Creating a natural garden

As my gardening companion and I prepare to leave a garden (really a low-maintenance native plant-dominated landscape) that we've created over the last 22 years, it's interesting to reflect on the changes that we've made -- all to the good, certainly, from the perspective of being good stewards of our space in the world.

We've converted 1.44 acres of what was largely lawn, punctuated by a few large hardwood trees (oaks and hickories), to a native-plant rich diverse landscape,

devoted to woodland in front

with the side yard screened by a diversity of shrubs and trees, not all native, so including Deodar cedar, gingko, and Asian viburnums.

The theme was adding plants that work for a living - native plants that Tim could use for Plant Ecology and Field Botany labs, and adding plants that supported pollinators, herbivores, and providing habitats for birds, and other wildlife.

The front meadow and informal perennial borders have been about supporting pollinators.

And the vegetable garden spaces have been about nourishing us, and our table.

It's been a privilege to be a steward of our historic house (built in 1929), but even more importantly, I'm glad to be leaving a more nature-vibrant landscape, too.

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Hmm, snow....

 Waking up to a lovely snowy scene is not what I usually expect to see in late February, but that's what I saw out the windows this morning. 

Cool-season greens and window boxes will still have to wait for warmer weather.

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A warmer day (and vegetable musings)

Finally, the last bit of accumulated ice has melted and it was a "normal" temperature day, with highs ~ 58°F.

I'm itching to plant cool-season greens - I've missed having homegrown greens (kale, collards, mustard, etc.) over the last two winters, even though I've felt we've eaten nothing but homegrown greens in years past.

So, we're enjoying broccoli, collards, red cabbage, and kale from the grocery store -- cooked with garlic, red onions, and a bit of balsamic vinegar -- they're quite nice.

But a restaurant meal out at a local Mexican place yesterday evening was telling -- the "vegetables" were shredded carrots, broccoli bits, and some onions, clearly from a regional veggie warehouse somewhere, and delivered through the commercial food system.  They all tasted the same.

Geez, I sound like a total food snob, but homegrown veggies are really good. Vegetables from local markets, ditto.

Freshly-harvested vegetables, even if industrial, quickly frozen, are good, too, as are their organic equivalents.

I don't like to buy fruits and vegetables with a super long distance pedigree, so certainly "fresh" fruits and vegetables from the Southern Hemisphere this time of year are not normally in my cart  (berries, peaches and nectarines, grapes, asparagus, and the like).

The exception --bananas -- my hubbie's breakfast staple fruit. And coffee. And broccoli and lettuce from California, well, I suppose so, too...So I'm hardly a purist.

Hmm, soon it will be warm enough to sow at least a quick crop of cool-season greens, I hope.

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Brown thrashers and cardinals

Even if the weather doesn't seem like spring, and is unusual for late February, plants and animals mark and take notice of lengthening days.

The male cardinals are singing now, the robins are flocking, and a brown thrasher is pronouncing loudly (very early in the morning) that his territory consists of the hollies outside the kitchen door.  (We've had thrashers nesting there for years).

We've had snowdrops in flower, and daffodils trying to open.  And there are native trout lily and iris leaves emerging, too.

It's been too cold to poke around out in the front woodland border, but I imagine there are fiddleheads of Christmas fern ready to unfurl, too.  Their normally evergreen above-ground leaves are looking pretty battered right now.

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Winter: a good time to remove invasive plants

Wedelia or creeping oxeye daisy (Sphagneticola trilobata): a beautiful invader. 

Less lawn...

When we moved into our house here in North Florida, we let several areas of lawn grow out. I've written about this several times. See From lawn to woods: a retrospective, for what has happened out front.

Here's the other half of the story. Our 1.5 acre lot is long and pie-shaped. Out back is a narrowing strip to the lake. We decided early on that we'd not continue to mow this whole area and just leave a pathway that could be mowed with one trip down and one trip back on the riding mower. The area opens up by the lake, so there is more  mowing to do down there.

So this is what happened...

2007. Vast section of lawn that we let grow out became engulfed by wedelia. Looking back toward the house from the pathway to the lake.

The gardener strikes back...

By 2007, the wedelia, which had been controlled in the lawn by mowing, grew like crazy. So it was time to strike back. I did not want to kill everything in the area, so pulling was the best option. And with some follow-up this has worked pretty well.

Pulling the wedelia by rolling it up like a rug. Yes, leather gloves were necessary here.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the path...

2007. A work in progress: pulling the wedelia from the slope next to the shallow ravine between our property and our neighbor's. This photo was taken from approximately the same place as the above photo, but looking toward the lake.

I started the removal project on the other side of the path where the wedelia was covering ferns, small beautyberry bushes and other desirable vegetation. You can see some of the ferns, mostly netted chain ferns (Woodwardia areolata), in the above photo. One good reason for tackling this project in the winter is that the ferns die back in the winter.

It didn't take long for the ferns to totally fill in this ravine and slope, which is what I'd hoped for.

2009. These ferns are lovely for most of the year.
They die back  only for a couple of months here.

The fertile fronds bear a chain of sori that hold the spores. 

Because it's invasive and because there are parts of the plants that did not get pulled, it's necessary to check for new sprouts on a regular basis. The first year after removal, I checked every other month. For a couple of years I checked twice a year. Now I check every other year, because I sure don't want to start all over again. So a few weeks ago, I found a few sprouts at the bottom of the ravine where it's dampest and more near the lake shore.

A sprout found on my latest foray.

While I'm out hunting for wedelia sprouts, I also removed
the other big invasive on our property coral ardisia.

On the upland side of the path, the plant community has changed from a meadow-like area to a wooded ecosystem and is filled with small trees. It has become too shady for the wedelia to take off, but I still found a few sprouts. I also found a fair number of coral ardisia (Ardisia crenata) plants and some wild taro (Colocasia esculenta). So while I was removing invasives, I worked on all of them.

I'll cover the transformation of this area in a post later in the year.

For more information on what is invasive in Florida, see the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council Invasive website, which has not only the list of the 76 most invasive plants in Category I and the potentially invasive list in Category II, there are links for most of these invasive plants for more information.

I know that my maintenance removal project will continue because so many of my neighbors continue to grow these plants, but at least our property will become less of a problem going forward.

Indian blanketflowr (Gaillardia pulchella) and a Cicada killer (Sphecius speciosus) 

Making room for native plants is so important for the heath of our environment.
I'm working on doing my part. Are you?

Green Gardening Matters,

Ginny Stibolt

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Global weirding

I wrote a piece ~ seven years ago about what North American gardeners (and botanists) thought about climate change for The Public Garden (at that time, the journal of the American Association of Public Gardens and Arboreta --AABGA, now APGA). It didn't end up being published, probably because it was too telling. 

American botanical gardens are in denial about what they need to do around conservation and promoting sustainable gardening practices to the public, etc.  This is true of American horticulture associations, too, I'm sorry to say, from Garden Writers Association to our network of Master Gardeners across the country.

At the time I wrote, we'd just emerged from a decade of severe drought in the Southeastern US, and there were significant floods in the west at that time, too.  It was telling to hear from knowledgeable folks (from a number of different scientific backgrounds) across North America what they thought about this topic.

Since then, we've just continued to experience what I was thinking about and posted about in 2010 -- global weirding. The link is to a post from Feb. 19, 2010.

Normal is just getting more extreme than ever, it seems to me.

We're going to experience record lows for February here in the Southeastern U.S over the next couple of days.  And record lows for the "high" temperatures, too, thanks to the strong polar air that's flowing down our way.

Hmm, isn't there something to learn about polar melting and a flood of cold air (aka polar vortex) down our way?

We've got a lot of adaptations to make as gardeners -- whether with native plants that support pollinators or in our vegetable gardens. 

Personally, I'm ready to plant cool-season vegetables this spring.  I've missed my winter kale and collards over the last two years, and I'd normally have started planted some early greens and peas by now.  Not this year.

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Icicles!

This morning, icicles hung from the curled-up rhododendron leaves in front of the house and ice weighted down the hemlock branches.

The dogwood beyond the porch was coated with ice, too, with a silvery shimmer in the dull wintry light.

 Outside my study window, the ice on the Carolina jessamine is dripping, as the temperatures rise.

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Sleet and ice

There's sleet falling outside the window, and when it was still light, evidence of significant accumulation.  Strange weather, to be sure. 

It's mid-February.  In the Southeast.  Daffodils have popped up, with flowers, blueberry buds are swelling, and the quince has a few tentative flowers, too.

But we're presented with another blast of frigid arctic air this week -- on Wednesday night, temperatures are predicted to be ~ 11°F  here in the Piedmont -- definitely cold for this time of the year.

The cold air flowing down from the northern Polar realms seems to be pushing out the warmer, humid air -- as the predictions keep getting colder -- for overnights.

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Queulat National Park (another hike)

A magical park in Chilean Patagonia, along the Carretera Austral, is Queulat National Park.  

The hikes, views, etc. were all wonderful: the link takes you to previous posts.

Here are a few images and thoughts around our last hike before we moved south.

We had looked for this trail before, and hadn't found the trailhead (the road was REALLY challenging), and our lodging was at the base of the road. It climbed up over the pass, full of gravel, deep ruts, and slippery patches -- a bit daunting, actually. We'd been glad to go back downhill the previous day.

But, after a young park ranger told us, yes, the Enchanted Forest trail is still open, we measured mileage carefully (again) and finally found the trail head, amid the rubble of road construction.

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A lovely Ozark witch hazel

 Our Ozark witch hazel, planted by the previous owner, is lovely right now.

The flowers are luminous towards sunset, as the light filters through the flowers.

I had thought originally that it was a Chinese witch hazel, but thanks to my blogging friend Janet (and now friend in person), have corrected that!

Ozark witch hazel --backlit by the setting sun

A closer view

And close up

 What a great plant!

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Howling winds and cold

We've had a lovely roll of pre-spring-like conditions, normal for us this time of the year.

But a huge cold front, bringing arctic air down into the Carolinas, has changed that.  It's now really cold -- into the teens (F°) tonight, with a high in the 30° F zone.  That's cold for February.

I'm glad I didn't think that last weekend's weather meant it was time to plant peas.  It definitely would have been too early.

I wish I'd snagged the spinach and creasy greens this afternoon in my raised beds.  The creasy greens will be fine -- not sure about the spinach.  It was a very small patch, so that's OK.

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Spring is coming

Another spell of warm weather always reminds me that, here, in the Southern U.S., spring comes early.

February often brings lovely bright days -- we've have a row of them -- with temperatures up in the mid 60°'s F.  Balmy, really.

So spring is just around the corner.  Even the native plants are starting to show signs of buds swelling.

Our Carolina Jessamine has flower buds close to opening.  It's a good sign.

Carolina Jessamine (some years ago)

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