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Enter your keywords:Posts Tagged ‘Jazz Taxes’
Your Garden’s Flowers : In Consideration of Why They Bloom
I will admit that I love flowers. I also love gardening. I am not the most proficient or the neatest of gardeners, and I have a taste for the less than manicured bed.
Why do most of us garden? I think there is a combination of an appreciation for the plants themselves and their attributes of beauty such as foliage, shape, stem color and, of course, their flowers. We wish to surround ourselves with the beauty of plants. We do so by in a sense, playing God on our little acre (or 1 /3 of an acre in my case). This is not altogether bad. But any time we pretend to be omnipotent, a little bit of humility is a good thing.
There are two aspects of our obsession with flowers that we have to think about: 1) do they bloom just for us, and 2) do the plants in our gardens exist in a vacuum separate from the surrounding environment? The answer to both questions is no.
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 Earth: Plant Your Own Orchard
Through the years I have found great satisfaction in growing my own vegetables and much enjoyment from growing my own fruit trees. Orchard fruits and nuts not only supply essential nutrition and fiber to a diet but also opportunities for joy and beauty. Growing vegetables can be very productive, but no food-production system is complete without a small orchard.
In one way, an orchard is easier to grow than a vegetable garden. Once planted, fruit and nut trees will produce for years. Some apple trees can still be productive after 50 years.
