The Pinelands Preservation Alliance annual native plant sale takes place this Saturday (4/27) from 11am to 2pm. If you are a member of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance you are invited to the pre-sale tomorrow (Friday) 4/26 from 3pm to 6pm. The plant sale is rain or shine. PPA is located on Pemberton Rd., Southampton, NJ
Have you heard of "Permaculture"? I catch a garden show on nor every once in awhile. I think it is called "You bet your garden." I have learned a great deal from that show even though I don't 'garden' in the usual sense of the word. When I first moved into my house 35 years ago, I planted over the next decades about 200 shrubs and trees It was a haphazard, season thing - I bought root ball Christmas trees and planted them, and azaleas at Easter, always tulips and hyacinths, and from time to time, someone would give me a plant.
I have a LOT of hollies, mainly because they love my sandy soil and propagate themselves, as has my Rose of Sharon succeeded in doing, and my day lilies. Most recently I planted Lily of the Valley and they have thrived to my delight as the fragrance from them is intoxicating. When I worked as a volunteer at the Gloucester County Historical Society, I used to catch a whiff of the fragrance when I parked in the lot outside the library where a bordering yard was three feet wide with lily of the valley. A master gardener from the James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield gave me some plots of lily of the valley to plan in my yard and that is where my thriving village of them came from.
Although I don't plant, I do have a lot of plants to look after in one way or another so from the npr show, I learned to prune in winter when the holly are dormant and same with the forsythia. Speaking of forsythia, my best forsythia tale is that the first summer when I had just moved in, a friend who had a landscaping business brought a clump of earth in his pick-up that was studded with chopped off stalks. It was a very unlikely and unlovely object that we planted out front, but for the next 34 years, it has flourished like stationery yellow fireworks. We saved it from the dump. It ha said thank you every spring since.
So, here are some things I have learned and believe: It is wrong to poison wildflowers in your yard. First off we have a worldwide catastrophe called "collapsing bee colonies" and poisoning the wildflowers also poisons the bees and deprives the migrating butterflies of needed nutrition. It also seeps into the aquifer and poisons our drinking water.
#2. Black licorice mulch ismostly dyed black and also poisons the earth and the water supply. It is a current fashion but an unhealthy one for the earth.
Personally I find the golf green year style of today boring, conventional, and uninspired as well as uninformed. GO GREEN! Keep the trees, let a little yellow into the lawn, enjoy the wildflowers and the butterflies and preserve the drinking water.
You might want to check out the native plant sale at the Pinelands Preservation Alliance if you want to add to your garden. How cool is it to plant native species!!!! And Ivy, by the way is invasive and deadly to your trees and shrubs. It is the equivalent of a boa constrictor when it gets its greedy grip on your tree trunk.
ALSO this weekend - The Artisans' Fair at Rancocas Woods all day! and Benjamin Franklin appearing at Indian King Tavern in Haddonfield on Kings Hwy from 1 to 4.
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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