Admitting to infrequently designing on paper, instead, after conceptualizing an overall picture, French relies on instinct and the experience of more than twenty years of working in his chosen medium to dictate the details of each piece.  And because his masonry creations rarely employ cut stone, a good portion of the hours dedicated to every project is spent on hand picking the stone material.  If a piece of stone doesn’t fit, he doesn’t use it.  French has had the good fortune of long term creative partnerships with many of his clients.  His working process is unorthodox and takes more time than a typical masonry installation, but the end results are certainly worth the wait.

For pure inspiration Stone by Design by Lew French, a photographic narration of a number of his stunning stone interiors and landscape installations will not disappoint.

Last week we looked at weeds and mild winters, now let’s look at fruits flowers and fungi. There are some advantages to a mild winter, flower buds on fruits trees are less hardy than their vegetative buds, so a mild winter will allow more flowering and later more fruit. Though we generally want to get as much fruit as possible, too much fruit can mean not only broken branches, but smaller less succulent fruit, so be sure to thin those fruits and not over burden the fruit tree. The same applies to our flowering landscape shrubs. Forsythia will bloom from the ground to the tips when winters are mild with no thinning necessary

On the down side, over 80 percent of our plant diseases are caused by fungi. A mild winter allows those fungal spores and structures to live on more, decaying moist plant parts. The overwintering fungal structures will be in the leaf litter waiting to strike again next spring during cool, wet weather. Raking and removal of as much of that leaf litter as possible will reduce the spores available and there for a huge impact on disease pressure this coming spring. For this reason,  recommend early clean up of perennials and fallen leaves in beds this year, removing spent plant parts and weeds, to remove the overwintering fungal structures and lessen the disease pressure.”

A mild winter will not affect populations of insects routinely surviving much colder winter temperatures. It will have an impact on insects that typically move into northern areas from the south, or neighboring states that do not overwinter locally. A mild winter will allow more of them to survive in their normal habit before migrating . For those insects that normally overwinter in northern climes, it would take a very cold winter over an extended period to lower those pest populations. Insects can overwinter as eggs, larvae, pupae or adults using a variety of tactics to survive.

Though the implication is that spring populations such as flies and mosquitoes could be higher, a late freeze in let’s say March might actually reduce these populations in our area. Alternately, many birds feed on these insects and may also limit the mosquito population which is why creating and sustaining landscapes that promote bio-diversity and create homes for beneficial insects is so important. No matter what kind of a winter we end up with, gardeners know that diseases and insects will develop right along with our landscape plants, so be on the lookout early and often for potential problems.

With the help of Accuweather and other predictors of the weather, we predicted a cold winter with lots of snow. The original prediction was 27” of snow for New York for example and we have had maybe 4” inches so far with highs in the mid to upper forties predicted for the rest of February.  This indeed is the winter that never was and though we may possibly get some snow, it does appear that we won’t get much of an opportunity to roll out those snow throwers and other snow management tools since highs are predicted in the mid to upper forties in Southern NY for the rest of February.

The good news is that if the weather remains consistent, our shrubs and evergreens will have not suffered to many weather extremes which allow them to get burned by cold when they think it’s spring etc. The bad news is that insects and annual weeds that are reduced by cold winters will abound.

Annual bluegrass, henbit, common chickweed and speedwell and winter perennials such as wild garlic and wild onion are unsightly and can be problematic your lawn and perennial beds. These weeds compete for sunlight, water and nutrients and can slow green-up of lawn areas in the spring, creating relatively large “no grass” areas that get filled in by other weeds as these die back.

Knowing and indentifying these plants is the first step to managing them. Control is most effective when weeds are immature (two to four leaf stage) and actively growing. However, proper identification is generally easier once weeds have matured. There are tones of articles on the internet as well as books on weeds that you can tap to get familiar. Also, make use of your county extension agent, state weed specialist, landscape professional or botanist at the local college or university.

Given the unusually warm weather you can expect good weed activity and now is the time to get after them. If you see weeds in your beds or lawn and have identified them, learn about their growth habits and possible controls. If you are hand weeding them, make sure to NOT shake them when you pull them. Shaking soil of the roots of the weed also shakes seeds the weed may be carrying onto the open area you have just created increasing the number of weeds you will have down the line. Even though it is technically winter, you might want to scratch some grass seed into any open areas as soils will reach germination temperatures much earlier this year  Since the ground still has not frozen.

1) Think of your home with nothing around it “naked”; what should NOT be covered up by plants? windows? architectural features?

2) What do you want to hide with plantings? Downspouts? electric/gas meters?

3) What features (of your home) do you want to draw attention to maybe through framing them with plants? French doors? Main entry? Maybe a bay window?

4) When do you look at your garden space the most? what would you like to see there? Think color!

5) What other sensory stimulation would you like (from your garden ; ) ? Sound? Smell? Touch?

6) What features of your property most annoy you? Your neighbors? The driveway? and how can you soften the impact of these features with plantings?

7) What room would you most like to have outdoors? Bedroom? Living room? Dining room? and what would it be worth to you? How would outdoor rooms increase the value of your home to yourself and others?

What area are you least using that you could develop into a new room? Front/back yard?

9) What lawn areas do you have that you never really walk on or touch? converting these to grouncover or better yet, native perennials will pay for itself in maintenance savings in less than five years AND make your property more eco-friendly to beneficial insects.

10) Where can you most benefit from a large hardwood tree that would shade your home yielding energy savings,  absorb storm water reducing run off and basement leaks and increase bio diversity WITHOUT shading the rest of the property too much?

Much like our own bodies, plants have difficulty with constant temperature fluctuations. If you have been reading this blog for a while, than you have read about how plants create their own anti-freeze in preparation for the winter. Of course when temperatures reach the fifties as they are predicted to do next week in the New York vicinity, plants are tricked into thinking that maybe it is spring and they start responding to that shift by growing. Growth can be disastrous if the warm spell is followed up by extreme cold as was experienced recently.

There is very little if anything we can do to prevent damage due to weather shifts, except perhaps mulch more heavily to protect plant roots and slow down the tendrils of freezing weather until it is consistent. Mulch will also give bulb and perennials shoots a little extra cover and prevent the growth tips from freezing to heavily. We can take advantage of the warm spells when they come to combat seasonal affect disorder and maybe even do some work on the garden.

The ground is not really frozen, nurseries are holding a fair amount of material due to poor fall sales, and the opportunity to get your outdoor spaces ready for the spring as well as get outside in the process will always lighten spirits. Take a look at your foundation plantings first and see what’s missing plant wise. Look for any “hardscaping” (walkways, fencing, paths, etc) that you might be able to get started on. Avoid pruning anything but dead wood for a little while longer.

Unless done in very late winter, pruning runs the risk of stimulating growth, which is the last thing you want to do in uncertain weather conditions. You can also spray anti-desiccant on evergreens which will help protect them in harsh winds when the cold finally does come.

We all care about the planet right? I mean if you polled everyone you knew, including members of your own household of course, and the question was: Do you want to leave the planet a better place then you left it? I guarantee you 99% of the respondents would say yes. I was going to say 100% but then I remembered one of my kids going through a goth/anarchistic phase in life and his stance at the time seemed to be that the whole thing needed to be torn down first before it can get better, so I guess there are always exceptions.

I was saying, most folks at least believe the right thing to do is leave the planet better than we found it (even if they do not yet live it through their actions), but  if you polled the same group on whether they actually feel  they are empowered to leave the world a better place than they found it,  I’ll bet that maybe 25% of the respondents would say “definitely”, and the rest would state that they feel the condition of the world is too far beyond their direct influence. It is one of the great failures of our democracy that we the people feel so disenfranchised from the process of change in our society. We can finger point all day long, but in the end, this is a democracy and responsibility for creating change rests squarely on our own shoulders. Perhaps this is a case of a nation patiently waiting and searching for a leader when in truth, every time we look in the mirror that leader is there in front of us desperately yearning for release?

What does this have to do with gardening? One of the places where you have direct influence over “the world” is the little piece of land that has been entrusted into our hands, namely the one your home sits on, and the public spaces that we can influence through our local governments. We  decide what kind of plants will be there and how they will be cared for. We decide whether there are native plants or invasive plants.  Large native hardwood trees for example are the bones of the ecosystem supporting more beneficial insects, birds and animals than any other part of the ecosystem as well as shading your home and reducing energy costs in the winter.  We decide what kind of planet we will leave to our children by where we vote with our dollars. Do we hire contractors with a track record and commitment to sustainability? or the cheapest guy who is giving short term cosmetics at the expense or the long term health of your plants and the ecosystem? Or if you do it yourself, do you have a gas mower or an electric one? Are you using pesticides and chemical fertilizers or nurturing the soil and plants naturally?

The voting does not end with your landscape,  you can also choose whether you pay for wind power, or less sustainable energy sources. You can choose  what kinds of vehicles you drive, whether you take public transportation, use plastic bags or re-usable bags, how much water you use, how energy efficient your lifestyle is, what level of recycling and composting you will use etc.  Going into 2012 make the decision to empower your life and make a difference where you  have a direct impact, your own home and your own community.

Much like the dawning of the age of Aquarius in which there was a unique alignment of the planets heralding a new age, Christmas and Chanukah  over lap perfectly this year with Christmas dropping squarely in the middle of Chanukah week, or Chanukah bracketing Christmas depending on your orientation. In my home where we celebrate everything (we are a “blended family”) this is something of a blessing allowing us to focus our decorating, various holiday songs of both cultures, and celebrations over a single week which though intense, is also something of a relief in its focus, intensity, and completion.  Interestingly, the wider culture and economy seems to experience this confluence of holidays in a similar manner with Black Friday sales being the best in years and compression of school holidays etc.

Along with the confluence of holidays, there is an increased movement towards bringing nature in doors as part of the holidays as well as bringing the holidays out. We now see Chanukah flags and blow ups to compete with blow up Christmas decorations and flags, as well as a growing movement to bring the garden indoors in the form of table decorations and plantings for both cultures. There are bulb plantings, floral decorations, plants, and garden based gifts for both faiths, and any other for that matter. Sure, they are the same products re-packaged in the colors of the particular faith, silver pots with white narcissus for Chanukah, red pots with the same narcissus for Christmas, but it is encouraging that more folks want nature in their homes and yearn for that connection as we are driven indoors by seasonal change.

Regardless of feelings positive or negative regarding how people decorate the outside of their homes and commercialization of the holidays, there has to be gratitude that we all do it with tolerance and even acceptance of one another’s differences and perhaps even with consideration for our commonalities being primary. Considering that many faiths are persecuted in the rest of the world, it is something of a miracle that we here in the United States seem to take for granted.

A recent study by the Pew foundation found that in 178 countries (90%), religious groups must register with the government for various purposes”. In the majority of instances, this results in discrimination against at least some faiths.  This holiday celebrate difference and celebrate that we can all celebrate difference. We live in an amazing country, it is not only the land of opportunity but more important, it is the land of possibility. Our forefathers dreamed of a place where there can be not only freedom but religious freedom and amazingly we are succeeding where 90% of the world is still struggling.

Get Those Evergreens Ready for a Tough Winter

All the weather predictions for this winter are that the Northeast will be hammered once again with icy conditions and lots of snow thanks to La Nina. This means you can count on your evergreens taking a lot of abuse unless you take measures to protect them or unless of course the prediction is wrong.

La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during the first half of 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter. The forces of La Nina — characterized by colder than normal waters in the Pacific — are expected to cause stormier and windier conditions, with “sporadic big rain, or snow events,” says the NOAA, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

Last year saw sever winter burn damage to evergreens due to snow and ice that were the result of the influence of La Nina’s influence. Winter burn occurs when extreme cold draws moisture from evergreen leaves which are dormant and cannot replace the moisture due to dormant root systems. One solution is to spray finer leaved evergreens like pines, spruces, taxus, and cedars with anti-desiccant spray like “Wilt Pruf”. These sprays are usually organic and latex based. They coat the leaf and help it hold moisture, but be careful to spray only the tops of the leaves as spraying the bottoms can cover over the stoma which are the vents through which leaves breath.

Larger leafed plants like laurels, rhodendrons, and aucuba can be wrapped in burlap for the winter for extra protection and to keep snow from resting on leaves for too long. Some varieties of arborvitae and junipers with multiple crowns can be split by heavy snows leaving them splayed on the top in the spring. Tying these off around the middle and top in the fall so that snow and ice can’t build up in between crowns will prevent damage.

We all pay to deal with our leaves. The question is, are we getting any return on them? I have been watching all the organic material piling up, and the village people taking them away from our streets to be trucked up to Orange County  to be composted. Thank goodness they are being composted at least, except we are paying for this in taxes, non-renewable resources,  as well as in labor.

First, there is the labor of moving the leaves off the property and to the curb which most folks seem to pay a landscape company to do.  That costs money and uses oil -which we are running out of though no one talks about that any more. Next there is the labor and fuel (more oil) it takes to gather up the leaves and take them to the composting center over on the other side of the Tappan Zee. And then there is the cost of replacing those leaves. That’s right, replacing them.

Your trees start looking for organic matter to make more leaves with and if we are taking all the old leaves away, then we are running down the organic content of our soil. Organic material is what allows soil to breathe, encourages moisture absorption and retention and holds nutrients for trees shrubs and lawns. Eventually that organic material has to go back or plants start getting sickly. Replacing that organic material costs more money in labor and oil to move organic material in the form of compost, which by the way is probably made from the very same leaves you paid in labor and oil to get rid of the previous year.

This is an absurd cycle and Westchester County as well as New Rochelle are engaged in a campaign to break it. Unfortunately they are driving it from the wrong end. They are trying to educate the contractors, who actually make more money if they move the leaves out and bring the compost in, than if they help keep the leaves on the property. Only you the consumer can really drive that kind of change either by voting with your dollars or legislating change locally. I’m not a big fan of legislation, I’ve come to believe that legislation is the final recourse of a society that lacks principle. So here I am on my soap box appealing to your principles and please bear with me as I do:

The argument for changing the practices on your own property is simple: by keeping the leaves on the property you will save money and have healthier soil as well as plants. The way to do this is by grinding up the leaves with a mower set to mulching.  If you do this every week, yes there will be some dime sized leaf bits on the lawn when you are done, but these will be digested by the soil very quickly. The truth is that in the fall, lawns are immaculate for at the most 24hrs after they are blown off as the surrounding trees keep dropping leaves and the wind is moving all those nicely piled leaves all over the place anyway……nature does not respect leaf piles, what can I say?

Our company Greener by Design has completed three years of grinding leaves into the soil, accompanied by three years of soil testing and the results speak for themselves; soils that were depleted of organic material have actually increased in organic content through mulching the leaves back into the lawn and beds. Careful attention to the soil has led to healthier soils and therefore healthier plants which depend on the soil.  Clients who had drainage issues are reporting better drainage and grass that is more usable than it was. Our soils are less compacted and plants are healthier.

Talk to your landscape contractor about changing his practices today. Not only will you have healthier plants, but you will save money over time, and save your municipality and county money as well. Additionally you will be reducing your carbon footprint in all the oil that wont be used moving all that organic material around and all it will cost you is some short term, dime sized bits of leaves that you won’t even notice as the fall inevitably marches on.

With the early winter storm that occurred in the Northeast this week there are a lot of landscape related reverberations. These have to do first and foremost with safety, plant health, and long term planning for the future which may seem like something of a joke give the level of uncertainty many of us are experiencing regarding the future.

Safety

As  an entrepreneur I often say that  safety is over rated. Growth of any kind often involves some level of risk and therefore reduced safety. However, when we are talking about our homes, safety is at the top of the list. This week’s storm split trees, and brought down branches due to the fact that so many of the trees still have leaves on them that caught and held the snow.  Ecologists have been predicting for some time that weather patterns will get more erratic over the next couple of decades and that we can expect an increase in heavier precipitation at irregular intervals. “Freak” snow falls certainly fall into this category.

The trees that took the most damage are Bradford pears and maples as well as some old wood trees with already weakened leaves. A possible solution would be clear your property of all trees, however the reverberation of that would be reduced biodiversity, greater interruption to the wider ecosystem (which is part of what is causing these weather pattern changes) higher heating and cooling bills as the tree canpopy diminishes, and reduced property values since landscape enhancements and particularly large trees increase values by as much as 20%. Instead, have an arborist evaluate and prune your large hardwood trees at least every other year. Our clients who have done this had significantly less damage than those who did not. Also avoid planting Bradford pears which are known to be brittle and split under stress.

Plant Health

Landscape plants go through a process preparing for winter in which they basically stop absorbing moisture as they load themselves up with their own version of anti-freeze. Unfortunately, this storm caught most landscape plants half way through the cycle. There will be stress to the landscape as a result. If you have plants that are struggling now, this is one more straw so to speak. Any toime you get a freak storm, go out and knock the snow off the plants ASAP to reduce damage due to freezing temperatures. Any branches that have broken off will usually leave a stub that should be pruned back so that the tree can heal over the wound, Evergreens, trees, and shrubs that are bent over will want to be staked straight, tied tighter, anything that can be done to help them recover their original form.

The Future

None of really know what the future holds in terms of the weather (or anything else) but we can act upon patterns we see today and what we want to create. Preserving the investment you have in your landscape is a pro-active one. Understand that unlike a rain forest plants growing in a cultivated environment that exists in an interrupted eco-system, there is a level of care and input that will enhance the appearance as well as increase the value of your landscape. In addition to the recommendations above, I would make sure you spray highly exposed evergreens with anti-desiccant to help protect them this winter. Mulch all your perennial and shrub beds to give them additional root protection from frost as well as organic material to feed the soil. Do heavy late winter/early spring pruning of any none spring blooming ornamental tree or shrub. And this fall consider an irrigation audit to make sure your system is delivering balanced and adequate water for the needs of your landscap