Aphids are a common garden pest.  They do damage by sucking the plants they infest and by excreting sticky honeydew.   The following are tips to prevent and control aphids.

Avoid over fertilizing: Aphids prefer tender new growth that appears in profusion with over fertilized plants.  Use slow release fertilizer.

Monitor: Check your plants once a week.  If you see ants climbing up a plant they are most likely harvesting the aphids’ honeydew.  Putting sticky tape around the trunk of plants can stop ants.

Spray with water:  Spraying aphids with water can dislodge them from the infested plant and knock them off where they will be less likely to re-infest.

Natural predators:  There are natural predators such as lady beetles, lacewings, syrphid flies, and various parasitic wasps.  Lady beetles are often available commercially, however they tend to disperse in a few days.

Insecticidal soap:  A mixture of two tablespoons of mild dish soap with luke warm water in a spray bottle is effective in cleaning aphids from plants.  The soap dissolves the aphids waxy protective coating and causes them to dehydrate.  Also mixing three tablespoons of vegetable or horticultural oil with luke warn water and a few drops of dish soap can be effective to clog the aphids breathing spiracles.  Spray once a week and alternate between methods.

These methods only take care of mature aphids, not those in eggs.  Repeated applications should eventually rid your plants of the little pests.

Michal

How Good Design Can Change Your Lifestyle…

This project turned a neglected side yard into a wonderful inviting garden. One of the basic concepts of design is to understand the circulation pattern. In this before picture the “wedding cake” stairs were not only dangerous but illustrates how the circulation was taking up to much precious space in this landscape. This homeowner was interested in having a garden retreat. The finished project shows how a relatively small space can be successfully designed to include positive circulation paths, water feature, gathering space, and containers that were important to this family.

Are raised beds worth the effort and expense? The simple answer is yes, and here are a few reasons to make room in your landscape:
• Raised beds give the gardener an opportunity to control key factors such as soil make up, drainage and sun exposure.
• No foot traffic through your raised beds means less compacted soil.
• Plants thrive when their roots can travel freely.
• A bed that is raised even a foot can avoid many of our region’s pesky weeds. When the bed is fallow, a barrier of newspaper or plastic can add extra weed prevention.
• A raised bed constructed at seat level can reduce the amount of stretching needed to tend it.
• Heat gain that a raised bed receives provides a longer growing season; visqueen or glass extends the season.

Raised beds come in many forms, with a wide range of cost and materials:
• Mounding of garden soil can outperform a traditional ground level planting area.
• A rockery or a stacked stone wall can be inexpensive and attractive if built well, but maintenance can be an issue. Rough rocks are not usually comfortable seats.
• Segmented rock walls can be a more expensive, with a range of sizes and colors, and involve straightforward installation. Capped walls can be very comfortable seats.
• Cedar raised beds are very common. Cedar is naturally decay and insect resistant and readily available.
• Pressure treated lumber can be used for raised bed walls. Even though treated wood will have a long life, its use around raised vegetable beds is controversial due to the possibility of chemical leeching into the soil and vegetables. (My raised beds are pressure treated 2 x 8’s that were once deck joists. When constructing my beds, I lined the inside of the walls with a resilient plastic liner, protecting my food (and me) from any unwanted leeched chemicals.)
• Poured concrete raised beds are an expensive but very long lasting option.
• Other materials that have been used to form raised beds include concrete board (Hardie Plank), plastic/composite lumber (Trex, TimberTech, Monarch), and formed steel. Winter is the season that few think about landscaping and gardening but it is a great time to prepare for spring. A raised bed that is installed early has time for composting and other important soil building amendments. Put the effort in now, avoid the rush of building, planning and planting all at once. Leave a little time to contemplate and reflect, how does one prepare parsnips? Bok choi?

Zach

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How Good Design Can Change Your Lifestyle…

This picture shows a common situation…a well worn deck and a hot tub next to it.

This family wanted better access to the hot tub, a low maintenance deck, a safe play space for small children and inviting areas to encourage use of more of the property. The newly designed multi-level deck is made of Trex so it is easily maintained. Gates were installed between the areas to keep children and pets safe. The hot tub was never moved…we built the new deck around it. This space looks so much more inviting with the forest view and beautiful deck. The Montana flagstone patio draws guests from the deck out into the landscape. Altogether this was a successful project.

Combined Sewer Storm Water Systems may seem an unlikely topic for a landscape blog.  I believe an understanding of the way storm water and sewerage are disposed of in Seattle (through the same pipes), leads to an opportunity for home owners.  Water that runs off our streets and roofs into storm drains, it contains chemicals and bacteria.  Puget Sound cities often collect this water and route it to a combined sewer/storm water water treatment system before it is released into rivers or the Puget Sound.  During heavy storms in the Seattle area, the system becomes over loaded and untreated sewage flows into Lake Washington and Puget Sound.

Seattle has initiated a campaign to detach building downspouts from the water treatment system and, where suitable, divert the water into rain gardens and cisterns where it can infiltrate into the ground, or retained until the storm subsides.  This Seattle initiative creates an opportunity – homeowners may help protect our waterways and to enhance their landscape.

Starting in Ballard, but eventually extending to other catchments, Seattle Public Utilities is setting up a subsidy program to encourage homeowners to detach their downspouts and route storm water to cisterns and/or rain gardens in their yards.  These cisterns and rain gardens are ‘storm water treatment facilities’.  If you should decide to pursue this idea, and receive the subsidy, you will need to follow a relatively simple permitting process, commit to maintain the system for at least five years.   Lifestyle Landscapes is trained to the permitting and installation processes.  With our designers help, you will end up with a new rain garden and the knowledge you have helped clean up Puget Sound and Lake Washington.  In the long term, you will have increased the value of your property by enhancing its green credentials.

Irrespective of whether your home is eligible for this Seattle based program, installing a rain garden will enhance your property and improving the environment.

Baxter

Peter Kahn is an environmental psychologist at the University of Washington.  Kahn has done extensive cross-cultural studies of children’s values and attitudes about open space and animal life and forests and plants and water—and the degradation and disappearance of all these things. He believes that, with every generation, kids are lowering their knowledge and expectations for what is a normal interaction with nature—creating a kind of generational amnesia about the natural world.  If nature is indeed a source of mental and emotional replenishment, this could emerge as one of the most compelling psychological issues of the not-so-faraway future.

There are great benefits for ourselves and our children when we have a connection to nature.  Here is a list of just some of the benefits:

• Decrease stress
• Stimulate healing
• People develop deeper more enduring relationships
• People become more generous
• We experience a greater sense of joy
• We experience a greater sense of peace
• Greater sense of well being

A simple beginning to introduce our children to nature:

• Become a nature watcher ourselves.
• Have unstructured time to walk in a park even in the rain and wind.
• Look for birds, bugs, any wildlife.
• Observe the sky.
• Pick a plant in your yard and take a look at the changes that occur each month for a year.
• Plant something, tend it, observe it, and harvest.
• Get a subscription for your children to a nature magazine:
  Your Big Backyard for ages 3-7
  Ranger Rick for ages 8-12

The mind needs nature and even a little bit can be a big help.

Arlene

Recently we have begun to offer a new irrigation clock; Rainbird ESP-SMT Controllers.  These controllers are new to the marketplace although the technology has been around for years in the commercial landscape industry.  This controller offers a new approach to how we manage the irrigation of our landscapes.   More importantly it will reduce the overall amount of water used and reduce your water bill.

In the past, we (Landscape Professional, Homeowners, Etc) determined how much to water and when.  Now with a smart controller we simply determine the conditions for each zone.  We give the controller critical information about the site ranging from; light condition, plant type, soil type, amount of slope, etc and the clock determines the needed amount of water.

The way in which water need is calculated begins with the outdoor weather station.  This weather station measures rain fall and temperature and compares this current information with 7 years of programmed historical data based upon zip code.  This allows the controller to increase, decrease or terminate water output completely.  This is the first controller that allows the homeowner to walk away and allow the controller to make the daily and seasonal decisions or adjustments.

We, as programmers, determine when the system can water; this is called the water window.  The controller determines based upon collected weather information and programmed site condition how much water should be allowed and how frequently.  If you have a slope, instead of watering for 7 minutes at one time this controller knows (pre-programmed) the ideal rate of percolation.  It would water for the same amount of time (7 minutes), but it would do so in smaller increments over the time allowed (water window).  This means less runoff, less wasted water, and more savings.

Rainbird ESP-SMT controllers are estimated to save between 30-70% of water usage for a typical landscape.  This is a tremendous amount of water and a large step to being more environmentally conscious when managing ones property.

Brian

At Lifestyle Landscapes, we always work within the boundary limits of our clients’ property. There are spaces adjacent to, or included in a clients’ property which they may be responsible for maintaining, but limit the use of the property.  These areas are called Right-of-Ways, Easements and Setbacks.

Setbacks are typically determined by municipalities and are used to contain development within the property lines.  Typically, structures over 18″ height are not allowed in the setbacks.

Similar to setbacks are buffers where local codes allow only specific types of plant material.

Easements are typically established to provide for installation of, and access to, utilities such as sewer, electrical, water, or gas.  Easements may be established to allow access for owners of adjacent property.

A Right-of-Way is also like an easement, but, normally, utilities are not installed under a Right-of-Way.  The Right-of-Way and Utility Easement is typically owned by the municipality or utility district but the homeowner is responsible for its maintenance.  When working in a Right-of-Way, it is important to be aware of municipal codes specifying allowable construction in these areas and defining the conditions under which permits are required before construction projects may be undertaken in these areas.  Plantings in Right-of-Ways might consist of low maintenance shrubs or trees.  However, in utility easements, vegetation may be limited to shrubs and ground-covers.

Michal

I recently read an article in the September 2009 Landscape Architecture Magazine ‘Haag’s Edible Estate’.  For those of you who don’t know, Rich Haag founded the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Washington and has designed some very notable places including Gasworks Park here in Seattle and the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island.  This article looks at the landscape of his private residence in Capitol Hill, which is an active experiment and example of what he has coined ‘nutrimental horticulture’.  The term is a mouthful but the ideas behind it caught my attention immediately.

Balancing the utility of a food producing garden with a landscape that is also beautiful and welcoming is something that drives many of my designs, including my own gardens.  Gardens are about discovery and activating our many senses.  Showy flowers and an intoxicating smell are great but think of discovering your first ripe strawberry; this evokes a special reaction.  Why can’t all landscapes have this multi-sensorial experience? They can.

One plant that is very easy to utilize in a landscape are blueberries. They are tolerant of a wide range of soil and light conditions (err on the side of shady and moist) and beyond the berries, the leaves have great fall color, changing to a bright red as the plant goes dormant.

If you are looking to create an informal screen, try red raspberries.  They grow into 5-6′ canes which spread through rhizomes over time.  Raspberries can be perfect for obscuring a utility shed or a tall cedar fence.  Many varieties of raspberry will produce fruit multiple times throughout the summer.

Does your garden need a bulletproof ground cover?   Similar to the aforementioned strawberry plant (which is a must) creeping bramble (Rubus pentalobus) sprawls low to the ground and produces bright orange, raspberry-like fruit.

A great way to bring structure to the garden is a trellis.  Trellises allow plants, especially vines, to grow vertically and often with a dramatic result.  They can support garden variety vegetables like climbing beans and peas that can be grown throughout the year.  As an alternative try grape vines or better yet, hops.  This summer I grew hops (Cascade variety) for the first time. They quickly grew to about ten feet tall with pendulous clusters of yellow green hops, a surprisingly good turnout for the first year.  Hop plants grow from rhizomes that mature and increase in size over time producing more and more hops.

Lastly, an edible plant that makes both an architectural statement and is very sought after for its culinary uses, the artichoke.  This plant may not be for everyone but it is dramatic as a focal plant. Mature plants can grow to be 6-7′ feet tall with bold serrated fronds and large thistle flowers (the artichoke).  Tall and conspicuous, I see it as the Palm Tree of the garden.  Unlike the Palm, however, the artichoke is perennial and will die back in the fall to emerge in spring.

I will readily admit that I have had mixed results with some of these plants (especially the artichoke). To me the experiment is a part of the experience.  Try new things alongside successes of the past.  It is a great way to discover what works in your garden landscape.

Zach