Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal




Featured

National Seed Swap Day on Saturday

by

Swap Seeds For A Better Garden This Year

Gardener’s have traditionally loved to trade with each other: tips ad advice, seeds and plants, even tools of the trade. It is no surprise that as the seed supplies available from seed companies have been shrinking, that grassroots gardeners have stepped up to organize seed swaps.

National Seed Swap Day

Last Saturday of January.

These are great places to go to let others have some of your abundance and to try out the seeds of someone else’s harvests.

saving seed
Gathering in late summer, saving seed

Gather and store your seeds, then participate in a local seed swap in January. Just in time to start some new plants for your coming garden season.

It is a wonderful way to obtain little known heirloom seeds from local gardener’s such as yourself, and pick up some helpful growing tips, as well.

Why Have A National Seed Swap Day?

The winning logo design by Matthew Smith of Richwood, OH. Join in to increase the available seedbank, to make new gardening friends, and participate in one of the fun aspects of growing plants.

The winning logo design by Matthew Smith of Richwood, OH. Join in to increase the available seedbank, to make new gardening friends, and participate in one of the fun aspects of growing plants.

An Old Idea Takes On New Enthusiasm

The first annual Washington Gardener Seed Exchange was held on January 26, 2006.

It was a success!

Would you like to know how to organize your own see swap? Some ideas to get you started.

Why swap your seeds?

  • Some people have more seeds than they can grow
  • Often people have a hard time finding a certain type of seed
  • Seeds might be best for local conditions, or not predictable for widespread conditions
  • Desirable seeds are heirlooms, now lost to the trade
  • It is a way to avoid GMO tampered seed

Celebrating

Celebrating the saving and sharing of seeds by home gardeners across the United States

How To Save Seeds This Year


You can probably think of a myriad ways to organize your saved seeds, but here are a few possibilities ranging from DIY to fine crafted Monticello boxes ready supplied with heirloom seeds.


Make yourself a system. Borrow an organizer from a beading enthusiast:  individual aluminum containers with translucent tops. Mark with seed names and date.

Monticello Shop

4 Easy Steps

  1. Nurture the plant into a healthy maturity
  2. Allow seeds to mature, harvest and dry pods. Remove husks.From fruits like tomatoes, allow to ferment, then wash seeds after removal from pulp. Dry on a clean surface.
  3. When thoroughly dry, save seeds inside cellophane wrappers, envelopes or jars.
  4. Always store in a cool, dry place.

Garden Basics – Preserve Your Own Seeds

Whether you are homesteading or simply wanting to save some money and make sure you have a supply of your favorite flowers and vegetables, saving your own is a good skill to have.

Seed Saving Bible

The Complete Guide to Preserving Your Own Seeds for Your Garden: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply (Back-To-Basics) (Back to Basics Growing)
The Complete Guide to Preserving Your Own Seeds for Your Garden: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply (Back-To-Basics) (Back to Basics Growing)

No small chapter on keeping seed, this is an entire tome that covers the A to Z. I think one reason we hesitate to do something like preserving seeds for ourselves is because we don’t know enough about it.

This is a book for every garden bookshelf.

Really.

What A Seed Swap Looks Like

Remember

Seeds saved from hybrids don’t come true from seeds collected from the parent plants.

Add Seedlings For Variety And Convenience

Swap Tips

Make a list of your desired seeds in advance. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement, forgetting your original list of wanted seeds.

Write down your list to keep focused.

There is no one way to gather and keep seeds. If you wish to build your own collection of heirlooms and special varieties, a book with the various techniques and the growing directions for at least a hundred kinds of common home garden plants is a great start.

Learn How To Observe This Day

Gardeners can benefit each other and build a seed bank

Seed Preservation is Quite Easy

It is so easy to save seeds, but there are a few things to remember:

(1) One thing is to keep the seeds dry. They germinate with moisture, so it makes sense to keep seeds dry as you save and store them.

Simply keeping seeds is often a matter of collecting and keeping your seeds dry. The reason a seed swap is so helpful is the chance to meet with other gardeners for tips and to learn from their seed saving techniques- plus the chance to come by seeds you may otherwise not collect or grow, on your own.

(2) The temperatures for storage should stay on the cool side, but most seeds are best if not frozen.

The directions for saving and storing seeds use words like “often” or “most” since the majority of seeds are gathered and behave, once stored, in the same way. But not all do. If you know what conditions your desired seeds may need, you can preserve them until they are needed without any trouble.

(3) Some seeds need special conditions. Whether they need scarification, or freezing, certain light conditions or not, there are directions to help you have success. Key to success: following the directions for the desired seed.

Look up information on the seeds you plan to save. For newbies it is probably a good idea to stay with the common, simpler types of seeds.

If you like a challenge, however, go ahead and try something that needs scarification, time in winter conditions to sprout.

Tips On Organizing Your Seeds

Seed Saving Handbook

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, 2nd Edition
Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, 2nd Edition

In its 2nd edition because so many gardeners find the information so helpful. Vegetable gardening is becoming a more important endeavor for many gardeners including myself.

Where did all the heritage tomatoes come from? Those who understood these techniques and kept delicious, little-known varieties alive by saving their seeds.

Now the rest of us can learn how.

One of the best, most basic, books on the topic. This is the book you will reach for when starting seeds and saving your own heirlooms.


Seed Saving and Swapping Links

Ilona has gardened actively for most of her life, and been a writer and webmaster online since 1998. Homeschooled all 10 of her children.

What Makes a Low Maintenance Garden?

by

Front garden entry
Berberis thunbergii atro nana “Crimson Pygmy” (5); Spirea bumalda “Gold Mound” (1) ; Prunus laurocerasus “Otto Luykens” (6) ; Spirea bumalda “Limemound” (1)

It is increasingly the Holy Grail of garden designs: making a landscape low maintenance. For many reasons, reducing the work load of our outdoor spaces has become a priority.

  • We are busy with many activities
  • We are aging
  • Viewing flowers rather than weeding flowerbeds is preferable

That is not the definitive list, by any means, but it does hit the highlights of why this style of landscaping is increasing in desirability.

What are the Characteristics of Easy Care Yardspaces?

  1. Perennial Plantings. The more permanent the planting, the less work it involves annually. Chores of caring for the plants are still present, but the larger larger spaces that are taken up by the individuals and groups of trees, shrubs, and long lived herbaceous flowers will cut down on weeding and replanting.
  2. Larger Groups. This is basic to good design, too. using a larger number of the same kind reduces work in two ways: symbiotic health of the plants is increased and the required care is given to the whole grouping.
  3. Like-minded Plants. Culturally harmonious in moisture fertility, and light requirements means they stay happy together and the gardener doesn’t have to cater to one or two unhappy plants in the group.
  4. Hardy and Tolerant. Under your garden conditions, the plants should be varieties that are easier to care for to begin with… persnickety ones demand more cultivation, attention, and replacement.
  5. Mowing Ease. In your design, tailor the shape of beds and tree wells, as well as the position of low hanging branches to aid in ease of lawn maintenance (if you have a lawn).

Those are my top 5 tips for creating a more low maintenance space.

More Gardening Tips

A formal, manicured style is much more work than a naturalistic design.

Manicured shrubs take constant care.

There are other refinements like using mulch to suppress weeds and conserve moisture.

Increasing the amount of shrubbery for fragrance, flowers, and foliage interest is another improvement to be made in most landscapes. Don’t overlook the value of well-behaved shrubs.

Dwarf shrubs add color and seasonal interest.

One consideration related to suggestion #5 is whether a plant is a thug, having invasive traits. Think, before introducing it to the garden. Sometimes it is a fine line of definition that divides the ground covers from the invasives. Find out “what is considered what” in your own area of the country.

Soil building is foundational to better gardens with less care.

Two Ways

1 Starting over from scratch in designing the yard might be the quickest way to ensure that it adheres to all the best practices in lowering the workload. Use hardscaping to control and access portions of the garden. Plant only easy to grow, healthy trees, shrubs, and flowers.

2 Most of us are in the second group, however. We inherited a garden, and important large trees, or we have a love of growing a wide number of things, both easy and more challenging. Yet, the need to have a less demanding landscape is imperative for us.

For gardeners in the second group, some hard decisions need to be made: removing certain plants and even woody specimens. Forgoing types of plantings or styles that are labor intensive is another choice sometimes made, sometimes forced upon us.

Both efforts -whether starting from the beginning or taking over an established landscape- benefit from improving the soils with compost and amendments.

Perennial Plant Examples to Use

pink daylilies
‘Catherine Woodbery’ is a tried and true Hemerocallis.

Take a look at any public planted spaces and you will quickly find an array of what landscapers choose:

  • Daylilies
  • Russian Sage
  • Veronicas
  • Ornamental grasses
  • Rudbeckias
  • Sedums

Those backbone species don’t need to be the entire composition of your own place, but can start out your short list of easy care plants. Use choices planted in berms and along roadways to give you ideas for what works well in your climate and/or urban conditions.

The Most Important Consideration

The garden should serve the home and the people in it. At the same time, recognizing that it fits in the greater ecology of the planet, the use of the earth surrounding our houses should be healthy for plants, animals, and humans alike.

Lower maintenance goals work alongside this greater one, since designing in tandem with nature means the garden will require less to look good. The plants are healthy when they have the soil, light, and moisture that is best for their needs. They will then need little to no interference of chemical support.

 

Create A Child’s Garden, Grow Love For Nature

by

 

Let Your Children Discover the Benefits of Gardening

by Jaine on Flickr
by Jaine on Flickr

Do some of your goals for your children include eating more vegetables, better grades, and improved immune system? Does that seem too good to believe if I told you gardening is a pathway to all three? Well, believe it! Gardening is good for children, and they can have fun enjoying the beauty and curiosities of nature while those goals of yours are part of the menu.
Children Who Garden

Growing their own vegetables encourages children to be excited about eating them.

Playing in the dirt, (AKA gardening and growing plants), is known to improve immune response due to contact with certain helpful bacterium.(1 )

Gardening involves science, and is a great hands on way to learn more about science related subjects. (2)

 

peter rabbit
Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit

Beatrix Potter books are full of stories that involve the garden, from Mr. McGregor’s busy work in the vegetable rows to Mr. Benjamin Bunny’s stroll..

What Type of Garden Is Best For Children?

Which would you like for your children?

The type of garden that matches the child’s interests is the best for them. This will vary with their age and other factors…including your own interests and what you would like to introduce to them. A garden of good things to eat is always popular, so salad gardens or herb gardens can be a place to start. Fun themes, like a pizza garden that includes all the makings of a great pizza (tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano) is one that is easy to grow and supplies the kitchen.

Do your children want to have fun with crafts? Pressed flowers from their own garden patch may be inspiration for the garden they wish to grow. Bird house gourds to carve and paint, or decorative Indian corn provide plenty of craft materials. Even grow your own dried flower supplies, and then create Christmas gifts for that year.

 

If you have the room, giant pumpkins might be a choice to provide a porch pumpkin in the fall- the biggest in the neighborhood! Match up your space, your child’s interests, and your own- the project might be so much fun that it will inspire a lifetime of love for gardening.

A Fairy Garden Project – The perfect plan for interesting your child

Next- just grow stuff

That’s right, some potting soil, big size seeds like nasturtiums and zinnias, or beans, an empty eggshell pot or old egg carton and you have started! Just seeing those green sprouts pop through the soil is enough to get the ball rolling.

Now you are ready to go out in the garden and plant, weed, and harvest. It’s the joy of fresh air with all the interesting things of nature right at your fingertips.

 

Enchanted Fairy Garden Kit

Learning about science, gardening, and being creative is all part of the Fairy Garden experience. why not order a kit or gather together materials to make a miniature garden together?

This could be one garden that is truly your child’s own. It can be a wild garden or one that is indoors, there are so many possibilities!

Be sure to watch the delightful video with children constructing an easy and charming garden from a kit.

You could easily assemble all of these things for a gift your child or grandchild will remember with joy.

Simple gardens for young children, but the age group for which this kind of project is ideal is anywhere from 6 to 12 yrs. old. Or should I say “to adult”? Since we never really outgrow the fascination with making such gardens!
Enchanted Fairy Garden Kit

Catch your child’s interest and imagination with a wonderful Fairy garden-this makes a nice starter kit.

Help Children Keep Tools Organized – With Their Own Garden Tool Set And A Tote

Go Green & Giggle Greenhouse Kit with Tote, Book and Song Cd
Go Green & Giggle Greenhouse Kit with Tote, Book and Song CD

I have my own garden tote very similar to this one, and it is great for keeping all those different hand tools together while working and ready for storage.

 

A Butterfly Net – Catching butterflies on a summer afternoon

If you have a bug house, you will want an insect net to safely catch flying insects. While catching butterflies is something that shouldn’t be done to excess, there are plenty of other insects, like grasshoppers, lightning bugs, moths, etc. that could use a nice little net like this for capture.

Of course, catching cabbage butterflies, which are in no danger and prove a nuisance to many plants, might be the perfect ones to stalk with this net.

Melissa & Doug Bella Butterfly Net
Melissa & Doug Bella Butterfly Net

Everyone is fascinated by butterflies and this net is a safe way to catch some for a closer look. Have a roomy bug house for them and release them when the day is over.

Tips for Gardening with Children – Don’t make chores too much of a chore

  1. There are tasks, but try to keep garden time fun. Keep a balance, and don’t let the child’s garden become more of a punishment than a pleasure.
  2. Choose easy plants, nothing teaches better than success. That is what hooked most of us on gardening. Remember biting into your first homegrown, juicy tomato? Even a child can grow a pot of patio, bite size tomatoes. Easiest Plants For A Child’s Garden
  3. For young gardeners keep the space small… the work should not be overwhelming. You might consider container or raised bed gardens for this reason.
  4. Let them have fun with garden ornaments or odd types of plants… or make a toad house or fairy house as part of the project. A toad house is as simple as a broken flower pot turned on its side, a fairy house can be just a makings of bark decorated with moss or something very intricate with little plates and tiny ladders leading to upper floors.The only important thing is the fun.
  5. Smaller children should always have supervision and tools sized and meant for them.Consider this your one on one time together. It is surprising how fresh and new the world looks when discovering it with a young child.
  6. Encourage them to pick their flowers and make flower arrangements. Children delight in picking flowers and being generous in giving bouquets, the flowers all grow back at some point, anyway….whether this year or next.
  7. Keep a nature journal or garden journal for the growing season.Garden Journal Guide gives you the steps to making your own garden journals, and there are lots of lapbook ideas for very little children.

Seeds and Plants to Make a Child Happy

Easy flowers and veggies to grow

The first thing on the list of creating a garden experience for your children is to make it easy to succeed. Certain seeds are easy to plant, sprout quickly, and grow into a satisfactory plant.

What is the best garden for a child?
vote

 

Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children

 

 

Gardening Projects for Kids: Fantastic ideas for making things, growing plants and flowers, and attracting wildlife to the garden, with 60 practical projects and 500 photographs
Gardening Projects for Kids: Fantastic ideas for making things, growing plants and flowers, and attracting wildlife to the garden, with 60 practical projects and 500 photographs

Garden Clothes
Every gardener needs clothes that don’t mind a little dirt and scruff- and that goes double for kids. Overalls, old Tshirts, Wellies or garden shoes, all are good clothing items to wear in the garden

Easiest Vegetable Seeds

Leaf lettuces

Radishes

Swiss Chard

Beets

Green onions

Beans

Plants in the Vegetable Garden:

Tomatoes

Peppers

Broccoli

 

 

Easiest Flower Seeds

Candytuft

Cosmos

Marigolds

Nasturtium

Zinnia

What are some of the easiest seeds for a children’s garden? The easiest plants to grow from cuttings? Find out!

Bright Pink Petunias
Garden variety petunias are a showstopper

Bright Pink Petunias

Easy Plants for the Flower Garden

Petunias

Ageratums

Impatiens

Pansies

Books for Children in The Garden:

Start With A Garden Book

I know, everyone is always trying to sell you something, but really, one of the best ways to introduce your children to the garden is by way of a book. Look for the kind of book written and illustrated just for them, so they can start gaining some enthusiasm for this venture of growing things.

Try one of these book choices.

A Child's Garden: 60 Ideas to Make Any Garden Come Alive for Children (Archetype Press Books)
A Child’s Garden: 60 Ideas to Make Any Garden Come Alive for Children (Archetype Press Books)

Life skills are also a part of the garden experience.

One important characteristic is learning to organize, and what teaches a person this lesson better than keeping important tools together so they are handy when you need them?

Learning to keep tools together so they are easy to put away after the last task is finished is an invaluable quality to cultivate! (Ask me how I know)

A Wheelbarrow: Child size, with a grown-up design

Your child will be happy to help gather leaves and other debris into this child sized, but authentic working tool. This wheel barrow is made of steel.

Toysmith Big Kids Garden Tool Set
Toysmith Big Kids Garden Tool Set

Like mom and dad’s,but in sizes that smaller gardeners can best handle.

CHILDREN IN THE GARDEN THROUGH THE SEASONS

Whether the winter reading and planning, or springtime discovery and planting, summer harvests, or fall leaves, the garden is a whole year of activities, discoveries, and can be fun.

It isn’t all fun and games, of course, but there is always something to do.

There is nothing more natural than sharing your own love of tilling the earth, or at least exploring the wonders of nature in your own backyard.

When gardening we can’t help but interact with mother nature, sunshine,  and fresh air.

 

 

Bug House

A place for the creepy crawlies -much better than pockets 🙂

My children loved these bug houses, and now my grandchildren enjoy observing bugs and insects with the same sturdy screen houses.

Public Gardens Created with Children In Mind

Places for your gardening children to visit

Child's spring day in the garden
Picking pansies, who can resist?

A resource list of places to visit in the USA:

Gardens of Ohio

Buy It Used, and Recycle

Garden with the help of eBay.

Gardening might seem like an old fashioned activity for modern children, a throwback to a more agricultural society, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Is there anything is more pertinent to today’s world than environmental awareness? Gardening is a first hand experience of nature, and it can teach the importance of recycling, as well as something about the challenges of growing food.

Gardening also builds an inner satisfaction that comes from working with nature.

 

Kids Gardening Info and Ideas – more about gardening with children online

cauliflower sheep
Make veggies fun, cauliflower sheep and one broccoli lamb

How to Plant Tulips – Choose healthy bulbs, plant them easily

Dutch bulbs delight children for the same reason they delight everyone: from the almost forgotten fall plantings arise the most fragrant and fantastically colored flowers after the ground seemed barren from winter’s pall.

The fact that everything is included within that compact flower factory we call a “bulb”, and the result is guaranteed for that season makes this the perfect thing to plant to excite a new gardener (or those who have yet to grow their own green thumb).

Spring Bulbs 101 for Beginning Gardeners…

A Child’s Garden – Did you have your own garden?

artists painting
Young Girl In a garden
Did you have a garden as a child?
vote

Growing Indoor Flowers In December

by

Today I was reading Teresa Byington’s Garden Diary blog, and her post on Amaryllis bulbs.

amaryllis bulbs from Lowes
Teresa Byington’s post on growing an Amaryllis bulb

 

She brought back memories of the winter windowsill plantings through the years, including some Amaryllis. As she mentions, this is really easy gardening and most people have great success with the kits that are offered. Amaryllis is one of the most showy, with their huge blossoms crowning the vertical stems.

bulbpan
A bulbpan in a deep windowsill, from past years…

I thought of the first experience I ever had with such plants. When I was only 18, my Aunt had given me a small planter filled with gravel that held paperwhite bulbs. This is another winter favorite and is available in kits, like the ones Teresa B. shows in her post.

Many of them come with everything you need, and stores will sometimes have them already started for you (although I think planting them is half the fun, and is really no work at all).

That long ago memory of the paperwhites shooting up and then blooming with such perfect flowers and sweet fragrance is one of those things that added to my fascination with growing things. It was a wonderful reminder of spring in that cold Chicago winter, I can tell you!

It is such a luxury to have beautiful blooms in the midst of winter’s hold.

The Years Since, Tulips, Crocus, Amaryllis

my christmas rosesThat green bonsai pot with the paperwhites later led to a Smith&Hawken kit with spring bulbs, a number of Amaryllis (they are a bit addicting) and more paperwhites in the ensuing years.

I am never less than enthralled with the process and the result.

Of course, like many of you, the windowsills and table somehow find room for herbs, and bright spots of potted plants (my Christmas rose, Hellborus niger, started in my garden from just such winter pots!)

One tip I picked up from Teresa is to soak my bulbs in “Moopoo” tea. I had never done that. I think I will try that this year. We are never too old to learn, and gardening is one body of knowledge that always keeps growing.

Do you force bulbs or grow winter plants? Which ones are your favorites?

My Favorite Winter Windowsill Plants
  • Usually I buy rosemary plants, often the ones trimmed into Christmas tree shape. I have not yet kept one growing beyond the year purchased.
  • I often purchase herb combinations. I just can’t resist.
  • Amaryllis bulbs are festive and every few years I plant from a kit.
  • Every year I get one of those big splashy poinsettias. Always in a bright Christmas red. I place it on a low table in from of the living room window.
  • Not regularly, but that first time with Paperwhite bulbs is repeated every once in awhile. Their graceful blooms never cease to delight me.

I Found Out About “She Sheds” And Coincidentally, About Friends

by

A high school friend of mine is considering lending his sizable carpentry talents to making “She Sheds”.  I hadn’t even heard of them, although I could make an educated guess as to what they might be. Still, since having a guess is never as good as solid knowledge on a subject, in my opinion, you can see why I then thought I would research the topic a bit.

As it happened, I came upon a Houzz article, which isn’t surprising, since anything to do with houses, or buildings, and interiors sooner or later seems to land on that site! What was surprising to me was to find a post about an old friend of mine. She had a “she shed” featured in the article!

It is the one that heads up this post.

How fun to see how this old friend and her husband had creatively repurposed a shed and decorated it so thriftily and with such panache. It made me happy to think she had this lovely space to retreat to… and it was inspiring, too.

I don’t know if I will need such a space myself, but I am looking to use old materials around here to give them new uses.

I loved reading about someone I knew and seeing the pictures of her triumph. But knowing her… the half has not been told of her talents and the way she and her husband have creatively fixed up their place. It makes me realize that there are so many inventive and creative people out there….  that showcases like Pinterest or Houzz can’t even scratch the surface of the accomplishments of those around us. It is enlightening and inspiring to think that maybe we can do the same.

We just need to look around us, and give it a try.

Rural Landscape

by

Shepherds from my nativity set

I’ve been in the middle of my Christmas devotions on my Advent blog.

While writing about the shepherds watching their flocks (from the Christmas story), I thought about the fact that while sheep were once a common sight in fields around here, there has not been a flock in recent years, now that I think about it.

I know that agriculture business changes quite a bit and sheep raising in Ohio was once big business, before it all moved out West. Then some years ago there seemed to be a resurgence of flocks, so that they were a common, if not ubiquitous sight in my “neighborhood”.

I once thought about raising a few sheep myself, but that is yet another dream that didn’t materialize. There was never the money for simply satisfying my personal curiosity and love of sheep.

Now, I must be contented with a “Sheep” Pinterest board!

From my Pinterest collection

 

 It Has All Changed

Some Natural Changes

It makes me think of the many changes I have observed in the rural landscape over the years. I’m sorry to say that most has been to the detriment.

Windstorms, ice storms, the entry of Emerald borers, Japanese beetles, Stinkbugs, and Asian ladybugs… all are changes in my history here. But it is the manmade changes that most trouble me, as they are those which we could exercise some control over.

I actually saw the last deep economic recession as having a silver lining, in that it put a damper on the mindless development that is steadily creeping into our county.

We have some of the best farming soils in the world, but the greed of people who must ‘develop’ as they call it, and destroy those lands is disheartening. People are not generally long-sighted, and the voice of money has shut up many of the reasonable voices for environmental stewardship.

Are there people who value the production and quiet of the rural countryside left? I mean those who value it enough to preserve it?

We depend on laws and regulations to somehow control the greed, but I really think we need a mindset change. For people generally to be introduced to the beauty, the needs, and the cultivation of the land.

All the shilling about education, and little thought given for education of this kind.

The back field, Alfalfa growing on the right

 

Except From Passionate Gardeners

No Pesticides in my Garden
This is the one light I see shining in this dismal picture.
I see hope in gardeners who carry their love of nature, of growing things and what that inspires, in encouraging responsibility to the environment.
I am so happy when I see people who advocate for sustainable gardens, organic foods and cultivation methods, green tips that are made generally known, and all the many avenues that individual gardeners take as they band together to make a difference.
In their gardens and in society…
I hope that it will extend to create less demand for “people who want to live in the country” – those who then complain about animals, fence off their properties, pour chemicals into their suburban style lawns, and generally make a city out of the once open country.
Instead I wish citizens and homeowners throughout the country would give thought , money, time, and effort to creating places of production, of green spaces, of even the “village green” of old in their own venues and choices of living.
Give some green, space, and quiet in the midst of the cities and suburbs. Make them more “country”. Or at least large swathes of them.
That is a worthy, if lofty and impractical goal.
What is most attainable, however, is our value system. We can fend for that.
“Love for country” takes on a whole new connotation in that case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Visit Ilona’s Garden Journal on facebook: Click here
© 2014 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.