Ab Fab. That’s what Janet Christiansen’s Millington garden is: absolutely fabulous. There is a stone meditation pool that looks like something out of Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pa., a rock-lined streambed that deals with runoff in a water-wise and beautiful way — and fruit trees, vegetable patch, strategically-dripped drip irrigation, and much more. I had joined a clutch of Master Gardeners from both Queene Anne’s and Kent counties to snoop shamelessly while Vida Morley vetted the garden for the Bay Wise program.
What’s Bay Wise? Glad you asked. It’s a Maryland master gardeners’ effort to improve water quality through smarter gardening. The irrefutable premise is that it’s our two-legged ilk who got the Bay to where it is right now (failing) and who imperil our drinking water with how we treat both land and water. Master gardeners figure individual choices collectively got us here; they can also get us back. At least we need to try.
Bay Wise gives gardeners a checklist of things to do — or are already doing, imparting a feeling of virtuous superiority, always pleasant — that will make a definite positive difference. In broad strokes it includes watering efficiently, recycling garden waste, feeding the soil and fertilizing wisely (over- and ill-timed fertilizing is both damaging and a waste of money), mulching, using Integrated Pest Management instead of Agent Orange-ing the place at the sight of the first bug encouraging wildlife, and controlling runoff. Tiny in-town garden or vast estate doesn’t matter — or rather, it ALL matters.
You can get your garden certified, which nets you a spiffy little sign to stick up, or you can forgo the vetting, and opt instead to download the Bay-Wise ‘yardstick’ checklist to vet your own bit of Eden (though there won’t be a spiffy little sign forthcoming). In Janet’s garden it was obvious that the careful use and reuse of water, bio controls, native plants, beneficial bugs, birds, water features with natural filters, and virtually no lawn, let alone one that had been chemically treated, made the vetting part superfluous. She got her well-deserved sign. The rest of us just gawped enviously.
Check out: https://baywise.umd.edu/
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