gentle gardener: green

Rothesay on the James, 2010 Richmond Symphony Orchestra League Designer House

Rothesay, as the 10,000-square-foot house is called, is this year's Richmond Symphony Orchestra League Designer House. The property has been redecorated by 46 designers and artisans including Washington's Mary Douglas Drysdale, who did the living room.

via www.washingtonpost.com

Even more impressive are the over 7 acres of gardens surrounding Rothesay, including several rooms designed by Charles Gillette and renovated by landscape designers certified by the #VSLD, the Virginia Society of Landscape Designers, the oldest professional landscape design certifying body in the Commonwealth. Check out the Allee renovated using sustainable garden methods by #Gentle Gardener Green Design.

Allee: 75-Year-Old Gillette Design Goes ‘Green’ : now open through 11 October 2010

Richmond Symphony Designer House & Garden Tour

Design:  Virginia R. Rockwell, VSLD, VCH, LEED Green Associate

Green Projects Management:  Scotty Guinn Dilworth

 

The Allee is:

    A Charles Gillette-designed garden, serene yet playful, with a bit of mystery, and a surprise:  You may just learn something new…just as the children of The Secret Garden (1911) did! 

The Allee showcases sustainability with aesthetics in keeping with the character of the home.  As specialists in sustainable landscapes, container gardens, and event/floral design, we showcase the best of 'green' methods in one outdoor 'room’. 

We discovered this ‘Secret Garden’ under layers of deciduous leaves and vines covering Gillette’s 1930’s design for herringbone brick walk, steps and walls, the leaves slowly composting beneath the boxwoods and thus feeding them.

Your journey ends with a private view of the James framed by Magnolia grandiflora ‘Kay Parris’ and a wrought iron Arch featuring living wall panels and one of Rothesay's own bench fragments 'reupholstered' with living roof panels of drought-tolerant and heat-reducing plants.  The existing buxus sempervirens (American Boxwood) in the Allee we believe were used as ‘nursery’ stock to keep the boxwood plantings around the grounds at Rothesay supplied sustainably.  The existing lagerstroemia indica  (crape myrtles) lift and direct the eye to the views.

Q:  What Makes this garden ‘green’?

A:  Existing, Native, Repurposed, Local, Reusable, Organic,

Drought-tolerant, Heat-reducing 

• Locally made wrought iron arch by blacksmith Paul McGill, McGill Metalsmithing, Keswick, VA

• Re-purposed fisheye mirror suspended in peak of Arch

• Living wall panels and LiveRoof 'upholstery' on bench fragments by SGDesigns, Richmond, VA

• Pairs of brick red pots atop the wall plinths demonstrate 'sustainable container gardens' :  how to use native and drought-tolerant shrubs, perennials, grasses in containers for a period, then transplant out into the garden, accented by only small numbers of drought-tolerant annuals. 

• Existing charming Rothesay tennis footwear signs  as garden ornament (found under a bench).

•Existing Rothesay benches and wrought iron chairs, sycamore limbs as pedestals

• Only ONE brick had to be replaced at the top step after 75 years!

• Existing crape myrtles were fed and watered and pruned of dead wood and vines, NOT TOPPED

• Existing American boxwood were cared for organically this year:  fed with slow release organics and calcitic lime per soil test, watered, and sprayed with horticultural oil spray and insecticidal soap.  Dead, diseased and stems with leafminer were removed.  Spring pruning took no more than 1/3 of the foliage, opening up light and air circulation.

•NO IRRIGATION was installed.

For More Information, Contact:

Virginia R. Rockwell, VSLD, VCH, LEED GREEN ASSOCIATE

[email protected]

For Tickets, go to www.rsol.org

75 year old Gillette garden goes 'green': update by Gentle Gardener Green Design

Rothesay..., the 2010 Richmond Symphony Orchestra League Designer House, is situated on a spectacular site overlooking the James River. This year, for the first time, the Designer House will not only feature the work of interior designers but also the work of 10 landscape designers, a few of whom are featured in the videos below.

via www.richmondmagazine.com

check out the video of Scotty Guinn Dilworth, Project Manager for Gentle Gardener Green Design, at http://vimeo.com/12752764...on our green approach to this Charles Gillette garden design..and visit the house and garden, open NOW through midOctober.  tickets at www.rsol.org 

New York, New Jersey Elevate Lawn Phosphorus Debate | Safelawns Daily Post and Q&A Blog

Compile all the managed lawn surface in New York and New Jersey and, conservatively speaking, you’d probably be talking about 15 percent of the total lawn care industry in the United States. That puts billions of dollars and high emotion into play when the two states’ legislatures start passing lawn laws.

via www.safelawns.org

more on bad science > bad policy > bad legislation > unintended consequence: putting organics and small businesses out of business

To stop lawn fertilizer from polluting, do we have to kill off the organic fertilizer industry?

via www.gardenrant.com

Organic Mechanics is simply the BEST container garden/potting soil on the East Coast. It's also great for topdressing lightly on lawns being reseeded; those rice hulls and coir are better than straw, which blows away. (Thank you Mark, for helping Gentle Gardener client container gardens do so well.)

And, the checkered local/state phosphorus bans are just DUMB. If you want to garden sustainably, you need good root development, particularly as plants are being established in low organic matter % soils (pretty much everywhere in VA except for the forest floor). Phosphorus from organic sources gives you that to get started; healthy soil life keeps it going. Demonizing one element just confuses the public.

The point is: do what farmers MUST do: have a soil conservation/management plan: pretest, measure, (ignore what the land grant universities tell you to do, which is almost always to apply 10-10-10 no matter what their own lab test show), get a professional garden coach or sustainable landscape designer/organic horticulturalist help you interpret and apply the correct amounts of organics, preferably locally made.

Organic Mechanics has a huge location advantage, being within 400-500 miles (and thus 'local' per USDA and LEED USGBC) of much of the East Coast megaplex population.

Soil test, test microbial action via the soilfoodweb guys out West, apply the organics (including worm compost, mulches on top, green manures, cover crops and nitrogen fixing plants like leguminous trees and, ahem, clover), don't overdo ANYTHING, water, and heck, be patient, observant and not a picky perfectionist.

Do NOT let the "Perfect" be the Enemy of the Good......or the organic.......or the local......or the sustainable.

To stop lawn fertilizer from polluting, do we have to kill off the organic fertilizer industry?

the checkered local/state phosphorus bans are just DUMB. If you want to garden sustainably, you need good root development, particularly as plants are being established in low organic matter % soils (pretty much everywhere in VA except for the forest floor). Phosphorus from organic sources gives you that to get started; healthy soil life keeps it going. Demonizing one element just confuses the public.

RichmondGRID.com: A Green House on Grove

via www.richmondgrid.com

By our Sustainable Projects Manager, Scotty Guinn Dilworth of SGDesigns.

Scotty Designs Green ...roofs, living walls, living fences, rain gardens, and more, in association with Gentle Gardener Green Design and independently from her base in Richmond, Virginia.

Cleaning up the dirt? The Dirt on Potting Media (aka soil)

via www.gardenrant.com

Gentle Gardener makes its own sustainable container garden potting mix. 15 years ago in Great Britain gardeners started picketing/boycotting DIY stores and garden centers over peat based potting soil; I was at Findhorn and Kew and sat up and took notice. Took 10 years to develop supply chain of alternatives here in the clueless, cheap transport US.

A few steps to enlightened dirt/soil:

First, make your own compost and/or worm castings (compost), and aged leafmould (what the Brits call a pile of chipped/shredded leaves left for a year to decompose). Second, get locally made municipal compost if it's not all been sold to a commercial compost company locally. Third, buy only locally made compost from a reputable supplier, and ensure it doesn't have persistent herbicides in it. We have a very good one near Charlottesville from Panorama Farms called Panorama Paydirt. There are sometimes shortages due to demand. Our local worm compost is Black Gold Organics.

Coir Bricks are portable, peat-free potting media from a quickly renewable source (peat bogs.. not so quick). We supplied Brent Heath from Brent and Becky's Bulbs with coir for a container garden bulb planting workshop and he loved how the fibres give the root hairs of bulbs something to cling to. (He too is a Fafard peat fan but that's Canadian and not very sustainable from a transport perspective, not to the midAtlantic or South).

You need warm water and TIME to expand the coir. We mix in a muck bucket with the hot water, load and by the time we are at the job site, it's done. Extra bricks are portable and take up lots less room than bags/bales of promix. Extra worm compost helps too.

Mulching the tops of pots with coir chips, stones or moss or even found objects helps with soil loss. I too want to experiment with corel stones from the hydroponics folks.

As with so many other things, you get what you pay for, BUT, the best is homemade and free. Also a very good workout turning the compost from bin to bin to tumbler. I find shoveling this particular s... much more meditative and enjoyable than the corporate kind....

http://blogs.usda.gov/2010/08/04/survey-says-farmers-markets-on-the-rise/

http://blogs.usda.gov/2010/08/04/survey-says-farmers-markets-on-the-rise/

Aug. 4, 2010 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced that the 2010 National Farmers Market Directory lists 6,132 operational farmers markets, representing 16 percent growth over 2009 when the agency reported 5,274. The 2010 National Farmers Market Directory results are being released as part of National Farmers Market Week declared by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack between Aug. 1-7, 2010.

Tree Folks - Top Ten - 09: Trees increase your property value

 ..."benefit-cost analysis for Modesto's 90,000 street/park trees found $1.89 returned annually for every $1 invested in stewardship."

via www.treefolks.org

GOT TREE$?

YouTube - ‪wildflowercenter's Channel‬‎

Channel Views:711

via www.youtube.com

more agri-tainment, or agri-adventure: prescribed burn to prep for wildflower meadow. in august outside austin, tx, no less.

That's Agri-tainment! Got a problem with noxious plants? Get goats | Richmond Times-Dispatch

SPROUSES CORNER

via www2.timesdispatch.com

Perfect for slopes, stone outcroppings covered with bittersweet, grapevine, honeysuckle, poison ivy and bull brier. not to mention kudzu, ailanthus and sumac. No compaction of the soil, no loud machinery. #in

NYT Op-Ed: Swimming Through the #Spill ... - NYTimes.com

FOR the last few days, attention has understandably been directed at the shores of the Gulf Coast as oil has started to wash up on beaches and in marshes. But last week I had the chance to see the effects of the spill from another perspective — when I dived into the oil slick a few miles off the Pass a Loutre wetlands in southern Louisiana. What I witnessed was a surreal, sickening scene beyond anything I could have imagined.

via www.nytimes.com

nature is not going to deal with the oil with a single command and control structure.  NOR SHOULD WE.

bioaccumulative dispersant contains known carcinogen. Friday eve # NewsHour guest professor from #University of South Florida describes a chef's nightmare a mile below the surface:  natural gas under pressure, combining with salt water, oil and dispersant to make an emulsion with properties more like water:  most of the oil is NOT rising to the surface but pervading the water column and thus the entire food web.

nature is not going to deal with the oil with a single command and control structure.  NOR SHOULD WE.  grab your destiny in your own hands, gulf states:  employ best practices, don't do anything stupid, try to anticipate unintended consequences, but lead, follow, or get out of the way.  every coastal community is going to have to deal with its undulating coastline, marsh, disappearing barrier islands in its own way.  waiting for the feds to authorize or do or lead is proving to be just, well, dumb.  i'd think y'all had figured that out 4 years back. spend the money and send BP the bill.  they're paying for dopey advertising for FL beaches, they can write more checks for actual Work.

one group has to deal with the source of the flow a mile down.  command and control is appropriate for that, but not for the local response. 

we better be as opportunistic, flexible, locally adaptive, communitarian as Nature on dealing with the cleanup, or we will perish waiting for a single silver bullet from An Authority from elsewhere. 

green. and pink. and white and chartreuse and blue and purple and and and SPRING!

So much biomass, so little time.  So much more colour, in so little time.  To paraphrase my teacher, David Orr, "If it's not beautiful, it's not sustainable."  The human impulse to shape nature into what we consider to be beautiful is fundamental and innate; we garden for sustenance and our prosaic needs, but the process sometimes shows us the way to poetry. 

This year:  the early bloomers were late and the late ones early:  the result of 4 months of snow on the ground, with #Mount Chipotle in the Barracks Rd Shopping Centre in Cville melting April 27 or so after accumulating since December 19 (roll your eyes if you must, Buffalo and Boston, but this is Virginia!).
Spring in central Virginia, in the Piedmont, yields so much so quickly, with temperatures seesawing between 26F yesterday morning, and 89F predicted tomorrow.  

Plants! Scarlet quince blooming in shade, intermittently, still! along with dogwood, aesculus x carnea 'Ft. McNair' pink horsechestnut, and now native fringe tree, chionanthus Virginicus, a bit early (fringe tree is usually a Mother's Day bloomer).

Native woodland phlox divaricata, mertensia virginica (VA Bluebells), and English and Spanish bluebells mingle companionably with helleborus foetidus, orientalis, and variegated false Solomon's seal (polygonatum falcatum variegatum). 
And the drama of native Quamash:  camassia, punctuating the garden. 

And yes, even the azalea:  on the north side of the farm office & studio, with hakenochloa 'All Gold', heuchera 'Amethyst Mist' and 'Citronelle', and tiarella, heucherella, variegated Solomon's seal, plus gold creeping jenny duking it out with the weeds.  Magnolia 'Kay Parris' did well in snow, 'Little Gem' not so well.  Osmanthus 'Goshiki', Cotinus 'Golden Spirit', and Pieris J. 'Valley Valentine' , plus my first ever camellia japonica left over from a garden show display last year, all appeared to LOVE being buried in a snow bank.
  Did I dig them out or fret or kvetch?  No.  I left the snow drifts to support the branches when the snow load off the roof let go in big heavy icy sheets.  Damage:  Minimal.

And is a designer's garden perfection?  Ha!  No, my garden has not been weeded.  We pruned the trees and shrubs of damage, my able farmer husband used the grapple rake on the tractor to claw it up into a burn pile, and on a cool March Sunday evening, we burned it.  That, and some rock phosphate on everything, was it.  Clients' gardens demanded my attention, and the 'shoemaker's children have...well, actually, lovely, careless, glorious shoes.......including ladyslippers along the wooded driveway.  We creep in the truck and count, a game each April since our daughter was two.  This year, we counted over 40 ladyslippers.  We are blessed with such mysterious riches.

Enough words.  Pictures are better.  Later, I'll post more to web.me.com/gentlegardener. 
when I have time, but meanwhile, here are a few shot with my iPhone:   


 

Garden Rant: So You Want to Be a Garden Designer--We Have a Winner!

Thanks for playing, everybody! From the responses to her guest rant, Love has chosen a winner.  Gentle Gardener, you're getting a free book.

via www.gardenrant.com

Wow! I won a book on GardenRant! A real, paper book that can be read in a bubble bath after gardening. From Love Albrecht Howard, author of So You Want to Be a Garden Designer from Timber Press....a sistah corporate marketing refugee...#in

Well, our Lawmakers have surely STEPPED IN IT this time! from Garden Rant: Virginians, help save your Extension Service

:

Bad news out of Richmond - Cooperative Extension Services in Virginia may be axed this week by the legislature.  So gardeners are rallying, and if you're in Virginia or know someone who is, instructions for how to lobby to save these services are below the jump (click "Continue reading").

via www.gardenrant.com

They obviously have NO IDEA that cooperative extension service (aka county agents) have been cultivating a cadre of opinionated master gardeners, 4Hers, and other fans for years now.

They also have NO IDEA that they WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MEET THEIR FEDERALLY MANDATED WATER QUALITY GOALS FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY WITHOUT CHANGING URBAN/SUBURBAN NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION RUNOFF (THAT IS, CRAP WASHING OFF OUR OVERFERTILIZED/PESTICIDED YARDS) WITHOUT RETRAINING THE PUBLIC TO MORE SUSTAINABLE METHODS.

Possible conspiracy theory:  that the 'green' industry (that is nursery & landscape) is throwing cooperative extension 'under the bus' in order to train the public to 'green' methods.  Well, whatever we in the private sector say is green, perhaps without research to back it up.....hmmm........

  Stay tuned!

Learning to think like a Tree...What did Snow and Ice teach us? From On Gardening: I survived the blizzard of 2010, but will my plants? - washingtonpost.com

via www.washingtonpost.com

What did we learn to become better landscape designers/land stewards?  more images at http://web.me.com/gentlegardener   click on 'Landscape Design:  Winter' up top in the title bar.

This Just In...

you heard it here secondhand thanks to gardenrant.typepad.com: native amsonia (blue star) will be the Perennial Plant of the Year next year, but for me, is every year: blue flowers, drought tolerant, golden autumn airy foliage! pics at web.me.com/gentlegardener fern hill.