Naturally Maintained: Wild by Nature, Civilized by Design

I just caught an interesting comment on my Water-Smart Gardening article this morning. It was from Derek Lippert, owner of ‘Naturally Maintained‘, a local landscaping company dedicated to providing environmentally friendly landscape solutions in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (Tri-city) area.

Here is what Derek had to say in his comment:

I started Naturally Maintained in 1999 with the primary focus of installing and promoting lawn alternative landscapes. At the time it was a fairly hard sell, with people saying ‘lawn what?’ Nowadays the lawn alternative is becoming nearly as popular as the lawn itself. With many options and styles to choose from it’s likely that a lawn alternative can be designed for nearly everyone’s taste. We’ve put in demonstration gardens for the Region of Waterloo and have eliminated lawns from 100’s of homes throughout the tri-cities. I’m at a point now where it’s hard to keep up with the demand.

I’m really excited to hear that these alternative landscaping ideas are really taking off! It sounds as though Derek doesn’t need the business, but I figured I might as well see if we can help him round up some more! (sorry, Derek! haha)

I totally love the look of the Naturally Maintained website - very simple and clean, but also full of life (great images and designs). Even if you don’t live in the Tricity area I highly recommend you check it out. The gallery section alone is definitely worth it! Certainly puts my landscaping efforts to shame! haha!

I see Derek offers installations of Eco-Lawn (I wrote a post about it recently) - cool! I’ll have to ask him about that (since I’ve been hoping to find someone who has experience with it).

If you happen to live in the K-W or Cambridge are and are looking for lawn-alternatives or other eco-friendly garden ideas, I highly recommend you check out Naturally Maintained (follow link at beginning of article).

One other thing I should mention. After hearing from Derek, I suddenly had a brainwave (happens once in awhile)! I think it would be really fun to dedicate a page to green businesses in Waterloo Region (perhaps even Southwestern Ontario in general).

I always love hearing about any that are close by, and I think it would be a great way to inform people in the region about green alternatives.
Anyway, I’ll think on that a little more and let you know what I decide to do!

Related Sherpa Posts:
Water-Smart Gardening
Eco-Lawn - Is The Grass Really Greener on the Other Side?

Technorati Tags: eco-lawn, green landscaping, lawn alternatives, natural landscaping, naturally maintained, kitchener-waterloo, waterloo region, local businesses, eco-friendly

Written by Bentley on July 12th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Water Conservation and Gardening.

Terracycle Challenge - Day 0

Well I finally squeezed in some time for EcoSherpa this week, and my activites revolved around getting our Terracycle Challenge officially rolling.

Our sunflowers were all ready to go (enough for 1 per treatment), my worm compost was ready, and the stars and the moon were aligned just right - no stopping us now!

I felt kinda bad though - quite a few baby worms had hatched in the worm compost. I tried to move as many as I could over to one of my active indoor bins. The rest, along with plenty of springtails will simply have to make do with their new environment (in the plant pots).

One change to methodology I should mention - just so you know, I’m now back using fertlizer sticks NOT liquid fertilizer (sorry for the flip-flopping). They are still MiracleGro though. This will make things so much easier since I won’t have to mix anything. Each MG pot gets one stick.

Today every pot received 300 ml of either rainwater or Terracycle (depending on treatment). All treatments will now only receive water until it’s time for our next round of TC (will likely use it once per week as suggested on bottle).

I also kickstarted my second TC Challenge, which I’ll be referring to as “Terracycle Challenge Jr”. Kinda ironic that I would belittle it like that, since it’s actually much more of a scientific experiment than the main challenge. I have 3 reps for each of the 3 treatments I’m testing (MiracleGro, Terracycle, and Worm Compost).

I’m using green beans for this one since they grow very quickly and…well…I love eating green beans!

It’s not technically ‘Day 0′ for this challenge though - I decided to hold off on watering today since the peat pellets they were grown in were soaked this morning. I will start the actually watering them (and Terracycling them) tomorrow.

I’m aiming to provide updates for the challenges at least once or twice a week! Stay tuned!

Related Sherpa Posts:
Terracycle Challenge - Off To The Races…Well, Almost!
Terracycle Challenge

Technorati Tags: terracycle, worm compost, vermicompost, worm castings, miracle gro, miraclegro, fertilizer, sunflowers, experiment, gardening

Written by Bentley on July 12th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gardening and Waste Management.