People’s reasons for organic gardening are varied. Some folks love animals and want to protect our wildlife by not using harmful chemicals. Others may have health problems they’re trying to ameliorate by living a chemical free lifestyle. Organic gardening may be seen as an outdoors extension of their clean life. Organic edible gardens gain […]
Reduce Tick Exposure Naturally: 8 Steps. There is nothing quite like time spent enjoying the outdoors. Exhilarating. But many of us in the northeast have one nagging fear about time in nature and that is, “how do we reduce our tick exposure? Preferably to zero?” After almost 2 decades of organic landscaping, this is something
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Hügelkultur Gardens Hügelkultur garden beds are a German restorative agriculture technique that any homeowner with some extra tree branches and a bit of space can construct. There are many benefits to using this permaculture style of land management. Sinking carbon that may otherwise be considered a waste product is one environmental win. Creating a rich,
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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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Tree Planting Service: Native Trees To-Go. Bringing new large trees to client’s locations is one of our team’s favorite ecosystem building projects. And it’s an activity with a dynamic positive effect afterwards. New native trees offer life-saving benefits to songbirds, caterpillars, keystone pollinating insects and humans. So how does it happen? First, we meet with you
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Sustainable Landscape Development. What an opportunity we all have ahead of us over the next decade. The future is bright. As eastern NY cities, villages and townships begin to consider sustainability in planning, we all win. Over the years, we’ve observed 5 principles for sustainability in garden construction. Removing invasive species, adding only native plants in
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Organic Soil. The quest to manipulate the land in any facet and call it “gardening” would be shortsighted without attention to the soil condition. Healthy soils beget healthy gardens. Even a more laissez-faire habitat restoration approach like rewilding does require acknowledgment of soil quality as it regards severe mineral deficiencies. There is not a lot
Natural Gardening. One benefit of a natural gardening practice is closer contact with nature. If you’ve wanted to hold a baby bunny, you may be able to! It depends on the unique nuances in your neighborhood’s ecosystem. And the flow of your land matters. There’s lots of native fauna besides the Eastern Cottontail, too. The
Albany Deer Gardens. Albany Deer Gardens. In the summer of 2017, we got a call to renovate the gardens surrounding a townhouse in Albany, NY. The townhouse was located within the Albany Pinebush ecosystem, right near the park. The gentleman of the house was known to his friends as, “Miami Joe.” He was the first
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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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Invasive Plants. The problem in America of invasive species rapaciously displacing native flora is weird. How did we get here? Is it like this everywhere in the world? Why? And logistically: what can we do? Invasive Natural History When you read the American naturalists (Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and others), quite
Organic Garden Lifestyle. We passed the official 3-year anniversary of Covid-19’s paradigm shift reframing society this week. The world is a very different place now and most people have been forced to re-evaluate a lot of their values. Organic gardens are a major component of many Americans lives in a new way. Organic gardening
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Organic Gardens Design People expect more from their landscaping these days. It’s no longer adequate for most folks when a garden is high maintenance with no benefit or returns on inputs. Many people are looking to augment edible plants into an edible garden system. Organic gardens designed with native plants are becoming more and more
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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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Monarch Butterfly Garden. Monarch Butterfly Garden development is easy, fun and visually beautiful. It’s good for the local ecosystem and the larger environment. And it’s good for us as people. Recently the Monarch butterfly was officially registered as an endangered species. In the ecology world though, we’ve been watching the species carefully for a very
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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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Interpretive Nature Sign Gardens. One thing that differentiates a botanical garden or arboretum from an amateur nature lover’s garden is signage. Interpretive nature signs in a garden or nature preserve transform a pedestrian stroll into an educational event. When plants are labeled, the people enjoying the nature and gardens can study the plants. Labeling the
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Habitat Garden Network Over the past decade our company has been honored and delighted to create habitat restoration landscaping projects with hundreds of Capital Region residents. Our mission is to restore ecosystem function to our urban + suburban neighborhoods. By now, the gardens have absolutely taken on a new life of their own. They’ve
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