Peconic Land Trust Series Focuses On Going Natural

For sprawling lawns, pesticides and fertilizers are like cigarettes, according to landscape designer Edwina von Gal, who says American gardeners might as well be back in the 1920s.

“Remember when smoking looked cool?” Ms. von Gal, the principal of Edwina von Gal + Company, said during a telephone interview last week. “It was very cool to smoke. There was no one who said, ‘Smoking is not cool. You shouldn’t do it.’ You could not have imagined that mind-set would change.”

But, it did. And, as far as landscaping goes, with time and education, Ms. von Gal said she’s convinced gardens will bid farewell to chemicals too.

“First, you have to convince people to try,” she said, “and then you have to give them the tools they need.”

The Peconic Land Trust’s lecture series, “Conversations With ...” is a step in the right direction, according to the landscape designer. Kicking off on Sunday, March 3, with “Cooking With Herbs: Part Two” by Rick Bogusch at the Bridgehampton Community House, the talks nurture not only healthy gardening, but also healthy living.

Following up last year’s standing-room-only presentation to members of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, Mr. Bogusch is offering up once again a fresh slate of herb facts and legends, the Bridge Gardens manager said during a telephone interview last week. His talk will also include a cooking demonstration and tasting.

“Gee, I don’t want to give it away,” he said of what he’ll be serving. “I’m also going to be talking about an important family of herbs—the parsley family—and just how many of the herbs that we use almost on a daily basis are part of that botanical family. There’s a lot more to parsley than people think.”

Parsley is far from just a garnish, Mr. Bogusch explained, and has been used not only as a culinary tool but also for medicinal purposes dating back to the Stone Age. Other members of the family include dill, caraway, cumin, coriander—or “cilantro” in Spanish—and hemlock, the most poisonous member of the group.

“It was a tea made from hemlock that was given to Socrates to execute him. We won’t be serving that,” Mr. Bogusch laughed. “It actually looks just like chervil. So people who forage out in the wild are urged not to pick anything that looks like chervil because it may not be.”

Mr. Bogusch added that while many herbs thrive best while potted or planted in a raised bed, other vegetables and flowers can handle oversaturated conditions, such as rain gardens, which allow rainwater runoff from impervious areas—including roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots and compacted lawn areas—to be absorbed, reducing runoff by allowing storm water to run into the ground instead of the bays and oceans. On Sunday, March 17, Mark Cappellino, an educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, will discuss the design, placement and creation of natural rain gardens and the role they play in passively controlling the polluting impact of runoff. The talk will be held at the Peconic Land Trust’s Bridge Gardens.

“Stormwater management is really an important part of sustainable gardening, even where there’s abundant water for whatever purpose. That doesn’t mean we should be wasteful,” Mr. Bogusch said. “It’s particularly important to a place like Long Island, which has very sandy soil and it depends on an aquifer that we need to keep in good shape. This could be a very critical situation some day.”

Another element of sustainable gardening is planting with native species, according to Katharine Griffiths, director of the 84-acre Avalon Park and Preserve in Stony Brook. She will present “Avalon: A Journey through Land Reclamation” on Sunday, April 7, at Bridge Gardens.

However, native gardening is harder than it looks, Ms. Griffiths said during a telephone interview last week, especially when it’s competing with eye-catching tropicals.

“Put the things that you ‘love-love’ close to your home where you’re really going to appreciate them,” she said. “Minimize the grassy areas to what you’re absolutely going to need. As you move out on your property, it becomes more and more natural, which makes a lot of sense.”

Unlike exotics, many native plants are low maintenance, adaptable and can be blended with tropicals to make interesting, beautiful landscapes, Ms. Griffiths reported.

Across the East End, that particular philosophy is Ms. von Gal’s trademark. And on Sunday, April 21, she will host “Why Not? Landscape Design & Sustainability,” a lecture about her design work in the Hamptons, how it links into her involvement with the Azuero Earth Project in Panama—a mission to preserve the earth’s ecosystems and protect biodiversity by helping people to make informed decisions—and how she is bringing it full circle with an initiative in the United States. That talk will also be held at Bridge Gardens.

“The way it will manifest here is to start teaching people how to manage their properties without chemicals,” she explained. “We’re finding out, increasingly, how dangerous it is, especially for children and pets. There’s just no reason. There’s no reason to put chemicals on your property.”

The key is building up the soil and watering properly—seldom and deep, she said, as opposed to a little every day. Use mowing or interventions, such as a log wall, to bring definition to areas where the lawn goes wild, she said.

And homeowners need to change their expectations. When they ask, “How will I give up the look of a perfect green lawn?” Ms. von Gal said she typically responds, “It’s perception. That’s a warped perception.”

Just like the incorrectly perceived coolness of smoking, she said.

“That is not a real lawn,” she said. “That is not a healthy thing. You can do it organically. You can have an amazingly perfect green lawn organically. It’s a lot of work, but it is if you do it with chemicals, too. It’s a major commitment. It’s like, why? What’s wrong with dandelions, anyway? They’re cute. But there’s even ways around those, organically, too.”

The Peconic Land Trust will host its fourth annual lecture series “Conversations With ...” starting Sunday, March 3, with “Cooking With Herbs: Part II” by Rick Bogusch at 2 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Community House. The remaining lectures—“The Rain Garden” with Mark Cappellino on Sunday, March 17; “Avalon: A Journey through Land Reclamation” with Katharine Griffiths on Sunday, April 7; and “Why Not? Landscape Design & Sustainability” with Edwina von Gal on Sunday, April 21—will all be held at 2 p.m. at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton. Admission to each program is $15, or free for Peconic Land Trust members. For more information, call 283-3195 or visit peconiclandtrust.org.