By Cheryl Lovato Niles
Birch Bay resident Laurie Bender’s yard showcases a garden bed with a riot of flowers from small cosmos to big dahlias.
Bender grew her garden last spring as a participant in the most recent Gardening Green course with Washington State University Extension in Whatcom County.
She was inspired to take the course after moving from Colorado with her husband, Steve, a few years prior. Bender was looking to revitalize a part of her lawn that was difficult to mow and not big enough for kids to play on – an endeavor she succeeded in with her pollinator garden.
WSU Extension offers the Gardening Green course several times a year, including an upcoming series in Birch Bay that starts Saturday, February 28. The program is designed to teach the essentials of creating a beautiful landscape that doesn’t harm the environment. The Gardening Green course asks participants to pick an area of their yard to focus their site-analysis and landscape planning on.
Bender planted three shrubs to serve as focal points for the bed – a golden currant, red currant and mock orange – all of them purchased from the annual Whatcom Conservation District plant sale.
She then added a variety of flowering annuals and perennials to fill the bed with color while she waited for the shrubs to mature. Her plant list includes calendula, primrose, turtlehead, yarrow, lupine, chocolate cosmos, coreopsis, cup plant, honeywort, spider wort, white gaura, and lots and lots of dahlias.
She planted densely knowing she’ll need to thin the bed next year. As far as the pollinators are concerned, the bed is a hit. It’s always alive with a variety of bees and other pollinators. Steve has observed seven types of pollinators visiting the garden in j a five-minute window. The Winnie-the-Pooh dahlias, so named for their red and yellow stripes, seem to be particularly popular.
Motivation for Gardening Green
Bender was motivated to take the Gardening Green course because she wants to keep the earth healthy, and sustainable landscaping fits in with her family’s lifestyle of buying less, using less and trying to reuse and recycle everything. The Birch Bay resident said she appreciated what she learned from the course, especially a soil analysis she had done as part of the program.
Bender added that using drip irrigation in the form of a soaker hose in the flower bed “saved my life.” She said she was able to keep her plants green while also conserving water thanks to using the soaker hose as well as a moisture meter she picked up from the Whatcom Conservation District.
Scores of slugs and other garden challenges
While her garden remains healthy, Bender said her biggest obstacle is slugs. She avoids using pesticides and fertilizers but makes an exception for Sluggo, a product designed to tackle slugs. She feels OK about using the product because it is approved for organic farming by OMRI (the Organic Materials Review Institute), and she’s found beer-baited slug traps, while effective, were just plain icky.
Another challenge is her garden doesn’t receive afternoon sun, and so she’s all but given up on growing tomatoes. And she has mixed feelings on deadheading, which is the removal of dead flowers on plants. The prolonged blooms are a visual delight, and she enjoys communing with the bees while doing it, but it’s also a lot of work, she said. Bender doesn’t deadhead everything, though, and will let some flowers form seeds for the birds.
Advice
As for advice Bender would give other others interested in sustainable landscaping, she said her “number one advice is do not impulse buy.” After that, know your site conditions and landscaping goals before choosing your plants, she said.
Bender also recommended seeking out local resources and advice. She said the demonstration gardens at Hovander Homestead Park in Ferndale was helpful, as was consulting with volunteers at WSU Extension’s Master Gardener program. Also, Bender added, don’t be afraid to move struggling plants to a location where they may do better. A hydrangea in a hot sunny spot had always struggled with powdery mildew until she moved it to an area with open shade.
Bender is also enthusiastic about sharing plants and seeds with her neighbors. By getting to know what’s growing well in the neighborhood, she can get clues about what’s likely to do well in her own yard.
Cheryl Lovato Niles is the WSU Whatcom County Extension Water Resources Educator.
Birch Bay gardening course
Washington State University’s Whatcom County Extension will hold a gardening green class series at the Birch Bay Village Clubhouse 2-4 p.m. on several Saturdays from late February through mid-April.
The gardening green course will teach participants about natural landscaping that improves soil health, saves water, reduces yard maintenance and relies less on fertilizer and pesticides, according to the WSU Whatcom County Extension’s website.
The green gardening class will run February 28, March 14, March 21, April 11 and April 18. The course charges a $42 fee for a soil lab test.
Additional courses will be held in Sudden Valley and online this spring.
For more information on the courses, visit bit.ly/4qXBcZL.
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