Lifestyle

Job one in gardening and landscaping is loosening and enriching compacted soil and clay by mixing in organic materials like compost. For experienced gardeners, good compost is worth its weight in gold. There’s nothing healthier for your plants than rich black compost, but any kind of organic material mixed with soil is beneficial. Most gardeners buy compost in bags or bulk. Bagged compost and soils are in high demand, evidence that many gardeners aren’t making their own.

Before I think about packing clothes for a trip, my children are making all sorts of plans. I usually tell them they may pack their purses, then I’ll go through everything with them and discuss with them what may or not may be good items to take along. We learn as we go; who will want to go after all the missing pieces of a travel checkers game or beads that strayed while threading them? As they grow older there will be plenty of time for the likes. For now there are a lot of more travel-friendly options such as looking at books, telling stories, or our old faithful games of ‘ABC’ or ‘I see something’.

As a landscaper specializing in “makeovers” (rebuilding existing landscapes) I often find myself looking at landscape disasters, trying to pick up the pieces and figure out how to make it right. You might call me a landscape forensic pathologist, examining a crime scene of poorly designed, carelessly installed, mis-managed landscaping with major problems. More often than not the solution is a deep-down, scorched-earth, gut-level restoration, because so little of what’s there is salvageable. Does this seem harsh? How did we get to this point?

“Mom, you need to write a column about this!” Julia quipped as she scattered another handful of straw over her grandparents’ newly seeded lawn.

These last days have been a pull and by last night, a fever set in.

Hosta is a perennial foliage plant so well-known and widely planted that many gardeners take it for granted. There are over 3000 named varieties, all of them easy to grow and very trouble-free. They are known for growing well in shady spots where most flowers struggle, just one of the many reasons they deserve a place in your garden.

As fall weather brings frosts, your annual flowers will start to fall victim to nighttime temperatures, wilting and turning brown. Some annual flowers are more tender than others. The petunias and lantanas in our landscape seem to shrug off the cold, while the impatiens and begonias are fading fast. In Marjorie’s garden, all the annuals are in containers, and once the summer annuals keel over she has to replace them with more cold-hardy flowers. Mums are fairly cold-hardy, so some of our planter pots have fall mums blooming in them.

Natural stone paths look good in almost any landscape. They never go out of style like so many man-made paver materials. Like most things made of stone, they will stand the test of time if they’re built carefully. Stone construction is one of the most satisfying home improvement projects you can do, for that exact reason. Stonemasons are generally a happy and satisfied group, because they build things that last and no two projects are exactly alike.

Regular shearing, particularly when shrubs are young, helps them develop a stronger branch structure and a more rounded, full, and neat appearance. The more branches they have, the shorter each branch will be, making shrubs more compact and well-shaped in later life.

Do you worry that your children or grandchildren are slipping out of touch with the natural world? You have intelligent company. In his book “Last Child in the Woods - Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,” author Richard Louv directly links childhood obesity, ADD and depression to the lack of nature in children’s lives. Every parent should read this eye-opening book, brought to my attention years ago by Adams County educator Donna Shepherd. Full of documented evidence that nature is essential for healthy childhood development, it shows how that nature-based education improves grades, test scores, problem-solving, critical thinking and decision making.