News from AHS

INDEX

SMART GARDEN™
Lecture Schedule 
How Smart is Your Garden?
AHS Children’s Garden Underway
Gardening Schools
Houston Speakers Set

SmartGarden™

Pragmatists scoff at the idea that entering a new century and millennium is anything beyond a statistical oddity. Purists insist that we won’t actually enter the new millennium until 2001. Both groups may be right, but it is human nature to take notice of numerical milestones in our lives.

Indeed, the arrival of any new year prompts many of us to make resolutions about our lifestyles, our health, and our careers. In light of the gloomy statistics floating around about the future of our planet—more people, fewer natural resources, higher temperatures, more pollution—perhaps now is the time to add better gardening practices to our list of resolutions for the millennium.

With that in mind, the American Horticultural Society, which has historically led the way in promoting scientifically sound and environmentally responsible gardening practices, is introducing the SmartGarden™, a holistic approach to gardening that will help gardeners become even more active stewards of the earth.

The SmartGarden™ concept combines the needs of our changing lifestyles with the environmental imperatives of the 21st century by linking all of the environmentally responsible gardening techniques that many of us try to put into practice in our gardens—selecting plants appropriate for climate, soil, and light exposure; practicing efficient watering methods; using integrated pest management (IPM) to minimize applications of synthetic pesticides; and composting to reduce waste entering landfills and create rich soil amendments.

Having a SmartGarden™ doesn’t mean sacrificing a beautiful landscape, it simply means practicing good stewardship of the earth in the course of creating and maintaining the garden of your dreams. “Stewardship is an individual commitment to the earth that transcends the immediate goal of a beautiful garden,” says H. Marc Cathey, president emeritus of AHS and national spokesperson for the SmartGarden™. “Heroic efforts in the past to maintain delicate or demanding gardens were predicated on abundant natural resources and are no longer justifiable given today’s environmental awareness.”

The coming century will present many challenges. The last decade of the 20th century brought the highest average global temperatures on record and it looks like more of the same is in store. As the earth’s population continues to increase, we must all look for ways to minimize our environmental “footprint.” Our choices will affect not only our landscapes, but the environment as a whole. This means cutting our output of pollutants while at the same time reducing our consumption of precious natural resources.

The key is to work with rather than against nature. This requires a thorough and eyes-wide-open assessment of our garden sites—both their potential and limitations. What has been successful in the past, and what has been troublesome or simply too much work?

Selecting plants that are compatible with your growing conditions is one of the principal tenets of the SmartGarden™. To make this process easier for gardeners, Cathey has created a SmartGarden™ coding system that will be applied to all ornamental plants. Codes will indicate each plant’s light requirements, soil moisture requirements, height and width, USDA hardiness zones and AHS heat zones. Plants are being now being coded and will be released on the AHS Web site ( www.ahs.org ) as they become available.

We must also reassess our gardening practices. To realize the greatest benefits from our time and efforts we need to take advantage of the horticultural tools, technology, and knowledge that are available and can help us garden smarter and more efficiently. And finally, we need to measure every gardening decision against its environmental impact; in this way we recognize our stewardship of the earth.

Look for more on the SmartGarden™  in upcoming issues of The American Gardener and on the AHS Web site. H. Marc Cathey will be lecturing on smart gardening practices throughout North America this year; a schedule of his upcoming lectures is listed on the opposite page and will be updated on the Web site.

We’d also like to learn what successful and environmentally responsible gardening practices you use in your garden. We’ll feature the best ideas we receive in the magazine and on our Web site. Write to The American Gardener, 7931 East Boulevard Drive, Alexandria, VA 22308–1300; or e-mail to editor@ahs.org.

Lecture Schedule 

Marc Cathey will lecture on the SmartGarden™  concept at the following locations in 2000:

• Jan. 22–28 Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia (706) 663-2281
• Feb. 2–6 Northwest Flower & Garden Show, Seattle, Washington (206) 543-8618
• Feb. 12 Oklahoma County Cooperative Extension Building, Oklahoma City. (405) 945-3358.
• Feb. 17 Beverly Hills Garden Club, Alexandria, Virginia (703) 335-1269
• Feb. 23 Olney Garden Club, Olney, Maryland (301) 774-3855
• Feb. 26 The Nature Center, Westport, Connecticut (203) 227-7253

How Smart is Your Garden?

Take a good look at your garden and ask yourself what parts of it are successful and what parts are troublesome. Here’s a quick self-assessment survey to help identify problems or ways you can garden smarter. A more comprehensive evaluation can be found on the SmartGarden™  page of the AHS Web site ( www.ahs.org ).

• Do you have any plants that are constantly diseased or struggling to survive that could be replaced by more appropriate selections?

• Are you composting your organic yard and kitchen waste to reduce pressure on our landfills and to create healthy soil amendments?

• Have you tested the soil in various parts of your garden to determine if it is appropriate for the types of plants you are growing?

• Are your watering practices efficient? Do you water early in the morning or use drip irrigation systems to reduce evaporative loss?

• Are you using the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone map and the AHS Plant Heat Zone map to help select plants appropriate for the area in which you live?

AHS Children’s Garden Underway

Construction will begin in March on the AHS Children’s Garden that will be unveiled as part of the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival from April 28 to June 11 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The garden will also be a focal point of the eighth annual AHS National Youth Garden Symposium, titled “Celebrating Children’s Gardens in the New Millennium: Design is Key,” which will be held June 8 to 10 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort.

To create an innovative design for the Children’s Garden, a panel of 17 landscape architects and horticultural educators from around the country participated in a design charette at Epcot last fall. The goal was to design a model kid’s garden that was fun, interactive, educational, and worked within the theme park environment. “What we envisioned was an interactive journey of discovery focused on children, plants, gardens and gardening,” says Norm Lownds, curator of the 4-H Children’s Garden at Michigan State University and chair of the AHS National Youth Garden Symposium Advisory Panel.

For more information about the 2000 symposium, click here.

Gardening Schools

This spring, AHS will again be co-sponsoring the Gardening Schools hosted by Southern Living magazine. Launched last year, the Gardening School program brought the expertise of Southern Living’s horticulturists to thousands of gardeners who attended hour-long programs at major botanical gardens and other prominent locations in the South and Southeast.

The first Garden School of 2000 will be held March 2 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Call (404) 876-5859 ext. 548 to register for this school or to learn more about it. A complete schedule of Garden Schools will be published in the March/April issue of The American Gardener.

Houston Speakers Set

During “Celebrating the American Gardener,” AHS’s annual meeting to be held March 16 through 18 in Houston, Texas, a panel of renowned horticultural experts will share their first-hand knowledge on a variety of gardening topics. Leading a session on Southern gardening will be Bill Welch, professor of horticulture and extension landscape horticulturist at Texas A & M University. “We’ll look at the trends in color,” says Welch, “and the return to heirloom plants, as well as period landscape design concepts that have come around to us again.”

Richard Craig, professor of plant breeding and J. Franklin Styer Professor of Horticultural Botany at Pennsylvania State University in College Station and the 2000 recipient of AHS’s Luther Burbank Award for plant breeding will recount Penn State’s groundbreaking research on pest resistance in plants. According to Craig, “It’s a good story—as much about the people involved—dozens over the years—as about the history and outcome of the research program.”

Two other winners of 2000 AHS awards will also be speaking. Teaching Award recipient Michael Dirr, professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia, Athens, and author of Manual of Woody Landscape Plants will discuss his Georgia Plant Introduction Program. Horticultural Therapy Award winner Diane Relf, coordinator of the People-Plant Council and professor of horticulture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg will discuss the psychological and social value of plants and the role of horticulture in human health.