The Plight of the Blue Lupine in the Northeast Blue Lupine. In the realm of native plant conservation, good intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. The Blue Lupine (Lupinus perennis), a beautiful and vital native species in the northeastern United States, has faced significant challenges in recent years. A mix of enthusiasm for […]
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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This summer we had the privilege of doing ecological garden renovations at a farm in Saratoga. The farm is located in quintessential farm country, heading east on the way to Schuylerville, surrounded by miles on all sides of wild beauty. It’s a dream location for this exact kind of project: planting dozens of native plants
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Poison Parsnip Season. Being mid-June, it’s now the time of year that the invasive plant Poison Parsnip (aka Wild Parsnip or Pastinaca sativa) is blooming on the roadsides, ditches, marshes and forest edges of Saratoga + Albany County and much of the northeast. Many people confuse Poison Parsnip with the early blooming shade tolerant native
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Please stop with Lyme tick nurseries. Aka, How to prevent ticks in your yard. Certainly, many people are considering while they plan their outdoor spaces: “How to prevent ticks in my yard?” In the region of upstate New York where we live, Lyme disease- an infection of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that’s spread primarily by
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Hummingbird Garden DIY: How To Creating hummingbird habitat in our gardens is easy and necessary for the species’ survival. Hummingbird Garden DIY is possible with a few learned principles. Properties that have rich biodiversity have many different native plant species. This includes native trees, shrubs, perennials and native grasses and sedges. Hummingbirds need nectar and
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Edible Gardens in Saratoga Springs, NY. Altogether, many people want to grow their own organic food and have edible gardens at home these days. The photo here shows some Saratoga Springs, NY edible gardens projects in raised beds. It is always a good idea to plant native plants near vegetable gardens to attract pollinators. Correspondingly,
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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 New York. 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 an upstate New York homeowner. Straightaway, the fruit tree site location is a half mile from a major wildlife
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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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