Last Tuesday morning, hundreds of horticultural professionals gathered at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the 29th annual Plant-O-Rama, a symposium, trade show, and career fair hosted by Metro Hort Group. A member-based organization of horticulture professionals in the tri-state area, the group plans meet-ups, lectures, and field trips, but Plant-O-Rama is their biggest event by far. This year’s symposium included keynote speeches by landscape designer Edwina Von Gal, the founder of Perfect Earth Project, (also a founding board member of Metro Hort Group) and Ethan Kauffman, director at Stoneleigh, a naturalistic public garden in Villanova, Pennsylvania, and panel discussions on managing naturalistic landscapes and encouraging collaborations between artists and horticulturists.
Here are 7 ideas to steal from this inspiring event:
N.B: Above photograph of section on Governors Island, post-solarization, by Sarma Ozols for The Trust for Governors Island.
Artful Hay Stacks
The morning keynote from von Gal was tailored to an audience of plant pros and how they might best communicate ideas to their clients. It also showcased the landscape designer’s latest experiments on her own property. In addition to creating habitat (and keeping biomass on site) through log pile walls and bug snugs, von Gal has added an artful hay stack to her property to keep the biomass from meadow mowing on site. (She jokingly referred to it as her homage to Monet.) Von Gal suggested strategically placing such a pile in a place where you have an invasive plant you’d like to smother.
Bee Beaches
Von Gal offered another fresh idea to support wildlife, which she called a “bee beach,” a shallow place for bees and other insects to drink fresh water. In her own garden this takes the form of a concrete trough placed beneath a spigot with stones inside to make landing spots for the insects to access the water. In summer, von Gal leaves the tap set to ever so slowly drip water into the trough ensuring a constant supply of fresh water. In your garden the “bee beach” might just be a few rocks within a bird bath.
