Planning for (another) rainy day

I was wandering around our yard the other day thinking that the next project we should undertake is creating some sort of rain garden.

We know the importance of keeping as much of the rainwater ON our property as possible, rather than letting it run off. This slows down the runoff, helping to filter pollutants before the water reaches local water supplies. Helping to do our part to slow down pollution is one of the reasons that we  have rain barrels on several of our downspouts and why adding more to the other downspouts is on our ever-growing to-do list.

We also have very long drainage tubes attached to the overflow pipes of our rain barrels, which allows us to direct the water away from our house and into whatever area we choose. But so far, we haven’t taken advantage of that runoff by planting gardens of water loving plants.

Right now I’m still in the planning stage, doing a little research on what plants will work well in a rain garden and also survive on our shady property.

I’ve found a lot of great information on planning and designing rain gardens, and wanted to share some of it with you if the rainy days also have you seeking solutions for your soggy spots.

Rain Gardens – Arlington, VA website

Rain Garden Design and Construction Manual (pdf)

Beautifying Your Yard for Healthy Streams - Residential Rain Gardens – Many links on this page for more info (Northern Virginia Regional Commission)

Meadow Ecology Tour at Bristoe Station Battlefield Park

What: Meadow Ecology Tour

When: Saturday, May 26th, 9:00 am – 11:00 am

Where: Bristoe Station Battlefield Park, Iron Brigade Avenue and 10th Alabama Way, Bristow, Virginia

Bristoe Station Battlefield is home to a complex meadow ecosystem.  Join naturalist Charles Smith from the Prince William Wildflower Society (VNPS) for a walking tour of the 133-acre battlefield and learn about the beneficial wildlife especially the birds and butterflies that call this ecosystem home.  Learn to identify the plants that these birds and butterflies need for food and shelter.  Bring binoculars.  Wear comfortable walking shoes and dress for the weather.  No pets please.  Advance reservation recommended. 

The walking tour departs from the Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park kiosk in the parking lot located at Iron Brigade Unit Ave and 10th Alabama Way at 9:00 am and will end at 11:00am.  The cost for the tour is $5 per person, free for children under six.

Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park includes 133 acres of fields and woodlands.  The Park interprets two Civil War battles and its natural resources.  Prince William County Historic Preservation owns and operates the Park.

For more information, please call (703) 366-3049 or email rorrison@pwcgov.org.

Backyard Habitat Workshop – May 24th

What: Backyard Habitat Workshop

When: May 2th, 4-7 pm

Where: Fort DuPont Community Garden

The District Department of the Environment is continuing its backyard habitat workshop program through 2012. 

The next workshop will be held in partnership with the National Park Service at the Fort DuPont community garden on May 24, 2012.  They will be discussing how to attract pollinators, beneficial insects, and birds to your yard or garden, and will be planting a pollinator border around the community garden.  Attendees will receive a book (Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy) and other literature on gardening for wildlife, a birdhouse kit and live plants.  The workshop is free and open to all District residents.

To register, send an email to backyardhabitat@dc.gov with “Fort DuPont Workshop” in the subject line and the names of the attendees in the body of the email.

FREE Water Quality Monitoring Training Workshop

For those who want to learn a little bit more about how substances effect our waterways:

What: FREE Water Quality Monitoring Training Workshop

When: Saturday, 5/19, 9-11am

Where: Springhill Lake Recreation Center, 6101 Cherrywood Lane, Greenbelt, MD 20770

A collaborative event brought to you by Citizens to Conserve and Restore Indian Creek (CCRIC), Camp Fire USA, and CHEARS - Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society, Greenbelt Food Forest project.  Support by the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Please register to attend - Click here or visit the CHEARS website at www.chears.org

Learn how to check the health of Indian Creek by using basic test for water quality.No prior knowledge of chemistry or biology is needed- just curiosity about the Creek!

Ocean Friendly Gardens

I’ve mentioned Bay Friendly Gardens before and Wildlife Friendly Gardens, but today I found out about Ocean Friendly Gardens.

All of these programs are really very similar. They all encourage and recognize property owner’s efforts to create landscapes while considering the effects that their actions have on the surrounding environment.
Ocean Friendly Gardens is a program by the Surfrider Foundation, a charitable organization which was started in 1984 by a group of surfers intent on protecting their favorite surf break in Malibu, California. The organization now has over 50,000 members and 80 chapters worldwide, all focused on protecting the world’s oceans, waves and beaches.

Surfrider Foundation members understand that runoff from gardens and hard surfaces is one of the primary sources of water pollution, which means  that home gardeners play an important role in  protecting the world’s water bodies. They developed the Ocean Friendly Gardens program to educate and encourage property owners to follow the three principles of CPR – Conservation, Permeability and Retention.

The Ocean Friendly Gardens website describes steps that gardeners can take to apply these principles:

• Conservation of water, energy and habitat through native plants (add allow some climate adapted plants), spaced for mature growth.
• Permeability through healthy, biologically active soil, and utilizing materials for - or making a cut in - driveways, walkways and patios that allow water to percolate into the soil.
• Retention devices like rain chains, rain barrels and rain gardens retain water in the soil for the dry seasons or save it to water veggies, preventing it from running off the property.

For more information about the Surfrider Foundation and the Ocean Friendly Gardens program, you can visit the DC Surfrider website.

Ocean Friendly Gardens

The David Stemper Memorial Rain Garden was created using the principles of Ocean Friendly Gardens

Nibbles from an Article on Feeding the Soil

   I found a great article online recently that I would like to share. It is called Feeding the Soil Builds Sustainable Lawns and it was written by Karen Fitzgerald.
The article is chock full of great “green” gardening information, from start to finish, so I encourage you to devour the whole thing. Here are a few nibbles from the article to whet your appetite for more:

“Spraying chemical fertilizers and pesticides on lawns is like giving kids junk food, says landscape designer Cathy Bilow. They’ll be invigorated for a while, but eventually they’ll crash and burn….

A sustainable lawn is one that thrives with as little inputs and labor as possible. It is better for the environment, not only because it lessens chemicals going in the ground, but it also reduces carbon emissions from mowing and supports bees, butterflies and other wildlife….

… the key to a sustainable lawn is cultivating healthy soil. “When soil is healthy, plants will thrive, and thriving plants are more tolerant of disease and drought,” she said. Instead of killing soil bacteria, insects and earthworms, we should be nourishing them with compost….

One cup of soil contains as many bacteria as people on the planet, she said….

One of the easiest ways to feed microbes is to leave mowed grass on the lawn, preferably mulched by your lawnmower to decompose faster….
A cubic yard of compost applied annually is all that is needed to fertilize a thousand square feet of soil….

Weeds will begin to move out on their own once the soil is vibrant enough to support lush growth…
Grass should be mowed at the highest setting to discourage weeds, and there should be enough room in the soil to permit the flow of air and water.

In designing a sustainable landscape, the goal is to replace as much lawn as possible with native plantings…
Bilow suggests adding a rain garden to the landscape to manage water flow and prevent soil erosion…”

As I said, those are little nibbles from a great, worthwhile article. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
And visit our new Topic Index page to find more posts about these topics on this blog.

Eco-Friendly Benefits of Veggie Gardening

We all know the obvious environmentally friendly benefits of “green” gardening. Green gardeners often work to eliminate all harmful herbicides and pesticides from their yards, incorporate more native plants,  and conserve water by choosing plants that are drought tolerant.

But a recent article on the National Geographic website lists several benefits of veggie gardening  that go beyond these obvious ones.

Here are a few excerpts from the article, entitled How is Growing a Veggie Garden Eco-Friendly, by Fred Decker:

“Infiltration:   Rooftops, driveways, patios and lawns don't allow much water to infiltrate. However, the loose, crumbly soil of a well-worked garden absorbs water like a sponge, especially if it's well composted. This limits runoff, and maintains water quality.

Emissions -  Depending on the time of year and where you live, much of the produce you eat might have traveled thousands of miles to get to your local grocer. Every vegetable garden, and every homeowner growing vegetables instead of buying them, helps reduce [carbon emissions].

Urban Cooling - The high density of pavement and rooftops in urban areas can create "heat islands," places where the sun's energy becomes concentrated. This creates an increased demand for cooling and air conditioning, which is a drain on energy and the environment. …gardens  can  help provide cooling by reducing the number of unshaded heat-reflecting areas exposed to the sun.”

You can read the full text of the article by visiting the National Geographic Green Living website.

Environmental Concerns Native Plant Sale – May 18th & 19th

What: Environmental Concern’s  Spring Native Plant Sale!

When: Friday May 18th  from 9am-4pm & Saturday May 19 from 9am -2pm

Where: 201 Boundary Lane, St. Michaels, MD

Native plants ideal for Rain Gardens, Butterfly Gardens, Shade Gardens, Wetlands, Salt Tolerant Plantings and Songbird Hedgerows will be available.  Plants are grown from seed (local and regional ecotypes) right here at the nation’s first wetland plant nursery!

Pre-orders will be accepted any time up to Wednesday, May 16^th.

Environmental Concern is located at 201 Boundary Lane in St. Michaels, MD.

For more information, call EC at 410-745-9620 or visit www.wetland.org.

Gardening and your Mother

This weekend is, of course, Mother’s Day, and I hope that everyone will spend some time in a garden with their mother.

Garden with your mother: If your mother lives close enough, plan on spending some time working in a garden with her. I’ve often mentioned what a therapeutic place a garden can be. Working side by side in a garden with your mother gives you some nice, quiet time together to dig deep into personal, bonding conversations and help your relationship grow.

Teach your mother about green gardening: Like many people of their generation, my parent’s idea of gardening was all about creating colorful, flower-filled beds, neatly trimmed shrubs and lush green lawns, using whatever chemicals and techniques were necessary to produce the best and quickest results. Take the time to teach your mother some of the things you have learned about being a little gentler to the earth, such as using native plants, beneficial insects and creating compost.

Visit a garden with your mother: There are plenty of great public gardens in the area. If neither you nor your mother have a garden of your own to work in, take your mother to a public garden or park where you can enjoy the same quiet benefits of being together in nature.

Be a gardening mother: If your favorite part of Mother’s Day is spending time with your kids instead of your mother, gardening provides the same opportunities to bond with your kids as it does with your mother.

Take care of your other Mother: If you don’t live close enough to your mom, or if she is no longer in your life, spend some time in Mother Nature, anyway. Taking care of a piece of the planet gives you a great opportunity to do some mothering of your own. You have the perfect opportunity to nurture and grow something that will add beauty to the world for generations to come.

Take photos of your garden experience: No matter how you spend time with your Mother this weekend, I encourage you to take photos. When I was getting ready to write this post, I really wished I had some photos of my mom in her gardens. She always loved to garden and she was still outside putzing around with her plants well into her late ‘70’s.

So if she doesn’t live close by, take some garden photos and send them to mom. If you do get to spend time with her, capture the experience with a few photos.

And if she laughs, hit the record button and record that beautiful sound. For no matter how much beauty you may be able to create in a garden or experience in nature, none of it can really compare to the laughter of your Mother.

"Earth laughs in flowers." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Wild” Garden Tour this weekend

In celebration of May as Wildlife Gardening Month, the National Wildlife Federation, in partnership with Landscape Designer John Magee, is sponsoring a 15 location Wildlife Garden Tour in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties on Saturday, May 12, 2012 from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.

The tour will feature 14 wildlife-friendly and native inspired gardens, at sites including 10 individual homes, a church, a school and a nature center.   You can also visit NWF’s own wildlife habitat and landscape. Each of these sites provides you with an opportunity to view the garden, see some unique landscape design ideas that you can use in your own garden and  learn more about some of the plants and wildlife that call these locations home.   NWF will have volunteers at each location to answer your questions as you view the gardens. 

Newton-Lee Elementary School (Ashburn, VA) will also have activities for families, so feel free to bring your whole family to the event.  Activities include:  Exploring the two gardens at the school - courtyard and outside wildlife habitat; and examples of how to use gardens to teach – science, math, English and much more.  Hands-on activities for planting, learning about birds and making a solar art print with items found in nature.  Meet Ranger Rick and have your picture taken with the Best Raccoon around.

National Wildlife Federation Headquarters (Reston, VA) will serve as the starting point for the tour, where you can pick up your tour book before heading out to view the gardens in any order that you select.  NWF will also offer tours of its habitat and a native plant sale.  Get a great native plant to add to your garden that can help a few wildlife friends have a great summer. (Special Pre-sale day - Thursday, May 10th from 4:00 - 7:30 pm – see list of plants here.)

Activities at NWF HQ:  19 varieties of Native Plants from American Beauties available for purchase including blueberry, coneflower, sea oats and more.  Invasive species walking tour and discussion on how to best manage your habitat for invasives;  Tours of NWF property in Reston and the sustainable features and wildlife garden.  Tours available on the hour and ½ hour during the day starting at 10:30 am.

Reserve your tickets now! www.nwf.org/VAgardentour
Cost: $15 per person or $30 for a family (until May 11th)
Day of Event Cost: $20 per person or $40 for a family
Limited to 500 participants

All proceeds from the tour will support the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Habitat programs and its mission to protect wildlife for our children's future.

Date: Saturday, May 12, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Address: 11100 Wildlife Center Drive
Reston, VA 20190

Information provided by Eliza Russell, Director of Education Programs, NWF