Author: Admin

by Leslie Duthie

The lawn takes on many connotations for all of us. It is a place to meet, a place for kids to play, to relax, the ultimate suburban habitat. Lawns can also be hard work – our lawns need water and require fertilizer to keep that deep green lushness yet provide little in the way of habitat or ecological value for anything other than humans. From an ecological standpoint, I started to rethink the importance of the “lawn” and to consider a smaller lawn or lawn alternatives that do not require fertilizer, water, or much mowing. Ultimately, I decided the best solution would be to replace the lawn with new gardens.

I have never used much fertilizer or water on the lawn, so it is a mix of weeds, dandelions, violets, pussytoes, clover, and some turf. As a result, I can forgo mowing for more extended periods, forget watering, and do without the fertilizer entirely. It may not look great all year, but it was useful when my children were young and needed places to play and gather with friends. Now that the children are grown and my husband and I built a patio for gathering, it was time to reduce the lawn.

Bring on the Cardboard

In the past, I would have undertaken the long and arduous task of removing whatever sod or plants that were impeding the creation of new garden spaces. That digging also meant losing whatever topsoil and organic matter accumulated in the soil and creating a large pile of sod to compost. I could use herbicides or solarize the lawn by covering it with clear plastic, but what else was being killed in the process?

None of those options seemed appropriate, so in the early spring of 2020, stuck at home, I undertook lawn murder using a different method. A method I found to be easy and manageable no matter your space’s size. The pandemic required each of us to purchase items online that were delivered to our houses. Groceries, pet supplies, furniture, home improvement, and organizational items all came in a box. I began collecting cardboard boxes (preferably plain brown ones with little printing) and realized that I could also scavenge my neighbor’s cardboard boxes on recycling day.

Rather than digging or using herbicides to kill the lawn, I could lay pieces of cardboard over the surface of the grass to smother it. Cardboard degrades quickly while also smothering whatever plants are beneath it. I was fortunate to have access to a large amount of decomposing wood chips to hold the cardboard in place. Other than decomposed wood chips, you can consider using small logs, branches, manure, compost, or just soil to keep the cardboard in place.

Once I had used up all my collected cardboard, I realized I wanted more. I purchased Ram Board at my local hardware store. Ram Board is cardboard material used by renovators to protect your floors during remodeling. It comes in large rolls and can be cut to any length. You can see in the picture below that I used a lot of woodchips to hold down boxes of various sizes. On the Ram Board, I only had to put chips along the seams of the cardboard. Finally, after covering a large rectangular area, I wanted to shape my new garden area, so I retrieved additional boxes and used them to make a more rounded area rather than another big square. In all, I have killed almost 1000 square feet of former lawn.

Planting Time for the Annual Seeds

At this point, several options are available: The cardboard needs some kind of cover to help it stay moist and degrade while opening up a planting area. A light coating of compost or soil would be sufficient to break down the cardboard, and I could begin planting in late summer or early fall. I could have applied the decomposed wood chips across the entire surface and allowed them to decompose with the cardboard, in which case I could plant the following year. I was ready to plant the first spring, so instead, I ordered a mix of topsoil and compost and covered all of the cardboard and wood chips with a 2” to 4” layer of soil.

I have expanded my narrow strip garden along a fence line into a larger garden bed. There is a saucer magnolia at the back corner of the new garden, and I left a red cedar and blueberries along the fence. That existing strip of the garden already has many sun-loving perennials, species you would find in a meadow. My goal was to use the expanded garden area to create a more meadow-like setting in this section of the yard and to attract more wildlife to my corner of suburbia.

by Anna Failkoff

Rethink Garden “Clean Up”

While planting natives is an essential step toward creating habitat, how we manage our plantings will determine whether we can sustain and support the life-cycles and successful reproduction of many other organisms including birds, butterflies, moths, bees, salamanders, and frogs.

While planting natives is an essential step toward creating habitat, how we manage our plantings will determine whether we can sustain and support the life-cycles and successful reproduction of many other organisms including birds, butterflies, moths, bees, salamanders, and frogs.

Autumn is when many of us think to put our gardens to bed by removing leaves and cutting back perennials. Yet to truly support living creatures year round, it’s much better to leave fallen leaves, branches, stems, and seed heads where they are rather than raking, blowing, shredding, or cutting them away. Leaves and other organic matter insulate plant roots through the cold winter months and then decompose to build up living soil critical to healthy vegetation. This organic matter also stores large amounts of carbon, which is crucial to a resilient planet in the face of climate change.

Rethink your “clean up” this year – take inspiration from the following ideas to manage your leaves and other natural materials in fun and creative ways while protecting creatures all year long.

Many species of butterflies and moths, including our beloved luna moth, pupate and overwinter in leaves before emerging as stunning winged adults the following spring. Raking away the leaves is very disruptive to that life in the leaf litter. Leaf blowers are even more damaging, and also create noise pollution and use large amounts of fossil fuels – please discontinue this practice.

Undisturbed leaf litter is also essential to the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, which requires two seasons to complete its life cycle. After a first season of foraging on its host plant (white turtlehead) the caterpillars crawl down and overwinter in the leaf litter. This once common butterfly is in decline due to loss of habitat and poor gardening practices.

Other small creatures like the eastern newt, as well as many species of salamanders and frogs, spend the frigid winter months hibernating under the protection of leaves, rocks, and logs.

For many, leaf management can feel like a never-ending burden in the fall. Even if we want to leave the leaves, we can’t let them accumulate everywhere or they will smother the grass, clog sewer heads, and leave a slippery layer to get mushed into the ground by cars, snowblowers and pedestrians.

The problem is not that deciduous trees shed “too many” leaves, but that we have developed our landscapes and removed natural areas. Too much space is now taken up by driveways, streets, sidewalks, and lawn.

Leaves are an exceptionally valuable resource! They contain nutrients and organic matter that we should keep on site, instead of raking or blowing them from off our lawns and driveways and into the woods, or stuffing them into leaf collection bags to be taken off site. We can find more places for the leaves to go by shrinking our lawns, creating more planting space, and consolidating the excess leaves that fall outside our planting beds.

Using leaves as mulch for a planting bed is a free alternative to buying bark mulch or other expensive and harmful inputs such as fertilizers and dyed mulches. The space under a tree is an especially critical place to keep leaves since many butterfly and moth caterpillars drop down from trees into the leaf litter to pupate and overwinter. Let’s do what we can to keep this colorful natural blanket where it falls.

Consolidate Your Leaves

After shrinking the lawn and expanding planting areas, there should be more room to accommodate the leaves removed from the remaining lawn and driveway.

Still too many leaves? Rake the leaves that fall outside the planting beds into a pile. Yes, in this case raking is okay (and leaf piles are necessary for jumping in!). Our goal is to not remove them from within our planting beds, which benefit from the organic matter and insulation for the cold winter months, limiting disturbance to the leaf litter and any overwintering creatures.

Where Do The Leaves Blow?

Inevitably, leaves will blow around and pile up in various corners of the yard. Rather than repeatedly removing leaves from the same spots, pause and pay attention to where they tend to accumulate or blow away, and plant accordingly.

Plant strong stemmed plants like ferns, baneberries and bugbanes, coneflowers, or milkweeds in the areas where leaves accumulate. Leaves often form a deeper layer in low, concave spaces of the landscape, like at the bottom of a slope or a valley.

There are a few ground covers like sedges, creeping and rock phlox, pussytoes, bearberry, and groundsels, that can get smothered by leaves. Plant them in spots where the wind strips leaves away. Leaves don’t tend to stay put on elevated, convex landforms, so don’t fight it and work with what you have.

Wait until spring, just as you begin to notice sprouting and emergence, to remove leaves that get stuck in the crevices between rocks, against fences, and within shrubs.

A common worry of gardeners is that plants cannot push through whole leaves or thick layers of leaves. Many woodland natives, even ephemerals like trout lily and squirrel corn, that are adapted to soils rich in organic matter created by decomposing leaves, have no trouble emerging through a good 2-6” of leaves.

In addition to leaves, avoid over-removing items like sticks, stumps, and logs. Gather materials that may look haphazard (to some) into intentional piles or arrangements to be enjoyed by all. Frogs, salamanders, as well as fungi and other decomposers, like beetles and millipedes, all benefit from the extra opportunities to nest, feed, and overwinter in this woody debris. This can be done on a small scale in a suburban yard or applied to a rural woodlot. Gary Smith’s “Hidden Valley” sculpture at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, MA illustrates this concept most elegantly with an undulating line of fallen longs.

Leave stems and seed heads of grasses, coneflowers, asters, and other herbaceous plants to sustain pollinators and non-migrating birds through the winter. Pithy or hollow stems of plants like Joe-Pye weed, flowering raspberry, and black elderberry, left up or cut back to at least 18”, provide perfect chambers for many of our native solitary bees to lay their eggs in, which hatch come spring. They are also beautiful covered in frost and snow.

Originally published on Wild Seed Project’s Native Gardening Blog

Photos by Heather McCargo and Anna Fialkoff, courtesy of Wild Seed Project.

What this means for your yard: Can you give up the “perfect lawn”?

It’s October and Maryland has a new law, one that will help the environment and give us gardeners a little more freedom. Earlier this year, the Maryland legislature passed HB322, known as the Low-Impact Landscaping bill, effective October 1, 2021. In a nutshell, communities—including homeowners associations (HOAs)—can no longer require turf in yards or ban certain types of gardens.

Instead, the new law allows homeowners to convert their lawns to habitats to benefit pollinators, birds and other wildlife and to install rain gardens and xeriscaping to help manage storm water run-off and conserve water. Yes, even in our front yards. (Jump to types of gardens referenced in law).

This may mean that our expanses of uniform green lawn may change. But that’s a trend that has been gathering steam across the country for years as our planet faces drought, climate and biodiversity crises.

Here’s a sampling of the headlines: “Are Traditional Lawns on Their Way Out?” Wall Street Journal; “Do You Have a Glossy, Green Front Lawn? What is this, the 1950s?” The Guardian; “The American Lawn: A Eulogy,” The Atlantic. Heck, even Men’s Journal has been reporting on “How to Kill Your Lawn” and claims that “smaller is better.”

We’re still in the early phases of a mass shift away from lawns, however. For many, grass is a hard habit to break.

Reduce waste and save money

by Anne Marie Bonneau
the zero waste chef

I tried to put these nine items into what-I-despise-most order but I found that kind of ranking simply too difficult. Bottled water or coffee pods? That’s a tough call, especially since Nestlé peddles both.

However, I’m leaning toward coffee pods. Not only do they create obscene amounts of waste—Keurig alone sold nearly 10 billion packs of pods in 2014—they also represent the Wall·E-fication of our society. Will every foodstuff eventually be pre-measured and pre-packaged for the specially designed machines that prepare it for us? Personally, I enjoy the ritual of brewing coffee in the morning—or tea. But you can now buy tea pods as well, surely a sign of the end-times.

Convenience has, at the very least, exacerbated—if not created—our waste crisis. Beginning in the 50s and 60s, consumer products companies marketed their wares—disposable dishes, disposable cutlery, disposable plastic wrap and eventually disposable everything—as time-saving lifesavers. As these companies and their products seduced and hooked us, they simultaneously chiseled away at our life-skills toolkit, leaving us more dependent on so-called disposable materials. (The term “disposable” suggests an item is “able” to be “disposed” of but the items must go somewhere in the environment.)

Yes, some coffee pods can be recycled. Nespresso manufactures its pods out of aluminum. Other brands produce pods consisting of plastic and aluminum. Theoretically, anything can be recycled if we throw enough money and specialized, outrageously expensive, heavy equipment at it. That doesn’t mean it will be recycled. And besides, recycling is a last resort. We can’t recycle our way out of our garbage crisis. Corporations produce more than our systems can possibly handle.

The list

1. Plastic wrap

Well before I went plastic-free, I rarely bought plastic wrap. Trash aside, do we want our food to touch this stuff?

Unfortunately, most [plastic wraps] are now made with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) or polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC). (The exceptions are wraps used in catering and professional kitchens.) LDPE and PVDC don’t adhere as well as plastic wraps made with PVC, but more worrying is the fact that LDPE may contain diethylhexyl adipate (DEHA), another potential endocrine disruptor that has been linked to breast cancer in women and low sperm counts in men. — Dr. Weil

Alternatives:

Place a plate over a bowl of leftovers to cover them. Or store leftovers—and all kinds of food—in glass jars. Glass offers the additional benefit of a clear view of the food you have on hand. If you can see it, you’ll more likely eat it before it heads south.

2. Plastic baggies

Again, do you want plastic coming into contact with your food?

Yes, plastic baggies make packing lunches convenient but you can find many alternatives. And the cost of cheap baggies does eventually add up. On Amazon, with its rock-bottom prices, 90 Ziploc sandwich bags cost around $9. Ten cents a bag may not sound like much but if you pack lunches for a couple of kids and use a couple of baggies per kid, you’ll go through these in a couple of months. Isn’t Jeff Bezos wealthy enough?!

Alternatives:

Pre-Covid, when I still worked in an office, I packed my lunches in glass jars. For small children, I don’t suggest packing lunches this way. Use metal lunch containers such as LunchBots or wrap up sandwiches in a large napkin, Furoshiki style.

3. Teflon anything

Back when my daughter MK wrote her blog The Plastic-Free Chef, a representative from Dupont once left a comment on a popcorn post, in which MK had slammed PFAS-treated microwave popcorn bags. (PFAS—also known as forever chemicals—render the bags grease-proof.) The condescending rep wrote about the virtues of Teflon at length, saying she “understood” my daughter’s supposed confusion. “You have arrived, MKat,” I told her.

Teflon-coated pans release toxic gases when heated. They also tend to wear quickly. Thoughtlessly use a metal spatula in there and you can damage the coating. When it begins to flake, it gets into your food. If you use the plastic utensils designed for Teflon pots and pans, you combine heat, plastic and food. But wait there’s more! The inventor of Teflon was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame (yes, that’s a thing). I wonder if the five gyres of plastic swirling around in and wreaking havoc on our oceans have been inducted yet.

Alternatives:

I cook with stainless steel pots, cast iron pans and enameled cast iron. (Go here for more on choosing pots and pans.)

4. Bottled beverages

I banned from my kitchen not only bottled water but also other bottled drinks such as soda and juice. In addition to the plastic waste these drinks generate, most of them are unhealthy, filled with sugar and, like heavy bottled water, travel many miles to reach the store.

Alternatives:

You have so many to choose from: iced tea, lemonade or, if you want to get adventurous, kombucha, ginger beer or natural soda.

5. Coffee pods

See opening rant.

Alternative:

Coffee brewed in a French press or pour-over coffee maker is very simple.

6. Teabags

Teabags just about send me over the edge. Food manufacturers can charge only so much for a commodity like a teabag. So they have “improved” paper teabags by creating silk-like bags in order to justify charging a premium for them.

Many of these silky bags are made of synthetics—in other words, plastic, not silk. And some of them shed billions of plastic microfibers per cup of tea. (Yes, billions!) Even paper teabags contain “polypropylene, a sealant used across the [tea] industry to ensure bags hold their shape.” You want tea leaves infusing your piping hot water, not the chemicals found in plastic.

Alternatives:

Loose leaf tea brewed in a teapot and strained out.

7. Paper towels

My mother—who at 89 grew up without paper towels—wonders how I live without them. Let me preface the following rant with the admission that my research into paper towel manufacture comes from the sawmill and paper mill passages of Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? However, I think I can safely claim that just some of the steps in the life-cycle of a paper towel include:

• Chop down trees
• Transport logs to the sawmill
• Harvest scrap lumber from logs cut into rough boards
• Transport scrap lumber to the paper mill
• Run scrap lumber through the chipper
• Add a bunch of water and chemicals to the wood chips to make wood pulp
• Run the pulp across a bunch of screens to form paper towels
• Bundle the long sheets into rolls of paper towels
• Shrink wrap the rolls of paper towels in plastic
• Transport the paper towels to the warehouse
• Transport the paper towels to the store
• Drive to the store to buy paper towels
• Unwrap the plastic and throw it out or into the recycling bin because you’re in denial that that kind of flimsy plastic can actually be recycled
• Use the paper towel once
• Toss the soiled paper towel into the garbage
• Argue with your partner or kids about who should take out the garbage
• Lug your garbage to the curb because you lost
• Repeat until the last tree falls

Alternatives:

I have a lifetime supply of cotton rags I cut out of my kids’ old t-shirts. Yes, some nasty manufacturing processes went into the production of said t-shirts but I will use these rags for years. If you have the crafty gene, you could make some unpaper towels.

8. Paper napkins

I imagine people buy more paper towels than paper napkins—or use paper towels as napkins—but these too have easy replacements, unlike bathroom tissue. Don’t worry, I won’t include bathroom tissue on this list. However, regarding wipes for wee-wee, as clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology Lauren F Streicher, MD, told The Guardian last year,

People urinated long before toilet paper became available. There are zero health concerns with this … people have urine on their underwear all the time.”

Alternative:

Cloth napkins make eating more appetizing. They will also save you money over time, as will all of the suggestions on this list. Yes, you must wash them—I wait until ours actually appear soiled, usually after a few uses—but they take up very little space in the washing machine.

9. Highly processed food

Of everything on the list, highly processed food will require the most effort to replace. The Western diet—which the majority of us eat—consists of these products, almost always packaged in shiny plastic. It’s convenient but not healthy for us or the planet.

Alternative:

Cook real food. Yes, home-cooked meals require time to prepare but they taste better than highly processed food, will improve your health and likely save you money. You need not cook anything elaborate. For time-saving ideas, read my previous newsletter, “How to Save up to 5 Hours a Week in the Kitchen.”

This article was written by Anne-Marie Bonneau and reprinted here with her permission. Read more on her website, The Zero Waste Chef.

Searing heat waves, recurring downpours, and the news that insect and bird populations are declining precipitously all indicate that the climate crisis has already crossed our doorstep. While our government works out local, national, and global solutions, there are many proactive things we can do in our own yards.

Growing native plants and trees is a relatively simple act that could have a significant positive impact on our environment.  Many people don’t realize that 90% of the insects that live in our neighborhoods can only digest the plants that they have co-evolved with for thousands of years, as documented by University of Delaware entomologist Douglas Tallamy. The birds that we love to see in our communities eat insects and raise their young almost exclusively on insects.

The simple fact is that insects are a vital part of the local food web. No insects – no baby birds. Other wildlife would be affected as well: insects are a significant protein source for frogs, snakes, chipmunks, fox, even bears.

Growing native trees and plants is important because they are environmental powerhouses in our yards. An oak tree, for example, is a host for more than 500 species of butterflies and moths.  The non-native Crape Myrtle supports only 10 butterflies or moths. Baltimore, it’s obvious there is a problem when crape myrtles or nonnative nandina shrubs are ubiquitous in block after block of the city and suburban landscape.

This summer, Green Towson Alliance sponsored a Native Garden Contest. We were amazed not only by the beautiful native gardens that people are growing, but by the commitment shown by gardeners to supporting our ecosystem by growing native plants. And they’re not alone in wanting to support the ecosystem. Nearly 450 people participated in an online vote to choose the winners of the contest. That’s a lot of votes – and it indicates that people are hungry to learn about growing native plants and supporting our ecosystem.

The next step is for the local garden centers and landscape services to step up and do their part. Finding native plants and trees are not easy right now. It’s time for local businesses to offer native plants and trees, and it’s time for all of us to plant some natives in our yards.