Organic Garden Lifestyle The Beauty and Benefits of an Organic Garden In the hustle + bustle of modern life, there’s an ever-growing yearning to reconnect with nature. Finding solace in the simplicity of greenery and soil at home is the new frontier. Enter the organic garden – a sanctuary where sustainability meets beauty. The act […]
Ease up on the yard work. It’s just kinder. “Yard Work.” This time of year, people wear themselves and each other out with yardwork. There’s raking and activity with leaf blowers. And then folks cut every green, soft tissue stem possible down to the ground. It really needs to stop. The incessant fixation on neatness
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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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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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Easy potato garden DIY: About 2 months ago we bought some attractive Fingerling Potatoes from the Saratoga Farmer’s Market. We forgot we had them. Subsequently they grew long, spindly eye buds and the potato bodies turned soft and flaccid. Finally, today we got around to picking the eyes off the potatoes to plant them.
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Naturalized Plants. If you ever more than dabble in the gardening world, you’ll definitely hear the term “naturalized plant” mentioned. It’s an abused grey area at best within the industry that leads to environmental problems from new invasive plants ultimately. Naturalized plants are a sanctioned ecology category defined by a clear set of metrics. Unfortunately, most
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Compost Project for Earth Day. We celebrated Earth Day on trend this year. (And really, every day is Earth Day here.) We decided to add some Red Wiggler Worms, Eisenia hortensia, aka European Red Wigglers to our compost pile. The benefits of composting our food scraps and using them as soil for the edible garden
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Eco-friendly Gardens and Edible landscaping in Clifton Park, NY Edible plants can nicely augment eco-friendly gardens. In Clifton Park, NY (which is located in southern Saratoga County), there’s an eco-friendly landscaped property that we’ve used edible gardens and edible plants and herbs generously in the design. The above photo contains a June-bearing Strawberry as groundcover
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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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Shade Gardens in NY Recently we designed and built new shade gardens in Saratoga Springs, NY. There was a small, disorganized collection of existing shrubs and perennials in one established bed by the patio. This garden was adjacent to a woodland area that we rewilded into relaxed shade gardens. For that reason, many shade tolerant
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Growing organic produce at home is fun and easy. The benefits of eating organic vegetables are immeasurable. In turn, it makes sense that more and more people are interested in eating healthy and having a direct hand in the food’s growing process. Trucking to the farmer’s market each week can be taxing on many folks’
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Woodland Garden Design Recently we were invited to design and build a new woodland garden in upstate NY. The picture above shows Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum) and Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata.) One reason landscape design for shade gardens is enjoyable is the malleability of structure compared to full sunspaces. And the plants! Certainly, native woodland
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Raised Bed Success Story Raised bed gardens are a wonderful choice for new organic vegetable production. Checking up on a property recently, we were delighted to see the Little Acre raised beds teeming with life, vitality and organic produce. We filled the boxes with high quality organic soil, compost and organic vegetable seedlings. The results
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Pine Tree Gardening A recent rainy Monday found us on a break near a Pine Forest in the Albany Pinebush Nature Preserve. This nature preserve is a 2-minute walk from the garden we were working in; a 10-minute drive from downtown Albany and 20 minutes from Saratoga. This particular wildlife habitat is a sister site
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Butterfly Gardens in Glenville, NY A year in recent history, our company was invited to design and install new butterfly gardens in Glenville, NY. The new gardens were comprised exclusively of NY native plants. The Swallowtail butterfly photo was taken by the homeowner, Mark. The following photo is from summer 2014. It was taken in
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Urban Gardens A recent year we were contracted to do the design and install for the landscape renovation of an urban garden. The client’s urban location crystalized a wildlife corridor in Saratoga Springs, NY through the positioning of several dozen individual local properties with eco-savvy landscape design. This habitat renewal space is located in front
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Natural History In 2012 the Glens Falls Business Journal printed a story about the Jessecology Eco-Landscaping company. It was to celebrate the paper’s special environmental edition. The legacy story did justice explaining the ecological advantages of native plant landscaping and organic garden design. The natural history of a region can be understood when large blocks