[caption id="attachment_4922" align="alignleft" width="555" caption="High Country Gardens specializes in drought-tolerant plants."][/caption] AS A PART OF OUR ongoing campaign to reduce the impact of the American lawn, we launched guest blog series with our sponsoring partners at High Country Gardens in New Mexico. Rethinking the Traditional American Lawn is a four-part series by High Country Gardens Founde ...

COMPANIES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE Pearls Premium, www.pearlspremium.com ECO-LAWN, www.wildflowerfarm.com High County Gardens, www.highcountrygardens.com With the calendar barreling toward spring, I’m like many people this time of year . . . dreaming about how to make my lawn and garden better. I waited too long last fall on a big seeding project, so I’ll be out there again as soon as this weekend in south ...

EcoSMART Tick Control Remains Best Currently Available Safe Product With gardening season seemingly breaking early in the Northeastern areas of the United States, tick control is once again front and center for homeowners and landscapers concerned about the lyme disease epidemic. News of a new organic tick control product out of Connecticut late last week sounded promising. However, the product — derived fr ...

NOTE: This is an update of a position paper I first published in 2007. As I’ve traveled around the nation on our organization SafeLawns.org, I’ve sensed a tremendous amount of confusion about organic products. “What’s really organic, and what isn’t?” people ask. Just yesterday, on the phone with Consumers Digest magazine, a reporter was asking about the proliferation of seemingly safe, natural products — an ...

Here's a breakdown of various products available for use, with a review of whether or not they'll harm your landscape: http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2011/01/calcium-based-ice-melt-is-safer-for-lawns/ ...

While those of us in the North are primarily concerned with collecting those last few leaves from the lawn to avoid winterkill next spring, many folks in the South are actually preparing to plant. When December arrives, the cooler temperatures turn many Southern lawns brown — which is the natural dormant state. To combat that appearance, the planting of annual and perennial ryegrasses is common. Ryegrasses ...

The SafeLawns fall tour of the Midwest unveiled numerous examples of landscape sustainability in recent days. Hosted by our sponsoring partners at Calcium Products/NatraTurf and Purple Cow Organics, we visited installations at state capitols, college campuses, golf courses, public gardens and private residences during our whirlwind tour. Here are just a few examples: [caption id="attachment_4549" align="ali ...

[caption id="attachment_4533" align="alignleft" width="288" caption="The Fiskars Momentum mower, the best reel machine on the market today."][/caption] Here's a link sent to us by Katy Moss Warner, the emeritus director of the American Horticultural Society and the woman who built and oversaw operations at the Walt Disney World landscape in Orlando for a quarter century. She's a huge proponent of sustainabl ...

[caption id="attachment_4525" align="alignleft" width="540" caption="To upgrade a lawn with terrible soil beneath, we brought in a bulk delivery of compost last weekend. "][/caption] [caption id="attachment_4526" align="alignleft" width="540" caption="We used a landscape rake to spread the compost approximately one-quarter inch thick. With rain coming today, we'll overseed with a layer of perennial ryegrass ...

Spurred by the success of pilot projects at Bowdoin College in Maine and Harvard University in Massachusetts, several other college campuses across the nation have turned aside chemicals on their malls and promenades in favor of a more natural approach. In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, Virginia Smith chats with a groundskeeper who is delighted to have made the switch to organics: http://www.philly.com/phil ...