Here was the dilemma: one of our clients had a gorgeous Lions Head Japanese maple that had grown too big for its location. It was already 7 feet tall when the homeowner planted it on his property 12 years ago, so you can imagine how much it had grown since.

Our client was looking to move the maple because it was planted too close to the house; its roots were likely to get tangled in underground gas lines and the top branches would soon interfere with overhead cable lines. He also had a personal attachment to the tree, so wanted to find a way to preserve it if possible. And what’s not to love about it: this deciduous tree has beautiful green foliage that turns red in spring and a spectacular gold in the fall. It can grow to about 20 feet tall at maturity with a spread of about 15 feet.

Air vaccum and air knife. All photos by Ecoyards

The problem: the roots of the Lions Head Japanese Maple were so close to gas lines that we couldn’t dig it out without striking those lines and causing all kinds of mayhem.

The solution: we hired an arborist who used “an air knife” to safely excavate soil from the maple’s tree roots without having to hack away with a pick or shovel and otherwise damaging the roots.

Opening up root-ball with air knife.

The air knife uses compressed air (not unlike air tire pumps you find at gas stations) at about 185 psi rating. The pressure from the air knife removes soil away by focusing a stream of air around the roots. Apparently, this technology has been used by the military to excavate land mines.

Crane places tree in truck for move.

The process of air-excavating the tree from its original location was tedious. It took hours to gently remove the soil away from the root ball. Once we had freed the soil from the root ball, we brought in a crane to raise the plant and moved it into a truck where we then transplanted it into its new location.

Crew places Lions Head Japanese Maple in its new location.

Happy tree in its new location. This maple, Acer palmatum “Shishigashira”, loves full sun to partial shade, and is relatively low maintenance. It can live to be about 80 years old!

Contact Ecoyards if you ever need help solving a tricky landscaping situation.  

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, the New York Times’ Mark Bittman has a good piece on the benefits of converting lawns into gardens. Bittman calls attention to a situation in Orlando, where a couple was threatened with a $500 a day fine for planting vegetables in their front yard. A neighbor had complained about the yard being an eyesore, or rather for looking “like a farm.”

According to the NYT, when faced with a violation from the city, the homeowner “stood outside his polling site during the last election circulating a petition to change the current code, and then appeared on a local TV news station, telling the reporter and any city officials who happened to be watching, ‘You’ll take my house before you take my vegetable garden’.”

“The battle has been raging for months, and the city’s latest proposal is to allow no more than 25 percent of a homeowner’s front yard to be planted in fruits and vegetables,” Bittman writes.

Fortunately, the city of Seattle has been encouraging residents to plant urban gardens for a number of years as the urban farm movement has taken hold. The mayor and others even recently expanded the number of P-patches in the community where residents can garden if they don’t have their own plots. Still, it wasn’t long ago when homeowners were chastised for not obtaining a $225 street use permit to plant vegetables or flowers in the city-owned property known as parking trips (located between the sidewalk in front of your home and the street). We wrote about the city revising the rules in 2009 after much citizen uproar. The new guidelines are here, and homeowners are free to plant fruits and vegetables in that city-owned parking strip, with some exceptions; for example, the city says don’t plant fruiting cherry, apple or pear trees that may drop fruit and can pose a safety risk to oblivious pedestrians.

Not every homeowner will want to tear up their front lawns or even devote the time to keep an urban vegetable plot. Let’s face it, vegetable plots can be very time consuming, and not too pleasing to look at during the winter months (the city suggests planting a winter cover crop to keep soil from running off the property and into the storm drains). We think there are certainly benefits to having lawns (think young kids and pets), as long as they’re maintained and grown responsibly. Read more about how we maintain lawns in a ecologically responsible way, including leaving grass clippings on the lawn, using organic fertilizers sparingly, avoiding pesticides (weed and feed products), planting grass seeds that thrive in the Northwest, and going easy on the watering hose.

We’d like to hear from those who are tending vegetable gardens in parking strips. What are you growing in winter months? What are you planning to grow this season? Are there vegetables or fruits that work better than others?

Contact Ecoyards to setup a consultation if you’d like to convert your lawn area into a new garden.

Photo by JKehoe_Photos via Creative Commons License.

What popular holiday plant goes by the name Cuitlaxochitl, Flower of the Holy Night, or Crown of the Andes, and has even been referred to as lobster flower or flame-leaf flower? If you guessed poinsettia, you’re right.

In the U.S., poinsettias got their name from a botanist and the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, who introduced the plant into the country in 1828. But its history goes back many centuries, according to this terrific reference guide from the University of Illinois Extension. The Aztects called these bright red plants Cuitlaxochitl. They used the sap to control fevers and the leaves to make a reddish dye during the 14th through 16th century.

Poinsettias are part of the Euphorbiaceae or Spurge family. Botanically, the plant is known as Euphorbia pulcherrima. The U of Illinois experts also dispense with a myth, noting that poinsettias are NOT poisonous. It notes that an Ohio State University study showed that a 50-pound child would have to eat more than a pound-and-a-quarter of Poinsettia leaves (500 to 600 leaves) to have any side effects. The most common side effects that have been reported from Poinsettia ingestions are upset stomach and vomiting. The leaves are reportedly not very tasty, so it’s highly unlikely that kids or even pets would be able to eat that many!

Here are some tips on how to care for your poinsettia. Poinsettias can last up to 6-8 weeks if properly cared for:

_ Make sure it is wrapped properly because exposure to low temperatures even for a few minutes can damage the bracts and leaves.

_ Keep in indirect light. Six hours of light daily is ideal. Keep the plant from touching cold windows.

_ Keep them away from radiators, air registers or open doors and windows.

_ Punch a few holes in the foil so water can drain through into a saucer. Water when the soil is dry.

Reference: The University of Illinois Extension Poinsettia Pages.

New 49er stadium.

The San Francisco 49ers are getting a new football stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., and there’s one particular landscape feature being built that we think is pretty cool and environmentally-friendly.

The massive construction project features a bioretention system, an innovative way to control stormwater runoff that pollutes local waterways. As you can imagine, a venue with seating for about 70,000 or so fans would require lots and lots of parking spaces, sidewalks and other hardscaping. Rain falling on parking spaces, for example, would wash grease, oil leaked from cars and other petrochemicals into storm drains and right into a local creek that eventually flows into the San Francisco Bay.

The contractors, however, used a low-impact development technique to slow the flow of runoff, filter that rainwater on site. They designed a bioretention system that collects runoff, prevents it from eroding surrounding natural landscapes, and treats the polluted stormwater on site. The stadium site will have six bioretention systems in parking lots and in the area next to the stadium. The bioretention and biofiltration system looks like any other parking lot planting strip. It will likely have flowers or trees, but in the trenches below are a series of pipes, gravel, soil, and other material that filters and then carries treated water out of the system. The stadium project was required to meet tough California rules; the treatment soil in the system had to retain 5 inches of water per hour.

Contact Ecoyards if you’d like to build a football stadium like this in your backyard.  😊

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of tree or shrub is growing in your backyard, or if you covet your neighbor’s flower but its name stumps you, look no further. The plant detectives at the  Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens are here to help. The Seattle Times recently wrote a feature on the UW graduate student (and her army of volunteers) who staff the center and try to find get to the bottom of flora mysteries.

As the Times notes, facility’s bigger mission is to collect and house specimens of all plants grown in the UW Botanic Garden. But in between, the staff helps the public with plant identification at no charge.

If you have plant or other specimen and want to know what it is, bring in a sample (including the fruit or flower whenever possible). A photo of the entire plant also helps. You can also drop off plant samples for identification with the Center for Urban Horticulture reception desk when the herbarium is not open. If your plant sample does not have flowers or fruit, the herbarium will still make every effort to identify the plant sample, but says it may not be able to accurately identify the plant species. Contact the herbarium at 206-685-2589.

You may also download a plant identification form and mail it in with your plant sample to: Hyde Herbarium, UWBG, University of Washington, Box 354115, Seattle, WA 98195-4115.

Ecoyards makeover of West Seattle parking strip.

All across Seattle, homeowners have been reclaiming the parking strip — the city-owned no-man’s land between the sidewalk and the street in front of their homes — and remaking it into a more beautiful or useful part of their home landscape. One of our neighbors has been working on a DIY project to transform her grass-covered parking strip into a low-maintenance but edible garden space. Because the city-owned property is public, she wants to install edible plants that would provide bounty to anyone in the neighborhood who wants to help themselves.

Other residents are making use of these parking strips to plant vegetables, install raised beds, add extra beautify to their landscapes or creating a landscape that doesn’t require mowing. After much uproar from citizens, the city of Seattle relaxed rules on gardening in planting strips back in 2009. Residents no longer have to pay the old $225 permit fee to plant in the space, but you still have to follow certain setback rules and height requirements.

The city keeps a master tree list of trees that can be planted in the parking strip. It offers useful information such as mature height, whether it can be planted under wires and what fall color it offers.

Here are some other questions and answers, taken from the city’s memo on the subject:

Do I need a permit? No permit is required if you are gardening in the planting strip in front of your house. A FREE street use permit is required if you plant a tree or install hardscape elements, such as a raised bed or pavers.

Can I grow food? Yes. The city allows you to grow food in planting strips as long as you follow certain height and setback guidelines. The city doesn’t allow “certain trees, including fruiting cherry, apple, and pear species that can pose a safety risk to pedestrians when fruit falls on the walkway.”

Where do I get a permit? Apply for a Street Use permit online, or in person on the 23rd floor of the Seattle Municipal Building at 700 5th Ave.

vine maple

Gardens in the Northwest can put on spectacular displays of colors during the autumn. From native vine maples and Japanese maples to burning bushes and asters, gardeners have plenty of options for incorporating bursts of color into their landscapes as summer winds down into fall. This can be done through fall-blooming perennials, showy annuals or employing the colorful foliage of shrubs and trees.

1. Vine maple. This is a classic Northwest native with show-stopping orange, yellow and red color that last well into winter. Coax the best fall color by planting these trees in a spot with at least a half day of sun.

2. Asters come in a variety of colors, ranging from pink to blue to white. They have daisy-like flowers that bloom from late August into early winter. Aster ‘monch’ is a particularly long-lasting bloom with clear lavender-blue flower.

3. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ offers year-round interest, not just the pinkish-red blooms that pop in the fall. They’re drought-tolerant and require little maintenance, and are a must in any Northwest garden.

Japanese maple. Photo by Ecoyards.

4. Japanese maples. There’s no shortage of Japanese maple varieties to choose from, depending on the color you’re going after. Japanese maples are show-stoppers this time of year. Yellow, orange, green and varying shades of red, burgundy and purple.

5. Burning bush, or ‘euonymous alatus,’ is a large-foliage shrub with brilliant flaming red color during the fall.

6. Goldenrod, Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks,’ are easy-to-grow, hardy perennials.  ‘Fireworks’ have tiny flowers that are clustered into spires of yellow. Butterflies and bees love these flowers.

Contact Ecoyards to setup a consultation if you’d like help adding new colorful plants to your landscape.

Crimson clover. Consider planting a cover crop to suppress weeds and add nutrients to your garden over the winter. Photo courtesy of shannonm75 via Creative Commons License.

After a terrific stretch of sunny, dry days over the past several weeks, the overcast skies are a reminder that it’s time to get cracking on fall tasks in the garden. On my to-do list this week: harvest the remaining ripe tomatoes, pick ripe huckleberries and start putting the vegetable garden to bed. Here are some other chores to consider this fall:

1. Plant trees, shrubs, perennials, ground covers and more. Read our previous post for tips on how to plant trees properly.

2. Weed, weed and weed.

3. Putting the vegetable garden to bed, unless of course you’ve planted winter crops. If not, consider planting a cover crop such as crimson clover to suppress weeds over the winter and improve your soil.

3. Time to plant spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. Get the earliest bloomers into the ground first: crocus, daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. The bulbs will need need several months of winter chill to produce good springtime blooms.

4. Remove dead and diseased leaves, plants and other messes from around your landscape to reduce diseases next year. Deadhead flowers.

5. Continue to plant or transplant perennials, shrubs and trees. Winter months provide ideal conditions for planting new shrubs and trees.

6. Plant garlic for harvest in the spring.

7. Turn off irrigation system once the rains come.  Contact us if you need help winterizing your irrigation system.

Peat bog. Photo courtesy of peupleloup via Creative Commons License.

The New York Times recently covered the controversy brewing in Great Britian over the use of peat in gardening. As the newspaper reports, the British government drew some fierce criticism from both sides after it announced plans to gradually eliminate peat from all gardening products. Gardeners love the stuff (it’s spongy, airy, improves soil structure, holds water without being soggy; and it is widely used in potting soils, planting mixes and as a soil amendment). But environmental critics say the practice of harvesting peat isn’t sustainable. Peat “is scraped off the tops of centuries-old bogs, which are vital ecosystems that also serve as natural stores of carbon, just like rain forests,” the Times reports.

Most of the peat used in the U.S. comes from Canada. Its use is no less controversial here, though there doesn’t seem to be any effort afoot to ban the product.

At Western Washington University, professor Linda Chalker-Scott makes the argument for why peat moss isn’t a sustainable resource. She writes that peatlands play an important role in the environment. Like wetlands, she says, peatland systems store and help purify water; and they’re the single largest terrestrial store of carbon. While natural, peat can often take centuries to replace.

Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture, however, suggests that it’s OK, if you use it conservatively. The department recommends using peat for starting seeds and cuttings because it minimizes disease problems. But it says it’s a better idea to turn to compost and manure for larger quantities of organic matter in your garden.

Chalker-Scott writes that there are a number of suitable substitutes for peat. Compost is the best known substitute. Coir, or coconut dust, is also another suitable alternative, according to Oregon State University. Coconut “peat” is usually the short fibers of the coconut husk; the longer fibers are removed and used for doormats, brushes and ropes; the short fibers often end up in horticulture products. According to OSU, researchers at Auburn University and University of Arkansas compared peat and coir as soil amendments for gardening and found that coir performed as good as peat. Coir can hold moisture and wet, similar to peat.

The cooler weather in Seattle means it’s time to plant trees! Fall is a great time to do this, because the weather is much cooler and this allows trees and plants to establish new roots rather than withering in dry, summer conditions.

Planting a tree seems easy enough. Dig a hole, plop the tree in, cover with dirt, water, and voila!  That’s mostly right, but there are some steps that you can take to ensure that tree is planted properly and gets off to a great start.

1. Call before you dig! Check to make sure you’re not digging into underground lines. Call 1-800-424-5555 for utility location services. Do it at least 2 days prior to digging.

2. Dig the planting hole only as deep as the root system and at least twice as wide. It is important to make the hole wide, as new roots will expand more quickly into loose soil. If the tree is planted too deep, new roots may not develop due to lack of oxygen.

3. With balled or burlap-wrapped tree, remove all wire baskets, twine, and burlap from the root ball. Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D., a horticulturalist and associate professor with Washington State University argues that it’s much better for tree growth if you actually disturb the root ball. Read more of her explanation in this paper, which lists step-by-step instructions for planting a ball or burlapped tree. “The most important reason to disturb the root ball of a balled and burlapped tree is to inspect the root system,” she writes, adding: “The circling, girdling, kinked, and hooked root systems often found in containerized plants occur frequently with B&B materials, too.”

4. Make sure the tree is at the proper depth. Better to plant the tree slightly high, about 1-2 inches above the base of the trunk flare, than it plant it at or below the growing level. This allows for some settling.

5. Backfill with native soil (the soil you dug out of the hole). Don’t use any type of soil amendment, advises WSU professor Linda Chalker-Scott in this paper. She says adding soil amendments to the planting hole may help it grow vigorously in the first few years, but notes the organic matter eventually decomposes and you may be left with a sunken hole. She writes:

Amended backfill has markedly different characteristics than surrounding native soil; it is more porous and water will wick away to the finer-textured native soil. In the summer, moisture within the planting hole will be depleted by the plant but not replaced by water held more tightly in the native soil. This results in water stress to the plant unless the planting hole is kept irrigated, a costly and often unrealistic practice. During wet seasons water will move quickly through the
amended soil only to be held back by the more slowly draining native soil.

6. Mulch the planting area with organic mulch. Lay about 2-4 inches. This will help keep a buffer between the trunk and the mulch to prevent disease. Mulch also helps hold moisture and moderate soil temperatures.

7. Water. Keep it moist and well-watered for the first growing season, but don’t overdo it. Most likely, Seattle’s fall and winter rains will do your work for you.

Contact Ecoyards to setup a consolation if you want help choosing and installing new trees on your property.  

References:

The Myth of Soil Amendments: “When transplanting trees or shrubs into landscapes, amend the backfill soil with organic matter.”

New tree planting, city of Seattle website.