Native Species Awakening. Gardeners often have an unexpected learning curve when they begin to add native plants to their gardens. In springtime, when native species wildflowers wake up from winter dormancy it can seem underwhelming for a while. The immediate gratification of vegetable gardening and big box store plant shopping are obstacles to true real […]
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Pollinator Gardens in Albany, NY To be sure, in the past few years, many customers have reached out requesting pollinator gardens in Albany, NY. We love it! Native plants are exactly what we need for urban habitat restoration. Many of our clients live in the neighborhoods surrounding SUNY Albany or the College at Saint Rose.
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Rain Gardens in Niskayuna, NY In beautiful Niskayuna, NY near the Mohawk River, there are a lot of families who have called our company in recent years to create new rain gardens on their wetland adjacent properties. We love this work. Rain gardens are the future of stormwater management. Imagine a system that harnesses nature
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Rewilding is a wonderful and relaxed form of land management that anyone with plant literacy and land can practice. Essentially it boils down to removing any invasive plants and letting the natural seed bank express itself. Rewilding is not like formal garden development. A new garden bed is not created, and soil amending isn’t
In Saratoga Springs, NY there is a network tapestry of beautiful native plant gardens. Our company has worked with hundreds of unique design/build projects over the past 15 years in the Albany, Saratoga Springs + Niskayuna/Altamont region. The Saratoga Racetrack Gardens are some of the most beautiful, functional and eco-productive that we have ever
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Native Landscaping in NY Recently we completed new lakeshore edge native landscaping in NY. The new garden build consisted of a home’s foundation landscape design near the shore of the lake. The house is located very close to the lake. Therefore, it was built with a high foundation to prevent flooding issues. We used New
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Municipal Gardens Project. In July 2013 a local paper, The Post Star wrote an article about our municipal gardens native landscaping project. Doing an eco-landscape renovation at such a busy site was quite an experience. Such an open, public space was a refreshing change. Cars honked their horns all day long, people came out of
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You have your gorgeous native plant landscaping system all designed, built and on its way to mature establishment. What happens now? Garden art projects. Now the exciting times really begin! “Garden art” is a vast category of creations, with a likely-to-be endless scope. Many of the plants and weeds in your garden are possibly edible.
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Recently we published an article about the link between using Japanese Barberry shrubs in landscaping and an increase in human Lyme disease infection rates in the surrounding neighborhoods. People in Saratoga Springs, Albany and Schenectady, NY are learning about this. We humans are collaborating against ourselves in a public health crisis through lazy and shortsighted
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We’ve begun an exploration series discovering a deeper connection and enjoyment of organic garden systems. Our company has worked with hundreds of local families through the years to do rewilding work, integrating native plants into the tapestry of their land. Creating a functional and biodiverse microclimate right at home. Folks have begun investing in
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DIY Planting Native Plants. Every year our company receives more and more, and more requests for design plans for DIY planting native plants gardens. The excitement for the growing environmental movement is thrilling. We love all the energy and effort towards healing our ecosystem and eco-renewal! And we’d love to respond to all the new
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Naturalistic Planting. The internationally renowned landscape designer and plantsman Piet Oudolf has popularized a new design style known as naturalistic planting. And so, in the NYC Highline Garden and all the worldwide Botanical Gardens Mr. Oudolf has designed, you can see this theme of beautiful, organized chaos. Natural beauty is celebrated in all its wildness
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Early Blooming Natives. Most of the flowering native plants that grow in eastern US butterfly gardens and pollinator gardens trend towards late season blooming. The timing aligns locally perfectly with the Saratoga annual racetrack season. The horses race from July through September. And that’s exactly when area native gardens in sunny spaces are blowing up
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Native Plants: What Are They? What are native plants? How can you differentiate a native species versus an introduced species? What designates a plant as invasive? Can a native plant be invasive? We consider a plant native to a region if it existed there already before the explorers (like Henry Hudson and Christopher Columbus)
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Butterfly Garden DIY: How To Jesse taught a workshop at a regional garden expo. “Butterfly Garden DIY: How To” was the topic. Subsequently we’ve heard from folks who wanted to attend and couldn’t. This post will summarize the butterfly habitat gardening presentation. A wildlife biologist friend writes frequently about butterfly gardening and the lifecycles of
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Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa, aka Actaea racemosa) is one of the finest native woodland plants. It’s also beloved as a woman’s herb. It graces the shade garden and part sun gardens and woodlands around the US. Black Cohosh has many nicknames, i.e., Bugbane or Black Snakeroot. There is also a
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Native Fruit Trees in Saratoga Springs, NY Planting native fruit trees is one of the best parts of this work. Shown in the photo is a line of Red Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) trees we planted for a Wilton homeowner. Straightaway, the Wilton location is a half mile from the Wilton Wildlife Preserve. The Red
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Community Education What an amazing time to be working in the green industry! There are daily mainstream media news articles extoling the virtues of sustainable landscaping and organic, native plants gardens. The public is really getting onboard. Our team currently has a collective 39 years of experience as of 2023. When we all started
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Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) is a beautiful and versatile plant that is native to North America. It is a tall, slender plant with spikes of deep blue flowers that bloom from June to September. The plant can grow up to 4-6 feet in height. As a matter of fact, it has a wide range of
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A nature preserve in Schenectady needed a butterfly garden designed and supplied with native plants. The volunteers from Woodlawn contacted our company to design a butterfly garden for the preserve. The Woodlawn Nature Preserve is a part of the connected Pine Grove ecosystem, aka the Albany Pine Bush. The Friends of the Woodlawn Preserve group
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