Sari's Natural Garden

LGWV Pro: Sari

Greetings, gardeners! I am thrilled to be able to share my passion for natural gardening with you all. The love of gardening has always run in my blood; my grandmother used to harass my grandfather about his need to "play in the dirt." I have been a gardener ever since I brought a spindly pine seedling home from nursery school. My parents planted it, and when we moved to a different house, we moved it in a bucket of dirt and planted it in the new yard. Today that tree stands taller than the house.

From there, every place I've lived that had a bare patch of ground or room for a pot has been planted with something or another, from herbs to roses to native plants to vegetables. I even had a lettuce and strawberry patch growing in between the landscape shrubs of an apartment complex where I lived!

Some of these experiments have been successful -- like the $3 shrub rose bought on clearance that quickly grew to overtake an entire bed - and some have not. Suffice it to say that $50 worth of tulips planted in deeply shaded clay is NOT money well spent! But to me, the continuous pleasure of gardening is that it's all trial and error, and it's okay if it doesn't work out the first time. That's how we learn.

I came to study what I call natural gardening early on. As I got started in gardening, I realized that everything you apply to a plant or the soil will eventually end up in the groundwater. My first "real" garden was right next to a lake that supported all sorts of wildlife, so I decided to try to only use organic fertilizers and natural controls for pests and diseases, and to reserve the chemicals for "last resort" situations. What I found out is that natural gardening is actually very easy and rewarding. When you garden naturally, you create an ecosystem, a web of bumblebees and butterflies, hummingbirds and frogs. And yes, pests show up in the web, too. But the challenge of controlling pests while maintaining the natural balance of beneficial insects can serve to inform us during the delicate balancing acts that we all carry on throughout our daily lives. Natural gardening, to me, is more than just creating beautiful landscapes. It's a way of being in the world, of being a part of the world, rather than trying to control it.

Come along with me for the journey as we explore different techniques in gardening naturally. If you have suggestions for specific topics that you'd like to see covered in the show, please email them to info@lawnandgardenwv.com. Thank you.

Sari