OPEI encourages homeowners, gardeners and commercial facility managers to keep these smart landscaping tips in mind when planting this spring:
- Plant a living landscape that breathes. It creates the oxygen we need and sequesters carbon.
- Follow the "right plant, right place" rule. Put in living trees, shrubs, grasses and flowering plants that are right for your climate zone. Once established, Mother Nature will weather climate changes.
- Remember wildlife in your planting choices. Add flowering plants to support pollinators like birds, bees and butterflies. Our yards, parks, schoolyards and other green spaces connect and form wildlife corridors.
- Plant for your lifestyle. If you have kids and pets, remember our yards are safe spaces for families, kids and pets.
- Put in a mix of adaptive and native plants that can handle people traffic as well as provide food and habitat for wildlife.
- Don't overwater. Plants and trees will grow stronger and work harder, creating deeper, vertical roots, if they need to seek water.
- Let plants go dormant in drought conditions. They will "green back up" when the rains come.
Source: www.OPEI.org.
Nancy M. Alexander - Stone Harbor and Avalon NJ Real Estate NancyAlexander.com
