Welcome to the half-time show. The beginning of August marks the halfway mark on our gardening calendars. Your annual garden is entering mid life, and like us entering mid-life, this is a great time to reflect on the meaning of (gardening) life.

Recently, Ben's aunt Lynn sent us a link to a thoroughly fascinating publication from New York about Nature-Based Landscapes. It is fascinating as it articulates many aspects of gardening as we know it today, in 2022. And it makes perfect sense.  

Gone is the access to pesticides that generations before us used with abandon.

Gone is the notion that the only garden worth having was one that reflected control over nature: the perfect lawn, hedge and a border dominated by pollinator-unfriendly impatiens.

Gone too, we only hope, is the idea that every piece of noisy equipment available must be obtained and used, often on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning. 

Here are our favourites from a long list of simple principles for a nature-based landscape:

1.     Go electric. No noise, no pollution. People won’t run away from you.

2.     Save the soil. It is to your garden what the foundation is to your house. Try building a house or garden without either and failure is guaranteed to be in your future.

3.     Mind the Mulch. A 10 to 12 cm layer of finely ground up cedar bark mulch will eliminate up to 90% of weeds and reduce the need for water by up to 70%. It is a miracle for both the low maintenance and Nature Based gardener.

4.     Raise your mower. Cut your lawn less frequently and never shorter than 8 cm. “The taller the grass blades the deeper and more drought tolerant the roots.” We quote ourselves.

5.     Reduce your lawn area and replace with native flowering plants. Neighbourhood pollinators, the ones who fertilize 30% of what we eat, will thank you.

6.      Plant a pollinator patch. With or without a reduced lawn size, attracting pollinators like bumblebees, mason bees, moths, butterflies and hummingbirds (to name just a few) not only is a wonderful and meaningfully positive contribution to the environment, it is entertainment. Once you start looking for them, you will be hooked on the exercise.  Our morning always begins this time of year with a walk through the garden observing the activity.  

7.     Plant a tree. Through our work with Trees For Life ( www.treesforlife.ca) we have learned that of all the nature based solutions to climate change, trees, especially urban trees, represent 30% of the answer. Note: we added this point, it is not in the report. 

The idea of nature-based solutions is so good that we think it is causing a revolution in how we garden. Remember when milkweed was a weed? The seeds for milkweed are now sold from seed racks.

Remember when we sprayed 2,4-D to kill dandelions? If you are under 30, you won’t. But the rest of us do. 

And if you are over 75, you remember when municipalities sprayed DDT on well-treed streets while kids played road hockey. You might have been one of those kids.

We know so much more about how the world works and the impact of our activity on it. 

We are smarter now. 

Yours as ever,

Mark and Ben Cullen

Merchants of Beans and Beauty

p.s. look for our story in the Toronto Star about 'A Garden for the rusty-patched bumblebee', by Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Colla . An amazing book.