Landscape Articles | Organic and Responsible Practices

Many homeowners schedule their fall yard clean up and consider their lawn care needs met until spring. But end-of-season maintenance shouldn’t stop with the collection of fallen leaves.

Fall is firmly upon us, which means you may have already completed some essential landscape tasks, such as storing your garden hose, cleaning out your gutters and winterizing yourirrigation systems. However, there’s ...

During the summer, when you find yourself working hard to keep up with your lawn’s water needs, you may have wondered if installing an irrigation system could be the key to simplifying your lawn maintenance. For many ...

Summer may be winding down, but there is still plenty of time left in the year to tackle some impactful lawn care projects. With cooler temperatures swiftly approaching, now is the time to begin thinking about lawn and ...

For an environmentally conscious gardener, managing your garden during a drought is a constant battle between needing to conserve water and keeping your parched plants alive. Drought is often paired with heat waves, ...

A beautiful, healthy lawn is an investment in your home’s curb appeal that is important to protect. In New England, the summer season is when your lawn is showcased and should appear at its best.

This time of year is when our lawns can look particularly lush and inviting. But, if not very careful, homeowners can find themselves with a very serious weed problem on their hands, quickly discovering that lawn care ...

Many beginner gardeners are excited to start a new garden project simply to provide their family with tasty, fresh produce throughout the summer months. But others, like you, may have a different goal in mind: to grow ...

A vegetable garden can significantly enhance the aesthetic appeal of a home landscape by introducing a vibrant, dynamic, and functional element that combines beauty with utility.

Do you want to improve your physical health and overall wellbeing?

These days, rising grocery store prices are impacting everyone’s wallets — and they’re showing no signs of coming down any time soon. That means if you’re like many people, you are searching for ways to stretch your ...

While screens offer families a chance to unwind and relax, as we all know, they’re not without their drawbacks.

Starting a vegetable garden is a great way to live sustainably and ensure your family has easy and abundant access to healthy veggies without depending on the grocery store. Not only does it provide access to your own ...

When looking online for garden design inspiration, it’s easy to see that the raised garden bed is having a major moment. Everywhere you turn, people are showing how easy, fun, and beautiful their raised beds, and their ...

Whether you’re installing a new patio, building your dream outdoor kitchen, transforming a driveway, or adding a firepit, there are a lot of factors that come into play when working on the hardscape design within your ...

In the winter, walking out to fetch the mail may be one of the only ways you're scratching the itch to spend some time outdoors. These short forays to the front stoop or the end of the driveway don't allow us to get a ...

Adding plants with different heights, textures and colors can be an excellent solution to adding depth and natural beauty to your garden, but many plants with interesting colors and textures often come with a ...

“Save the bees” is a phrase that has been repeated endlessly over the last couple of decades. We know how important it is to support our pollinator population, and have learned many ways to care for bees as they do ...

Gardening provides us with many joys, but there are, of course, hurdles to jump. The fact of the matter is that you can’t have a garden without garden pests. You can spray for them if you want to take care of them ...

Mushrooms play a very important role in many different ecosystems. The fruiting bodies are a source of food for many different species, not just humans, and on a smaller scale, the mycelium digests and decomposes ...

Adding compost to your lawn and garden is one of the best, easiest, most natural ways to get happy, healthy plants. Compost can be bought at lawn and garden centers, farmers markets, and sometimes even from zoos. But ...

Before the mass adoption of chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and mechanized farming equipment in the early 20th century, people had to rely on more natural methods of cultivating plants. Prior to these changes, ...

For an environmentally conscious gardener, managing your garden during a drought is a constant battle between needing to conserve water and keeping your parched plants alive. Drought is often paired with heat waves ...

Home lawn care has been a subject of human interest since around the 11th century, with the Japanese sodding areas around their gardens with turf grasses taken from livestock fields. Since then, with the introduction of ...

When it comes to plant care, chemical processes are the main element of whether plants wither and die, or survive and thrive. But more often than not, these processes are watered down into three categories; light, ...

Maintaining a home garden can sometimes require a significant amount of water to maintain. Of course, from time to time that’s supplemented by rainfall, but what about the rest of the time? For most people, this extra ...

Supply chain shortcomings are topping news headlines left and right lately, and it’s not just the latest cars and electronics being affected. Food shortages and price increases are becoming the new normal, and many ...

Although insects are vital to a sustainable landscape, an excess of the annoying ones like mosquitos can be a deterrent to enjoying your outdoor spaces. Chemical pesticides can be effective, but are indiscriminate and ...

Rewilding is not a new idea, but it has grown in popularity over the last several years. The modern homeowner is becoming more aware of how even small choices they make in their backyard affects the bigger picture. As ...

Pollination has become a hot topic in part because a fatal disease has been killing honeybees, threatening the ability of commercial farms to produce an adequate supply of the fruits and vegetables we all love — not to ...

As efforts to combat climate change become increasingly urgent, one term that is gaining visibility and popularity is “sustainable landscaping.” But what exactly is it and how can it help us protect the environment? ...

Gardening in general and organic gardening specifically are growing in popularity as an increasing number of homeowners are becoming aware of the benefits. The pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the rising cost of food ...

The pandemic has brought about a number of widespread changes in how we live, eat, and thrive. Gone for now are the days of carefree eating out. Tightened budgets often mean tightened belts as more and more Americans ...

While summer may be long gone, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy an active yard during the colder months and throughout winter. The key is creating an attractive, sustainable winter ecosystem that not only provides ...

Truly successful landscaping starts with sustainability, which is built on a foundation of ecology -- really just a fancy word for the relationship of all organisms to each other and their surroundings. By understanding ...

In part one of our series comparing ecological cleanups with traditional ones, we discussed the differences between ecological and conventional landscaping. In the second part, we reviewed some of the specific processes ...

It seems intuitive that we like to spend time outdoors -- we’ve all craved nature at one time or another -- but science has now identified some of the reasons we actually need to spend time in a more natural setting. In ...

Gardening and garden landscaping to many people invokes images of beautiful flowers or rows of healthy fruits and vegetables. But gardening is so much more than that. Modern garden design encompasses a wide range of ...

According to the American Society of Landscape Architects climate change is rapidly growing as a significant factor in landscape design. Raising temperatures, more frequent and severe droughts, and increasing damage ...

Organic landscaping is both a process and a strategy for creating a beautiful, dynamic landscape while supporting a low-environmental-impact installation and maintenance approach. And while organic landscaping may not ...

Lawn care chemicals have been around for decades. But only in recent years have we started to become aware of some of the damage that can be caused by these compounds. There is a lot of hype and misinformation out there ...

In recent blog posts, we have been discussing the key differences between organic and conventional landscaping. While conventional gardening tactics may be more prominent, we believe that organic methods are better for ...

In our previous blog post, we provided an overview of the difference between conventional and organic landscaping. We explained the ultimate goal of organic landscaping: to use gardening and lawn care methods that ...

We live in a time when humans have a tremendous impact on the environment with agriculture and industry. This is especially true in developed countries – according to research by the University of Michigan, we would ...

Everyone loves having a healthy yard that is capable of growing many types of interesting, vibrant shrubs and trees. Unfortunately, the presence of unsightly weeds is one of the drawbacks of having a yard that can ...

Using organic methods to take care of your lawn isn’t just better for the environment - it may also be safer for human health. This past summer, a terminally ill former groundskeeper in San Francisco was awarded a $250 ...

In our previous blog post, we touched on methods to choose, arrange, and support healthy shrubs and trees in your yard. For this post, we will be talking about ways to maintain your yard over the long run. We’ll also ...

In recent years, there’s been a large push to educate homeowners and commercial landscapers on how to conserve the environment. More and more home and business owners are realizing that poor landscaping practices will ...

In a July 2018 meeting, the Massachusetts Drought Management Task Force declared that the state of Massachusetts was free of drought conditions. This is a sigh of relief for residents of the state who remember the ...

A short, neatly-edged expanse of sprawling green grass is the ultimate idea of the American lawn. Unfortunately, the “perfect” lawn is more reminiscent of a chemically-treated golf course than a healthy yard that ...

Homeowners often place lots of emphasis on creating a garden with beautiful flowers and shrubs that bloom majestically in the spring season. Unfortunately, focusing on beauty for a single season can leave your yard ...

Summer is about getting together with friends and family in a fun celebration of the season. Unfortunately, this is a tradition that is often interrupted by uninvited pests like mosquitoes. These insects can make happy ...

There’s nothing like hosting a summer get-together in your backyard to celebrate the season. Spending quality time with friends in your outdoor space is the epitome of summer, and it’s time to prepare for upcoming BBQs ...

Every yard will eventually face pest problems. Caterpillars stripping leaves in your new vegetable garden and fungus that causes root rot in flowers and shrubs are only a couple of examples of the extensive damage that ...

Once summer hits and you’ve finished all of the work you had planned for spring, it can be tempting to spend your free time enjoying the sun and letting your yard do its own thing. While your yard doesn’t need as much ...

Soil, seeds, and sunlight may be the foundation for a healthy and fruitful garden, but without proper care and attention, you won’t be able to grow the beautiful shrubs and flowers you want. With the right tools for ...

Everyone loves the family pet, a companion that kids and adults appreciate having around. But as homeowners with dogs and cats know, there are some parts of your residence that you can’t share with your furry bundle of ...

Say the word “bees” around most people and the first thing that comes to mind is a black-and-yellow menace that terrorizes children and summer get-togethers. But that’s an unfair and incomplete picture of the importance ...

Growing your own food is healthy, reduces your environmental footprint, and can even reduce stress and improve your mood. But before you jump into buying supplies for a vegetable garden, you’ll want to do some planning. ...

The arrival of March means we are just weeks away from consistently warm weather here in the Massachusetts area. While we’ll certainly see some colder days, it’s also time to start preparing for the spring season. ...

Growing your own food has many benefits. Not only does it help you establish a more organic space in your yard, it allows you and your family to eat nutritious foods that are natural and healthy. But creating a thriving ...

Soil is the foundation for a great yard. Without the right soil, you’ll never be able to create a thriving outdoor environment that gives you relaxation, attracts beautiful wildlife, and supports the local habitat. Yet ...

If you’re in the process of creating a new landscaping plan and want a garden that is not only beautiful but good for the environment, you may be thinking about organic methods. There’s an entire movement focused on ...

Water conservation is important: it helps preserve limited natural resources, conserves energy, and saves you money. A properly engineered drip irrigation system can give your plants the exact amount of water that they ...

Perhaps you just bought a new house and want to be sure you maintain your yard sustainably, or you want to transition to organic landscaping to reduce your environmental footprint. Before you start, read this guide to ...

Organic landscaping may sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be — all you need is a good plan and the ability to stick to it. Once you’ve decided to start an organic landscaping project, these are the first five ...

Organic lawn care is not only better for your yard, it improves the environment and human health. But what are the differences between chemical and organic lawn care products? Is there ever a time to use chemical ...

Are you looking for the best possible fertilizer for your lawn and unsure what to pick? Wondering if investing in organic fertilizers are even worth it? Organic supplements and fertilizers are not only better for the ...

We all know how important it is to take care of the planet, but you may be wondering what you can do to improve your practices. One easy step is to use organic landscaping methods. Adopting these habits is much simpler ...

Being from New England I have seen many snow and ice storms come through. It’s important to keep in mind both personal and public safety with winter weather. State workers and highway departments take care of snow ...

For many homeowners here in the Northeast, having enough space for entertaining guests can be a bit challenging. A good cost-effective alternative to full-scale home additions or remodeling is creatively extending your ...