Artful Gardeners Club

In some Native languages the term for plants translates to those who take care of us. Robin Wall Kimmerer, "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom scienti...fic knowledge, and the teachings of plants" (Link to book in comments) Artwork: Digging Medicine" by Leah Marie Dorion, more of her work here: http://www.leahdorion.ca/gallery.html See more

Did you know that spiders are GREAT for the garden? The biggest benefit of garden spiders is that they eat insects mostly unwanted pests that you don't wa...nt in your garden, like aphids, wasps, beetles, mosquitoes, and flies. They work hard, keeping those unwanted insects in check before they can harm your favorite perennials or sting you. What kind of spiders have you seen in the garden? See more

LIVING ON THE EDGE The boundary where two habitats meet is called an edge. Here an insect hotel faces an open field yet backs into a woodlands. Edges are rather... dynamic and can be busy places for birds, bugs, amphibians and reptiles. The treess provide safety, shade and nesting sites and the field and edge provide both food and warm sunshine. The insect hotel is full of nesting sites for many species of insects and other anthropods. The various "rooms" of this hotel are filled with different kinds of habitats that attract different insects. Solitary bees and wasps like to lay their eggs in holes drilled in wood while beetles prefer bundles of twigs and sticks. A main benefit of the hotel is to give insects a safe place to burrow and nest helping them to survive through the cold months of winter. After all, this hotel is on the EDGE! See more

Francisca Perez from Santiago, Chile is our February NGC Designer of the month, she is a member of Clubes Jardines de Chile and an internationally known floral designer that constantly shares her love of design.

My Hellebores come back every spring.

Does your club, District, State, Share Programs? Think of your ZOOM as an auditorium with seats, waiting to be filled with appreciative friends. Found this th...rough great free programs from USBC. Considering we just had a WH change, perfect timing for this Marta McDowell program...enjoy and share! See more

Daily Dose of Hort #MSUext #dailydoseofhort

Enjoy the moments!

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Daisugi Not far outside of Kyoto, there are immense cedar forests planted along the hills. This Kitayama cedar is known for being exceptionally straight and wi...thout knots and has been in high demand since the 15th century. With such a demand and lack of space, foresters came up with an ingenious way to grow more wood using less land. This involves the heavy pruning of a mother cedar tree, which encourages tall, thin saplings to shoot upwards. Think of it as a bonsai on a large scale. This technique, which is called daisugi, enables foresters to harvest wood much more quickly. The shoots can either be planted (to help quickly populate a forest) or harvested. Similar techniques can be found dating back to ancient Rome, which was called pollarding, and across Europeparticularly in Britainwhere it's called coppicing. The result is slender cedar that is both flexible and dense, making it the perfect choice for traditional wood roofs and beams. Daisugi cedar can be harvested every 20 years and with the base tree lasting hundreds of years, there's a lot of wood to be harvested from just one tree. While 20 years may seem like a long time, this is actually accelerated compared to traditional Kitayama cedar. In order to keep the trees knot-free, workers climb the long trunks every three to four years and carefully prune any developing branches. After about 30 years, a single tree is finally cut down. This type of cedar, which is slightly thicker than the daisugi cedar, has several different uses. Traditionally, the smooth, aesthetically pleasing pieces of wood were used as the main pillars in an alcove called the tokonoma. Also first appearing in the 15th century during the Muromachi period, these alcoves were used to display artistic items like ikebana or scrolls. They also feature prominently in Kyoto's tea houses and it's said that it was Kyoto's preeminent tea master, Sen-no-rikyu, who demanded perfection in the Kitayama cedar during the 16th century. Though the use of Kitayama cedar in these traditional alcoves is declining as Japanese architecture develops, this highly prized wood is still used for everything from chopsticks to furniture. photo: Wrath of Gnon Photo: Stock Photos from H.Tanaka/Shutterstock See more

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