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Earth Gardeners

Helping the World to Grow

11/04/2026

Preparing to restore a piece of Maminash Corner in the Terrace Trails

11/02/2026

Thank you to Nasami Farm for the donation of all of these plants!

They will be gratefully used to help restore the Terrace Trails conservation area in Northampton.

I'm so excited that the rich bird population of the Terrace Trails will have native insects from these plants to feed their young.

10/27/2026

Now booking winter pruning! 🌳

Earth Gardeners offers thoughtful pruning for small ornamental trees, fruit trees, and shrubs, with attention to healthy structure, natural form, and the right timing for each plant.

Serving Northampton and surrounding Western Massachusetts communities. Send a message to discuss your plants and arrange an estimate!

GardenCare

09/23/2026

Self-watering strawberry tower

08/31/2026

There is an incredible diversity of wasps enjoying my boneset right now. These photos show a few of the visitors I’ve been finding. I’m just beginning to learn wasp and spider identification, so these IDs are tentative, but I’ll do my best:

Potter/mason wasp (Vespidae: Eumeninae)
Paper wasp (Polistes)
Goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia)
Sweat bee, likely family Halictidae

The more closely I look at a patch of flowers, the more life there is to discover.

08/30/2026

What could this forest understory become?

This is a small area of Terrace Trails beneath a largely intact, silver-maple-dominated canopy. At ground level, the picture is different. There’s plenty of jewelweed (Impatiens sp.), some dogwood, creeping euonymus (Euonymus fortunei), and areas of relatively bare soil.
I’m exploring whether this could become a small restoration nucleus: a concentrated patch of diverse native understory vegetation that could demonstrate what might eventually be possible elsewhere in the forest.

But choosing plants is only one part of restoration design.

Before developing a planting palette, we need to understand the site itself: its soils, hydrology and flooding, light, microtopography, existing vegetation, surrounding plant communities, and any wetland or other regulatory considerations. The goal isn’t to impose a generic “native plant garden” on a natural area, but to better understand what kind of plant community belongs here.

Then come the practical constraints.

How much can the community afford to plant? Where is the nearest hose? If water has to be hauled into the woods in five-gallon buckets and a wheelbarrow, how large an area can realistically be kept watered during establishment? Which species and planting densities give us the greatest ecological return for the resources available?

Those questions are part of ecological design, too.

Rather than attempting to restore an entire forest understory at once, the idea is to start with something small enough to establish and care for well. If it succeeds, this patch could become both a model and a nucleus—a place to learn what works here and inform restoration elsewhere at Terrace Trails.

Ecological restoration isn't only about what we want to grow. It's about discovering what the site can support—and designing a practical way to help it get there.

08/19/2026

Seattle gardening notes

I walked around Capitol Hill in Seattle today, making my way toward Volunteer Park, and one thing really stood out to me: people take gardening seriously here.

I don't know how much of it is the climate and how much is the gardening culture, but the plantings in this neighborhood feel remarkably tight. There aren't many weeds, the species selection is thoughtful, and the plants seem to fit together.

What I love about these gardens—and really, all gardens—is that when the overall composition of a plant community works, it draws your eye toward finer and finer details.

You start noticing the seed stalks. The texture of a leaf. The way one small structure accents the larger community around it.

There are so many elements working together here: layers of vegetation, plants that fill space, plants that add spikiness or movement, and others that provide the bones of the garden.

When all of that works together, you can look at a garden at one scale, then move closer and discover another whole composition within it.

I just love seeing it.

More posts to come from Seattle gardens. 🌿

08/05/2026

Lobelia cardinalis

08/05/2026

Finished the mulch today

08/05/2026

Stag beetle!

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