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On the Inside with Jacqueline Heriteau: Digging The Net
As though you didn’t know, SurferMania - and I do refer to surfing the Internet and other electronic highways - is sweeping the garden world. It’s a revolution and I’m here to tell you, it’s irresistible! That’s the word from an honest four-thumbed electronics nerd.
I’m not going to drop bauds and Ram and Mbytes on you. (I don’t know what those words mean, anyway.) But I do want you to know that the electronic universe has a whole lot of offer gardeners.
WHAT IS A LANDSCAPER?
A landscaper can be any individual or company offering services ranging from lawn care to maintenance, installation of plant materials, the contractor offering site construction services such as patios, desks, grading, or roadways, or the licensed landscape architect that offers design services. Generally, the businesses that offer landscape installation services beyond the services normally offered by lawn care businesses prefer to be called landscape contractors. Many nurseries and garden centers offer installation services and consider themselves landscape contractors, as well. Landscape contractors are not licensed, but are usually members of one or several organizations that set up standards for their industry. These associations include a Landscape Contractors Association, the American Association of Nurserymen, The Maryland Association of Nurserymen and the National Landscape Association (Division of the American Association of Nurserymen).
When is a plant considered native?
Interest in the horticultural use of native plants has grown considerably in recent years. Evidence for this includes numerous articles in gardening publications about natives and their uses, seminars organized by botanic gardens that feature principles of garden design using natives, and the increasing availability of native plants or their seeds in catalogs and specialty nurseries.
The question of “When is a plant considered native?” is a question that has arisen on more than one occasion in discussions among the staff at the State Arboretum of Virginia at Blandy Experimental Farm. At the grandest scale, a plant might be considered a North American native if it was present in the native flora when Europeans colonized the New World. Red maple, Acer rubrum, is an example.
THE GARDENERS BILL OF RIGHTS
As a native Virginian my education in the history of this great Commonwealth began at an early age. Not an Independence Day goes by without my thinking of Virginia’s foremost Statesman architect writer. inventor and gardener, Thomas Jefferson.
Mr. Jefferson gave us the University of Virginia, French tarragon and, of course, is best known as the Father of the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately Mr. Jefferson was out of the country on a government mission during the Constitutional Convention in May of 1787. I can’t help but to wonder how Mr. Jefferson’s attendance at that Convention would have affected the Constitution as we know it. Given his love of law and his love of gardening, possibly we would now have a “GARDENERS BILL OF RIGHTS”
ON THE INSIDE : Have You Ordered Your Bulbs Yet?
Nurserymen and catalog people are feisty, irascible, creative dreamers, and they dance up a storm given a chance, which isn’t every week, nor even every year. The way they are is easier to understand when you know that most started their own businesses, worry all the time about going broke because so many do, are jealous of the quality of their products, and love plants with a passion only the best Shakespearean sonnets can express adequately. Many classy catalogs are, or started out, as mom-and-pop operations where mom, pop, and the kids, risk everything all the time and often earn less than the minimal hourly wage.
THE GARDEN VS. THE GYMNASIUM:DIGGING UP A BETTER BODY
We live in an age of choices: diet or non-diet, sweetened or unsweetened, caffeine or no caffeine. So why not choose gardening as your favorite form of exercise?
A garden is a wonderful place to workout. And after all the sweating and straining is done, you will have a beautifully landscaped garden to go along with a healthy body,” says Gary Doerr, president of Blooms of Bressingham North America and an avid gardener.
