Category Archives: Garden Design

Gardens as an Antidote to “Extinction of Experience”

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This article was written for the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Quarterly (HPSO) Magazine and was greatly improved by the efforts of the HPSO editorial team.

Robert Michael Pyle first used the term “extinction of experience” over 30 years ago in his memoir, which centers on the power of human-nature interactions. Extinction of experience refers to humankind’s increasing alienation from the natural world and the consequent impacts that include increasing disaffection towards the natural world. As Pyle so eloquently phrased it, “What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?” 1

Children spend less time in nature than the previous generations and this gap has only widened over time.2 Our loss of connection with nature is due in part to lack of opportunity in an increasingly urbanized world. But lack of opportunity grows a loss of emotional affinity to the natural world, thus creating a positive feedback cycle that further distances younger and future generations from nature.3  I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about this concerning trend and how I have seen it manifested in myself, and in younger generations.

I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore City, Maryland, where I relished opportunities to catch lightning bugs, pick mulberries, and crawl through the culverts of channelized streams. These experiences constitute some of my favorite childhood memories. Yet I remember being confused when I learned about deforestation in school, because I could see trees on every street. I had no frame of reference for how vast and diverse nature could be. It wasn’t until I took an undergraduate student position in an ecology lab that I started to understand how important the natural world was to humanity—and to my own existence. I worked in a peri-urban wildlife refuge, where I saw my first deer, hunted for spiders at night, and learned the names of an array of plants, birds, and invertebrates. I describe this time of my life, at the age of 21, as one where I felt like a scrim had been lifted from my eyes, and I saw the world in a whole new light.

My core experiences with nature occurred between 1976 and 1993. But today’s world is different from when I came of age. Decades before we were introduced to virtual reality and the metaverse, two celebrated nature writers warned that “children’s very ability to perceive the environment may be diminished by the replacement of multisensory experiences in richly textured landscapes . . . .“4 Today, humanity lives in a world where the metaverse and social media platforms play an increasingly important role in social construction of reality, including how nature is experienced and perceived.5 In fact, as early as 13 years ago, 7-11 year olds, from both rural and urban settings, were found to be more apt to correctly identify and have positive feelings for virtual animals, compared to local animal species.6

More recent research has found that gardens can counteract extinction of experience. This is somewhat surprising, since gardens themselves are not natural areas; garden floras are diverse mixtures of both planted and volunteer plants and tend to be dominated by non-native and cultivated species.7 Nonetheless, gardens were ranked in the top five most frequented natural areas in a survey of 4,600 French adults.8 Gardens provide opportunities to notice and experience elements of the natural world in an accessible and relatively safe setting. And multiple studies (including those from the Oregon State University Garden Ecology Lab) have shown that, as people become more familiar with the plants, insects,9 and birds10 in a garden, they grow more positive feelings towards the natural world. This cycle of familiarity and increased emotional attachment to nature thus creates a positive feedback loop that disrupts and counteracts extinction of experience.10

There are two things you can do to create a positive feedback loop of familiarity and increased attachment to the natural world in a garden. First, you need to create a space that promotes biodiversity. If you have an affinity for neat and tidy gardens, challenge yourself to create at least one section of the garden that has a more natural look. If your garden is dominated by non-native and cultivated plants, look for opportunities to add a few native plant species. Don’t release beneficial insects into your garden. Instead, try to attract them with proper plant selection and by reducing or eliminating pesticide use. Second, practice noticing and identifying the volunteer plants, resident insects, and visiting birds in your garden.

If you are online, you may want to try using iNaturalist, which is a social media platform that uses artificial intelligence to help identify organisms. However, the artificial intelligence built into iNaturalist depends upon the community of naturalists that use the platform. The community aspect of iNaturalist allows nature lovers to connect with and learn from others. It is not unusual for a nationally or internationally renowned taxon expert to provide species-level determinations for bees, or beetles, or other syrphid flies on this platform. I use iNaturalist often and have expanded my own understanding of local biodiversity as a direct result of my engagement with the site.

Noticing and identifying nature in your garden are the very first steps to growing an appreciation for local biodiversity. Once you are able to identify a new garden organism, further challenge yourself to learn more about its basic biology and ecology. There are so many surprising ways that organisms make their way in this world, including cooperation and altruism to social parasitism and deception. Nature never ceases to amaze me.

This column is most likely to be read by gardeners, who already have a level of appreciation and affinity for plants and greenspaces. What about others, including those most fascinated with the digital and virtual worlds? With my students and my own kids, I try to connect elements from popular movies and video games with analogs in the natural world. The creature from the Predator movies has a face with insectoid-like mandibles that extend like a dragonfly naiad. The fictional Sarlacc pits from Return of the Jedi remind me of how antlion larvae hunt. And when you’re really struggling to catch the attention of someone seemingly bored with the natural world, you can always draw from British biologist Olivia Judson’s excellent and hilarious book,11 Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, which was first recommended to me by a Lane County gardener. For readers of this book, there will be no denying that the natural world is often stranger than fiction.

A few of the 213 garden species observed during a 2021 one-day BioBlitz of Oregon Gardens. There is a diversity of nature in every garden, particularly if you can pull back on pesticides and other design and management practices that exclude diverse species.

References

  • 1Pyle, Robert M., The Thunder Tree: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
  • 2Clements, Rhonda, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 5(1): 68-80, 2004.
  • 3Soga, Masashi and Gaston, Kevin J., Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(2): 94-101, 2016.
  • 4Nabhan, Gary P. and St Antoine, Sarah, Chapter 7. (pp 229-250) in, The biophilia hypothesis Island Press, 1993.
  • 5Rossmeier, Albert. Chapter 23 (pp 429-449) in, Landscape Conflicts: Springer, 2024.
  • 6Ballouard, Jean-Marie et al. Public Library of Science, 6(8): e23152, 2011.
  • 7Thompson, Ken, et al., Journal of Vegetation Science 14(1): 71-78, 2003.
  • 8Colléony, Agathe, et al., Landscape and Urban Planning 159: 23-31, 2017.
  • 9Anderson et al., HortTechnology 31(4): 458-469.
  • 10Garfinkel, Megan, et al. Biological Conservation 289: 110400, 2024.
  • 11Judson, Olivia. Dr. Tatiana’s sex advice to all creation: The definitive guide to the evolutionary biology of sex. Macmillan, 2003.

Behind the Scenes of the Portland Bee Guide!

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What is the Portland Bee Guide? 

This month has seen the release of the Portland Bee Guide! This guide was a collaborative project among many different members of the Garden Ecology Lab, along with numerous others inside and outside Oregon State University. Our goal for the project was relatively simple: create an accessible guide to Portland bees. If you haven’t already, click here to download the Portland Bee Guide. It contains species descriptions of 67 bee species found in Portland, OR, gardens (including the ones seen below!), and the accompanying iNaturalist guide (click here) contains photos and interactive functional trait filters for each species. Read on for bonus content, not included in the bee guide or in the social media campaign we ran to promote the guide earlier in recent weeks.  

This blog will also serve as an access point to the social media content, for those not on Instagram or Facebook. The social media campaign contained three sets of posts: one focused on floral resources for bees, another on nesting sites for bees, and the final was a feature of some of the Portland bee-friendly gardeners. 

Making the Guide 

Most of my time spent on the guide happened in my home, which is my preferred work space (it helps that a cat is included). Specifically, a table on the same back patio where I grew up spending time with my family in the outdoors as I was growing up. When I entered graduate school, the sampling in Portland gardens was already finished—so many people had contributed to this project before I ever knew it existed. The main thing that inspired me to work in science communication was the opportunity to serve as a liaison between the academic sphere and the public sphere. I’ve always enjoyed interacting with people, and was parented by scientists who valued their work in Extension programs. 

The back patio, where I spent much of my time this past summer working on the bee guide.

Because so much of my work took place on my computer, far removed from the soil, forage, and buzzing bees of Portland, I knew I wanted to make visiting some of the gardens a priority. This would allow me to have a deeper understanding of the guide itself prior to its release, as well as to take photographs and interview some of the gardeners who hosted diverse bee communities in their backyard. I completed my visits in June 2023, and got a chance to talk with gardeners about their successes, setbacks, motivations, and more. Let’s look at some of these gardens! 

Our 3 Featured Gardeners 

Pascal: “Small and mighty” 

Pascal’s garden is in Northeast Portland. He lives just off a busy street, so his main goal when creating his garden was privacy. I was inspired by Pascal’s eye for design—his garden, to me, was the definition of maximizing space. He has created a layered effect, with winding pathways, designated sections for food crops and ornamental plantings, but everything blended seamlessly. Though I could tell from the road that Pascal’s garden was going to be quite something, while I was inside it felt like I was in on a secret: here I was, in a secluded refuge. 

I asked Pascal!

What is the biggest challenge you deal with in your garden? “My biggest challenge is keeping the garden healthy and thriving during dry stretches of weather, which seem to be getting longer each year. I use soaker hoses throughout the garden and run them once a week, but during extreme heat and dry weather over the last few summers, the stress on the plants is obvious. I’m now running them more often, and this year, earlier than in previous years. More water means a bigger water bill, but it’s better than losing established plants to drought. When I do lose plants, I now plant replacements that are native and more drought tolerant.” 

What has been your biggest gardening success? “My biggest gardening success has been transitioning this yard, that was basically lawn and a few trees, into a biodiversity hotspot with almost 80 species of plants stuffed into a small space. All those plants now provide a lush green wall that blocks out some of the noise and business of our urban location. They also provide shelter and forage year-round for a variety of birds, insects (including pollinators), a few small mammals and even a lost cat, who we were able to rehome.”  

What is your favorite spot in the garden? “My favorite spot in the garden is under the canopy created by a series of overlapping trees that create a cool, shaded area over the lawn. It’s the perfect spot to sit on a hot day and face out towards the surrounding gardens and see all the activity that is going on with birds, bees, and other insects moving around. The yard is still noisy, but sitting under those trees feels peaceful.”  

Pascal and my father, Neil (also a retired Community Horticulturist for Oregon State), talking about plants in Pascal’s urban refuge. I love this photo because you can get a feel for the layered effect that this garden has. The variety of foliage textures makes the space feel welcoming, cozy, and vibrant.

Bob: “A bee’s urban paradise” 

I visited Bob, along with a fellow Master Gardener, Cathy, at the Multnomah County Master Gardeners Demonstration Garden. This garden is open to the public, and Bob made is clear that visitors are welcome. Visitors are free to come walk around the garden, which is not limited to pollinator-oriented spaces. Other gardeners focus on food crops, ornamental plantings—there’s even a willow tunnel to walk under. The garden is beautiful, and worth a stroll-through if you’re in the area. It was such a joy to talk with both of them—their passion for both pollinators and gardening was tangible, and his interest in learning more about the bees he was seeing in his plot was inspiring.  

Bob and Cathy standing next to their sign at the Multnomah County Demonstration Garden. If you’re in the Portland area, take a visit! It’s open to the public, and they were both wonderful to talk to.

The number of active pollinators here was astounding! Many of my now-favorite bee photos came from my visit to Bob’s garden. Male long-horned and leaf-cutter bees snoozing inside California poppy, Agapostemon (“green bees”) on Gaillardia, and bumble bees abounded during my midday visit. Many of those bees are pictured in our social media campaign, which will be included below.  

I asked Bob!

What is the biggest challenge you deal with in your garden? “Unwanted plants. However, we have developed management strategies to deal with them. We plant very densely and layer plants vertically; we also tolerate some ‘weeds’.” 

What has been your biggest gardening success? “Over time, Master Gardener colleagues—some of whom initially looked askance at what we were doing—have come to appreciate the aesthetic of our plantings. While some still wouldn’t garden the way we do, they now recognize that there’s a method to our madness.”  

Where is your favorite spot in the garden? “I enjoy standing at the intersection of the steppingstone pathways, where I feel engulfed by vegetation.”  

Sherry: “A suburban oasis” 

Sherry is a long-time supporter of the lab, and follower of our research. One of my favorite parts of her garden is her planting of Douglas aster and goldenrod, which she was inspired to plant based on Dr. Aaron Anderson’s research, a past GEL lab member. The plating overlooks the Willamette River. I included this quote in the social media campaign, but I can’t help from including it here too: “Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass.  

Something I admire about Sherry’s garden is how she incorporates both native plants, and also plants that are important or special to her. It reminds me of my childhood garden growing up, planted and cared for by my parents, both horticulturists. I remember being surrounded by vegetation on our back patio, which was one of the first places I ever experienced the natural world up close.  

I asked Sherry!

What is the biggest challenge you deal with in your garden? “Leaving unwanted and unmulched ground for nesting bees is hard for me. Bare ground goes against my nature!” 

Sherry has done a wonderful job of incorporating more patches of bare soil into her garden: these spots are perfect for ground-nesting bees!

What has been your biggest gardening success? “A bee garden starring Douglas aster and goldenrod, two natives that tested well in the Garden Ecology Lab research. I added Allium, Emerus, rose, Persicaria, Phlox, Verbascum, and a Vitex for diversity and to extend bloom time.” 

Where is your favorite spot in your garden? “I favor areas where there is a place to pause and reflect: an alcove off the driveway affords a scene of raised beds against a coral-colored wall, a bench surrounded by a circle of Phlomis offers expansive views of the pollinator garden, and a second-story deck gives a bird’s eye view of colorful shrubs and perennials below.”  

Sherry standing next to the Phlomis in her June garden. This is one of her favorite spots to pause and admire the work she has put into this space. I can see why!

Social media content lives here, too!

Above: the set of slides included in our first post, which focused on floral resources for bees.

Above: the set of slides for our second post, which covered nesting sites for bees.

Above: the third and final post in our social media campaign, featuring Portland gardeners Pascal, Bob, and Sherry!

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to tune in over the past month. Take some downtime during our rainy Oregon winter to familiarize yourself with the written guide PDF (downloadable here) and the online interactive iNaturalist guide (click here), so you’re ready for all our Portland bees next spring!

Do you have questions about the guide? I am more than happy to chat with you! Feel free to reach out to me at nicolecsbell@gmail.com.

Biodiverse Gardens Can Improve Bee Nutrition and Reduce Bee Disease

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This article was originally written by Gail Langellotto for publication in the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Quarterly Magazine, available to HPSO members.

You are what you eat. This phrase can be traced back to an 1826 essay by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote ‘Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.’ Diet and health are inextricably linked for almost all animals, including bees.

Bees foraging from flowering plants obtain carbohydrates from nectar. Pollen provides protein, fats, and vitamins. While the quantity of food is provided by the abundance of floral plantings, the quality of food is determined by the diversity of floral plantings. This is because different flowering plants offer different nutrients to bees’ diets. And, different bees have different nutritional requirements that vary among species, or that vary across life stages of a single species. For example, mason bee larvae (Osmia bicornis) larvae performed best on carbohydrate rich diets. Fluctuations in protein made little different to bee health, but carbohydrate deficiencies slowed mason bee larval growth and reduced survival[i]. Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) foragers select foods that provide a target mix of 71% proteins, 6% carbohydrates, and 23% lipids[ii].

A graph with nutrient 1 on the x axis and nutrient 2 on the y axis. Five ellipses are drawn in two dimensional space, to illustrate the hypothetical nutritional niches of five bee species.
Hypothetical optimal (horizontal lines within each ellipse) and the tolerated nutritional niche (lighter color of each ellipse) of five bee species (Sp1, Sp2, etc.). Strong deviations from the optimal nutritional niche will likely lead to negative impacts on bee health, over time. From Parreño et al. 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534721003335#f0010

Diverse floral plantings also help to reduce bee disease. Flowers have been shown to be hotspots for bee disease transmission. If you think of a flower as an elementary school drinking fountain, it makes sense that a sequence of bees could be exposed to disease carried by previous floral visitors. Following a visit by parasite-infected bumblebees, some flowering plants (such as milkweed or bee balm) harbored more bee pathogens than others (e.g. thyme or snapdragons) [iii]. And here’s a fun fact you have likely never come across before: bees preferentially poop on seaside daisy compared to a variety of other flowering plants in the Malvaceae, Verbenaceae, or composites with less floral area in disk flowers[iv]. Planting diverse flower types diffuses interactions between healthy and diseased bees. Not all floral morphologies effectively hold and transfer disease. And, planting diverse plant types provides more foraging options for bees, which can limit opportunities for healthy and diseased bees to come into contact.

While some flowers may be hotspots for bee disease transmission, others provide anti-microbial compounds that help some bee to naturally fight disease. The common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens), but not the brown-belted bumblebee (Bombus griseocollis) was able to fend off parasite infection after consuming sunflower (Helianthus annuus) pollen[v].

Research on the nutritional ecology of wild bees is relatively young. And, from what we’ve learned thus far, different bee species have different nutirtional needs. It’s thus impossible to provide a specific garden plant recipe that can promote optimal bee health. Nonetheless, a few key points are clear. Monocultural cropping systems are harmful to bee nutrition. Just as you or I could not achieve optimal health by limiting our diet to one food item, neither can bees. And, this nutritional harm that monocultural cropping systems presents to bees doesn’t even consider the increased pesticide applications that single-cropped systems generally require. Gardens, on the other hand, are better poised to meet the nutritional requirements of bees, by virtue of the diverse flowering plant community that is typical of most gardens.

Thus, in case you need a reason to go out and discover new flowering plants for bees and other beneficial insects in your garden, bee nutrition is yet one more reason to build biodiverse plantings into your garden design.

An image of garden flowers, with lawn in the foreground.
Gardens with diverse and abundant flowers provide healthy nutritional landscapes for bees. Photo by Gail Langellotto
An image of a young woman, collecting bees from flowering plants in a container garden.
Container gardens can be used to provision diverse floral resources for bees, when space or soil is limited. Photo by Gail Langellotto

[i] Austin and Gilbert. 2021. Solitary bee larvae prioritize carbohydrate over protein in parentally provided pollen. Functional Ecology 35: 1069-1080. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13746

[ii] Kraus et al. 2019. Bumblebees adjust protein and lipid collection rules to the presence of brood Current Zoology 65: 437-446. https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz026

[iii] Adler et al. 2018. Disease where you dine: plant species and floral traits associated with pathogen transmission in bumble bees. Ecology 99: 2535-2545. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2503

[iv] Bodden et al. 2019. Floral traits predict frequency of defecation on flowers by foraging bumble bees. Journal of Insect Science 19: 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/iez091

[v] Malfi et al. 2023. Sunflower plantings reduce a common gut pathogen and increase queen production in common eastern bumblebee colonies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290: 20230055. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0055

No Mow May

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Cartoon: Seppo Leinonen, www.seppo.net/e/

A short story about grass

Lawns are perhaps one of the most controversial spaces when it comes to improving landscapes for wildlife. When I was in college, I threw myself head first into becoming more “green”, which for me meant being the best environmental and eco-friendly entomologist I could be. That meant changing not only my own habits, but those of my parents who, fortunately for me and maybe less fortunately for them, lived only thirty minutes away from my university.

It started with composting. After we got over the discussion about how to properly care for an indoor bin to avoid fruit flies AND my mom saw how much deliciously rich soil her dear friend yielded from her own bin, composting was a hit. My mom still tells me how amazed she is by how quickly the pile reduces every spring. I’m still surprised as to how easy of a practice it was for them to adopt.

The topics that came next were bees, buying local, what organic means, reusable everything, why you should check the insulation on the house before even thinking about buying solar panels, and then, after I took two landscape design courses, we approached the topic of grass. For this talk, which actually spanned months, I came prepared with books, quotations, and 3 or 4 finely detailed maps with elaborate plans for turning my parent’s yard into a pollinator sanctuary.

My parents and I at my graduation

I began with dropping hints that this talk was coming. I would casually add “lawns should be like area rugs, not wall to wall carpeting” into a conversation, or post graphics like the one at the beginning of this blog on Facebook, and tag my parents in it. I even gave my dad Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of our Own Backyards by Sara Stein for Father’s Day. I knew this was a change that would take a lot more time than the compost.

Truthfully, I started with my mom. She’s the outdoor gardener, my dad is the houseplant guy. And, as anyone who has ever been a child knowns, there’s always one parent or guardian you go to first for the more difficult requests. For the most part, my mom was excited to see me become a budding naturalist. Around the house or on hikes I would point out plants I now knew the names of, and together we would assess the basal leaves of new garden growth, trying to figure out what in the world did she plant next to the lupine in the garden last year. When I got my wisdom teeth removed, she and the nurse patiently waited while I explained how to identify the red oak next to the car from other common oaks planted as street trees. I made it my mission to make my mom a budding naturalist, too.

My mom and I putting together a raised garden bed last summer (2021).

When my landscape design class ended, I took my mom on a tour of her property, pointing out all of the potential diversity their landscape could support if they turned it into something beyond grass. I described the changes I recommended, I explained the benefits of the rain gardens, the swales, the terraced lowbush blueberries for the front yard, the beautiful meadow that would grow in the seasonal wet spot in the backyard and enhance the firefly populations we see glowing in the summer. I explained that though the initial transition would take a lot of work, the result would be significantly less maintenance for them, and they would sit atop the ecological design of my dreams. And there would be so much less lawn, err grass for them to mow.

Nearly 10 years later, I am reluctant to report that the quantity of grass covering my parents’ landscape remains relatively similar. The problem with my plan? I went too big. If mom was not ready to completely transform 3.5 acres, then dad certainly would not be either. Though they both appreciated and complemented my thoughtfulness and the rigor behind my design work when I reviewed it with them, my bold idea of turning the yard into a part pick your own blueberry farm and part pollinator paradise certainly scared them from asking my opinion on any further garden projects for a while.

I refused to let this setback alter my new found passion for increasing the value of my childhood home (to wildlife). I continue to share information with my parents, but in small doses rather than in huge design plans. My mom happily adds native plants we pick out together to her gardens and excitedly reports back about the bees she sees visiting them. They’ve added a small planting of mint outside the kitchen to keep the ants at bay, and when it comes to the lawn, they don’t mind leaving the dandelions and other wildflowers (“weeds”) for wildlife to snack on in the spring. And they’re not afraid of asking my advice on new plants or yard projects, though they don’t always utilize it.

Perhaps the most important result of my collegiate mission for Making the Hayes Family Eco-Conscious was helping my parents to see their yard differently, to help them see the potential that exists underneath all of the grass. I hope part two of this blog post might make you do just the same.

Dandelions covering a field in Northern Vermont

No mow May & reimagining our yards

No mow may is an initiative that started in the United Kingdom and has since spread to numerous other countries. To participate is relatively simple: don’t mow your lawn for the month of May. The goals of the initiative include increasing forage for pollinators and other wildlife, and creating awareness about the negative ecological impact of intensively managed lawns.

The practice of reducing mowing to promote diversity is supported by research. A meta-analysis of studies from North America and Europe found that both plant diversity and invertebrate diversity is higher in urban lawns with a lower mowing intensity. This increase in diversity was true regardless of mowing height or frequency, and the authors also found that weeds and invertebrate pests occurred in higher quantities with intensive mowing in many Northern regions.

In terms of surface area, the largest irrigated crop in the United States is lawn. Our idyllic front and backyard monocultures have been cultivated as such to meet the dominant neat and tidy aesthetic. This aesthetic has been so deeply wound into our culture that untidy yards are accused of being a sign of disrespect to one’s neighbors. The impact is such that if you choose to maintain a yard outside of this aesthetic, you have defend yourself against your neighbors with signage.

  • Courtesy of The Bees Weeds on Etsy
  • Courtesy of the Xerces Society
  • Courtesy of the National Wildlife Federation
  • Courtesy of the Xerces Society

Perhaps some of this discomfort with weedy yards is due to misinformation- common wildflowers like dandelions, goldenrod, and even sneezeweed have poor reputations because they are thought to cause seasonal allergies. Insect-pollinated plants, which all three of these happen to be, actually shed very little pollen into the air. These plants have co-evolved with their insect pollinators, such that insect-collected pollen grains are actually often larger and/or heavier than those of wind-pollinated plants, and as a result, their pollen cannot easily drift into our respiratory tracts. Many tree species and grasses (which we in the Willamette Valley know all too well about) are more likely to be the culprit for seasonal pollen allergens.

Whether it’s the allergens, the HOA, city standards, your landlord, your own personal preference, or societal pressures that encourage you to keep your yard tidy, there are many small ways in which to increase the productivity and diversity in your landscape. One option is No Mow May- committing to the whole month, or even part of it, to increase the availability of flora to early emerging invertebrates. Reducing mowing frequency is another option, or mowing around weeds like hedge nettle, creeping Charlie, heal-all and others that you may find some insects foraging on. Or perhaps you can replace a small section of lawn a native plant garden, or butterfly garden, or plant some giant sunflowers for the birds.

Left: Photo by Raquel Gilliland. Center & Right: Photos © Saxon Holt / PhotoBotanic.com

I have compiled a few resources related to No Mow May below, in addition to some more “neighborly” ways you can begin changing your own yard’s aesthetic. If you decide to go No Mow May, we’d love to hear about your experience!

“A weed is a flower in the wrong place” – Ian Emberson

Resources

Plantlife: No Mow May
Bee City USA: No Mow May
PennState Extension: Neighborly Natural Landscaping in Residential Areas
Buzzing and Beautiful: Designing Pollinator Gardens with OSU Extension
OSU Extension: Enhancing Urban and Suburban Landscapes to Protect Pollinators
A Tribute To The Monarch Butterfly: How to Turn Your Backyard Into a Butterfly Friendly Habitat
Fine Gardening: Defining the New American Cottage Garden (my personal favorite aesthetic!)
www.healthyyards.org

Left: original source unknown. Right: Sourced from healthyyards.org

Scrub a Dub Dub: 5 Cleaning Tips for a Healthy Garden!

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What… is it already time to think about spring cleaning?! It might still be winter, but spring will be here faster than we know it. Some quick cleaning is a great way to take care of a garden that we enjoy during the year!

If you’re wondering where to start, this blog post could be a way to jumpstart your cleaning. Here’s 5 tips on things to clean in the garden.

  • Bird feeders.

It’s a great feeling to see all types of birds using and enjoying your bird feeder. While they’re great, bird feeders can actually pose a major threat to bird health: excrement that is on the feeder perch can pass from bird to bird, spreading Salmonella and other diseases. Even if you don’t see dead birds around your bird feeder, birds that use your feeder could still be passing disease elsewhere, after they use it. Luckily, it’s a simple fix! How to clean a bird feeder: It’s best to clean your bird feeder regularly, say in between fills. Ideally, take it inside and wash it with soap and water. Then, soak it in a bleach solution (9:1 water to bleach) for 10 minutes. Rinse again to rid the feeder of any bleach solution. Make sure to wash your hands after touching the feeder! For more information, check out this link.

  • Bird baths.

Bird baths: Algae isn’t fun to look at, but did you know it’s also dangerous for birds? Luckily, there’s simple fixes to keep bird baths clean and fresh for visitors! The easiest way to help keep your bird bath clean is to wash it out regularly (sometimes even every day, especially in the summer). 

There are two other mixing solution options for doing a deep clean of your bird bath: vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. Each mixture is nine parts water and one part vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. Use a scrub brush to fully clean the bath and then ensure no cleaning mixture remains. Refill with water, and you’re good to go!

For more information, check out this link.

Photo by Nicole Bell.
  • Gardening tools.

Tools help us take great care of the garden… let’s show the same level of care to our gardening tools! Cleaning gardening tools helps to extend their lifespan and can also help prevent the spread of disease. 

How to clean gardening tools: Different options exist to clean gardening tools. For those tools that have metal, you can fill a 5 gallon bucket with sand and about a quart of car motor oil. After you’re done using the tools for the day, dip them in the sand and oil mixture. This mix helps to both clean the blade and coat it in a thin layer of oil. If you want to do a deep clean, you can wipe off any tools with a damp rag and some alcohol. If there’s sap or other buildup on your tools, try using sandpaper to get rid of it. Sandpaper is also a great way to refresh the wooden handle on tools (if you want to add a layer of oil after sanding wood, try mineral oil as a finish)!

For more information, check out this link.

  • Debris from diseased plants. Did you find black spot on any roses last year? How about other diseases on plants in the garden? Remove those diseased leaves or other debris from infected plants to prevent the spread of disease.
  • Stepping stones/moss slipping hazard. Moss is great! But if you have too much of it on your walkways, it can be a slipping hazard. Use your best judgment – if you’re worried about it being a potential hazard, it’s rather easy to select where you want to remove it on pathways/pavers. Mix a solution of bleach with water (up to 15% bleach) and use a scrub brush to agitate and remove the areas of concern.

Happy cleaning!

What we’re looking forward to planting this year

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The growing season is quickly approaching, so I reached out to the members of the Garden Ecology Lab to ask them to share three plants they’re looking forward to growing this year.

LeAnn

Zowie™! Yellow Flame. Photo Courtesy of Johnny Seeds

 I love zinnias so much. This year I want to branch out and grow some less usual ones. Like those in the Queen Lime series and Zowie™! Yellow Flame. 

This isn’t a plant as much as a technique: I really want to maximize vertical space, and grow tomatoes and squash vertically. I’m going the route of C-Bite stake clips, self described as “tinker toys for the garden.” I can attach and snap to common garden stakes and build my own structures. Up, up and away! 

After watching all of the success in the Grow This! challenge last year with potatoes in grow bags, I’m inspired to grow potatoes for the first time. Really excited about this. And remember: the time to plant potatoes is St. Patrick’s Day. 

Tyler

The three veggies I am most looking forward to growing this season are tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. Last season we grew over ten varieties of hot peppers and tomatoes in our hüglekultur beds. These types of beds are great for warm season plants that need just the right soil temperature. I am also looking forward to growing lettuce again next season because I eat so much salad! I got these amazing varieties of lettuce from Wild Garden seeds in Corvallis that I am super excited to try next year. To save space, I like to grow lettuce in a tower. I used chicken wire fencing, plant debris, and potting soil to create the foundation. I then used a stick to poke holes and plant the seeds. It grew into a beautiful ball of lettuce and I am so excited to try it again!

  • Our hüglekultur beds
  • Hüglekultur bed forest of tomatoes and peppers
  • Lettuce tower!
  • Lettuce tower layers
  • Lettuce tower grew into a lettuce poof
  • Sunflower room after we transplanted and seeded
  • Beginnings of the sunflower room
  • Sunflower room all grown up!
  • Random flowers we have planted keep popping up and surprising us throughout the season


In addition to veggies, my goal for my outdoor space has always been to maximize the amount of flowers and wild space, while also reducing the amount of turf grass. During the winter, our garden looks a little unsightly with all the tarps and cardboard we use to smother the grass and weeds. In the spring, we remove the tarps and broadcast seeds all over the yard. My goal is to provide pollinators with year round foraging and improve the biodiversity on our property. One of our big projects last year was making a sunflower room in the yard. We planted American Giant sunflowers in a circle that eventually became a beautiful area for our community to hang out, surrounded by flowers and pollinators.

Jen

Elliot & I don’t have a yard to garden in so we’ve been experimenting with container gardening and a tiered planter box. The only place we can put them is on the north-facing side of our townhouse, which receives direct sunlight for a maximum two hours during the height of summer, so you can imagine our options are limited!

  • Elliot built our garden box!
  • The box needed a lot of soil…
  • Strawberry pots!
  • My “big” snap pea harvest last year
  • ‘Blue Heaven’ Camas

This year I am excited to stop experimenting and just grow some plants that have been successful: strawberries, basil, nasturtium. Although these are fairly basic selections, they have proven to produce in abundance in our tiny space! ( Abundant compared to squash and tomatoes that grow, take up a ton of space, and then get powdery mildew and die before a harvest is even possible).

Mykl

  1. Marigolds. I’m inspired to make a flower one of my goals this years as well. The timing for some summer and especially fall crops for me has been hard as I usually move in the middle of summer. One way or another, I expect to have a place to grow something over this period, and some of it will hopefully be beds of Marigolds.
  2. Napa cabbage, cuz I need to make kimchi again and stop buying it.
  3. Sweet potatoes, cuz I think I can do it again this year. And hey, when you strike it big, you gotta try again.

Nicole

I don’t have a garden to grow in here in Corvallis, but I do have an apartment… with a north-facing balcony. While the conditions aren’t ideal, I do plan to grow a few things in small containers this year.

1) Begonias! I grew them last year, and since they thrive in the shade, I had great success. They provided such a nice pop of color to the balcony and I loved sitting out there in the morning. Plus, you can get so many different colors that even if I have multiple pots they can all bring their own fun.

2) Chard. I haven’t tried this one before… but even if the crop I grow isn’t quite enough to make a meal out of, I love chard because it’s beautiful to look at. Plus, it’s one of the few crops that might make a go of it in the shade. 

3) Fiddle leaf. While I can’t eat this one either, I’ve been growing a fiddle leaf since I moved into my apartment. It lives inside with me during the winter and goes back outside during the summer. It’s easy to take care of, grows relatively quickly, and I love the way the big leaves can add texture and some height to a small gardening space.

Mallory

Last June, I moved into a rental house that has a small, mostly-shaded garden bed in the backyard. I’ve helped out my parents around the garden throughout my childhood, but this is the first garden I can call my own! Last summer I worked on bringing some life into the soil (which was incredibly compacted and muted grayish-brown in color) by growing a cover crop of buckwheat that flowered and brought some bees and syrphid flies to the yard. I then tilled in the “green manure” which attracted worms, millipedes and molds into the soil! Hopefully this will pay off in the Spring, as I’ve seeded a mixture of native and nonnative wildflowers from pollinator seed mixes.

As an undergraduate student studying horticulture I am both thrifty and surrounded by opportunities to acquire plants for free! I am enrolled in a plant propagation course this Winter and will have many seedlings coming my way to plant in the Spring, and through my involvement at the Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture, I generally grow whatever comes my way from the rejects, cuttings and leftovers from the greenhouses there.

If the flower seeds don’t pan out, I hope to grow some of my favorite herbs: Rosemary, Thai Basil and Cilantro!

A green sweat bee visiting a Cosmo, photographed by Mallory last summer

Cara

1.     Prospera basil- this is a disease resistant Italian type basil that simply makes life easier in the pacific northwest!  The downy mildew resistance actually comes from a thai basil parent, though I can’t detect that in the flavor profile much.  Planting this, I can rest assured my basil crop won’t be destroyed by wet weather late spring. 

2.     Japanese trifele black tomato- My favorite heirloom tomato.  This tomato is indeterminate, and has a complex flavor profile that usually comes with black tomato varieties, as well as a silky-smooth texture.  It is wonderful for fresh eating and canning alike!  I like to train my indeterminate tomatoes to a simple trellis constructed of fence posts, electrical conduit pipe, and twine. 

3. Heliotropes- I always purchase a few heliotropes for my patio.  The smell is intoxicating and I love their old fashioned charm.  This is the first year I am planning on starting them from seed.

Signe

Most of my planning for this year has more to do with long-term restructuring than individual plants, but I do have a new bed of Tristar day neutral strawberries I was able to put in last fall. I’m hoping for a much extended strawberry season by adding those to the June bearers.
I am encouraging more natives to spread and self-sow along the front of my property, where I put in a dry streambed a couple of years ago to catch a neighboring spring before it goes down the street. This has worked very well to provide groundwater into the summer.

I’ll be continuing the attempt to eradicate a bed of one native, Asclepias speciosa, which got away from me even though I knew it would be a spreader and was watching it. (Anyone want any? NOT recommended for small spaces). I’ve been collecting Carex, both native and non, to evaluate which are best for gardens here (durable, non-running, attractive year-round).
In my vegetable garden, I will NOT be growing potatoes this year. Last year’s large crop was riddled with wireworm, so I want to give the beds a rest. I may just grow summer cover crops, and grains that can serve that purpose, except for tomatoes, which I always grow a few of.

Charlotte

I’m excited to grow moringa again. Moringa is a superfood, very nutrient dense, and I think the foliage is quite aesthetically pleasing. Moringa prefer warmer weather, so the plants will grow all summer and then go dormant for the fall/winter. We planted the moringa in containers so we can move them around seasonally without disturbing the roots. We have a few dormant moringa plants hanging out in the greenhouses at Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture that are waiting for the return of sunny weather.

Everyone at the ILC Garden is excited to grow Lagos Spinach (Celosia argentea) again. Lagos Spinach (also called Nigerian Spinach, or Efo Shoko) is in the Amaranth family and has beautiful reddish-purple leaves with a bitter taste that really adds to the flavor profile of salads, soups & stir-fries.

Lagos spinach is not quite as bitter as some of the other amaranth leaves I’ve tasted before. As you might deduce from the name, the plant is indigenous to West Africa, but they seemed to be well adapted to the soils and climate of the Willamette Valley summer. Very heat and drought tolerant!!! The plant flowers later in the season, which is an added bonus for pollinators. The lagos spinach was such a lovely addition to the garden last summer… I’ve included a picture, the Lagos spinach is nestled between the collards and sunflowers in the photo.

I also plan to try growing more watermelon this year. We only planted two watermelon plants at the ILC Garden last year, and they did not fair well. We transplanted them a bit late, so I don’t think they had enough time to reach maturity. This year I’m dedicating about 150 sqft under the high tunnel for growing watermelon!

Svea

I don’t have any plans for planting this spring, as there is very little outdoor space at my house in Corvallis, and the indoor space is currently dominated by my twin brother’s many, many succulents, and his newly indoor orange tree. But at my family’s farm, my mom has endeavored these past few pandemic years to bring back her pre-children garden that she loved to work in.

This spring she is planning on planting some different types of tomato plants, as we are a tomato loving family. She also loves to plant sunflowers every year, and we have a measuring contest on which one gets the tallest. I think this year she is going to try her hand at growing different types of peppers and squash. I know she is very excited, and loves to try to to grow many different things, so if anyone has any suggestions, she would love to hear them.


In terms of growing food for the animals, the goats love to eat any (safe) leftovers, or any overripe harvests. Anything they don’t like, the pigs are more than happy to clean up! So we don’t grow anything specific, but some favorites are sunflower seeds for the goats, and potatoes for the pigs. Included here is our goat Nutmeg and her babies from last summer, waiting for some treats! 

Gwynne

We don’t have a vegetable garden going yet, but last year we had an amazing cover crop mix for the  paddocks that were “renovated” by our pigs. The mix included amaranth, field peas, squash, sunflowers, chia, sesame, millet, sorghum, flax, a variety of cereal grains, and other things that I couldn’t identify. It was certainly the most unusual pasture forage that I’ve seen, but our cows and sheep loved it!

Let us know what you’re looking forward to growing this year by commenting below!

The Gardens of Piet Oudolf: Pollinator Paradise?

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Flower-filled garden in Oudolf style
Oudolf-designed garden at Pensthorpe, Fakenham, UK. https://www.fiveseasonsmovie.com/gallery/

As part of Master Gardener Week at the end of October, I had the opportunity to view “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf” and participate in a discussion afterwards. This recently-released film has brought renewed attention to the gardens and landscapes created by this internationally-renowned designer. His popular public garden designs, and several books, have had a profound impact on the design of public spaces, as well as private gardens.

Oudolf’s gardens have been described as spontaneous, immersive and naturalistic, and rely heavily on grasses and structural perennials to maintain visual interest well into the winter. They evoke flower-filled meadows and prairies, and seem at first glance like places that could, indeed, have occurred spontaneously. Oudolf himself acknowledges, though, that they require a certain amount of “interference”, and his design process is comprehensive and very specific. He has a palette of plants that he has tested over time for durability and effect.

During the bloom season, one imagines these gardens will be buzzing with pollinators, and be places of lively, hungry activity. When it comes to pollinators, it seems, almost any garden is better than no garden at all, and a garden doesn’t need to be designed especially for pollinators in order to offer benefits to them. As research in this lab has shown, though, a garden designed specifically to be pollinator friendly has an outsized impact.

So I wondered, how pollinator-friendly are Oudolf’s naturalistic gardens, really?
On the positive side:
• Lots of flowers. From early season to late, things are blooming. Plants are left standing well into winter, providing seed and shelter.
• Little or no use of pesticides.
• Native plants are often included, though there is no particular emphasis on them.

Pollinator friendly flowers
Pollinator-friendly flowers in Oudolf Field, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, Bruton, UK. https://www.fiveseasonsmovie.com/gallery/

On the negative side:
• Maintenance involves cutting everything to the ground in late winter. This destroys the winter homes of cavity-nesting bees that use the stems. At the Lurie garden in Chicago, this problem was recognized and steps were taken to leave some stems standing.
• Lack of layering. The iconic Oudolf garden is composed almost entirely of herbaceous perennials, with trees and large shrubs lacking. This limits the provision of food and habitat for a variety of creatures.


I believe pollinators could be better supported by Oudolf-style gardens with three simple changes.
• Keep mowed areas to a minimum. Group plants with good winter nesting stems, and leave them standing until they are covered by new growth.
• Include and group small groups of larger plants such as suitable small trees and shrubs.
• Prioritize native plants where possible.

Mowed brown winter garden with a section left standing
Lurie Garden with selected areas left standing for pollinators.
https://www.luriegarden.org/2019/03/15/cutting-back-on-the-cut-back/

If you would like to know more about Piet Oudolf’s gardens, plant choices, and design process, here are some reference materials. And if you get the chance, watch the film “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf”.

Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, Timber Press 2000
Essentially a catalog (although not all plants are pictured) of plants that Oudolf has culled to be “reliable plants that, over the years, can be maintained in an average garden without too much in the way of artificial props and bolstering”. Many of them “look good dead”, too. These are the plants he uses in his designs. They are divided into categories of Tough Perennials (the longest section by far), Playful Biennials and Annuals, Troublesome Invasive Plants, and Troublesome Capricious Plants – hardly the usual categories!
If you are an experienced gardener and want an invaluable reference for plants that will enhance your natural garden without requiring loads of work, this book is for you.

Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, Timber Press 2005
On the other hand, if you are not an experienced gardener, this book might be a better place to start. It is a thrifty introduction to the concepts of how gardens fit into nature, and vice versa, and how plants can be used through space – and time! – to create the desired outcomes. There are many lists of plants for specific purposes, such as Small Trees to combine with perennials, and Biennials for self-sowing, and a short but useful section on how to prepare for, implement, and maintain a planting of this sort.

Planting: A New Perspective by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, Timber Press 2013
This book builds on the previous two, offering a detailed look at the techniques and philosophy Oudolf uses to design his gardens, as well as specific ways in which he uses plants in them. A season-by-season guide dissects various effects and combinations, and a chart towards the end concisely organizes many of the plants used. One of the most interesting concepts is that of matrix planting.

Several Piet Oudolf books
Several of Piet Oudolf’s books

For more detail on the creation of specific gardens by Piet Oudolf, there are also books on Hummelo, the High Line, and Durslade Farm.

The Self-Sustaining Garden by Peter Thompson, Timber Press 2007
In this book matrix planting is presented in great detail. This is an effective and efficient way of designing intermingled plantings without having to specify the location of each and every plant. The matrix (often grasses) may be made up of several plant species, and serves as a stage for other, showier compatible plants embedded in it.

Dramatic Effects with Architectural Plants by Noel Kingsbury, Overlook Press, 1997
Oudolf’s chief writing partner has produced many noteworthy books himself. As the title describes, this book focuses on plants with strong and dramatic architecture. Having some of these in the mix is a key technique that makes Oudolf’s designs work.

Naturalistic Planting Design by Nigel Dunnett, filbert press 2019
With a foreword by, who else, Piet Oudolf, this is one of the most recent entries in the category of books focusing on natural or naturalistic design. It’s a dense book with at least as much text as photography, covering garden lore from historic, through contemporary, and looking to the future. Basic design principles, as they pertain to a naturalistic design, are also presented, along with a series of case studies illustrated by seasonal photos.

Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Arthur Kruckeberg and Linda Chalker-Scott, University of Washington Press, 2019.
And finally, if you want to use PNW native plants to achieve Oudolf-like effects in your garden, this recent book is an accessible, thorough, well-illustrated guide to those plants. You will find it easy to browse through for plants that have the look you want. Symbols by each photo give a hint as to each plant’s cultural requirements.

Other resources:
The blog Gardenista has several lovely entries on aspects of Oudolf’s designs. https://www.gardenista.com/posts/?t=oudolf#search
Piet talks about current projects in this recent interview: https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/29413-attached-world-piet-oudolf-garden-life

If you want LOTS of pictures to look at, try Piet Oudolf’s Flickr photostream, https://www.flickr.com/photos/10470961@N03/

Or his own website https://oudolf.com/