Browse Month: May 2018

Lessons at (and from) the Overland Park Arboretum & Botanical Gardens

Botanical gardens are amazing classrooms; kids can learn to appreciate the natural world, adults can learn to look up from our smartphones and appreciate the present, and gardeners can learn that it’s easy to have a beautiful garden when you have an army of staff and volunteers!

Beyond the lesson that we should give ourselves a break and not compare our own gardens with those that have full-time caretakers, we can pick up a few other ideas that are easier to implement than finding money in the budget for a full-time gardener. Continue Reading

Japanese Maple in a woodland garden in front of waterfall

Beginning to Naturalize the Water Garden with Fish and Plants

A backyard waterfall, stream, and pond is a water feature.  When you add plants, it becomes a water garden.  When you add plants and fish, it becomes a magical place you could sit by all day if you didn’t have to do adult things like go to work and buy groceries.

Alas, I am neither independently wealthy nor close enough to a store to qualify for any kind of delivery, so I do have to leave my oasis more than I would like to.  Now the last time you saw the water garden it was under snow and looking pretty darn empty — probably not what you would consider an “oasis” — so let me rewind a bit. Continue Reading