The Crystal Fund for Community Progress (CFCP) teamed up with staff from EnergyScapes to design a shoreline restoration plan for Memory Lane Pond in Crystal. With help from the neighbors, 4H group, Girl Scouts of America and others, hundreds of native plants and shrubs were installed along a 100ft section of shoreline. Thanks to everyone for their hard work and dedication to the environment!
Turf has a calming, even essential quality. Most landscapes require some. For the past
couple decades, we have reduced turf to areas used for entertaining or installed alternatives that require less care than the standard monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass (actually from England). Costs associated with standard lawns include: weekly mowing and watering, fertilization, herbicides to control weeds, insecticides fungicides and various other control techniques where moles or other animals are uprooting the manicured look. Natural lawns and be a mix of native diversity, monoculture of sedge or other low growing native grass species, or–our favorite–”No-Mow,” a blend developed by Prairie Nursery in central Wisconsin. This mix includes several species of fine fescue; tough plants for well drained loam in the sun. Once established, this blend requires no irrigation, fertilizer or mowing. It can be cut to yield a more manicured look, but should be cut high.
This site, featured on the MNLA Garden Tour in 2010, shows No-Mow's ability to perform well in challenging sites, such as along roadways.
Here in the upper Midwest, we are blessed with a tremendous diversity of over 300 sedge species. Their habitats range from the soggy edge of marshes, to raingardens (being mostly dry but occasionally flooded) to dry sand. Pennsylvania sedge is perfect for dry, sandy soil in full sun with no irrigation. It is difficult to establish from seed, but will fill in from plugs transplanted at 12-18″ apart.
The most difficult habitat for a dense turf appearance is deep shade with heavy clay soil. There are a couple of sedges we are testing that show promise for lawn alternatives in even these sites. The principle is that if the habitat exists, some plants have evolved to successfully colonize that setting. The longer term questions is whether that species will hold on to that site or will the site ecologically succeed into some new mix of plants. It is easy to see this progression where plowed fields are left fallow. A series of plant species move into the initially bare site. These can include trees like box elder and white pine, or annuals like rag-weed and mustards. Out of this list most are gone within just a few years. White pine are the exception, persisting for hundreds of years once their bark is thick enough to withstand ground fires.
One challenge with No-Mow turf is that it does not stand up well to heavy foot traffic. In high traffic areas we use natural flagstone, such as Chilton Dolomite in this example, to create a step-stone path through the turf. The fescue spreads vigorously between the stones.
In a garden setting, we can control this ecological succession by picking which species are allowed to become established, set seed or spread through rhizomes (in the case of sedges) or above ground stolons (in the case of strawberry). Each step of the way does require energy input. Our goal is to find a plant that will persist, once established, with the least amount of care. Native grasses are a potential solution, however, being bunch grasses, they grow with space between them and wait to come out of the ground until ground temperatures indicate spring fires have passed.
Pussytoes is an example of a spreading ground-cover that can substitute for turf in a difficult setting. Here it has performed wonderfully in very well drained gravel next to a flagstone path.
Fire is a great way to singe off undesirable trees, but having to wait until late May for controlled burns is a significant drawback. Non-native, high maintenance turf will green up weeks earlier than the native grasses.
Sedges seem to have the greatest promise for meeting every goal. Stay tuned to see what mix of species we find to be best for your habitat!
Please visit these other contributors to the Garden Designer’s Roundtable for more perspectives on Lawn Alternatives:
Susan Harris : Garden Rant : Takoma Park, MD
Susan Harris : Gardener Susan’s Blog : Takoma Park, MD
Billy Goodnick : Cool Green Gardens : Santa Barbara, CA
Evelyn Hadden : Lawn Reform.Org : Saint Paul, MN
Saxon Holt : Gardening Gone Wild : Novato, CA
Ginny Stibolt : Florida Native Plant Society : Green Cove Springs, FL
Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA
Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT
Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX
Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK
Laura Liven Good Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA
Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO
Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA
Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA
Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT
Water is one of the most curious commodities when it comes to landscape design. Here in the upper Midwest, we are blessed with native plants that have evolved with a climate that flips between too much or too little water for agricultural crops or common turf grass. This flip flop even happens within a single growing season. Continue reading
Often our clients assume that a native plant restoration (one aspect of our designs) requires full sun or enough room for a prairie. Yet most urban lots and the places people love to build their homes are either deep woods or savanna (the woodland edge). If not, people plant trees around the structures where we live and work to keep them cool in summer and warmer in winter. Because our ancestors, over the past several hundred thousand years, lived on the edge of the woods with views out into the open country, that is where many people feel safest.
The result is that most home landscapes are either shade or will become shade as those added trees mature. It takes only a few years for even relatively small transplants to form a canopy that promotes more outdoor living than full sun. Continue reading
This is the site of one of our suppliers and a great source for native plants:
We told you back in March that Douglas Owens-Pike won the Midwest Home Designer in Bloom Award, and will have a story published about his career and work. The article is now out in the June/July issue of Midwest Home so please check in out here. Scroll down the page to find the article about Douglas.
The human relationship with stone reaches back through nearly our entire 300,000 year history, beginning with the first stone tools napped by cunning, wary hunters to fell and butcher their prey in the scattered wildernesses of the world. Within the cool darkness of water carved caverns we sought the spirits around us and we painted stone walls with imaginings of their mystical worlds. The great civilizations of antiquity looked to stone for its permanence, seeking to use its apparent indestructibility to create an immortality of their own. Today we carve our monuments of marble, granite and other natural wonders just as these ancient peoples did thousands of years ago. Stone tugs at our memories and recalls these ancient worlds, evokes the eternal and intimate connection we feel to the world around us and, especially, the earth beneath us. Its character is timeless, its colors and textures evocative and its pull on our imagination powerful. No wonder we are drawn to stone and all its dazzling variations, colors, textures and characters. Continue reading
Now that spring has decided to come and stay. We would love to introduce you to couple of plants that are just about finished with their spring show. Hepatica is one of the early flowers here in Minnesota. It is an ephemeral plant, which is a plant marked by a short life cycle, usually six to eight weeks.
There are two species, easily identified by rounded lobed leaves vs. sharply pointed leaves. They are:
Anemone Americana (rounded lobed leaves) vs. Anemone acutiloba (sharply pointed leaves)
Anemone americana photo by Derek Anderson
Anamone acutiloba photo by Margery Melgaard
They both require shade during the summer, but want to have direct sun during in the weeks before deciduous leaves emerge. Both species rely on root reserves from the fall to produce the flowers of this season. Foliage present during full bloom is mostly dried up leaves left from last summer. Hepatica can have flower colors that are greenish-white, white, purple or pinkish in color.
Douglas had two A. acutiloba blooming this spring. One, that showed a couple dozen blooms in a circle of just 8”, was starting to bloom with snow still on the ground and if you moving to fast you could mistake them for another clump of snow. The other in a more shaded spot took longer to start blooming as it never got the same direct sun.
Those of you that couldn’t wait for the spring flowers to come remember their are some plants out there that are specially adapted to the Minnesota spring and can greet us with a show even when spring is reluctant to come.
If you have more information to share about your own experience with hepatica, please add your comments to this blog post.
Spring at our new office has given us an opportunity. The walk in front of the office was constantly flooded with water as the snow piles melted away. Also the city had removed a tree in the boulevard last year so we had a blank slate to work with. A perfect opportunity to create a rain garden. Our crew dug out around the stump and roots left in the ground and put down a good mulch to start our raingarden of well. The rain this week has flowed right into the garden instead of ponding up on the walk.
Raingarden at work
We removed the sod that held the water on the walk and water now goes into the garden and percolates into the soil. We had been waiting on the City of St Paul to deliver and plant a new swamp white oak to go with our raingarden. They put it in yesterday so we will plant the garden as our crew have time between working other job sites. We will keep you posted as the work progresses.
Starting in Spring 2011, EnergyScapes, Inc. is offering a new Referral Reward Program to our clients. Here’s how it works:
For every new client you refer to EnergyScapes, you will receive a credit to your account that can be applied to any of our services or open invoices. The amount of the credit will be calculated as 5% of any referred contract.
Services contracted by referral will generate rewards for a period of two years after the first meeting. For example, if you refer your friend to our services, and they hire us for a site consultation (a $200 value), which leads to a $7,000 installation,* your reward value would be $360. The cumulative value of your referral rewards will be recorded and tracked by our office. You will receive notification by e-mail of all individual rewards once a referred contract is signed and payment is received. You may request a statement of your cumulative rewards at any time by calling our office at (612) 821-9797. Program information, terms and conditions will be posted on our website.
Referral Rewards may be applied to any of our landscape design, build and/or maintenance services, including:
If you would like more information or to enroll in the program, please contact us at (612) 821-9797 or projectmanager@energyscapes.com. If you like this, don’t forget to ‘like’ us on our facebook page!
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