Ecological Gardening Through the Seasons: Three Sessions

9/27: Intro to Late Season Pollinator Plants

(Rain date: 9/28)

Join Spiral House Park's Head Gardener, Lorien McCabe, and our gardening team for the first in a series on Ecological Gardening.

Unlike traditional gardening, ecological gardening emphasizes creating habitat while cultivating beauty. Its core principles include building a deeper relationship with the land, learning from its rhythms, and engaging with the diversity of local organisms.

This inaugural workshop will highlight a wide range of resilient, late-blooming plants that not only extend the season in your garden or local wild spaces but also support hardworking pollinators.

The event will begin with a brief presentation on the vital relationships between these late-season blooms and the pollinators they sustain. Following the talk, we’ll explore the gardens together to observe these dynamic interactions firsthand at Spiral House Park.

10/19: Gathering, Saving, & Sowing Seeds

(Rain date: 10/25)

Learn how to sustain and expand your own native plant sanctuary through the ancient arts of seed saving and sowing.

Please join us for the second program in the Ecological Gardening series, focusing on seed saving and propagation techniques. In this class, we will review the details of gathering, processing, storing, and sowing seeds of some of our favorite native plants. We will discuss the how, when, where, and why of this specialized practice.

The class will have hands-on demonstrations in SHP’s own Propagation Station, where we have been propagating native perennials since autumn 2024. The SHP gardening staff will show you the steps so you can be on your way to starting your own plant stock! Cut your garden costs while also protecting our local ecosystems.

11/15: Basic Autumn Clean-Up

(Rain date: 11/16)

Learn the techniques of autumn garden cleanup through an ecological lens in this third program in our Ecological Gardening series.

Until recently, traditional garden wisdom was to cut down and clean up the garden in the fall. We are learning that this can be very destructive to our local ecosystems. The current best practice is to “leave the leaves” and return to more sustainable methods. How can this be done cleanly and efficiently? And why is it so important?

Come learn the answers with us! The SHP gardening team will illustrate the differences between a traditional and ecological approach to autumn cleanup. With on site examples, we will explain the importance of these practices and the best methods we have found so far.

Host or Publisher Spiral House Park