Garden Rant

Scotts - Godzilla of the Gardening Biz

Forbes has lots to say about the entry of Scotts into the organic market with the introduction of an organic soil, to be followed by organic versions of everything else.  Declares the Scotts CEO, "No one has had a commercial success in natural lawn and garden products, but I think it's a place where we can lead and dominate innovate." Surely he's noticed the competition - Lawn Restore, Milorganite, Gardens Alive and Bradfield Organics, though the Forbes writer apparently hadn't.  Isn't it enough that Scotts already has such bestselling brands as Miracle Gro, Ortho, Osmocote, Roundup, and Smith&Hawken?  I guess not.  They'll be proceeding with caution, however - their focus group results are making them nervous.  One common response they hear is "You mean you're not organic?" And on the other hand they hear "It contains chickenshit?  Ew!" Yeah, what a shock that customers are confused, what with all that good science education in the Scotts ads.  (Freakish growth?  It's a Miracle!!)

Podcasters: Let's Hear From You!

We've been covering crazy Internet garden videos and garden TV for a while, but now it's time to get into garden-related podcasts.  I'm working on a newspaper article on the subject, and after I wrap that up there will be some expanded garden podcast coverage here on GardenRant.

So if you're listening to anything on the Internet--whether it's a podcast you subscribe to through iTunes or a re-broadcast of a radio program that's available on the Internet--post a comment and let us know about it.  Be sure to tell us where to find it and why you like it.

And remember:  No boring Weekly Garden Tips!  Any podcasts that begin, "Hi, I'm Jim, and I'm here this week with Linda to talk about easy container gardens" could cause us to toss our iPod in the compost pile and cover it with a layer of chicken manure, and then where would we be?

Instead, we're looking for the interesting, the unusual, the quirky, and--of course--the rebellious--in garden podcasts.  And we define "garden" broadly to include horticulture, natural science, farming, rural life, floriculture, and anything else that might involve getting a little dirt under the fingernails.

Your nominations, please!

Now, There's a Good Use for a Lawnmower

Hang glider and artist Roger Baker cut enormous, half-million square-foot portaits into a field in Ellensville, NY, a town known as the Hang Gliding Capital of the World.  It serves as a bulls-eye for hang gliders to land upon, and it begins to disappear almost as soon as it is finished.  Some recent examples:

 

"Nature is Powerfully Relaxing"

So say biophilic designers like the ones who created this terraced garden and the Manhattan home that opens out onto it, with its stone walls and exposed beams inside.   I'd never heard the term biophilic but it's described in the NYTimes as the "quirky, lesser known cousin of green design."  (It could hardly be quirkier than feng shui and that's been all over the media lately, though how popular it is with actual people is another question.)  The article tells us that we can now get a masters in biophilic design at Yale, so there you go.

School Garden Army: An Idea Worth Reviving?

Here's an idea developed by none other than the National War Garden Commission, organized shortly before the United States entered World War I:

In a letter entitled "The Duty of the Schools," J. H. Francis, director of The United States School Garden Army wrote:

There is a mighty army of boys and girls, thirty to fifty million strong, who have heads, hearts and hands, leisure time and patriotism to spare. There are also hundreds of thousands of acres of tillable land uncultivated......Superintendents of schools must make their schools a vital, an actual, force in giving more food to the world and in conserving what is produced....Through the school children we can make the undertaking not merely immediately productive, but a permanent factor in American life as well...

Superintendents of schools must make their schools a vital, an actual, force in giving more food to the world and in conserving what is produced. They must do this in addition to talking and writing about this somewhat spectacular and highly interesting phase of the school's part in the war.

Via Earthly Pursuits.

I'll be your Guide to Charleston

Next up from the Vacationing GardenRanters, a tour of Historic Charleston, South Carolina. ( And all y'all gardenbloggers, I just LOVE seeing your nature- and garden-filled travel photos, so keep 'em coming.)

The morning after the overhyped rainstorm Ernesto, Charleston looked pretty damn good to this gardener's eyes.  You'd never know their market area was flooded just hours ago.  They're used to it.

Don't they just scream Old South?  They could have filmed Gone with the Wind here.  Did they?  I'll go look it up. 

More photos below the fold (all click-to-enlargeable).

Worst New Wedding Idea - the Butterfly Release

The news in this recent New York Times op-ed piece is weird and a tad alarming.  I didn't even know butterflies were big business, much less that brides are paying $95 per dozen for our winged friends to be "released" to much fanfare. ($300 will buy them the full "Fill the Sky" package.)  Following in the sad and misguided tradition of releasing doves,  impressive photo-ops are created and what else matters, after all?  But because we humans are capable of learning from our mistakes (think kudzu) some are thinking twice about this practice, and there's controvery:

So we have a classic industry-conservation conflict: the North American Butterfly Association versus the International Butterfly Breeders Association. The conservation group advocates banning the release of commercial butterflies (an unlikely development) while the breeders deny that there’s a problem (a risky wager). So what’s the answer?

Things get really interesting when the author suggests that butterflies for student projects be subsequently killed - "We owe the butterflies a quick and painless death" - and says:

If this is too harsh a lesson to teach in a culture that assiduously avoids confronting death, then a savvy teacher could work with students to collect local caterpillars, raise them and release the butterflies whence they came. That’s a real lesson in science — and ethics.

Discuss among yourselves.

 

Tony Avent's Infamous Rant about Nativism

Tony Avent - nurseryman, plant explorer, wildflower advocate and freelance provocatuer of the gardening world - has enough to say about native plants to piss off everybody, except maybe me.  I love the guy.  To me he's a fearless bullshit-basher of the first order.  And the recent discussion here of legal restrictions on plant choices reminded me of his amazing 1995 article about native plants.  He certainly offers answers to all the questions posed by Trey.  And the Michael Poulan (sic) article he references is listed here.
(Scroll down to May of 1994 and "Against Nativism".)

The first time I read Tony's article and saw that he was criticizing groups on the left, I started getting nervous - you know, wondering if he had ties to big oil or went hunting with Dick Cheney.  Then I read about his great love of wildflowers and concern for habitat preservation and I relaxed.  And his fact-filled article promoting the use of native plants and varieties thereof is a good one.  I know because reading it made me want some of those amsonias.

Wiggly Wigglers Employment Application

Dear Messrs Wiggly & Co--

After a delightful visit to your bucolic farm in Hereford, I have come to realize that I am entirely deserving of a simple and bountiful life in the English countryside, and I present herewith my application for the job.  I possess a number of useful skills and qualifications, including but not limited to:

• Worm Tamer
• Air Traffic Controller for Honeybees, Butterflies, and Lady Beetles
• Teacher of Clever Tricks to Chickens
• Mixing Very Cold, Dry Martinis (with Strong Coffee to Follow in the Morning)
• Flower Appreciation and Admiration
• Consumption of Vast Quantities of Local Cheeses and Ciders, with Enlightening Comments on Each
• Chooser of Obscure Literary Names for Cows, Pigs, Goats, Chickens, and Sheep
• Debator on Either Side of Issues of Importance to Rural Life, so as to allow for more Evenly Matched Disagreements over Hedgerows, Hedgehogs, Etc.
• Hatcher of Half-Baked Schemes, Idle Dreams, Far-Fetched Notions, Flights of Fancy, and Gradiose Ideas
• Hanger-On, Groupie, and Lender of Unique American Perspective on the Rural English Life.

I hope that you will consider my application with the same sincerity with which it was written.  I remain--

Yours with Dirty Fingernails,

Amy

P.S.  Check out the lively Wiggly Wigglers/Garden Rant discussion about the value of garden blogs on their podcast # 47.  (You'll need iTunes or something similar to hear it.)  You'll be hearing more about these fine folks from me soon.

Garden Writers on Blogs: "Say what?" or "Steal from 'em!"

by Guest Blogger Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener Magazine

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
At the recent Garden Writers Association annual meeting in Delaware the opening talk by William McDonough was quite a hit (I now consider him a deity in the world of green politics). How good was he?  Here's a quote: "Imagine a world in which all the things we make, use, and consume provide nutrition for nature and industry—a world in which growth is good and human activity generates a delightful, restorative ecological footprint." His real-world examples included: biodegradable car seat fabric and whole cities designed with green roofs, open window ventilation systems, and no AC. His company is now creating a database of ALL chemicals and components used in manufacturing today with ratings in categories such as sustainability, recyclability, carcinogenicity, toxicity to fish, etc. in order to "measure the product's positive effects upon the environment, human health and social equity".

About Those Homeowners Associations...

There have been some rumblings on this blog before about the ability of homeowners associations to restrict what people plant in their gardens.  According to this CNN article, one in six Americans live in a neighborhood governed by a community or homeowners association. These associations can act as quasi-governmental agencies, imposing and enforcing rules with little regard to their fairness or even their legality.  Basically, it's a grey area, and advocacy groups are forming to advocate for the rights of homeowners.

Where this gets interesting is when homeowners want to do more than express their individuality (GASP!) by painting their house a different color or planting something other than turf and shrubs in their front yard.  What about when homeowners want to take such eco-friendly steps as hanging their laundry out to dry or planting drought-tolerant natives in front?

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has something to say about that:

Most government jurisdictions in the Las Vegas Valley have laws that prevent a homeowners association (HOA) from restricting the installation of water-saving landscape. An HOA may require homeowners to submit landscape design plans for approval; however, the HOA cannot require a homeowner to install turf nor can it prohibit water-efficient landscapes.

Via: www.snwa.com.

What's up with your homeowners association? In the tradition of The Smoking Gun, we'd like to compile a dossier of incriminating documents.  Scan your rules, notices, or pesky e-mails from the HOA and get 'em over here.

About those Tacky Annuals

My friend Joell, knowing of my supersophisticated (more like pseudosophisticated) opinion that annuals are tacky, cautiously showed me her garden last week.  Unruly riot of color, sure.  More than one yellow in the same border, yep. Pink and red within shouting distance, check.  And it's the best-looking garden I've seen all month.

With regular watering but no fertilization, these beds and the well trained poodle Edgar look good enough for the snobbiest of gardeners (that would be me).  They sure as hell look better than my own tasteful beds, where the only blooms on display are the fading purple coneflowers and a smattering of color on the Knockout roses. 

So the fantacizing for next year has begun and I know just the place for a mass of annual color in my borders - amongst the ruins of early summer-blooming perennials.  Annuals in my garden - not just for pots anymore.

Want more color?  Here's more from Joell's little oasis.  The zinnias in the sidebar photo are hers, too. Just don't leave before you enlarge the photo of Edgar and admire his good looks.  And you can get news about his career as a performer here.

Christopher Lloyd on Plant Labels

This just in from Great Dixter:

"The plants at Dixter are unlabelled.  I know this is a bore, when you quickly want a plant's name.  Generally there is someone to ask.  Here are some of the reasons for my not labelling:

1.  This is my own, personal garden; I do not have the obligations of an institution like a botanic or National Trust garden.

2.   I hate the look of labels.  Like a cemetery.

3.  They are expensive in terms both of materials and the time needed to list the plants and write and place the labels.

4.  Plants (as against shrubs) need labels that are stuck into the ground.  The public removes them, the more easily to read, but does not replace them firmly or even in the right place.

5.  It is easier to pop a label into a handbag than to try and memorise it on the spot.

6.  The wrong label is read for the name of the plant to be identified.

7.  Visitors dart into the border, oblivious of footprints, the better to read a label that is out of reach from the front.

8.  If all labels are for that reason placed at the front, misapplications of names will be aggravated.

9.  Even when plants are clearly labelled, the public will still ask their name if anyone is around to talk to.  They're on an outing.  We're trying to work.

Sorry!"

Mr. Lloyd, you had me at #2.

Fear of Water

All God's gardens gotta have a water feature, right?  Me, I'd prefer that my next-door neighbors have one that I can hear and watch and not have to take care of (shown.)  It even has a nifty mister on a timer, further enhancing its role as a bird mecca.

I knew I wasn't alone in my fear of water when I read this article,
aptly titled "Fountains of Frustration" and citing the warning signs all over D.C. - waterless fountains.  The author recounts his own ordeal owning a modest fountain, though he says is "quite lovely.  When we're not screaming at it."  And don't forget, fountains are marketed as requiring less maintenance than ponds, which the author dismissed with:  "I cannot even imagine."