Garden Coaching

If you are on the right mailing lists, seed catalogs have probably already started showing up in your mailbox, soon to be followed by flower, edible plant, bulb, ornamental plant and/or garden supply catalogs. If you join in the annual ritual of pouring over these catalogs, marking things that look like they would be great additions to your yard but are unsure just what you would actually do with everything if you were to order and have them show up on your doorstep, then hiring a garden coach might be just the thing for you.

Hire a garden coach? Just what is a garden coach, you ask?

I was quoted in an article on garden coaching in the March 2010 Costco Magazine, "A garden coach is like hiring a professional trainer for your garden", explains Costco member Cathy Stein, owner of Eclectic Design Choices and a coach in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. "The role of a garden coach is to show a homeowner how to make improvements and maintain their landscape, to access the needs of their landscape and to show them how to put it into top shape".

Garden coaches offer a variety of services to help you turn your landscape visions into reality. They may help you with design, plant selection, shopping for healthy plants, plant care instruction, plant identification and lists of professionals for the parts of your yard transformation that you don't want to tackle yourself. By doing all of these things, a garden coach can actually help save you money by avoiding costly mistakes. For more of my thoughts on what a garden coach can do for you, click on my garden coaching tab above.

If you live in another part of the U.S. and would like to find a garden coach near you, you can find listings for garden coaches in your state in this garden coach directory. There are even international listings there as well. If you live in the DFW area, I'd love to talk with you about setting up an initial consultation.

Waterwise Gardening

Recently many areas of the US have experienced more severe than normal droughts. Last year’s drought in Texas even damaged some locally native plants. What can a gardener do to have a chance at pulling through their garden in a hot, dry year?

There are many resources available for tips on this subject. One of these is my article “Summertime Gardening” on pages 18-19 of last summer’s online De-Stress 4 Life magazine.

For those of you that are local to Arlington, TX a free “smart yard” symposium with some speakers addressing this issue will be held at Arlington City Hall and the Downtown Arlington Farmers Market this Saturday, March 31, 2012. Information about speakers, times, etc. for the symposium is found on the Green Source DFW website.

I will be a vendor this Saturday from 8 am - 1 pm at the Downtown Arlington Farmers Market with some of the native and adapted plants that do well in my north Texas garden. If after listening to the speakers and visiting my booth, you still need some direction to help you implement a water saving garden plan in your yard, I’d be happy to discuss my garden coaching services with you.

No More Green Tomatoes

In an earlier post I described what I do when I’m faced with a blue norther threatening to turn my still unripe tomatoes into tomatocicles. And as promised, I’m back to share with you the photos of the small green slicer, shown in my previous post, that I was letting ripen on my kitchen counter.

Three weeks later, on December 8, I decided that the small slicer, that I had picked on November 17 for this green tomato ripening test, looked ready to be sampled. I took a photo just before and after slicing it. You can see that it was a nice even red inside and out and was still nice and plump. My two guys and I tasted the tomato and the verdict was that it had a nice tomato flavor. The flesh was not dry or mealy. If we hadn’t polished it off sampling it, it would have been perfect on a salad or sandwich.

I picked my green cherry tomatoes and remaining small slicers on Thanksgiving as our first predicted freeze bore down on us. They have been ripening nicely in my kitchen too. Last night, December 15, we enjoyed a fresh salsa made from most of what remained from that harvest along with store bought tomatillos, garlic and cilantro.

So remember next year that your unripe tomatoes don’t have to turn to mush on the vine or be turned into fried green tomatoes if the first freeze of the year threatens them before they are ready to be picked. Go ahead and pick them all, leave them in a colander out of direct heat and light and use them as they ripen, just as if they were ripening on the vine.

See a complete list of my gardening tips at my garden coach profile.

A Terribly Beautiful Mistake

Some valuable information that a garden coach can provide to their clients is what plants will look good and thrive in a client’s garden. Equally valuable is what not to plant. Reasons for not planting include, the plant getting too large for the location, the plant is unlikely to survive in the given conditions, or the reason I’m going to discuss in this post, the plant is likely to run rampant so that it smothers out the other desirable plants.

These “Godzilla” plants usually look beautiful and tame enough in their small pots in the garden center. However, get them home and just like kudzu, they will cover or push out everything in its ever expanding area of influence.

When I first added plants to my water garden, I did some reading and knew not to plant things like full sized cattails, water hyacinth or horsetail reed. The dwarf versions of cattail and horsetail reed were supposed to be better behaved however, so I gave them a try. The dwarf cattail showed its Godzilla nature quickly and I ripped in out before it gained much headway.

The dwarf horsetail reed on the other hand, behaved for a couple of years. It stayed where I planted it and almost looked at one point like it might fade away. In a couple of years it began to spread slowly and I was still not concerned. Then, in what seemed like overnight, it covered about half of my pond, tried to clog up my filter and pump system and spread out into my surrounding garden. I do hate that it got so aggressive, because the dragonflies love to perch on it and I have many photographic art prints, note cards and bookmarks because of this. It had to go though. (I’m still working on rooting out the remnants.) After my husband spent several sessions wrestling the main part of the invasion out of the pond, we left it to dry out thoroughly before shipping it out as trash, so that it would not be able to spread if it found a favorable location.

Two other plants that looked so beautiful in their small pots that I just had to take them home and add them to my pond were floating heart and a four leaf water clover. I have to admit that I had been warned about the floating heart, but its nice leaves and pretty yellow flowers proved too tempting. “I can keep it in check, I reasoned.” Big, beautiful, mistake. We did battle it and get it removed before the horsetail and water clover got out of hand.

I really like the water clover. In the open water, its leaves lie flat on the surface and remind me of searching for terrestrial four leaf clovers as a kid. We tried pulling the water clover back to one curve in the pond. I truly thought I’d be able to keep it in check if I had it in a small enough area. Not so, its Godzilla nature was too strong and I am currently working to eliminate it too. It is no where near as pretty when it is crowding the water lilies and standing proud from the water’s surface.

I hope these tips will help you avoid making your own terribly beautiful mistakes in your water garden.

Fencing to Mitigate Traffic Sights and Sounds

If your side or rear yard has a clear view of a street, odds are, the sight and sound of the traffic can be anywhere from a minor imposition on your enjoyment of your yard to a downright annoyance. If you suffer from this problem, there are many ways to add privacy by screening out potential gawkers and reducing the noise of the traffic.

If you are lucky enough that the street that you want to screen is a quiet one, with no chance of an increase in traffic or of being widened, then the ubiquitous wood fence can be a decent option. However, with the inevitable wood shrinkage, most wood fences wind up with vertical gaps that allow passersby a view of your yard and let in sound. Even if these are not issues for your situation, then the need for maintenance or replacement due to weathering down the road may send you searching for fencing options.

There are many options to choose from such as vinyl, masonry, stone and composite fencing. You might even opt for a combination of wrought iron and landscaping to mitigate the impact of the traffic on your yard. While all of these materials have pros and cons, I’d like to share the solution that I chose for a side yard project recently. This choice was less costly than masonry or stone (both really good choices for sound mitigation and longevity), a bit more expensive than vinyl (to me, most look fake and don’t seem dense enough to mitigate the sound well.), and needed less room, maintenance and time for plant growth than a wrought iron and landscape option.

This particular side yard had been unfenced for about 40 years. Initially, a rural two lane road was separated from the house by about 20 feet of bar ditch (right of way) in addition to 25 feet of side yard. Over the years, traffic increased until finally, what was once a quiet rural road, was widened to a 5 lane thoroughfare. In doing so, 11 feet of the side yard was taken for the project. Now there was only about 9 feet of ROW between the curb and lot line that included a four foot wide sidewalk. The road pavement was now closer to the house than where the original lot line used to be. The traffic noise was a constant imposition, even inside the house and the traffic (vehicle and foot) felt on top of anyone trying to enjoy the patio or use the side yard.

The product that I chose for this fence, to serve as both a visual screen as well as a sound barrier, was a composite material, Trex, that has been used extensively for over 15 years in outdoor uses such as decking, outdoor trim, garden boxes and fencing. It is an environmentally friendly product made from reclaimed/recycled wood and plastic fibers. I chose the Trex Seclusions Privacy Fencing to enclose the side yard and connect into the existing chain link fence of the year yard. There are many styles and colors to choose from and many more good things I could tell you about this product, however to keep from making this post extremely lengthy, please visit the Trex website for more information. (I have no financial interest in this company, I am just a longtime fan of its products.)

As for how the project turned out, everyone involved considers it a huge success. The pictures in this post are of the project just after completion. The traffic noise outdoors and inside (especially noticeable improvement in the bedrooms that are on that side of the house) was greatly reduced. The side yard actually became usable again from the definition and privacy that the fencing provided and the patio area was once again something that could be enjoyed without feeling like being in a fishbowl.

If you need any assistance putting together a solution for a problem in your yard, you can find my contact information on my garden coach web page.