Our Community in Fairfax County, Virginia

At our May 2009 civic association meeting, two Green Spring Master Gardeners gave a presentation on the problems from traditional gardening and lawn maintenance and the benefits of taking a different approach.  Anne Marie Hicks and Ponder Henley provided a wealth of information on how to work with nature to maintain our lawns and gardens in ways that are beneficial to the ecology and in many cases save us time and money.

For those who are looking for simple ideas that are easy to implement, consider the following:

• When planting new grass or over seeding your lawn, use a variety of grasses, especially grasses that are native to this region.


• Save water and don't water lawns—they will naturally turn brown in the peak of summer and regain their green color when cooler temperatures return in the fall.


• Limit lawn areas to where you need it—not steep slopes.


• Aerate, over seed, and top dress your lawn with compost in the fall.


• Grass clippings left on the lawn become good fertilizer and don't add to the landfill.


• Use natural pest control and organic slow-release fertilizers.  Chemical fertilizers release nutrients too fast—the lawn responds quickly, but the grass then depends on more fertilizers.


• Only five percent of bugs are bad, so make sure you know what you are doing before using pesticides.


• Mulch your gardens every spring.  Mulch holds water and decomposes into materials that are good for plants.


• Leaves put into an open container or just a pile, and turned occasionally, become rich leaf compost or humus, a wonderful source of nutrition for plant life.


• One of the best things to do for your garden is to compost your garden and kitchen waste.

Every lawn is a combination of microenvironments: sunny, shady, damp, dry, clay soil, etc.  For new gardens, consider native plants that thrive in the particular microclimate where you are planting.

The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia has an excellent Web site with practical information you can use.  Go to www.audubonva.org/index.php/eco-friendly-landscaping and check out the links at the bottom of the page.  A lot of work went into this site to make it easy to find just what you want, and it even includes a list of lawn and garden centers where you can shop for the plants you need.  Merrifield Gardens is one of the places, and it happens to be close by.  Check it out!

A great way to promote a continuous blooming garden is to deadhead regularly.  Deadheading is the practice of trimming off spent flowers and it helps your garden in two ways:  it helps get of old, dying blooms, making your garden tidier, and it encourages plants to bloom again, so you can get more color out of each plant.  When blooms start to fade, brown, curl or otherwise look unattractive, that's the time to trim them off, allowing the other flowers to shine.  Deadheading also keeps plants from setting seed, which also promotes flowering all season long and helps to reduce disease problems.

You can deadhead throughout the season as blooms die as well as after the blooming season for each plant.  Use sharp shears to make strong, clean cuts without ragged edges.

Spring or fall is a good time to divide your perennials.  Divide older established plants, overgrown plants, or those whose middle sections are worn out.

Dig around and under the plant with a turning fork, and lift the plant carefully from the bottom of the root ball.  Remove damaged or diseased sections.  Using two turning forks, pry the plant in half.  You should now be able to see how many new plants you can divide it into.

Many older plants can yield up to a dozen new ones.  Water new plants well for several weeks until they are established