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January 2018

Sustainable Landscapes -- A Sense of Place and A Sense of Peace

Growing up in the middle of a large Midwestern city, my connection with nature was little more than a few minutes in our highly manicured yard, an occasional visit to a city park or a stroll through our botanical garden for the Christmas display. My family simply did not see the need to spend much time …

The Case for Sustainable Landscaping

At a recent presentation to a group of homes association property managers, my colleagues were asked why they were suggesting that changes be made in the landscapes resulting in sustainable landscaping for their properties. The potential clients questioned their logic, seeing the suggested changes as a path to planned obsolescence for Embassy; it seemed like …

Planting in a Changing World - Part 2: Climate Change

Gardening has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother had beds of iris and grew roses in her St. Louis back yard, my father had a thriving vegetable patch in the former ash pit of our home and my grandmother always had annuals blooming next to her kitchen …

Planting in a Changing World - Part 1: Phenology

  I was catching up on some reading the other day when an unexpected term caught my attention. At first glance I thought the word was phrenology and I couldn’t understand why anyone from the magazine Horticulture would be writing about measuring skulls. Rereading, I figured out that my brain had substituted a familiar word …

Fill the Need for Green - Visit a Nearby Botanical Garden

It’s been nearly two weeks since we have seen blue sky and sun here. Temperatures have been so miserable that zero feels like a heat wave and to top it all off, our driveway becomes a death trap in snowy or icy weather so I am essentially housebound right now. With January not even half …

Goals for Gardeners

The first week of January always brings out an almost obsessive need to clean and organize my surroundings in preparation for the new year ahead. I usually attack the closets first and then move into the basement and garage storage in a frenzied attempt to achieve organizational nirvana. It drives my poor husband crazy because …