A bright burst of color in the arrowwood viburnum, one of the many native plants on display at the Fall Sustainable Garden and Meadow tour (Courtesy Photo).
The late summer season on the North Fork still brings bursts of colorful blooms and garden creativity, the perfect time to explore biodiverse habitats that can inspire next year’s gardens.
ReWild Long Island North Fork and the Southold Peconic Civic Association are hosting the free Fall Sustainable Garden and Meadow tour Saturday, Sept. 13, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. From Cutchogue to East Marion, visitors will learn about the importance of native plants while getting ideas to make backyards more inviting for pollinators.
Nancy Tramontana and Kirsten Kesicki at CAST’s Children’s Garden (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
Teasel or beach thistle at Spielman’s garden (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
One example of Spielmann’s creative fencing from branches. (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
One stop on the tour is a wandering swath of myriad native plant life in Cutchogue. For two decades, Gabi Spielmann has been nurturing her 2.5 acres with bushes, plants and trees that birds and pollinators love.
“I want to tell people not to cut everything down in their yards,” explained Ms. Spielmann. “It’s so unnatural. Even a little corner of your property. Let it go. Share it with wildlife.”
When Ms. Spielmann gardens, nothing is wasted. Tree branches have been creatively woven into fencing to separate her various garden plots; cuttings from her fig trees work as stakes in the vegetable garden and wood chips are the footing of the winding paths between her garden patches.
“Why go out and buy stakes?” she asked. She added that birds and bees “go berserk” in her beach thistle, and she expects migrating birds and butterflies to be visiting soon.
Old wooden shed on Gabi’s property (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
Gabi and her Monkey Tree (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
The Children’s garden at CAST (Credit: Deborah Wetzel)
Also on the tour are two special gardens on the grounds of CAST, 53930 Main Road, Southold.
The first is the Children’s Garden, a colorful 2-foot-wide, 10-foot-long plot hugging the wall of a tiny yellow house in the back of the CAST property. Here, lily of the valley was uprooted and replaced with all natives: aster, golden rod, bee balm, sunflower and honeysuckle.
Children worked on the garden over the summer, explained Kirsten Kesicki, a CAST educator and owner of Yard Crop, which creates customized gardens. “They love to weed! And they were very excited to find little frogs,” she said.
There’s also a native plant plot along the outside of the white wooden parsonage house on the CAST property. It was planted by local young people funded by the Peconic Estuary Partnership.
“It’s a self-led tour,” explained Nancy Tramontana, Education Coordinator at CAST, gesturing to the white oval wooden signs planted among the perennials. “The garden is fully accessible, with QR codes to videos in English and Spanish.”
She stopped and pointed to the pink-hued autumn joy stonecrop plant, where dozens of bees were pollinating. Around the corner was yarrow, 3-foot-wide Cheyenne Spirit coneflower and purple aster, all waiting their turn for the bees.
“The tours are free, and you can see what you can do in a planter, a corner of your property or rip up your whole lawn, which is a sterile useless desert that doesn’t feed any pollinators,” said Nancy DePas Reinertsen, ReWild’s North Fork co-chair.
Registration is required at rewildlongisland.org. Visitors will receive a map with descriptions of the gardens, information about native plants, a happy hour at a local winery, and free plants donated by Clark’s Garden and Glover Perennials.
Comments are closed.