Grow More With Less

Sustainable Garden Methods: Less Water * Less Work * Less Money

Vincent Simeone

• Publisher: Cool Springs Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781610589550
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Horticulture
• Index: Biological Sciences

Horticultural expert Vincent Simeone helps you plan your green garden in this practical, holistic guide. With detailed, strategic timelines for both short-term and long-term gardening techniques, Grow More with Less lets you put your best foot forward in creating an efficient, sustainable home landscape. From composting and mulching to planting trees, author Vincent Simeone covers all the eco-friendly essentials in one straightforward handbook. Simeone makes the what, how, and why of sustainable gardening unmistakably clear: why we should plant for the long-term, how to make the best plant selections possible, how to manage invasive species, how to make the most of your lawn (regardless of its size), the importance of IPM (integrated pest management) in fighting insects and pests, how to conserve water with proper irrigation, installing rain barrels and cisterns, and more. Even when the solution is to do nothing - for instance, leaving some parts of a lawn un-mowed in order to save time and money while attracting local wildlife - Grow More with Less enables you to confidently make the call. With effective, time-proven recommendations like these, field-tested in a large botanical garden and adapted for home use by Vincent Simeone, Grow More with Less is your complete step-by-step personal roadmap for green gardening.

CHAPTER 1

Eco-Friendly Strategic Planning for Your Garden

Setting Up a Blueprint for the Future

The term eco-friendly is used quite often, but do you truly know the meaning and intent of the term? Many people don’t. Eco-friendly is an abbreviated version of ecologically friendly or environmentally friendly and basically means the activities, products, practices, and policies that do the least amount of harm to the environment. Companies and organizations have used this term regularly as a marketing tool to make their products more attractive to consumers. In the garden realm, eco-friendly can have very specific and direct significance. For example, compost and processed organic products are marketed as eco-friendly products because they are derived from plant and animal matter. It seems only natural that this recycling process of returning to the earth what came from it is the right thing to do. Eco-friendly products can be a wide range of recyclables, such as fertilizer, paper, and cardboard; recycled plastic and rubber products; recycled wood products; and more. Eco-friendly activities can range from using grey water (recycling wastewater as a source of nonpotable water to wash clothes or water the lawn) to riding a bike to school or the mall rather than using a car. Using energy conservation initiatives and equipment that reduces harmful emissions is not only eco-friendly but is economical as well.

Eco-friendly strategic planning takes the term eco-friendly to a whole new level and validates why sustainability is so meaningful. There is no question that in order to be successful at creating a sustainable garden, you have to do a little research, be prepared, and have a plan in place before starting. A gardener without a plan is destined to waste time and money trying to piece together various sustainability practices with no clear sense of direction. Planning gives you the opportunity to map out a schedule, prioritize, and list the goals that will undoubtedly make your life easier in the long run. That’s what this chapter is about—helping you plan.

LONG-TERM PLANNING AND SUSTAINABILITY

Long-term planning is a key element in developing a sustainable garden. Proper planning and design will enable your home landscape to survive the stress of an ever-changing, challenging world that includes extreme environmental conditions, increased pressure from pests, and other environmental challenges. If we have learned anything from the history of the American landscape, it is that the landscape is a dynamic entity. The late part of the nineteenth century until the middle part of the twentieth century brought ingenuity and the great American ideals that open space and the interaction between the landscape and humans are critical. Back then, landscapes were built with long-term goals and great aspirations of making a difference. But slowly our public and private landscapes have become shorter-term propositions with little regard for long-term viability. The ideals and life lessons that worked in our favorite community gardens can be applied to our own residential landscapes. As home gardeners, we love the open space of our own backyards and that connection with nature. This open space does not have to be a large, expansive lawn but can be something more long-term, such as a diverse landscape planting that you can enjoy growing old with. It is time to start reinventing our gardens and infusing in them the same passion and long-term planning that previous generations felt so committed to.

This commitment to the future starts with planting the garden for the long-term and not worrying about now. Today, in the context of new plantings, many home gardeners focus on how their landscape looks right now. It’s all about “how do I screen the neighbor’s fence?” or “how fast will my perennial garden grow so I can have instant color in the garden?” But that is not how sustainability in the garden works. We should not be focused on the short-term benefits of the garden as much as what it will offer and look like years down the road. So when you’re designing your garden—and before you add plants—you’ve got to do some research to fully understand how the plants you are considering grow and what their ultimate size will be. Many times I have seen gardeners just plant whatever they want wherever they want, with the idea that if the plant gets too big or becomes a problem, it can just be pruned or transplanted sometime in the future. This is the complete opposite of sustainable gardening. A better approach would be to provide your plants with the space and growing environment that will maximize plant growth and function in the landscape. Plants that have been put in the right situation have a much better chance of thriving in that situation and requiring little care while providing big dividends.

Believe me, as the director of Planting Fields Arboretum, I know firsthand that plants aren’t as easy to control as we would like to think! The notion of pruning a shrub that has been misplaced in the garden because we don’t want it to outgrow its bounds is shortsighted. Frankly, misplaced plants will either become misshapen or eventually outgrow the rate you prune them; they become eyesores or burdens on the landscape. Misplacement or poor planning can cause plants to perform so poorly that we lose sight of what the original purpose was. Sustainability gives us an opportunity to realize that we are not in control of our environment and we need to work with nature rather than against it. It is a hard lesson to learn, and many gardeners have had to experience this firsthand in order to truly understand it.

The long-term planning of the landscape is especially important in planting trees, shrubs, and evergreens. These plants typically live for a long time compared to other plants, such as herbaceous and tropical plants. More often than not, these woody plants are not given adequate room to grow, outgrowing their allocated space way before they reach maturity. I have witnessed many an evergreen grouping shoehorned into an area too small to accommodate it with spacing of only a few feet between plants. In five years’ time, these plants are competing with one another and shading one another instead of complementing one another in the garden.

THE ONE-HALF RULE

One basic rule that I recommend you should follow, whether you’re planting a shrub, shade tree, or evergreen, is the One-Half Rule. Whatever plant you select for your yard, find out how large it will ultimately grow. Then assume it will grow at least half that size in your lifetime. This will help you determine how far the plant should be planted from the house, fence, garage, or other plants. For example, if you choose to plant a row of American arborvitaes (Thuja occidentalis), and the plant tags state they will grow 30 feet tall and 15 feet wide at maturity, then at the very least, you should assume that each arborvitae would grow 15 feet tall and 7.5 feet wide in your lifetime. That means that you should plant these arborvitaes farther apart than just a few feet—in this case, more than 5 feet apart. Yes, it will take longer for your plants to touch or fill in, but ample space will allow them to reach their ultimate size unobstructed by an overcrowded garden. Obviously the One-Half Rule depends on the specific growth of your plants, your climate, your soil, and many other factors, but you get the idea. This rule may seem a bit extreme, but many modern landscapes become overgrown with poorly shaped plants because we want an instant landscape. This rule supports the idea of a more open, airy landscape with plenty of air circulation and light, which will create better growing conditions. The goal here is to spend time planning your garden design and to implement sound gardening practices. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Eco-Friendly Strategic Planning for Your Garden
• Chapter 2: The Right Plant for the Right Place
• Chapter 3: Attracting Wildlife to Ensure a Sustainable Garden
• Chapter 4: Integrated Pest Management
• Chapter 5: Water Conservation
• Chapter 6: Sustainable Lawn Care
• Chapter 7: Maintaining a Healthy Garden from the Ground Up
• Bibliography
• Garden Resources and Plant Sources
• Index
• Meet Vincent A. Simeone
• Dedication & Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page