Boston - The skies over Boston
may still be gray for another few weeks, but inside the
Bayside Expo Center, everything is blooming.
Winter weary gardeners can get a sneak preview of spring
at the 137th annual New England Spring Flower Show, which
highlights some of the most beautiful and innovative landscapes
from around the region. This year’s flower show —
“Rhapsody in Green” — is centered around
the theme of sustainable gardening.
Carol Michener-Card, owner of CMC Design: Trowel & Spade
in Lincoln, earned many accolades for her eco-friendly garden,
entitled, “Sustainable Grace.” In her third
year exhibiting at the Spring Flower Show, Michener-Card
received the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Gold Medal
in the medium-sized garden division.
In total, Michener-Card received six awards for her garden,
third most among all exhibitors at the show. Other awards
included the MHS Superlative Awards for native plants and
rural garden/landscape, a New Exhibitor's Certificate, the
Emily Seaber Parcher Award and the Elizabeth Armstrong-Cheswick
Garcia Award, which recognizes excellence in enhancing public
awareness of environmental issues relating to horticultural
practices and landscape design.
“I’m very excited. It’s not often I get
to build the garden that I want to build. I guess it was
worth all the bruises!” joked Michener-Card, who said
she had been designing the garden since September. “But
that’s really not why I do it. It’s about promoting
gardening.”
Growing up in Lincoln, Michener-Card fell in love with nature
at a young age. Her mother, a sculptor, tended a large organic
vegetable garden, while her father, a biologist and botanist,
taught her about the environment, Michener-Card recalled.
“My father was always dragging me out into the woods
looking for salamanders. So I definitely got my love of
nature from my parents,” she said.
While pursuing a degree in fine art (both painting and sculpting),
Michener-Card took up gardening and “got addicted
to plants.” After college, she earned a post-graduate
certificate in landscape design at Harvard’s Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study and has been working as a landscape
designer for more than 15 years, moving back to Lincoln
five years ago.
Her firm, CMC Design, is dedicated to creating ecologically
sustainable landscapes, adopting a “green” approach
for green thumbs.
Michener-Card said people may think of all gardening and
landscaping as eco-friendly, but there are many ways to
reduce its impact on the environment.
Above all, when designing an organic garden, it is important
to work with the existing landscape, she said.
“The right plant in the right place — that’s
the first rule of organic land care,” Michener-Card
said.
Rain gardens, designed with a low point to collect water,
are a great way to control run-off of chemicals and fertilizers,
which, she said, can be harmful to wetlands and contribute
to erosion of top soil. Michener-card said she recommends
planting adaptable species, like the native Iris, which
can thrive in both wet and dry conditions.
Michener-Card said she uses a lot of native species in her
gardens.
“I want to show people that these things are just
as beautiful as plants from Asia or anywhere else in the
world,” she said.
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