6 Tips for Creating an Eco-Friendly Landscape

I'm a big fan of blogs. The life experiences of one individual provide a wealth of knowledge for everything each one of us do every single day.

One of my favorite blogs is the Eastern Shore Gardener blog. While I'm located in the middle of the state, I have plenty of family and friends who live in a very different growing condition than what I see here in central Maryland.

Eastern Shore Gardener author Barbara Ellis published a fantastic article about creating an eco-friendly landscape.  And guess what? Eco-friendly landscapes also cut down on maintenance as well. Enjoy!

Caring for Ground Covers

Planting ground cover on your property requires careful consideration of the best type of plant for the location. Ground covers might be the perfect plant for tough locations but they do require maintenance. To perform the correct function of beautifying your landscape, these plants require fertilizing, mulching and weeding like any other plant in the landscape.

Enhancing the Soil

Plant care begins with soil preparation. The best case scenario features adding peat moss, compost or another type of soil conditioner to the garden bed before planting the ground cover. If not, don't panic. You can still carefully stir up the soil between juvenile plants to add organic matter to the soil. Use a rake, hoe or wheeled cultivator between plants. Strain out and remove any weeds during this process.

Gardening Tasks for March

It's coming...Spring is almost here and things will start a-poppin' before we know it. But did you see the forecast?  There are these awful little snowflake emogies showing up for the next three days, God help me please!!  I am SO sick of snow and winter and bulky clothes and extra laundry and bare trees and dead grass...

My theme seems to be my on-going struggle with the doldrums of winter. Chomping at the bit to get outside but the soil is still squishy and mostly frozen. A warm day for every four days at this point. Definitely not enough to break out the shovels and go to work in the garden unless you're far more hardy and cold-tolerant than the average Joe.

With all that said, what can we logically do right now to benefit the landscape?

Benefits of Snow for Landscapes

Buried underneath the nearly 15 inches of snow in my backyard lies my sleeping perennials. Hosta, sweet William, sedum, crepe myrtle, phlox, and so many others snooze under the pristine layer of white, waiting for sun and warmer temperatures.

So I started thinking today about just how, exactly, does all this snow benefit the landscape? There’s got to be a plus sign here somewhere.

And so there is…

Snow covered Nandina

Snow is Good

Snow insulates tender roots and prevents freezing/thawing that permeates deep enough to permanently damage a plant’s root system. Frozen soil around roots stops the plant from drawing moisture from the soil.