August 4, 2022 0 Comments

Southampton New York Top Five Plant List

Plants To Boost Your Southampton Property

In permaculture design, I use elements that offer multiple benefits.  This is known as stacking functions.  This is no different if you are considering plants or hardscape features.  Today I’m going to share my top five plant picks for Southampton yards, plants with more than just one beneficial quality.

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      1. Agastache nepetoides – Yellow Giant Hyssop is a beautiful native plant that is threatened statewide.  Planting it in your yard can help save this plant as well as provide critical habitat for birds and other beneficial pollinator species which rely on it for food and shelter.  Agastache as a genus offers many colors, and this species has the same beautiful greyish-green leaves as others in this genus.  The scent is no less than glorious, explaining what drives bees so crazy around these plants.

     

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June 23, 2022 0 Comments

Creating Rain

Dry Land Rain-Making

In this article, I’m going to share my research and experience with making it rain.  Nevermind the data-less climate “crisis.”  The need for rain in dry environments is obvious.  Well, it just so happens that human beings possess the ability to cause rain to fall.  How?  Let’s look at some of the methods I found.

Plant “rain trees” – species such as Ocotea foetens, the original “rain tree,” are known to condense water and shed it like

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Ocotea foetens grows throughout the Canary Islands and Madeira, Portugal.

rain.  So much so that some villages where it grows as a native plant are able to get over 80% of their water from these trees.  Another rain tree grows in the Amazonian rainforest, but Americans are very familiar with it; the Brazil Nut or Bertholletia excelsa.  This species makes it rain by drawing water 14 stories from beneath the soil surface, where the leaves release it to condense as rain clouds.  Half of the rainfall over the Amazon rainforest comes from trees like this one.  Note:  it can be difficult to find seeds or seedlings of these trees, if you wish to try your hand at cultivating them.  Be sure to confirm any seeds you buy have not been boiled or otherwise treated, so that they remain viable for planting.  Even if you simply plant more of any variety of trees that grow in your area, you’ll more than likely thereby cool the soil, increase moisture in the vicinity, and provide vital microclimate conditions for additional diverse species to take root.  Science is perennially failing to acknowledge what people intuitively find until much later on, so while we wait for scientists to admit the next amazing breakthrough, we can plant trees!

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September 14, 2021 0 Comments

3 Top Healing Plants For Your Immune System

Keep Healthy Naturally With Plants

If you are worried due to all the noise on TV and piped over sound systems in stores, don’t worry; you can take simple action now to sidestep all the fear.

Using plants to stay healthy is tried and true, tested and proven over millennia of human civilization.  Most pharmaceutical drugs were derived from the plants that miraculously grew the medicine within their branching architectures.  For-profit corporate interests focus on making money, and so if shouldn’t surprise us that a return to the source – Nature – is powerful and inexpensive.

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November 23, 2020 0 Comments

Storm Water Solutions for Dry Urban Areas

Storm Water Solutions to Drought

I’ll bet you never think about storm water solutions when walking in your neighorhood.  You may have noticed your local landscape seems stressed out by drought.  A walk can tell you a lot about the outside factors affecting your property.  Working with permaculture is one of the most effective ways to restore soil, increase plant health, add shade, and attract beneficial wildlife.  You can also lower your water and power bills by choosing permaculture instead of traditional landscaping.  But did you know permaculture reverses drought?

You’ll notice when you walk through your neighborhood that some yards are green and lush while others look tired and dry.  Of course some families irrigate and others try to save on their water bill by letting their lawns go brown in the summer.  But there is a lot more happening in the majority of urban and suburban yards than might be obvious at first glance.  Most families don’t realize that they can lower their water bills with a few simple techniques.

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image: Yard Maintenance Services
October 14, 2020 0 Comments

Destructive Maintenance

Can Yard Maintenance Services Cause Damage?

Yard maintenance services are destroying your yard and the wider landscape. People have begun to take notice and speak up about this hidden danger.
In case you missed it, the Pasadena Environmental Advisory Commission hosted a special forum last night on gas-powered blowers and other yard equipment.  I attended and was impressed with their consideration of destruction caused by typical mow-blow-and-go outfits.  I have a longstanding frustration with such companies, which are almost always uneducated and so do not know what they are doing to the plants and soil for which they are being paid to maintain.  Not only do they usually not have degrees or even basic training other than the use of gas-powered equipment, but the work they do is not licensed or regulated.
September 3, 2020 0 Comments

Conservation of Land Through Eco-Restoration

The Conservation of Land

The focus of my professional practice is the conservation of land.  I am here to restore it wherever I can.  I know in my bones that the earth posesses a highly evolved capacity to heal.  The degradation of the American landscape is easily reversible, yet  uneducated maintenance costs the homeowner and pushes the land toward entropy.

When I use permaculture to halt this destruction and restore the natural ecological evolution of a property, the homeowner stops needing maintenance, their power bill goes down, and they use less water.  I am serious about creating self-maintaining natural systems that sustain diverse forms of life.  Permaculture allows me to mimic those found in Nature, and the results are quick.

In light of ongoing rampant environmental destruction around the globe as well as destructive development and maintenance practices, I developed the following resources to help those interested in restoration ecology get a jump-start on their projects.

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image: Deer Overpopulation
March 23, 2020 0 Comments

Solutions to Deer Overpopulation

image: Deer OverpopulationWhat Can You Do About Deer Overpopulation?

Many of my clients in Oregon deal with deer overpopulation.  This manifests in deer coming onto their property and eating their plants.  When you invest in delicious food-producing plants, you want to eat them, not watch them be decimated by deer.  I recently advised a client who reached out with questions about how to deal with a lot of deer in her neighborhood doing exactly this.

The problem of deer overpopulation is in truth an issue of wildlife mismanagement.  Deer are a problem because their predators have been removed from the system.  I highly recommend advocating for protections for natural predators such as cougars, bears, and wolves.  These animals rarely attack humans and are vital to a healthy regional ecosystem.

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