with Nutrient Management Plans written by Rockwell and her fellow certified nutrient management planners to more than a half million acres.
To learn more, please visit www.gentlegardener.com and www.dcr.virginia.gov/vabaytmdl/documents/baytmdlp2wip.pdf.
Media inquiries can be directed to Ann P. Reid at (804) 501-9888 or via e-mail at [email protected].
This is Only a Test ... | Plant More Plants.
Soil testing is key to a successful, healthy garden and plant life!
Soil testing tells you about nutrient and organic matter content, and what the soil can provide in terms of nutrients prior to fertilization. You want to feed the soil, not the plant. It's important to get that 5 percent organic matter into your soil where roots are beginning to establish, and keep providing the living organisms with more organic matter so they can break it down for plants in a helpful way.
Soil tests are conducted by public and private laboratories. The Virginia Cooperative Extension lab at Virginia Tech is a public lab available for those of us living in Virginia.
To collect your own soil sample, first obtain a Soil Sample Information Sheet and Soil Sample Box from your area VCE office. You must indicate which plants or crops you plan to grow and immediately mail to the VCE lab at Virginia Tech via Priority Mail with the U.S. Postal Service. Click here for detailed instructions.
A soil analysis costs about $15 per sample, plus postage. Test results take about a week. VCE will mail a copy of the report to you, your designer, horticulturist or landscaper and county extension agent. A flat rate box is now just over $5 and holds up to four samples.
The lab will:
There are also reputable private laboratories available through certified nutrient management planners. The clients of private labs are primarily farmers who have long been required by their conservation plans to do nutrient planning to keep streams healthy. Planners take samples, send to the lab, analyze results for what you intend to grow, map the tested fields using Geographic Information Systems, compare with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Survey. They can tell you exactly what to do and use, how much, and when, precisely by field, area or crop to be grown. Golf courses in Virginia and public lands are now required to adhere to nutrient plans.
Understanding what lies beneath what we see in our gardens is the critical step to successful planting. Not only do we want to plant more plants to cover and protect the soil to keep it from eroding and washing into streams, we want to boost the soils to help plants flourish.
Healthy forests
are the ideal companions to streams and the Bay, protecting waters better than anything else. Your mission in the garden, should you choose to accept it, is to help make your garden soil function as well as the forest floor.
Problem is, most of us don't live or garden in forests anymore. Since the Dust Bowl era, we've learned to quantify the wisdom of ancient farming practices used before World War I. It took the Dust Bowl for us to get it.
As per the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Survey, most soil science textbooks identify ideal, living soils as being made of the following:
- 45 percent minerals (rocks broken down over the millennia)
- 25 percent water
- 25 percent air
- 5 percent organic matter/biologically active/living matter (humus, compost, decomposing leaves)
Think of the soil structure in terms of layers. The minerals and organic matter are only half the story, but an important half. They provide and make nutrients plants need to produce their own food.
Organic matter and air are near the surface. Minerals, rocks and bedrock are further down. Plant roots need to be able to tap into minerals and water in the lower layers.
Nothing gets to the roots without water.
The final critical component of healthy soil is air. Yes, air. Soils could be squeezed together into a clay-like ball if bulldozers or heavy equipment have ever been present on your property. That could result in a lack of air needed for healthy root and plant growth.
Soils in our area that have been disturbed by construction only absorb 75-85 percent of rainfall, according to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation's Virginia Runoff Reduction Method worksheet. These soils have 15-25 percent stormwater runoff along with sediment, phosphorous and nitrogen that plants could have used on land.
Restored and reforested soils capture and absorb 95-98 percent of rainfall. Only 2-5 percent runs off into the Bay.
Despite the rain, sun and wind, peonies reign. At home here in Barboursville, our farm-based design studio collaborates with hosts Carl and Tori Tremaglio of Stonefire Station to create an afternoon rich in the sweet sights and tastes
of the best the Piedmont of Virginia has to offer.
via web.me.com
green design at home here in Barboursville with locally grown peonies and other flowers, composed for Stonefire Station penultimate dessert toward the conclusion of the #OrangeWeddingTour 2011. Thanks to Meghan McSweeney Photography, Ann Reid, and Stonefire Station & Kitchen. Enjoy!
we are proud to be part of the 'Buy Fresh, Buy Local' movement. It's been a part of our philosophy since day one......for a Garden as Pleasing to Nature as to the Eye..........
for Weddings and Events as Pleasing to Nature as to the Eye.
Thirty Orange County Virginia hospitality and event professionals host 40 wedding and event planners, photographers and media for two days of ‘speed weddings’: showering food, flowers, wine, music, and gifts upon our guests. Mother Nature showered 4.5 inches of rain on us in 36 hours, helping answer the perennial question from nervous brides to be: “What if it RAINS?!”
via web.me.com
All flowers and plants composed by Gentle Gardener Green Design are locally and sustainably grown. Thanks to my very able and generous growers for helping us showcase their talents and Nature's bounty for our guests at the Inn at Mayhurst, 22960. Next post: flowers and food at Stonefire Station 22923.
Each February the Piedmont Landscape Association in central Virginia creates a Valentine to the plant world and its workers: the growers, designers, plantsmen and plantswomen who paint in plants.
This year's PLA winter symposium featured Dr. Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware, author of Bringing Nature Home, a Timber Press release, and now, a re-release. Dr. Tallamy and other stars of the horticultural world enthralled over 600 gardeners in the packed Paramount Theatre on the downtown mall in Charlottesville; in Tallamy's case, with pictures of - gasp! - caterpillars.
These action shots of caterpillars consuming native plants - most photographed in Tallamy's yard - were an unlikely inspiration for those who are often asked by clients to pick, smash, burn, poison, explode or just deter those caterpillars from eating any single leaf on 'their' plants. And as a result, many years of accumulated experience go into creating plant 'palettes' for 'low-maintenance' landscapes based on plants that have little appeal for these caterpillars; in other words, we prepare a banquet for our own human visual and sometimes olfactory entertainment that is also made to be un-appealing and dis-tasteful to these creatures.
Dr. Tallamy and his students research and publish the links between the food needed, and food provided in the regions where we live, particularly the midAtlantic. Critical to the entire food chain in any ecosystem are the plant genera that support the greatest numbers of lepitoptera and other 'bugs' in each region. Plants, large and small, feed the critters, and they in turn feed the birds, and on and on. Eventually, we too are fed.
At a time when food, and eating local, is tres chic, au courant, de rigeur, the zeitgeist, we often deny the birds in our flyways the same opportunity. We lay a banquet of foreign, strange and sometimes unappetizing material for them, and tease them with 'melting icebergs' of large expanses of foreign, clipped, never-blooming turf grasses, dotted with single 'specimen' trees and shrubs from other places, rather than a knitted-together community of native trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, grasses and forbs. And of course, the berries and other snacks on the foreign shrubs that birds DO find appetizing, end up being propagated by them. In the right conditions, these invasives then roll like a mighty tide right over the native plants. Think berberis (barberry) hosting increased tick populations in the woodlands of New Jersey and southern New England, and privet (ligustrum amurensis) colonizing the piedmont and coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia. (There is a singular virtue, after all, in clipping privet hedges into rectangles: denying birds the berry/seed to propagate an invasive pest).
So. What? you say. So, many thanks to Dr. Tallamy and his researchers for providing a list of the top 20 woody trees and shrubs and top 20 herbaceous perennials, grasses, forbs for supporting biodiversity in the midAtlantic. This single page handout was worth the price of the day's admission. We now hand out this list at speaking engagements and to each client in our initial landscape design consultation. Gardeners and designers love lists: look at the back of any catalog.
My teacher at Kew, the British landscape designer and writer John Brookes, opened our History of Garden Design lecture with a deceptively simple statement: "Gardens are a product of the culture in the time and place they are made."
Your landscape designer, gardener, landscape contractor and maintenance crew may not tell you they have suddenly converted to stewards of the ecosystem in your yard. In fact they will probably be quite reticent on the topic. But stealthily and steadily they will begin to suggest different plants, native replacements for the Norway maples and other strangers in your midst.
A generational shift that began in the sixties and seventies will shift almost all gardens in the midAtlantic in the next decade. Individual single family homes with individual yet identical turfgrass lawns - the archetypal American expanse - limitless, with no walls or hedges to define each suburbanite's plot, will become right-sized and sized for a purpose.
Grass? Who needs it? Well, children do. Players of sport do. Those of us with Seasonal Affective Disorder do, Rather than the development default, turfgrass lawns will become one design element, but by no means the most important element, of the designed landscape. Our gardens will be designed for people, yes, as Thomas Church so rightly pointed out, but also for a more permanent, sustaining culture, not just human culture. Permaculture speaks of forest gardening, and Bill Mollison's most exciting lectures in our permaculture design course were of 'weaving', 'stacking' or layering productive systems on land and water as Nature does.
Could it be that we are on the verge of unifying our notions of beauty with a reawakened sense of stewardship?
If so, we have a few important teachers to thank, and Dr. Doug Tallamy is among them. A deep, prayerful bow seems the right expression of gratitude.
The twenty woody plants, and the twenty herbaceous perennials, grasses and forbs, will inspire us this spring in this blog and in our design work for some time to come.
Stay tuned, and walk in beauty.
Virginia R. Rockwell of Gentle Gardener Green Design, will launch an educational campaign entitled 'Is Grass always the “Greenest” Choice? Sustainable Alternatives to Turf Grass for Healthy Gardens, Waterways, Rivers and Bay' via a lecture on Wednesday, March 16 at 7 p.m. at the Central Regional Rappahannock Library, 1201 Caroline Street, Fredericksburg, VA. The free event is hosted by the Master Gardener Association of Central Rappahannock Area and open to the public.
Rockwell will discuss beautiful, sustainable options for turf grass, design elements and new legislation concerning phosphorous levels in commercial fertilizers. Good gardening choices and practices have a positive impact upon waterways. Rockwell will show attendees how to achieve a garden as pleasing to nature as the eye.
Virginia R. Rockwell is a certified landscape designer, horticulturalist, Association of Professional Landscape Designers member, Virginia Society of Landscape Designers member and LEED* Green Associate. For more information about Rockwell and Gentle Gardener Green Design, please visit http://www.gentlegardener.com/green. To learn more about MGACRA, please visit http://www.mgacra.com. Media inquiries can be directed to Ann P. Reid via e-mail at [email protected].
*Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
PRUNING WORKSHOP
Tudor Place, Georgetown, D.C.
Saturday, March 26th, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Join members of the APLD DC-MD-VA Chapter, for a hands on pruning workshop with Peter Deahl co-founder of The Pruning School.
Can this plant be saved? How many times as a designer are you asked by a homeowner whether a particular plant can be drastically reduced in size without killing it? Or, can this green blob be transformed into something more interesting? And of course, can the 'growing out' period be minimized as much as possible so they don't have to look at a disfigured plant? Here's your chance to learn the answers to these questions and improve your pruning skills.
Back by popular demand, we are once again offering a hands-on pruning workshop with Peter Deahl. Peter, an Interpretive Naturalist and ISA Certified Arborist, has spent over twenty years practicing his craft and sharing his knowledge and experience with garden clubs, schools, municipalities, Master Gardeners and Tree Steward groups. He is co-founder of The Pruning School, located in Sterling, Virginia (http://www.thepruningschool.com/main.htm).
For this workshop, we will gather at historic Tudor Place in Georgetown where Peter will start us off with a brief introduction to pruning biology before taking us outside to spend the remainder of the time getting hands-on pruning instruction. Tudor Place, a 5 1/2 acre late 19th century garden in the heart of Georgetown (www.tudorplace.org/about.html), has a large variety of mature evergreen and deciduous shrubs and small trees. Peter will instruct us in how to prune ornamentals in a biologically correct and aesthetically pleasing manner. There will be plenty of time for you to practice exactly where to make the cut and to ask all your pruning questions.
Bring your sharpened hand pruners, pruning saws and gloves. Wear your work clothes and dress for the weather. APLD will provide mid-morning refreshments, but please eat breakfast before you arrive. NOTE: It is not possible to prune in the rain. If weather forces us to reschedule, the rain date will be April 9th, 2011 and if needed the reschedule will be posted on the APLD DC.MD.VA Chapter website (dcmdva-apld.org/events.php) by 9:00 pm the night before. So if you have any doubts, check the website on Friday night March 25th.
The cost for this workshop is $55 for APLD DC.MD-VA Chapter members and $65 for non-APLD members. This is a hands-on workshop so space is limited.
If you're interested in joining us please fill out the registration form and return it with your check made out to APLD DC.MD.VA Chapter as soon as possible. If you have any questions please email Derek Thomas at [email protected].
For this and many other educational and networking opportunities check out the chapter website Events page at dcmdva-apld.org/events.php
Pruning Workshop with Peter Deahl
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Registration Form
Sponsored by the APLD DC-MD-VA Chapter
Please enroll me in the March 26th Pruning Workshop:
Contact Information
Name: __________________________________________________________
Company: __________________________________________________________
Address: __________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
City/State/Zip: __________________________________________________________
Phone: __________________________________________________________
E-Mail: __________________________________________________________
The above information will be used only if we need to contact you with regards to this event, and will not be given to any other organizations or used for any other purposes.
Payment
Please check the appropriate category below:
___ APLD DC.MD.VA Chapter members - discount rate $55.00
___ APLD members $60.00
___ Non-APLD Members $65.00
No refunds will be given after March 14, 2011
Please make your check payable to APLD DC-MD-VA Chapter and mail it to:
Marty Hays
APLD DC-MD-VA Chapter
8817 Burbank Road
Annandale, Virginia 22003
Lawn fertilizer misuse is one of many factors degrading water quality in Florida and summertime fertilizer bans may not be a quick-fix solution, according to an updated report released this week by University of Florida scientists.
via www.physorg.com
"Healthy #turf grass loses almost zero nutrients when it’s fertilized and irrigated according to science-based best management practices, or BMPs."
And now to scrape together the funding for the Nutrient Management Education Fund provided for in #VA HB1831 headed to the Governor's desk for signing into law...
via cvilletomorrow.typepad.com
Leslie Middleton, the executive director of the Rivanna River Basin Commission, said individuals can play a role by voluntarily making choices to have a smaller footprint.
“Our choice of fertilizers, our choice of how much lawn to have, our choice of how to build our driveways, all of those kinds of things are very important,” Middleton said.
Parrish said efforts to reduce pollution have been working. In 1985, 102 million pounds of nitrogen made its way into the bay. By 2008, that number had fallen to 72.8 million pounds.
“The bad news is that we have to make almost that much of a reduction again to get to where we need to be for the bay to be restored...”
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