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I am grateful to the pioneers who planted the majestic white pines that keep my farm house cool as a cucumber. We’ve been growing beautiful, healthy Eco-Lawn under these same pine trees. It’s never watered and never fertilized and we mow it bout once every 4-5 weeks. Once in a while when a weed manages to grow through the thick Eco-Lawn we just pull it out and add a bit more seed.
Ancient white pine coexisting happily with Eco-Lawn
Got a sunny, gravely spot or a wall you want decorated with dark pink flowers all summer? Meet Calliroe involucrata! It goes by a few common names – Poppy Mallow or Wine Cups. This flowering ground cover is absolutely stunning! I grow it here in our sandy soil in full sun right along the ground, and in my new scree garden where it lives in super gravely sand and a bit of soil. We NEVER water this beauty! (We never, in fact, water ANYTHING in our wildflower gardens or meadows!!!) Super easy to grow from seed. Wildflower Farm will be offering this wonderful seed in the 2011 season. YOU’ll want to grow this gorgeous plant!!! Here’s a look at how it spreads deliciously over the ground in bursts of hot pink!!
Oh! The Agony & the Muckstacy of it All! Got the clay soil blues? Don’t sweat it! And, DON’T spend big bucks buying stuff to change your soil into something it’s not. I say – work with what cha got.
Instead of changing your conditions to suit the needs of the plants – choose plants that will thrive in the type of soil, sun and water conditions that naturally occur on your property.
I’m in love with Claybusters – a collection of perennial wildflowers and native grasses that LOVE unammended shovel breaking clay! These tough plants are designed by nature to handle conditions that kill other plants. There are lots of hardy, perennial wildflowers – over 30 in fact – that grow splendidly in clay.
Pale Purple Coneflowers on Parade
To get you started – here are three of my wildflower favorites…..
Smooth Penstemon
Smooth Penstemon (Penstemon digitalis)– to the rescue! Provides elegant, long-blooming white spikes during that anxious garden phase when spring’s done and early summer color seems far away. What’s more, Smooth Penn’s just as happy growing in the shade as in full sun. The tubular white flowers attract hummingbirds. Added bonus – in the fall, Smooth Penstemon’s foliage shifts to a regal shade of maroon.
Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida)– A cross between a purple coneflower and a long necked brontosaurus dinosaur – this tall member of the Echinacea family can get up to 5(?) tall, Long blooming in the sun or shade, Pale Purple Coneflower blooms 6 weeks earlier than the well know Echinacea purpurea.
Ironweed (Vernonia fasciculate) – Massively showy, it’s difficult to convey how stunning these richly textured, lush reddish-purple blooms are – till you experience them in person! Fabulously tall, these late summer bloomers work well in sun or part shade and make superb cut flowers. Ironweeds are top Monarch attractors in the late summer garden.
Ironweed
Fields of Flowers
Each glorious summer day I ride my bike through acres and acres of Echinacea, Ironweed, Monarda, Blazingstar, Blackeyed Susans, Butterflyweed and Yellow Coneflowers. As I build speed and soar through the giant stand of copper-plumed Indian Grass, I gotta say life is good.
So, how does a nice Jewish girl from Nutley, New Jersey end up running a native plant nursery in Ontario, Canada?
Liatris & Wild Quinine Outside Wildflower Farm Nursery
I’m a middle aged broad so I’m going to give you the condensed version of my story. Prior to my compulsion to grow plants I focused on creativity and communication – through my BA in dance and then free lance writing, mostly of the PR variety. But there’s another big reason I fell in love with growing stuff. Before my gardening obsession began, I ran a pre-natal fitness business called Preggae Woman – first in Los Angeles then Toronto. I was so drawn to the process of birth I spent time training as a mid-wife – even caught a baby or two! But when I started growing flowers from seed – that was it. I was hooked and haven’t looked back since. I’m sure it’s that nurturing life thing, combined with a need for beauty that sealed the deal for me.
In fact, my life boils down to two simple principles:1) There’s no such thing as too many flowers.
2) I must be surrounded by beauty.
The rest is gravy.
So, welcome to the first Wildflower Farm blog. I’ll be blogging about everything under the Wildflower Farm sun. And, I’m big on hearing from you! Ask me anything you want to know! Paul, my partner, and I have always believed in sharing information about wildflower seeds, plants andsustainable landscaping designs and techniques. And, of course I’ll also be blogging about Eco-Lawn – our truly sustainable lawn.
Drought stricken San Franciscans rejoice! The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show has invited Eco-Lawn for a visit. The Eco-Lawn demonstration garden will be a totally tactile experience filled with undulating swaths of Eco-Lawn in a sea of blue recycled glass. We’ll be hanging out in the Slow Food Plaza so you can check out the Eco-Lawn as you munch on yummy food items!
Preparations are well underway for this tiny gem of a garden! The green gardening community is pitching in big time! Mill Nash of Clean Air Lawn Care will help construct the garden and be around to field questions about Eco-Lawn. Annie Speigelman aka The Dirt Diva will be promoting her new book “Talking Dirt” and gossiping shamelessly about the benefits of Eco-Lawn. And, innovative entrepreneur, Aha Modern Living’s Jayme Jenkins – soon to be carrying Eco-Lawn - will pitch in to spread the gospel of Eco-Lawn.
So, what’s so great about Eco-Lawn anyway? Well, false modesty aside – Pretty much EVERYTHING! Mind you if you like spending money needlessly, squandering water and being enslaved to your lawn – this lawn’s NOT for you.
As for the rest of us we can check out Eco-Lawn at: www.eco-lawn.com . Then make your way over to the Annie’s Annuals booth and load up on Eco-Lawn!
Many thanks for the recycled garden glass courtesy of Red Shovel Glass and the exquisitely earthy containers filled with Eco-Lawn courtesy of UrbanFarmGirls.
It’s time to get all up close and personal with Eco-Lawn!
A Rockin Lawn Doc
Gimme Green is a solidly crafted documentary about America’s Obsession with Lawns. Released in 2007, Gimme Green entertains as it educates. Water consumption concerns and studies on the carcinogenic nature of pesticides are peppered with a parade of entertaining lawn-obsessed characters. Through this widely varied cast of characters we see how lawn has insidiously worked its way into the very fiber of our culture.
Lawnliness is Next to Godliness – Meet the Pro-Lawn Contingent
- the Bible thumping Florida homeowner who equates his religious superiority with the obsession required to achieve the perfect, manicured lawn.
- The realtor’s neighborhood patrol program rewards competition for the most overly maintained property with the Yard of the Month award.
- The by- the-book Municipal Code officer writing a ticket for an unmown lawn
- The Arizona sod farmer who’s happy to grow and sell sod but sees the trend toward sod flat lining because water restrictions are increasing.
- The TrueChem employee who seems utterly sincere in her belief that pesticides are not causing harm. But she won’t say they are safe. “Nothing is safe. Water is not safe. There is nothing you can use that word with. So when people say pesticides aren’t safe – what is? “ Truly a ringing endorsement!
On the oppositite end of the spectrum, Virginia Scott Jenkins, author of ‘The Lawn- A History of an American Obsession.” shares the hard-core facts about lawns, explaining how “lawns were imposed on people and originally people had to learn this upper class behavior. Now lawns cover over 41 million acres in the U.S. and over 5,000 acres of land are converted to lawns each day. What’s worse, Americans apply more than 25,000 tons of pesticides to their yards each year. The EPA finds that nearly ½ of these pesticides are possible or probable carcinogens”
Included in the Anti or Less-Lawn contingent is an interview with two of my heroes, authors, Andy and Sally Wasowski. A passionate educator and practitioner of sustainable landscape, Andy wisely predicts, “The Wars of the 21st century will be fought over water not oil,” and he reminds us that “native landscapes need no water.”
A synthetic lawn salesman hypes synthetic lawns as a no-maintenance, pesticide free alternative. I’m not a fan of synthetic lawns in any way, shape or form – but that’s a discussion for another time. Gimme Lawn shows the synthetic lawn salesman profiting from Las Vegas’ water conservation program homeowners’ incentive program that rewards homeowners with $1 for every square foot of sod they remove.
