Let's go green!

Imagine some corporate strategy meetings these days - “Let’s go green, everybody else is doing it!”. Think the conversation would turn to real changes and a discussion on environmental responsibility or become a spin session? With a little public relations campaign and the business is now green.

It may be next to impossible for most of us to separate real efforts from puffery. Now there is help, a new website offers to evaluate advertisers' environmental claims. www.greenwashingindex.com was created through a partnership by EnviroMedia Social Marketing and the advertising faculty of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. The site invites consumers to post advertisements and then offer their own assessments of the credibility of the message.

'Blue Mouse Ears' 2008 Hosta of the Year

'Blue Mouse Ears' has soft blue-green leaves, gently curled, just 2 3/4 inches long and 2 inches wide. A tightly mounded, dense plant, it reaches only 6 inches high and a foot wide, but draws the eye with its cool tones and soft texture.
This miniature makes up for in vigor what in lacks in size. New foliage unfurls from the center of the plant all season, and the older leaves keep their blue tones well in summer heat. At the base of each leaf, you may glimpse a hint of bright gold! Lavender flowers bloom above the foliage on short stems in summer.
'Blue Mouse Ears' can be used in containers of all sorts, as edging, in the front of the shade border, and as an accent among green- and yellow-leafed plants. It tolerates partial to full shade, and does not like direct sun. Zones 3-8.
Click here for more information.

Beginners Gardening Guide

Gardening can still be a fulfilling hobby even if you have a tight gardening budget. Many gardens can be started for only $100, or less. Less if you can find good quality second hand tools.

A spading fork should be your first gardening tool. It is a little bit like a pitchfork, but much smaller. It fits in your hand and resembles a three prong fork. This handy little gardening tool will help to improve the soil, aerate it and is great for digging plants you plan to propagate or share.

You will want a hoe for weeding and for cultivating your new garden. Add a long nozzle watering can to the cart as well as a round ended shovel for larger garden digging projects. Last on your budget list tools is a pair of garden shears. Make sure the garden shears fit comfortably in your hand, especially if you will be wearing gardening gloves.

Remove any layers of grass and then turn the soil. As you aerate the soil, remove any medium to large rocks and other debris to the surface. The next and perhaps most important step - establishing a balance between water holding capacity and aeration is the first key to a beautiful garden. If your soil is heavy, it should be amended with sand, bark, and / or compost material to improve drainage, and the soil should be mounded above grade to assure proper drainage. Mixing different components often provides the physical properties for optimum growth. Peat moss has excellent water holding characteristics, bark and sand promote aeration and drainage.

We cannot stress adding organic matter at every opportunity often enough.

Adding amendments such as humus or compost at planting time is critical, but nutrients leave the soil over time, and need constant replenishment. Nearly all plants grow better in soil that retains moisture, drains well, and is fairly fertile. Continually work your garden soil and plants will grow to their fullest potential. For perennial plants click on Bloomin Designs Nursery

Secrets To Beautiful Shade Gardens

There are principles behind successful execution in every art form and combining plants into beautiful arrangements is every bit as much an art as is music or painting. Entire books are dedicated to the subject of combining plants, but a few general principles can here be delineated which may prove useful.

Eclecticism is the most common sin of beginners, with one of these and one of those.. Whereas this can make an impressive collection of botanical specimens, it will not make a very satisfactory garden.

Some of the most beautiful scenes in nature consist of a massing of a predominant plant gradually giving way to another predominant plant in a natural drift, with an area in which both intermix. If these plants harmonize and or contrast nicely, the result is especially striking. Often this will be with a uniform backdrop and or foreground of some single or thoroughly intermixed planting of another kind which 'sets off' the main focal plantings.

So, defining an area, creating an element or unity with a particular look within the garden, which blends into another element in close harmony or distinct contrast is one key to combining plants.

This look need not be created with only one kind of plant and is often all the more rich and interesting if several plants having strong similarities and some differences are intermixed. A combination I personally enjoy, for example, is variegated ornamental grasses mixed with Iris and variegated Iris, with drifts of variegated liriope and an occasional daylily. All these are blade-leaved plants and together create a distinctive compositional element while providing variations in detail and in blossom.

Right in the middle of this I might place a variegated Hosta, or run the blade-leaved planting into a planting of Hosta, and I might place a Hydrangea macrophylla mariesi to the rear of the planting. The variegations all harmonize, relating even the Hosta and Hydrangea to the blade-leaved plants, and the broad leaf of the Hosta and Hydrangea contrasts very well with the foliage of the others.

Which brings us to the central principle: Relationship. What was just described is a planting in which all the plants involved relate to each other through several of their characteristics. If you take any two plants you have, or pictures of them, and put them together you can begin to see what is meant by relationship. Do they do anything together? Do they interact, visually? Does each highlight the qualities of the other or does nothing happen - there is no relationship that you can see?

This is similar in principle to combining colors effectively except that with plants it is more complex because we are working with the overall form, with the texture created by the foliage, with the individual leaves, with leaf color and with flower form and color. But the idea is the same. Is there a relationship? Do the plants work together? If not, then don't put them together.

Delicate leaved plants, such as ferns and Aquiligia can combine well with the rich textures of Taxus, Tsuga and other coniferous evergreens. The blue in the leaf of the Aquiligia blends well with the blue of Taxus, for example, while the wide, soft leaflets contrast beautifully with the needles of the evergreen.

If space allows, conifers, such as hemlock or thuja can make an excellent backdrop to most any flowering shrub, particularly broadleaved plants such as Rhododendron , Kalmia, Azalea and such. These same conifers also combine well with blade-leaved plants. In smaller areas, Ivy on a fence can also serve as a uniform background against which many plants can be seen to advantage.

Another consideration in designing the shade garden is lightness. A shady garden planted with dense conifers and dark broad leaved evergreens can be forbiddingly somber. Lightness can be introduced through both texture, (ferns, for example), leaf color and with bright blossoms. Variegated leaved plants are also very effective in this respect and there are very many variegated groundcovers, shrubs, trees and perennials available. White flowering shade plants are also not wanting and these too will add considerable brightness and cheer to a shady site.

As plants relate by foliage, so do they by form. A grouping of globe shaped shrubs may be punctuated by the spire of a conical shrub, for example. Or a low spreading planting may gradually rise into a mounded form, into a taller weeping plant type. What does not work, and this is the same principle as applies to foliage and flower, is a random intermixture of various forms. Again, unity, cohesiveness, is required, with an inter-relatedness between a variety of unities.

Each little grouping of plants - those areas which can be visually taken in from one perspective - should constitute a scene of inter-relating components. For example, the graceful, open branched Enkianthus might overhang an hinoki cypress with perhaps a small drift of Astilbe near by and a low spreading ground cover at the base of it all. The idea is to create, within your well laid out beds, vignettes and little worlds of plants in combination.

One such scene I recently created for a client consists of glossy, dark leaved groundcover, Gaultheria running into a planting of pale and variegated Lamium maculatum, punctuated by a scattering of Iris, overhung by spreading false cypress, and all embraced by the airy branches of variegated Cornus alba. These plants together create a little scene of considerable detail and richness, varied in form, texture and leaf color. Variety is introduced, not by a scattering of elements, but by an interaction of cohesive elements. Note that this combination does not even involve flowers, though Gaultheria produces an attractive berry and has good fall color.

This could go on indefinitely but we have not here space for that. The main point is to design an attractive, experientially enjoyable layout. Within this create unities which contain diversities, and which relate one to another pleasantly through both harmony and contrast. These unities can be created using foliage texture, foliage color, flower color and plant form. Combine plants which have a visable relation to each other, which have a give and take and use plant characteristics to relieve the less pleasant aspects of a shade garden. This is a study, and probably a life long study, but the application of these principles should help in the successful creation of your shade garden.

FREE REPORT ON LANDSCAPE PROFESSIONALS
Award winning author and landscape designer Keith Davitt ofers a comprehensive report on landscape professionals and how to identify which of the seven different categories is best for your garden and landscape needs. To get your free report go to landscape-design-garden-plans.

Keith Davitt is an award winning landscape designer with projects nation-wide and the author of four garden design books. To download a free, comprehensive report on landscape professionals and how to identify which of the seven different categories is best for you and your garden needs go to, http://www.landscape-design-garden-plans.com/landscape-design-report.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keith_Davitt

Paper or plastic? Neither

Whole Foods Market created a sensation last year with its $15 “designer” reusable shopping bags. Why stop there? Stella McCartney is selling a grocery bag for $465 and Hermes has one for $960.

This story is a few months old, but I bring it up now because yesterday I saw a woman shopping my Central Market with her Chanel grocery bag stuffed with containers of barbecued chicken wings.

Paper or plastic -- which is better for the environment? You probably think you know the answer. And you’re probably wrong.

“There definitely was a period of time when the message was, ‘Choose paper over plastic,’” Jenny Powers, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s not the way to view it.”

Powers and other environmental experts now say the best choice is neither paper nor plastic -- it’s reusable shopping bags made of substances like cotton, hemp, nylon or durable meshlike plastic.

“The ideal option is bring your own bag,” Powers said. “Second choice is to ask for the type of bag that you know will be reused -- plastic if you’ll use it for holding trash, or paper if you will recycle it.”

Las Vegas to Build World’s First 30 Story Vertical Farm

Las Vegas the tourist mecca of the World is set to begin development of the World’s first vertical farm. The $200 million dollar project is designed to be a functional and profitable working farm growing enough food to feed 72,000 people for a year and provide another tourist attraction to the city that does everything in a larger than life way.

The World currently uses about 80% of the available farm land and 60% of the earth’s population lives near or in an urban environment so the logical choice for farming is to go up for land where the environment can be controlled and where distribution is local. Las Vegas is seen as the perfect location for this project by Nevada State officials who would like to demonstrate their sustainability and environmental awareness instead of projecting an image of waste and excess.

Although the project initial cost is high at $200 million, with annual revenue of $25 million from produce and another $15 million from tourists the 30 story vertical farm would be about as profitable as a casino with operating expenses only being about $6 million a year.

There would be about 100 different crops grown ranging from strawberries to lettuce even miniature banana trees could be grown from each floors specially controlled environment. The products would go straight to the casinos and hotel properties and be a very visible and desirable addition to the overall Las Vegas experience. Design details should be worked out in 2008 and the project could open its doors by the middle of 2010.

Spring Garden Expo 2008

The Greatest Two-Day Plant Sale in Georgia Friday, April 11, 2008, and Saturday, April 12, 2008: The Spring Garden Expo, at Chicopee Woods Agricultural Center. Click on Hall County Master Gardeners for more information.

Being Green Impacted Holiday Spending and Shopping Habits

The 2007 Annual National Shopping Behavior Survey by the audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLC, came out with a clear report that consumers were thinking about the good of their planet as well as global manufacturing issues when they were spending their money this holiday season. The survey showed that 88% of the consumers surveyed were concerned about the environment and that 74% of them buy environmentally friendly products.
Other findings included:

* 60% of surveyors said they were willing to pay more for environmentally friendly items
* 55% said they make a special effort to patronize retailers with a “green” reputation.
* 40% of consumers said they checked the country of origin on potential gifts, with 31% using such information to decide against a purchase.

Read the full story at EnvironmentalLeader.com

Fiskars to award gardening grants

Fiskars Garden & Outdoor Living has launched Project Orange Thumb, a grant program designed to encourage community gardening. Ten grants will be awarded to community organizations, schools, gardening clubs and other groups. Recipients will receive up to $1,500 in garden tools and $800 for plants. Application deadline is Feb. 15. Winners will be announced March 15. Complete details are available here.

2008 SOUTHEASTERN FLOWER SHOW: IMAGINE THAT!

Annual Event Showcases Spectacular Gardens, Horticultural Innovations,
Renowned Speakers, Fab Shopping & Activities Galore
WHAT: Imagine That! is the featured theme of the 2008 Southeastern Flower Show, the region’s premier juried gardening and horticultural event. The gardening extravaganza will offer competition in floral design, horticulture, landscape and photography, as well as a retail marketplace, educational and family activities, industry experts and more.
WHEN: The annual five-day event will be held, Jan. 30 – Feb. 3, 2008. The treasured Atlanta happening has become a welcomed harbinger of spring.
WHERE: Building A of the Georgia World Congress Center, in downtown Atlanta, will be transformed into a vision of color and an explosion of scents.
SHOW DETAILS: Many of the Southeast’s premier garden designers and landscape architects will create extravagant indoor gardens for the Show. In addition, more than 200 invited judges from across the country will critique the entries of many of the nation’s expert horticulturists. National, local and regional speakers will offer their expertise on landscaping, cooking, flower arranging, recycling and more.
For more than two decades, the Southeastern Flower Show has inspired and entertained visitors, regardless of their gardening acumen. At the close of each Show, the organization creates The Legacy Garden, an annual outreach program that provides assistance with creating or augmenting a garden for one deserving local community organization each year. To extend public goodwill, The Southeastern Flower Show partners with several nonprofit groups committed to improving their communities through their environmental endeavors.
TICKETS: Tickets will be available in the fall at www.flowershow.org or by calling 404/351-1074.
Ticket prices are as follows:
Advance ticket $16
General admission $20
Student ticket $8 (9th grade – graduate school. ID required)
Youth ticket $6 (1st – 8th grades)
All-Access ticket $35 (best value; provides entry throughout show)
Twilight ticket $12 (after 4 p.m. Wednesday -Friday)
Media Contact: Julie Herron Carson, 404/285-3434, jhcarson@bellsouth.net
Hilary Bumm, 404/351-1074, hbumm@flowershow.org

The front yard is one of the most important landscaping projects you'll undertake on your property. Getting the front yard right is particularly important because it's the part of the house that people most often see-and the part they see and walk through every time they enter. With that in mind, here are some landscaping and design tips for your front yard.

The first detail of planning your landscaping-and particularly the materials you will use for structures such as walkways-is to determine how your landscaping will harmonize with the exterior of your home.

This is important because it ensures a smooth transition from the outside of the home to the inside. For example, if your home is made from brick, consider creating walkways that are edged in brick, to pick up on the colors of the home and echo those colors on the ground. Then make the dominant color of the walkway match or closely echo the color of the roof.

Pay Attention to Walkways

The front yard is less a place to relax in than it is an area that welcomes people to your home. Paying particular attention to the shape and design driveways and walkways is important, because these aspects of the front yard will see constant use. Driveways and walkways should be broad enough to use comfortably-for example, people walking from the gate to your house should not brush against shrubbery or flowers, but should have enough room to move without being caught by plants.

Adding motion-sensor lighting to driveways and walkways helps make your front yard a safer place to move through at night-you can choose lighting that complements the exterior of your home, further enhancing the harmony between the exterior and the yard.

Choosing Trees and Shrubs

When choosing trees for the front yard, you must think in the long term-how tall are they going to be when fully mature? Will they block sun, or shed leaves on the driveway or walkway?

These are important considerations for any front yard plantings. The trees and shrubs you add will grow over the years, and you'll need to consider how much space mature planting will take up when you first add the plants. Don't forget that root systems will grow over time, too-larger trees have extensive root systems, and a tree in a poor location may disrupt walkways or even the foundations of your home.

In addition, remember that overhang from your roof may deprive some plants of sunlight, depending on their sun requirements and the season. Small bushes and shrubs should be places four to six feet away from the home to ensure they receive enough sunlight throughout the year.

Fragrant plants and trees are an excellent option for front yards, with attractive scents that welcome your visitors-fruit trees, herbs, and sweet-smelling shrubs such as lavender are good choices.

Consider the View

When designing front yard landscaping, consider the view you are creating both of the yard and of the home. For example, if your front yard is small, it's best not to cram too many plants into the area. It's important to ensure that the front of the home is in full view from both the inside of the home and from the outside, so that you can see out, and so that new visitors are not in any doubt as to the location of the entry point of the home.

Use plants and shrubs that emphasize the entry point of your home-for example, add a planter with colorful flowers on either side of the front door, or train a vine to grow over the exterior of the front porch. This makes your entry point more welcoming, emphasizes its location, and further eases the transition between the outdoors and the indoors.

Adding Color

Flowing plants can be added easily to provide a welcoming splash of color in the front yard. A good option that makes planning the front yard in the long term easier is to designate particular spots for short-term plantings.

This means that you first designate the spots for trees and shrubs that will be constant fixtures-that will grow and mature over the course of several years-and then plan to use the remaining space for annuals or biennial plants. For example, your short-term yard space could be the home of colorful bulbs in the spring, and then used for summer annuals after the spring bulbs have flowered and died out.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer a lower-maintenance front yard, use perennial shrubs and plants to add color, rather than annuals and biennials that have shorter life-spans and need replacing every one to two years.

By: Megan Hazel

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'

Perennial Plant Assoc. named Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' (golden Japanese forest grass) as its 2009 Perennial Plant of the Year. This clump-forming deciduous grass produces arching, linear leaves that are bright yellow with narrow, longitudinal lime-green stripes. The leaves often develop a reddish tinge in fall. Plants reach 12-18 inches tall and 18-36 inches wide. It is hardy in USDA Hardiness Zones 5-9.

Geranium ‘Rozanne’

The Perennial Plant Association has awarded the title of Perennial Plant of the Year® to Geranium ‘Rozanne’. Donald and Rozanne Waterer discovered this strong performing hardy geranium in their garden in Somerset, England in 1989. It has 2 ½ inch, iridescent violet-blue, saucer-shaped flowers with purple-violet veins and radiant white centers. Bloom time is from late spring to mid fall.

• Hardiness – USDA Zones 5 to 8
• Size – 20 to 24 inches tall and 24 to 28 inches wide
• Light – Best in full sun to partial shade, afternoon shade is advisable in hot climates
• Soil – Prefers moist, well-drained soil
• Uses - Geranium ‘Rozanne’ may be used as a dynamic ground cover or as an attractive specimen plant. It is a good companion plant to Shasta daisy, perennial salvia, speedwell, hostas, and short ornamental grasses. Rozanne’senergetic habit makes it a worthy tenant of patio containers, window boxes,and hanging baskets.
• Unique Qualities – The large violet-blue flowers with purple-violet veins and small white centers offer non-stop flowering through the growing season. It has one of the longest flowering periods of any of the hardy geraniums.