by GardenLover | Feb 25, 2013 | Gardens to Drive, Trendspotting
Michael Leach helps find many of the speakers and programs for the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens Stage and the Backyard Patio Stage at the Central Ohio Home & Garden Show. It shouldn’t be surprising that the bloggers will be appearing.
Teresa Woodard presents “Spring Salad Bowl” at 1 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 26) on the patio stage.
Michael leads tours of several show gardens at 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday (Feb. 26 and 27). He explains some of the basic terms and techniques landscape designers use, while taking time to smell the hyacinths along the way. The caliber of design and execution seems especially high this year.
Heartland Garden Bloggers: Teresa Woodard, Michael Leach and Debra Knapke
Debra Knapke, Teresa and Michael present “Midwest Garden Trends, Tips and More” at 3 p.m. Sunday (March 3). So come with your garden questions and we’ll try to answer them.
This sneak preview of spring also offers an appearance by the Property Brothers from HGTV, demos by chefs from throughout central Ohio, and new home and garden products.
by GardenLover | Feb 5, 2013 | Trendspotting
What are the attractive and practical alternatives to lawn?
By Michael Leach
Finally there’s a voice of reason in the clamor over lawns. While I’m hardly a proponent of bluegrass from sea to shining sea, I grow weary of strident idealists calling for an end to lawn.
From what I’ve seen, their politically correct lawn replacements resemble vacant lots, not landscapes. Theirs is a green version of what many well-intentioned water savers palm off as xeriscape.
Sorry, not so fast, that’s zero-scape. To me a mass of tangled native plants or gravel bed punctuated with scraggly desert vegetation seems more a lazy bones approach to landscape design and maintenance than a desirable lawn alternative.
Which brings me to the voice of reason, Sabrena Schweyer, a principal of Salsbury-Schweyer of Akron, OH. She presented “Sustainable Lawn Alternatives” at the recent Ohio State University Short Course offered in conjunction with the Central Environmental Nursery Trade Show in Columbus.
Her vision and calm rationale were as welcome and illuminating as sunshine on a dreary Midwest winter day.
Not surprisingly for a landscape designer, she suggests looking at the lawn as a component of the overall plan, not the dominant theme. Obviously children and pets love playing on a lawn and few plants caress bare feet as gently as grass.
But other needs, such as entertaining or vegetable gardening, may also be on your priority list. Obviously all lawn won’t do.
Think of lawn as the area rugs of the landscape, she suggests. One of her clients wanted a large deck with adjacent water garden to fill much of the back yard. His wife argued against the plan because they never went outside and wouldn’t use.
Who would with only a blank green slate and the boring backsides of neighbors houses to gaze at? Sadly, too many homeowners feel like the wife, thanks to the lawn-centric tradition surrounding the typical American domicile.
She suggests that homeowners, who like the looks of lawn but resent the labor, should look into maintenance minimalist grass varieties and grasslike plants that mimic the open space of lawn without the drudgery. In some situations, moss or thyme might work as ground cover — but weeding is a must with these. (Warning, the casual looks won’t please fussbudgets.)
Even if you opt to replace the lawn with a mini meadow or prairie, it may be wise to surround it with a framework of mown grass, pavement or fence.This shows the neighbors — and skeptical government inspectors — that you are intentional, not merely growing a higgledy-piggledy array of plants.
If this seems too constraining, imagine — if you can — a frothy English perennial garden without a stately brick wall, clipped verdant hedge or precisely edged gravel walk as components. The contrast of order and abandon makes for an intriguing scene.
In the Midwest, we have to keep up appearances in winter. Grass usually turns to a straw mat, making it a neutral foil for other landscape features. But a wildflower meadow becomes a sinister, frosted-blackened place more an Edgar Allan Poe setting than a yard-of-the-year candidate. Plants with winter visual interest, plus structures and other hardscape, will keep the scene lively every day.
The idealists are on the right track. But theirs is a challenge of creating visually appealing — and easy to maintain — alternatives to lawns. Sabrena is pointing the way.
by GardenLover | Jan 29, 2013 | Trendspotting
Want a Sneak Peak at What’s Coming to Local Garden Centers?
By Teresa Woodard
Clematis ‘Diamantina’
A hardy super-nutritious Goji berry bush, an exquisite double clematis and a dwarf thornless raspberry bush were three of the plants that caught my fellow bloggers’ and my eyes as we toured the CENTS show (Central Environmental Nursery Trade Show) earlier this month in Columbus. Billed as the largest annual horticulture and landscape trade show, the trade show and workshops provided a glass ball to what’s hot in 2013. Here are five trends that created a buzz at the show:
- Edible landscaping —
Lycium barbarum (Goji Berry)
The industry is serving up more tasty options for this year’s gardens. We saw dwarf thornless raspberries, hardy Goji berry bushes, expanded selections of heirloom plants and seeds, and increased inventories of fruit trees, especially dwarf varieties.
- Small-space gardening – City dwellers and empty
nesters are looking for ways to maximize their smaller gardens, and the industry is happy to oblige with new options for container gardening, vertical treatments and more dwarf varieties. A multi-grafted espaliered crabapple, a new collection of clematis climbers and clever vertical wall planters caught our eye.
- Heat lovers – Midwest gardeners will be delighted to find more options available in tropicals and drought-tolerant plants like succulents. Acorn Farms showed oodles of hanging baskets full of eye-catching and trailing succulents. Willoway Nurseries displayed Brugmansia ‘Snow Bank’ — a showy variegated angel trumpet from Novalis’ “Bring on the Heat” group.
- Miniatures — The miniature craze continues, and the industry is stepping up its offerings with miniature hostas, succulents, conifers, and other wee plants and accessories especially suited for terrariums, fairy gardens and small containers.
- Sustainable landscapes – CENTS show speakers repeatedly talked about how to garden in a more sustainable – more eco-friendly – way with ideas for lawn alternatives, suggestions for tough plants, and new solutions for pest and weed control.
by GardenLover | Nov 23, 2012 | Trendspotting
By Teresa Woodard
This season, join the handcrafted craze and give gardening gifts that are more from the heart than the wallet. Try seed bombs in a hand-printed bag by a Cincinnati print shop. Dress up old clay pots with DIY gilding. Pot amaryllis or paperwhite bulbs for a home-grown present. Decorate a store-bought rosemary tree. Create gift baskets of local treats like jams, honey and maple syrup. Or make ornaments from backyard cuttings.
by GardenLover | Aug 7, 2012 | Trendspotting
Wanted: One word to make gardening cool and sexy
By Michael Leach
One of TV’s green thumbs needs help selling gardening to the Millennial generation.
Joe Lamp’l, host and developer of Growing a Greener World on PBS, seeks a horticultural equivalent of “foodie.” This special word will make plants and gardening seem as “sexy, cool and hip” as foodie does the food industry. Plantie, gardenie just don’t work for him. Start thinking and send him your suggestions. Tell us, too.
Getting the garden industry to care about Millennials was the thrust of his keynote program, “Can You Hear Me Now? Voice Beyond the Greenhouse,” at the recent OFA Short Course in Columbus. The annual event is one of America’s largest horticultural industry gatherings.
Millennials, which he defines as 17- to 34-year-olds, are second only to baby boomers in numbers and potential buying power, an obvious draw for the breeders, retailers and growers represented of OFA, the Association of Horticulture Professionals.
Gardening should be a natural for Millennials. He said they’re into cooking, volunteering, sustainability and self-expression. They’re even into slowing way down in their off hours. That’s why cooking appeals to them.
Trouble is, they’re burdened with educational loan debt and unlikely to stake a claim of suburban turf anytime soon. So garden centers, growers and breeders need to develop a tiered approach to help them first grow things on front stoops and balconies and then decks and yards. Plus, the industry should help them enjoy the “journey” of gardening rather than just selling them something.
His favorite garden center, for instance, offers cooking and gardening classes, plus help with composting and rain harvesting. A visit to the Greener World website shows Lamp’l doesn’t just preach social networking and a multimedia approach to telling the gardening story.
No wonder. This group is seriously into their cell phones and all the Internet wonders of the world those devices summon with a touch: entertainment, news, games, maps, restaurant reviews, apps, socializing and paying those college loans. Sometimes they even make phone calls.
Those of us already savoring a gardening lifestyle know the real pleasure lies as much in the journey of nurturing as in having an appealing landscape. It’s too good to keep to ourselves. But how do we get the word out?
As for that special word, send it to:
Website: joegardener.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/joegardener
FB fan page: Facebook.com/ggwtv
Twitter: twitter.com/joegardener
by GardenLover | Jul 31, 2012 | Trendspotting
Can gardening save the nation?
By Michael Leach
Too busy to eat together as a family? Who isn’t?
President Barack Obama and his family. According to Sam Kass, assistant White House chef, the President eats dinner with his family each evening, unless he’s out of the country. And vegetables and herbs from the White House veggie garden — the first since the 1890s — may be on the menu.
I suppose setting an example, if only to their own children, much less a nation of couch potatoes, is part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign against childhood obesity.
According to the Let’s Move website, one-third of America’s kids are overweight or obese. But it’s almost 40 percent among African-American and Hispanic communities. A third of the children born in 2000 or later will suffer from diabetes. Other health problems stemming from obesity include heart disease, asthma, sleep apnea and social discrimination.
Scary stuff — but gardening can help. (Some of you may be doing your part in community or school gardens or nutrition programs. If so, let us know about it.)
This month, Kass covered some of what is happening at the national level and shared behind the scenes garden stories in a keynote program at OFA, one of the nation’s largest horticulture trade shows. The annual event held in Columbus includes educational courses on topics as diverse as managing a garden center to solving greenhouse bug problems.
Battle lines against obesity are drawn, not at the Pentagon, but in the White House vegetable garden and school ground gardens across the nation.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aVpEr3kfWjc#!]
Kass frequently swaps toque for trowel. He probably worries more about the veggies than a dozen ordinary growers. With 100 members of the press covering each garden-focused event at the White House, who wouldn’t worry if the peas shrivel or a kid spits out that first bite of fresh broccoli?
So far nothing like that has happened but there are mistakes, just like in our gardens. Take the Thomas Jefferson fig.
Despite his coddling, Kass said the fig tree, a type grown by Jefferson at Monticello, sulked during its first year and was only marginally happier in the second.
One morning it was gone.
He found the wilted Thomas Jefferson fig in the compost pile! Apparently a volunteer gardener thought it a weed amongst the mint. Sam replanted and nurtured but it still looked distraught. This year, probably because of the hot summer. it grows lushly and is loaded with fruit. He calls this the “Little Fig that Could.”
Maybe those veggies and the school gardens planted as part of Let’s Move will help defeat fat.
Michael Leach helps find many of the speakers and programs for the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens Stage and the Backyard Patio Stage at the Central Ohio Home & Garden Show. It shouldn’t be surprising that the bloggers will be appearing.
