Gardeners/helpers: Here’s an offer you can’t refuse
The headline is serious, and the illustrations tell the story: I’m turning my ugly front area into a landscape of ornamental grasses and beautiful but hardy native floral statements — TODAY! (And tomorrow and the day after that — ad infinitum — until the work’s done). I need strong backs for hole-digging and pot and soil carrying and knowledgeable planters who know how to “massage” a rootball into a plantable state and placement into the chosen spot.
You, dear readers, are invited any time after this reading (weather permitting) to mask-up and join me with a makeover that’s taken 40-plus years to take place! I’m bribing you with payment in your choices of my collection of like-new garden and cookbooks — authored by the likes of Rosemary Verey, Christopher Lloyd, etc., covering most every facet of gardening from how-to, vines, stonework, annuals, perennials, groundcover, and more.
Naturally, with COVID at large, I can’t invite you in, and will have only bottled water to offer you — along with my personal expertise (read bossy, pushy, arbitrary). I’ve had my shots and will be wearing my mask (when I’m not bawling out orders). Seriously, I’d love to meet you — and renew acquaintances with those I’ve met before. There’s no need to call, just show up — maybe with a shovel (I’m short on them), and your own sandwich if you want to do that. If you can’t make it today, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are fine — I’ll be here on hand until the job’s done.
I don’t have a cellphone — and may not answer if you call (the answering machine is shot, too) — but this invitation is real, and I’ll welcome anyone who shows up — just not with a hug! There’s plenty of social distancing in planting a meadow — so we’ll all observe the cautions and still have fun and maybe make some new friends! See you later!
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In last week’s column, I opined that bird and butterfly population was way down this season — “doubtless due to the smoky, toxic air” … but I have since discovered how wrong I was. The problem exists throughout the world.
In the U.S. much of it is due to the deluge of next-generation pesticides unleashed by agrochemical giants like Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta. Bayers’ Neonics absorb into the plant’s tissue, turning the plant into a tiny poison factory that emits toxins all the way from its roots to its nectar killing a host of beneficial insects — ranging from bees and butterflies to ladybugs and dragonflies. This indiscriminate poison is persistent, remaining in the soil for years. When one considers that more than 70 out of 100 major crops are pollinated by bees, not to mention the abundance of flowers and vegetables that bees pollinate in millions of backyard gardens across America, it is more than chilling. Our only recourse is to use organic methods at all times and let the heroic beneficials do their work in safety.
However, pesticides are not the only enemy; I had always revered the incredible — and successful — efforts of Prince Charles in ridding England of pesticides, but a worse enemy is taking over the job of environmental destruction In that country — a fatal combination of downsizing and growth. Great estates of many acres are selling off large blocs of land to entrepreneurs who are ripping out miles of wildflower meadows and ancient hedgerows which wandered for miles and miles over the countryside.
A hedgerow isn’t like one of our dinky little property borders, but a large, vibrant, varied mix of shrubs, small trees, flowers, honeysuckle and grapevines, nut trees, brambles and groundcover hiding everything from mushrooms to bird’s nests and rabbit holes. These also served as home and cover for deer, foxes, squirrels, weasels and a plethora of other creatures and insects, great and small. Now, their destruction is adding to the decimation of birds and butterflies equating ours.
The problem was, and is, as usual, attributable to the workings of man. The solution then is up to man — or rather, we gardeners, landscapers, growers, earth-lovers, who must take stock of the points outlined in a book I discovered in a London bookshop.
Abandonment of the following:
• Agricultural intensification; deforestation (including destruction of beneficial undergrowth) due to use of pesticides and herbicides; reduction of water tables.
• Preservation or re-establishment of wildflower meadows, deciduous woodland, restoration of hedges.
The book, by the way, is British and dated 1988 — so their environmental drama has been going on for some time.
But people are aware — and in many small ways are working to make things better and the role of each of us in maintaining a little oasis of healthy landscape is vital in this time of massive bird, bee and butterfly die-off all over the world. So replace the chemicals with elbow-grease and join the action!
Valle Novak writes the Country Chef and Weekend Gardener columns for the Daily Bee. She can be reached at bcdailybee@bonnercountydailybee.com. or by phone at 208-265-4688 between the hours of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
