Gail and I have talked about using biological controls (getting “good bugs” to eat the “bad bugs” that eat the plants) in the greenhouse but aside from trying to not crash through spider webs on our watering and grooming rounds, and occasionally overwintering praying mantis egg cases in hopes of an early spring hatch, we’ve never tried it. Until now. Our good friend Crystal Brinson dropped off 3 bags of lady bugs this week and already the greenhouse seems tidier. And livelier. According to the package, our ladybugs (Hypodamia convergens) can each eat up to 5000 aphids and then lay eggs that hatch into alligator look-alike larvae that will eat their way to adulthood. Already our releaselings are looking … busy … and should be laying eggs near aphid infestations though I haven’t spotted any just yet.

The same day the ladybugs were released Gail noticed evidence of nature’s own IPM: brand new clusters of baby common or European garden spiders (Araneus diadematus).  They look much too tiny to tackle any full grown flying aphids but they’re already busy stringing webs and no doubt a flash mob (the barest vibration scatters them into action) could make quick work of any prey bigger than they are. I’m thrilled to have two such excellent reasons to hold off spraying insecticidal soap on our aphid and whitefly infested plants.

Have you ever released ladybugs in the garden? Do you have any overwintering in your house? (Crystal says, no worries if you do. They’ll find their way out again the same way they came in.) Any chance they keep your houseplants aphid free?

As soon as I published about Stephen Orr speaking at our Garden Design Luncheon, I found out that he couldn’t get out of NYC. We know he would have been here if he possibly could and our thoughts are with him and everyone else whose plans – and lives – have been wrecked by Sandy. We are really counting our blessings, one of which is that at practically the last minute, Tovah Martin very graciously agreed to speak in Stephen’s stead.

Tovah came to our rescue not only by braving a scary, snowy nor’easter herself to get here, but by speaking about infusing the garden with personality, and giving us a reminder that I’d like to have engraved on my hori-hori: don’t worry so much about what other people think about your garden. And then she made a quick and gorgeous terrarium because, “if everybody in the world grew a terrarium, there would be no war.” (It was kismet that we had already made terrariums — temporaryums, actually — for table centerpieces. We’re that much closer to peace.)

Intermixed with practical design advice regarding repetition, textures, and shapes (“You’ve got to have balls. –I do.”) Tovah also told us to “be happy in the garden.” Know who you are and what you love. If, “in your heart of hearts,” you love open spaces and gazing at the horizon, make your garden so. If enclosure is comforting, create it. When speaking about garden art and tsotchkes, she says, “if a miniature golf course moves you, go for it!” Plant orange and pink flowers together if those colors resonate for you (as they do for me) and then don’t worry over what anyone might say about it. All of this advice hits home for me because (at home) I garden with wild abandon in an otherwise well-manicured neighborhood. I do worry a little about getting the hairy eyeball from my neighbors but in actuality, I have noticed returned smiles and what could be interpreted as nods of approval. Perhaps, as different as our gardens are from each other’s, we recognize a kindred passion, just as Tovah does when she visits other gardens. And that’s it right there. Tovah told me she’s never been to a garden that she didn’t think was amazing, just by virtue of it having been created. And the inspiring slides she showed reflected exactly that.

Tovah’s latest book, The Unexpected Houseplant: 220 Extraordinary Choices for Every Spot in Your Home is already one of my faves, as is The New Terrarium (for obvious reasons). Read them and any of her dozens of others and be inspired to be you. And most of all – have fun.

She makes garden design look so easy. Last Thursday for the second time in exactly a decade Julie Moir Messervy enraptured the Garden Design Luncheon crowd with her graciousness, easy-going wit, energy, style, and utterly pragmatic approach to design. For busy homeowners she promotes outdoor living spaces capable of enticing anyone away from their computer screens (and has somewhat ironically created an app for that.) For gardeners who might be paralyzed by the endless possibilities she shows us how to tune in to our deepest desires to create a garden as comfortable and welcoming as our kitchen.

According to Julie, we already know how to design the garden of our dreams. We formed a connection to the outdoors as children. – Where did we go for daydreaming, reverie and reflection? Those places are part of our inner garden. We are full of great ideas that we have been collecting from all of the places we’ve ever visited and loved. We know what we like and what we don’t.

We can take an inventory of those ideas and predilections and translate them into what Julie calls the “big moves”, which are not unlike what we do inside when we set the table or rearrange the objet d’art on the mantel until we get it exactly right. Granted, the “big moves” outside often involve a little more heavy lifting, sometimes a lot more money, and even occasionally someone with an engineering degree and that is why some of us (my hand is raised) become too scared-rabbit to commit.

But Julie’s gorgeous slides were enough to catapult anybody out of inertia (if you could have heard the gasps!) To begin, we might identify our garden’s comfort zones; think about the frontyard as if it’s the back; create paths that choreograph pauses; audit the visual energy; place the pieces, and set about “crafting the details of nature.”

Julie also urged us all to follow Doug Tallamy’s advice about planting natives for the bugs and the birds. Whatever kind of garden you design, be sure to plant a few natives at least along the periphery. When our neighbors follow our example, swath-by-swath we may begin to restore the ecosystem we’ve all but destroyed.

It’s as clear as a sunny fall day that what Julie wants more than anything is for everyone to get outside and to have a garden to feel completely at home in. To that end she offers all the assistance she possibly can – from a range of design services for every budget, to an iphone/pod/pad app that’s way more fun than a piece of blank grid paper. (Believe me, I bought it and can’t stop moving patios and paths around my yard.) And her book, Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love is the confidence-inspiring blueprint that takes us through the creative process step by step.

Have you been able to channel your inner Julie* to create the garden of your dreams?

(*credit for “channeling your inner Julie” goes to Julie Murphy Christina)

With Helen Dillon, whether you read her books (the latest is called Down to Earth with Helen Dillon) or hear her speak you know right away that she only tells the absolute truth – particularly when she’s talking about her own garden. If you’re not already a fan, Helen Dillon is a gardener and garden writer from Dublin, Ireland (originally from Scotland). She reminded us that Ireland falls along the same latitude as New Foundland and although the climate is much milder, the sun is just as low. She mentioned taking Graham Stuart Thomas around her garden on an “ugly August day”. Thomas she said, was not a fan of strong yellows and it wasn’t until she met Christopher Lloyd that she realized there can be more than one opinion on the matter. Now she knows that “yellow is so luminous. It lights the place up.” But she’s “gone off” dark purple.

Aren’t we all fickle? Over her 70 years as a gardener (how can that be?), Helen has formed plenty of her own decided opinions. And is as unapologetic about changing her mind as we should all be. She has taken out swaths of lawn and replaced “80′s looking” gardens (bit of this, bit of that; one of everything) with a gravel mulch garden full of self-sowers in the front of the house, and a limestone (bluestone) surrounded pool between her famous borders. She planted a grove of birches in her front garden because, says Helen, “I never don’t love birches.” And she has added blues (among other colors) to the red border and reds to the blue border because they were becoming like overworked paintings. She lately wrapped a “smug” cherub sculpture in barbed wire before deciding to remove it altogether. There’s no reason to be overly sentimental about anything in our garden that we don’t still love like we used to.

Her advice on plants was just as much fun. Try arranging teasels after they’re dead – simply cut them down and replant the stalk in a deep hole. – Because why not create an allay of teasel for the winter wind to whisk through? Put sun loving plants like agapanthus, Casablanca lilies, and tall alstromeria – not the squiffy short ones -  in pots (she uses “dustbins” and big black plastic containers with handles) and move them in an out of the garden as they bloom and fade. She may have “gone off” boxwood balls but says that if you want to topiary a holly tree (hers is mushroom shaped) it’s very quick and “you could have a go this afternoon.” She only allows beautiful plants in her garden and considers Sisyrinchium striatum ‘Aunt May’ to be the ultimate of all plants not to grow because most of the time it looks neither alive nor dead. On the other hand, she’s keen on ubiquitous candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) because you only ever need to buy one packet of seeds and after blooming the green seedheads are just as pretty. I’m sold. But then anyone who thinks that the rudest thing to say about a garden is that it looks “manicured” has me at hello.

Have you met Helen Dillon yet in person or through her books and articles? Do you let yourself be as opinionated?

I know I’ve said it before but it’s good to get out. Yesterday Gail, Julie (our education coordinator) and I went to the Perennial Plant Conference at UCONN in Storrs, CT and came back jazzed all over again about things like native plants and edible landscaping.

Rosalind Creasy has been advocating and demonstrating edible landscaping –beautifully – since at least the early 70’s and we have certainly been playing with the idea here for the last few years too. But now I’m all over the idea for my own garden – all over again. Truth be told, I haven’t been much into planting vegetables at home unless they’re exceptionally pretty. But I’m coming to realize that they’re almost all exceptionally pretty if they’re worked into the design in the right way. Not to mention the benefits of growing your own food. And she makes such a compelling case for replacing lawn (preaching to the choir) – I don’t even have kids but if I did maybe I’d already know they prefer a garden to a blank expanse of turf. Gardens are always more interesting. Plus I came home with her cookbook …

And Doug Tallamy who wrote Bringing Nature Home (a book I have mentioned being excited about before) made an even more compelling case for replacing sterile suburban wastelands (ie. lawn and other exotics). He of course makes the case for planting native species. Tallamy recommends “flipping the age-old landscaping paradigm on its head. Instead of designing where your flower beds will go in a sea of lawn, design where you need lawn for walking spaces and plant the rest of your property with native ornamentals.” And here’s why we should all do that:

As he puts it, “humanity’s life support systems are failing.” We have to remember that the ecosystem provides services such as the air we breathe, water management and purification, food, weather systems, carbon dioxide sequestration, waste recycling and so on, and we have to quit taking all of that for granted. If we lose biodiversity, we literally lose it all. 33,000 species of plants and animals are considered “imperiled” and unable to perform their function within the ecosystem. Not good.

Everything is connected (just like in Avatar) and “insects are key!”, says Tallamy. They convert the energy from plants into food for other animals. Did you know that 23% of a black bear’s diet is insects? (In my family we always joked about all the protein we were getting every time we accidentally swallowed a bug. Turns out to be true.) Trouble is, most insects are specialists who will only eat certain native plants. If you worry about planting things that will just become defoliated and ugly because of all the insects, he says that doesn’t actually happen – and has the data to support it. Something always comes along to eat the insects. That’s how it works – and why it works. Here are his lists of great natives listed in order of how many butterfly/moth species will be supported by them.

I could go on and on … but instead I’ll just recommend reading his book yourself if you haven’t already. And in the next few weeks, take a look around and make a note of what is leafing out. Asian species are generally ahead of the natives by a week or two. Do you need a few more natives in your yard? In my own garden I have decided to evict a few things including a favorite young styrax tree. For one thing I know it can escape cultivation because mine had originally planted itself where it didn’t belong. And for another, it supports a whopping zero native caterpillars. I’ll also be evicting more lawn for vegetables… You too?