A monarch butterfly rests in John Ed Scalf’s residential cottage garden. Photo by Angela Hensley
The mowed lawn, boring boxwoods and Bradford pear trees are no longer the status quo in residential landscaping. Hungry for more natural, semi-wild surroundings, an increasing number of urban dwellers are seeking the diverse shapes and layers, the year-round color and food, and the increased wildlife habitat that natural landscaping offers.
On the following pages, three local garden designers share their process of utilizing natural landscaping techniques to develop unique Lexington gardens, ranging in scale from a home garden to a park’s community garden to a public greenspace landscape.
In his Garden Springs backyard “cottage garden,” Lexington landscape designer John Ed Scalf has created what he calls a “pollinator” island”: a diverse space with a small wildlife pond, two native trees and more than 30 species of native perennial flowers and grasses. Photo by Angela Hensley
John Ed Scalf's Residential Cottage Garden
John Ed Scalf, owner of John E. Scalf Garden Design, designs and gardens with one central idea: creating a more harmonious relationship with nature.
“I feel it is important to design and reinterpret gardens and green spaces with an ecological viewpoint in mind,” said Scalf, whose landscape design tends to favor food production, native plant communities and the natural beauty of the Bluegrass region, while discouraging a dependence on inputs of fuel, labor and various chemicals and pesticides.
Challenging traditional ideas about formal English gardening and the predominance of imported species, Scalf has transformed his yard into what he calls “a true cottage garden.”
“It’s a forest garden, food garden and flower garden all combined,” he said in describing the fun and functional family backyard he has created for his Garden Springs home.
Just a few blocks from the convergence of New Circle and Harrodsburg roads, Scalf’s blossoming oasis contrasts the city’s asphalt and traffic. The garden includes a central feature he calls a “pollinator island”: a diverse space that includes a wildlife pond, two native trees and more than 30 species of native perennial flowers and grasses. Positioned in a way to be a catchment for water that flows off the driveway, the space never needs watering or fertilizer, and attracts many different birds, bees, butterflies and dragonflies.
Scalf; his wife, Angela Hensley; and their young daughter are very involved in the playful space, which also includes fruit trees and raised beds with vegetables and herbs. Among the fruit trees and bushes in his yard are several varieties of apple trees (Gala, Newtown Pippin and Arkansas Black), an American persimmon, thornless blackberry bushes, Cornelian cherry trees, high bush blueberry plants and more.
The wildlife attracted by the garden brings joy to the gardener and his family throughout the seasons – from goldfinches perched upon coneflowers, consuming the flowers’ seeds while swaying in the breeze during summertime, to the forbs and grasses left standing tall in the late fall and winter native meadow garden, their hues of gold or rust blanketed in a light snow or shimmering frost. Scalf calls them “nature’s sculptures,” and they continue to evoke a sense of restfulness, tranquility and simplicity long after the rush and traditional garden prime time of spring and summer.
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The Wellington Park Pollinator Garden was designed to support a diverse ecosystem, and also to provide year-round visual interest. Plants were chosen that provide an array of stunning shades and silhouettes in every season, including pink muhly grass (pictured here), aromatic aster, hyssop-leafed thoroughwart and sedum. Photos by Beate Popkin
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The Wellington Park Pollinator Garden was designed to support a diverse ecosystem, and also to provide year-round visual interest. Plants were chosen that provide an array of stunning shades and silhouettes in every season, including pink muhly grass, aromatic aster, hyssop-leafed thoroughwart and sedum (pictured here). Photos by Beate Popkin
Wild Ones Community Pollinator Garden at Wellington Park
In 2014, the Lexington chapter of Wild Ones received a grant from the Lexington Council Garden Clubs to create of a community garden in Wellington Park. The project includes removing the existing turf grass and planting more than 20 native shrubs, flowers and grasses in the parking lot island facing the park’s entrance.
Beate Popkin, owner of the landscape design company Living Gardens and president of the Lexington chapter of Wild Ones, helped oversee the project – and while the garden has made beautiful progress over the past several growing seasons, it was not without its challenges, she said.
“Making a new garden bed on a site that used to be mowed is not for the faint of heart or body,” she said. “What looked like a carpet of turf grass from a distance turned out to be, on closer inspection, a patchy growth of fescue interspersed with every imaginable weed – dandelions being the most conspicuous.”
The weeds persisted, but many hands make light work. Brief but consistent weeding trips from Wild Ones volunteers have kept the unwanted plants under control and allowed the native plants to get ahead.
Popkin and her team designed the garden to support a diverse community of insects and other wildlife. The choice of plants qualifies the bed as a certified Monarch Waystation, which provides monarch butterflies floral nectar to fuel their continental migration, as well as milkweed leaves to support their successive generations of larvae (caterpillars). But migratory butterflies aren’t the only creatures that will find refuge in this urban garden – care was taken to mulch the bed lightly to permit ground-dwelling pollinating insects to exit and access their nests.
Popkin also chose plants carefully to time the changing palette of colors and give joy to park visitors year-round, from the first green and color of spring and the colorful summer vignettes (often involving coneflower, the signature plant of the Eastern native plant garden) to the stunning pink muhly grass that continues to garner “oohs” and “ahhs” deep into the end of the growing season in late fall.
“During winter most flower stalks retain their upright posture and continue to complement each other in form and even color, which is anything but a uniform brown or grey,” Popkin said.
Shrubby St. John’s Wort, one of the many shrubs included in the space, has become a new favorite – valued for its moderate height, rounded form and beautiful yellow pollinator-attracting flowers, as well as its dense branching, which gives it a strong winter presence.
Why is a natural garden like this one important?
“Urban spaces, where people increasingly live, are particularly blighted from the point of view of nature,” Popkin explained.
“Engaging ourselves with some of the plants and animals whose habitat is constantly under attack and bringing them into our living spaces seems like an appropriate response.”
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The Spring Branch Stormwater Improvement Project at Clays Mill Elementary has helped transform an eroded and overgrown streambed into a sanctuary for wildlife. The project – which included the planting of more than 700 trees, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses – has helped improve water quality and safety surrounding the stream, which is part of the Wolf Run watershed. Photo by Russ Turpin
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The Spring Branch Stormwater Improvement Project at Clays Mill Elementary has helped transform an eroded and overgrown streambed into a sanctuary for wildlife. The project – which included the planting of more than 700 trees, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses – has helped improve water quality and safety surrounding the stream, which is part of the Wolf Run watershed. Photo by Russ Turpin
Clays Mill Elementary Greenspace
Since 2013, arborist and environmental specialist Russ Turpin and a team of students from Clays Mill Elementary have worked to transform an eroded and overgrown stream on the school’s property into a much-needed sanctuary for wildlife and a peaceful place for people of all ages to connect with nature. Funded by an LFUCG stormwater grant awarded to Fayette County Public Schools, the Spring Branch Stormwater Improvement Project at Clays Mill Elementary has included the planting of more than 700 trees, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses on the new floodplain.
The greenspace is designed to hold the soil, filter the water and catch debris and trash that flow down the stream, which originally had steep, vertical, eroded banks and was surrounded by dense bush honeysuckle.
“When it rained, water was blasting through the narrow stream channel and taking with it the soil on the stream banks,” explained Turpin, who works for EcoGro, a Lexington ecological restoration company that has been addressing water and soil quality since 2005. “It was scouring, washing away the rocks, logs, and nooks and crannies for small insects and minnows to hide in.”
According to Turpin, a creek and its floodplain can improve water quality through four simple actions: “Spread it, slow it, soak it, store it.” The first step to improving the Clays Mill streambed was to remove the honeysuckle, then widen the stream channel to make a broad, gently sloping floodplain. Allowing the water to travel slower over a wider area reduced the scour of the banks and kept the soil from washing away, Turpin explained.
Stabilizing the banks and reducing the velocity of water also increased safety – a top priority for the project, which is bordered by Southland Park, Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary School and Clays Mill Elementary.
New plants were chosen and placed intentionally to create a child-friendly environment, with quick-growing ground cover selected to prevent erosion of the newly exposed earth. For the short term, Turpin selected plants that help contribute to “nature’s way of healing disturbed areas,” including wildflower species that would be showy within one to two years (quicker than most wildflowers grown from seed) such as bur marigold, lanceleaf coreopsis and black-eyed Susan. Aside from getting quick color and coverage, he needed something that would be sturdy and tough enough to tolerate kids and flowing water.
Working toward the goal of creating a long-term wildlife habitat, Turpin also added plants that provide food or shelter, including perennials like gray-headed coneflower and purple coneflower for birds, and swamp milkweed for monarchs and other pollinators. Lest we forget people love fresh food too, wild plum, persimmon, hickories and pecans were also planted.
The benefits of helping nature “do its thing” are still continuing to reveal themselves – Turpin recently discovered that a family of mallards started nesting at Clays Mill, and he expects other animal residents to arrive soon.
“As the small creatures get established, bigger creatures follow behind. A blue heron could come there to fish. The monarchs could stop as they are traveling through, or a red-tailed hawk might be on patrol for a snack,” he said. “That’s one perk of coming back regularly – just to see who shows up and what’s in bloom, who’s traveling through, who’s been here.”
Photo by Christina Elizabeth Relich
Best Native Plants From the Three Featured Gardens
While plant selection always depends heavily on the site itself, we’ve compiled favorite native plants that tend to do well in the region, as suggested by the garden designers featured in this article.
• Spring Beauty
• Virginia Bluebells
• Celandine Poppy
• Trout Lily
• Creeping Phlox
• Short-toothed Mountain Mint
• Dense, Prairie and Small Headed Blazing Star
• Blue Star
• Helen’s Flower (aka Sneezeweed)
• Aromatic, Calico and New England Aster
• Licorice, Elm-leaf and Scented Goldenrod
• Cut-leaf, Purple, Pale and Giant Coneflower
• Lanceleaf and Tall Coreopsis
• Black-eyed Susan
• Giant Ironweed
• Swamp, Common and Butterfly Milkweed
• Flowering Spurge
• Wild Quinine
• Boneset
• Joe Pye
• White Beardtongue
• Little Bluestem
• Broomsedge Bluestem
• Prairie Dropseed
• Indian Grass
• Pink Muhly Grass
• Sedges, Sedges and more Sedges
• Arrowwood Viburnum
• New Jersey Tea
• Wild Plum
• Persimmon
• Hickories
• Pecans
LFUCG’s Plant-By-Numbers Program
For citizens who want low-maintenance, pollinator-friendly landscaping but aren’t sure where to start, the city of Lexington is developing a Plant-By- Numbers program. Inspired by paint-by-numbers, the program will provide templates for full sun, full shade and partial shade areas that give guidance on what to plant where. The program will launch in partnership with a Plant-By-Numbers art exhibit at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, which opens in mid-August and will feature paintings of natural greenways in Fayette County. A variety of events surrounding the exhibit are planned, including naturalist talks, art programs for families and gardening demonstrations.
To learn more about the Plant-by-Numbers program, follow @LiveGreenLex on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or visit www.LexingtonKY.gov/PlantbyNumbers.