'Sustainable Gardening' Video - What I Didn't Say

Is it because I'd learned so much more between the taping of the video in the spring and when I first saw it 4 months later? Or just that the topic was SO HUGE (how to create and take care of a low-maintenance, eco-friendly garden that looks good all year)? Whatever. Here are some other things I have to say on the subject:

Choose the Right Plants

On the video I suggest planting mostly shrubs and small trees for a lush-but-low-maintenance garden, but gosh, which ones?

Drought-tolerance ones, above all! Except for the small minority of you who garden in evenly wet climates or spots, having plants that tolerate drought and gardener neglect is numero uno for low-maintenance, sustainable gardening! Especially because the world seems to be warming and drying up. Or the precipitation is more extreme, with deluges followed by droughts.

So shrubs like weigela, viburnum, spirea, acuba, and nandina that tolerate months without watering are the low-maintenance gardener's best friend, and they're much easier on the local water supply and your own water bill.

For more information about drought and other water issues, check this section of the site.

Disease- and pest-tolerance. Appropriate plants for a sustainable garden thrive without the application of chemicals of any kind. Yes, that includes "organic" because even natural substances can be harmful to humans and other critters. (One simple example? Consider nicotine!)

The points above apply equally to perennials, vines, groundcovers, grasses - all your plants.

Stop Expecting Perfection

The tide has turned and perfect lawns and perfect fussy roses are becoming as unpopular as Humvees and plastic bags among Nature-lovers.

Some weeds look fine, so just remove the ugly ones. I personally won't allow crabgrass to stick around and ruin a perfectly nice garden, but clover in my lawn? Bring it on!
Just a few insect holes in a few leaves aren't inherently ugly to the human eye. They can remind us that insects gotta eat, too. Up to a certain point, of course. As I say on the video, if a plant has enough insect or disease damage to look truly horrible, I just get rid of it. Good riddance.

More about Everything

See the Navigation Bar to the left for lots more about such briefly touched-on subjects as Mulching, Fertilizing, and Low-Maintenance Gardening. Or just browse the whole site!

Just One More Thing about Planting a Plant

Please spend a little more time filling the space around the new plant with soil and amendments ("soil improvers") than I did in the video. The camera was rolling, so I worked quickly and omitted one important step: tamping the surrounding soil down lightly with my FEET to assure good soil-root contact before mulching the area and watering.

SO Much More about Pruning

Pruning is a complicated subject that fills whole books on the subject with no extra words thrown in. But good-quality videos showing exactly how it's done would be a godsend to the gardening public, so they're in the works at MonkeySee.

See, my short clip about pruning was just a reminder that even sustainable gardens require a bit of yearly pruning.