Sugar Maple Tree Sugar maple trees (Acer saccharum) are iconic North American trees known for their stunning fall foliage and sap used to produce maple syrup. Here are some key details about sugar maple trees: Sugar Maple Characteristics Size and Growth: Sugar maples can grow to heights of 60-75 feet, with some reaching up to […]
Corporate Habitat Garden Projects. Corporate Habitat Garden Projects: Renewing the Local Ecosystem while Saving Money on Maintenance Costs. Corporate habitat garden projects are one of the most effective ways for a business to create visible, lasting good. When a company chooses to replace turfgrass with organic native wildflowers, the results ripple outward. A pollinator garden,
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Gardening 101: How to begin gardening with native plants. We know—gardening with native plants is exciting, but it makes some people nervous for some reason. If you’ve ever found yourself staring at your new garden and thinking, “Wait… is everything okay out there?”—you’re not alone. Let’s walk through some of the most common concerns we
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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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Time Builds Beauty Time Builds Beauty. Landscapes are not created all at once. They unfold. In native gardens especially, the most meaningful changes happen gradually, shaped by seasons, soil, and time. While modern landscaping often promises instant results, ecology tells a quieter truth. Time builds beauty. In the Beginning. In the first year after planting,
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Caring for large gardens is quite a different fête from caring for small gardens. The maintenance routine required to keep a small native garden thriving is often quite manageable. Weeding monthly is usually a breeze after plants are established. It’s fairly common knowledge by now that using native plants returns a low maintenance garden
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Native Garden Spring Cleanup: The Right Way to Clean Up a Pollinator Garden. Native wildflowers and grasses don’t wake up alone in spring. The insects, amphibians, spiders and reptiles wake up with them. Native Garden Spring Cleanup: Be Patient to Start. Many of the pollinators, beetles, moths, butterflies, and native bees that visited your garden
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Climate-resilient corporate landscaping. Climate resilient corporate landscaping is a lot more than an exterior upgrade or capital gains. (Although those tangible gains are very welcome in most campuses.) After that, a strategic investment in the health of your property, your people, and the entire region can be realized. When a corporate campus chooses native plants,
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Ecosystem Services. Ecosystem services refer to the benefits that humans derive from functioning ecosystems. These services can be categorized into four general types: provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services, and cultural services. Responsible and thoughtful landscaping plays a crucial role in enhancing and maximizing these ecosystem services. Provisioning Services: Provisioning services involve the tangible products
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Free Audiobooks in NYS: A Gift for Your Curious Mind PSA: Free Audiobooks in NYS. Did you know that free audiobooks in NYS are available to every resident? If you live in New York State, you automatically qualify for a free library card from both the Brooklyn Public Library and the New York Public Library.
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From Roots to Radiance From Roots to Radiance: Story of a Native Garden in Development. Every lasting garden begins underground. Long before flowers catch the eye or grasses sway in the breeze, a native landscape is quietly establishing itself below the soil surface. Understanding this hidden phase helps homeowners appreciate the full journey of a
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Norway Maple tree vs Sugar Maple. Native Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum) and invasive Norway Maples (Acer platanoides) can seem similar at first, but there are key differences. Identifying these differences is important for preserving native ecosystems. Here’s how to tell them apart: 1. Leaf Shape and Texture Sugar Maple: The leaves have five distinct lobes
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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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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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Invasives + Kindness. (continued). Several years ago we began a deep exploration into healthy land restoration after invasives have devastated a site. The problem is real and gross. For example, in Saratoga Springs, NY the beautiful public park on High Rock Rd is haunted by invasive Japanese Knotweed. Behind the park to the west side,
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Corporate campus landscaping Corporate Campus Landscaping: Transform Your Workplace into a Living Ecosystem. Surprisingly, corporate campuses across the country are beginning to rethink what landscaping can be. Traditional landscaping looks tidy from a distance, but it comes with constant mowing, chemical inputs, irrigation systems, and high maintenance costs. Native plant landscaping flips that script. A
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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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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
Matrix Planting What Is Matrix Planting? Matrix planting is a design approach where a dominant, continuous ground layer supports and stabilizes a comparatively smaller number of feature plants that emerge through it. Think of the matrix basically as the living fabric of the garden. The structure further integrates everything else. Ecologically, this mirrors how real
Landscape Transformation Process Landscape Transformation Process: Every great garden begins with a little faith. The before stage can look bare, messy, or even disappointing at first. Bare soil. Open space. A lot of possibility. This is the starting line of transformation, and it’s where every beautiful landscape begins. Landscape Transformation Process: The “During” Phase
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