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.
via www.nytimes.com
Just the facts, ma'am: 6.1trillion out of 14.3 trillion - almost half - because of Dubya, Cheney and their misadventures abroad and at home. The anemic stimuli the States spent on anyway projects and subsequently cut or abandoned maintaining a pittance in comparison. Who holds the Debt? 3.6trillion is US - NOT THE US, BUT Usn's. China is 1.2 trillion.
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.
Our landscape design clients who dislike the munching caterpillars often ask for 'butterfly' gardens to be composed by us, their dutiful landscape designers. (The notion of metamorphosis for lepidoptera has escaped some of us, if not our children). And, we and our clients often go to great lengths to feed birds year-round, when what is crucial to biodiversity, particularly diversity of migrating birds, is the availability of food rich in protein during nesting and fledging season. What food do birds prefer and need greatly at this critical time? Well, the bugs and caterpillars.of course. 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.
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