Tis the season for the incredibly beautiful coneflower!  If you were trapped on a desert island (with a climate of zone 4 to 8) and could only plant one native flower, you would be a very smart person to pick Echinacea, aka coneflower.  Why?  For starters, it comes in a dozen different colors and sizes.  The flower doesn’t have to be a single color.  There are varieties that grow orange & white and pink & purple. The petals come in different sizes and shapes too.  You can get them with droopy petals, short petals, long petals, skin petals and fat petals.  The center of the coneflower, or eye, can also be big, little, single colored or multicolored.  They can grow anywhere from one foot tall to as high as 5 feet.   

Along with the height of the coneflowers, you can also cultivate them to spread throughout a bed, lawn or side yard.   Combine them with a Panicum or Pennisetum grass can create a picturesque vista even Piet Oudolf would adore.  You will have a little slice of meadow heaven right out your door.   

Beyond the awesomeness of the variety of colors, textures, petal structure, heights and other characteristics, you will find a landscape of ecological and edible attributes just as exciting for the coneflower. Bees and butterflies pollinate coneflowers. The Monarch butterfly favors the nectar of the coneflowers as well.  This makes it a vital plant to maintain the pollution of Monarchs.  Along with the Monarchs, other butterfly species such as Fritillaries, Painted Ladies and Swallowtails also love its nectar.  Blue Jays, Cardinals and Goldfinches eat the seeds of the flower.  

In the winter, you don’t need to prune the flowers back.  Instead, leave them standing with the grasses you planted with them.  The way the snow lays on the big eyes of the coneflower and the way they turn brown give a new life to them that makes your garden a year round beauty.  Plus, birds will continue to feed on the seeds throughout the cold months. 

In terms of humans, everything from coneflower extract, dried root and tea can be used for medicinal purposes as treatment for coughs, colds, insect stings, animal bites, and skin diseases. But it most be used with caution especially if you are pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant.  Always, always, always be careful when you use plants for medical reasons. Make sure to talk with experts in the field.  If you aren’t sure how much or little to use, I’d suggest don’t use it at all.  

The coneflower is a wonderful option for your yard.  As an ornamental, you can decorate your yard to standout as one of the most attractive in the neighborhood.  It adds value to the environment, offers food for other species and can even help you cure the common cold.  

My wife’s best friend is getting married. Lucy (my wife) was asked to come up with an idea for a bridal shower favor.  The first thought that Lucy had was to give a plant of some kind to the shower’s guests.  The concept behind giving a plant was that it symbolizes how the bride & hubby-to-be will grow and develop together over the coming years. 
Lucy thought that succulent plants might be a great choice for the favors.  They are easy to take care of and can come in many beautiful shapes and sizes.  Since I work with plants everyday, she asked me for a little help to decide if succulents or some other kind of plant might be a better choice. 
I think giving plants, whatever the occasion, is always a great choice as long as it’s not an invasive or overly difficult to take care of.  I also think that making a gift by hand is a great way to make it more special. 
Lucy and I talked about her relationship with Erica, her best friend, and how they’d been friends since childhood. She talked to me about how happy she is that Erica is getting married and that it would be great to have a plant that could be as vibrant and colorful as Erica. After a bit of conversation, it was obvious that a succulent didn’t fit the bill.  If she wants something that can be colorful and bloom year after year, she should give a perennial flower.  Both Lucy and Erica grew up in the NYC area, so the perennial should absolutely be a native flower to the region. One of the most beautiful native flowers for the region is the coneflower.  It comes in several different varieties and colors.  In my opinion, purple coneflowers are the most eye catching and lively.

Coneflowers are great for indoors or out as long as they get the amount of sun they need.  They can grow to be 2 to 3 feet tall in ideal outdoor conditions, and spread through a planted bed if transferred from pot to soil.  They can also be beautiful potted plants for a window boxes or sill.  Best of all, once established, they need very little maintenance to flourish and stay gorgeous.  To add to the handmade component, we thought that growing the favors from seed would make them more special. So that’s what we did.  
After we figured out what the best plant would be, the hard work was done.  Now all that we needed to do was put the bridal shower favors together, and that is easy-to-do.  Here are the steps we took:
1.     First, we had to buy the seed.  Coneflower seeds can be commonly found at a local gardening store, or even a Home Depot.  You can also buy them online.  If you decide on a less-available-native-plant, online purchases will be your only option.  

2.     Second, we used peat moss pellets to sow the seed.  Pellets are a super easy way to get seeds to sprout.  All you have to do is water the pellets, open them and place seed inside each pellet.  Next, pellet trays come with plastic tops.  Once all the seed is planted, you just put the top on and let nature take its course.  You should start the seed at least 2-weeks before the shower because it will take about 7 to 14 days for the seedlings to start to germinate and emerge from the peat moss. (Note: Follow the specific instructions of whichever pellet system you buy. They are all a little different).

3.     After the seedlings appear, you transfer them into pots.  We kept them in the pellet once they were placed into a larger pot. I thought the mesh of the pellet gave the seedling an interesting detail.  We use plastic pots that were about 4 inches high and 3 inches wide.  We watered them once they were all replanted.

4.     As a last little detail, we put a colorful ribbon around the pot.  Then at the shower, everyone could pick the favor that they like most.  The coneflower can stay in the pot for at least the first couple of seasons.  Or, for those guests that want to transfer them, they can plant them outside this season.  Either way, the flower will grow and mature over the next several years to become a wonderful reminder of their friend’s shower and marriage. 

Native plants are so incredible.  Any chance to introduce more people to just how incredible they are should be taken.  They come in every color, size, texture or look.  Word from the shower is that the favors were a hit, and are now being taken care of by dozens of women from New York City to New Jersey and throughout Long Island. I think it’s kinda awesome that the symbol of love can be spread so far and wide.  It also proves that gifts from the heart can be born of dirt and time.  

Last week, I was busy installing a new rain garden for a client in South Orange, NJ.  The project was developed to address how the backyard gets swamped after rainstorms.  

Rain gardens come in many different shapes and forms.  A common approach is to have rainwater run into them and then stop until the water infiltrates into the ground.  But that’s really only one way to make them.

When I work with a client, I ask two really important questions: 1. How can the rain garden perform to address the problems, and 2. How can the rain garden enhance the quality of the yard?

For this project, the answer for the first question was to create a rain garden with a bioswale feature.  A bioswale allows for storm water to run through the garden versus having it sit and infiltrate.  

We started building the rain garden by digging a 3-foot deep by 2-foot wide trench that spans the entire backyard.  

Then we used peat moss, stone and mushroom soil to create a sponge that sits at the bottom of the trench.  We wrapped the sponge with landscape fabric to allow water, but not sediment, to go in.  The fabric will allow the sponge to function for years to come.   

After the sponge was installed, we put mushroom soil and river rock on top, and then planted around it.  The plants we selected are all shade tolerant and can manage wet areas.   

Just a few days after we were finished, we got a big storm.  I snapped the image below showing the rain garden in action.  

With the new rain garden, the backyard has been transformed into a place of discovery that is just as beautiful when it’s cloudy as it is during sunny, dry days. 

Last week, I blogged about what's too tall or short for your grass.  I used my front yard as a test case.  I mowed a strip of my lawn at a setting of 1 1/4" with my lawnmower.

The image above is that same strip of short mowed grass one week later.  When I first mowed the strip, it looked yellow and unhealthy. Now 7 days later, it still looks yellow and, well, kinda dead. 

If you wanted the grass to look green, you'd have to dump fertilizer and toxic stuff on it to rejuvenate it.  But to really understand what's happening with this strip of grass, you need to take it in context.  

First, I haven't watered my lawn in the last week.  I don't water my lawn at all, not even in the middle of the summer when it can get really hot and dry. But the last few days haven't been dry or hot.  In fact, the first week of June as been really wet and mild.  It's probably rained, at least, 4 or 5 days oin the last week.  It has also been kinda cold for early summer.  Here in North Jersey, it's got down into the 50's a couple of nights last week.  It was so cold, a jacket was needed in the morning.  

The chilly and wet weather is ideal for cold climate grass such as I have planted in my lawn.  If the grass was going to thrive in natural conditions, it would be in weather we've having.  You can see that the grass surrounding the strip looks great, and has grown back without any necessary assistance.  

If I cut my grass again this week, the shorter grass would only be more damaged.  The extra damage would absolutely require you to water it with sprinklers and treat it with fertilizer.  This would start the perpetual cycle for your lawn to always need unsustainable management such as extra watering and chemicals. 

If you have been mistreating your lawn for years, the length you cut your grass along with how to keep it looking "healthy" only make it harder to get it off toxic chemicals.  I think this strip is a great example to show you how it can start.  The only way I can get that strip back to health is to let it grow for another week or two before I mow it again.  

  

Have you always dreamed of having your very own rain barrel, but you have so many unanswered questions…like, what size should you buy, and how much do they cost and how do you install them and what will you do with the water once its in the barrel?  Let’s try to turn your dream into a reality by answering these very important lingering ponderings! 

What Size Do You Buy?
Google “rain barrel”, and you’ll be faced with a long list of results.  Rain barrels come in all shapes, sizes and colors.  The most common sizes range from 40 gallons to 65 gallons.   Of that range, which should you buy?  The short answer is whichever you like.  The biggest factor for picking a rain barrel really boils down to water capacity…and though the difference between 40 and 65 gallons might seem big, it isn’t that big of a difference when harvesting rain from your roof. 

The amount of rainwater coming off your roof in a normal storm is probably within the hundreds if not thousands of gallons. Here’s the math…say you have a very small house with a roof measuring 20 ft by 30ft, and it rains 1 inch during a 24-hour period.  That translates into nearly 4,500 gallons of water coming off your house.  Say you get a heavy rainstorm where 2 and half inches of rain falls in a day, you’ll have over 11,000 gallons of water runoff your roof.  That’s like OMG!, right?  The point is that the 25 gallons separating your most common options for rain barrels doesn’t matter too much when you have thousands and thousands of gallons of water coming off your roof. 

I actually have two 275-gallon totes that I refashioned into rain barrels in my yard.  They work really well, but fill up during the lightest rain. 

How Much Do They Cost?
Cost is all over the map.  You can buy a 65-gallon barrel that for $200 or $120.  You can buy a 45-gallon barrel for the same price.  I paid about $250 for my 275-gallon totes.  Cost is governed by two factors, material and style.  If you buy a rain barrel that looks like a wooden barrel but is actually made of plastic, you’ll pay somewhere around $120 to $150.  If you buy an actual wooden barrel, you’ll pay something around $220 to $300 for a single barrel. 

Say, you buy a recycled plastic, non-toxic terra-cotta styled 50-gallon rain barrel, you’ll pay around $100 to $120.00.  If you buy an actual terra-cotta 50-gallon rain barrel…well, I’d tell you to not do that. 

How Do You Install Them?
Installation is kinda straightforward if you are pretty good with your hands and can follow instructions.  If you can’t even figure out how to clean your gutters, I’d recommend hiring someone else to do it. 

The basics are:
1. Locate the rain barrel beside a downspout from your roof’s gutter.
2. Direct the downspout into the barrel.  You might need to cut the downspout and add a flexible pipe to get it into the barrel, but that really depends on your specific downspout. 
3. After you get the downspout into the barrel, you tmake sure you have an overflow pipe coming from the barrel, because it’s gonna fill up and the water has to go somewhere.  Usually, the overflow from the rain barrel is reattached to wherever the existing downspout had been connected. 
4. Attach a hose to the bottom of the barrel so you can use the newly harvested rain.  Most barrels come with some type of overflow hookup and hose connector for easy installation.  If you bought one that doesn’t have those easy-to-do-it-things, you can always make them yourself…unless you bought real terra cotta.  But if you aren’t very good at making things, you’ll likely destroy it by trying to drill a hole for an overflow pipe (which is why I don’t suggest buying real terra cotta). 

What Do You Do With the Water Once It’s in The Barrel?
Short answer…water your plants and lawn with it…duh? ;)  No, but really water your plants and lawn with it.  It is free and sustainable water!  Using harvested rain reduces the pressure on natural resources, reduces your carbon footprint and accomplishes some other pretty cool sustainable stuff. 

To make sure you don’t create a nursery for mosquitoes, you might want to drop a BT donut into it, or use it within 48 hours after a rainstorm.  Water from a rain barrel is good stuff and is usually safe to use for vegetables, grass and planted beds.  I won’t drink it…but that’s just me.  I’m sure some people do, but I do not recommend it. 

The Barrel
That’s the fast and short details for a rain barrel - Cost, Sizing, Location and Use.  I love my rain barrels, and am always upgrading them to make them better.  If you are wondering how much would it cost for someone to do the entire installation for you…based on cost of barrel and difficulty of installation, you should budget $160 to $350 per barrel...but that’s just ballpark.   If you have something more complicated in mind, it would obviously cost more.