Saturday, July 20 was a 96 degree scorcher, with high humidity as well. Some very brave garden lovers walked and drove around Cleveland Heights for the first day of the two day inaugural GardenWalk. Around 40 private yards and public gardens were available for viewing from 12 to 5, plus three community gardens and ten pocket gardens on Langton, in the four zip codes of Cleveland Heights.
Cleveland Heights covers about 8.13 square miles at an elevation of 935 feet. It was founded in 1903. Forest Hill is one of the historic neighborhoods, north of Mayfield between Lee and Taylor. It was purchased in 1923 by John Rockefeller from his father.
There were several homes in this neighborhood on the tour.
Further south some of the older neighborhoods featured a diverse group of gardens with wonderful water features, native plant havens, and charming displays of perennials and annuals. Friendly gardeners often greeted the visitors, offering refreshments and guided inspections as well.
One home on a small lane had crisply clipped hedges interrupted with white picket gates inviting you in.
charming gate off of the laneswamp milkweed finds a wayHypericumwatering method
Some homeowners placed signs in their gardens to inform visitors about their plants and other features.
Gardenopolis Cleveland has, since our inception, been a firm supporter of GardenWalk Cleveland, and has covered it with pictures and text on our blog. This year for various reasons we were only able to commit ourselves to one day, and we chose Slavic Village because it was a place we had not yet been. As Inner Ring Suburb Eastsiders, we’re not very familiar with the neighborhoods of the once great industrial heart of our city.
We got off to a late start due to some trauma inflicted upon one of us by the cat affectionately nicknamed The Brat Prince (there was a lot of blood involved), and then we had trouble getting a map — neither of the two Dave’s we stopped at had maps or even any idea they were supposed to have them.
But we did eventually wend our way to Slavic Village. Like many of Cleveland’s ‘working class’ neighborhood’s it is a place of pleasant sturdy houses, often designed for two families (mostly up and down duplexes), in an area now somewhat denuded by housing-stock loss. But people still make the most of their garden spaces, and have both vegetable gardens and gardens to please the eyes (and birds and pollinators). People express their personal creativity, and enjoy their yards in the summer.
We were especially interested to find one resident with an extensive bee keeping industry. You could wander among the hives and enjoy the singing bees wandering about around your head and in the air.
We hope you’ll enjoy our pictures.
The bee keeper
People found ways to bring comfort into their outdoor environments
And they found ways to add small scale personal touches
They brightened their environments with the colors of flowers
And many people were serious vegetable gardeners
There were handsome houses and handsome trees
Someone was claiming a corner to make an in progress pocket park
This gentleman had been fishing for Lake Erie Walleye.
Little Italy by Ann McCulloh
Little Italy, the other neighborhood visited by one of the Gardenopolis editors, offered more than 30 gardens this year. There are a surprising number of small but lush oases tucked away among the brick fronted homes and hilly side streets. Traditionally Italian grape arbors and fig trees, impressively well-tended vegetable gardens and whimsical decorative touches abound. A brand-new garden discovered at the end of an unpromising alley turned out to be an extensive and delightful outdoor entertainment space, with a pizza oven, water gardens and not one, but two welcoming patios.
Full disclosure: Ann has been involved with the committee that plans GardenWalk Cleveland since its inception.
Garden tour season is upon us, and we’re doing our best, weather permitting, to cover the various events. We went on the Shaker Heights Garden tour about a month ago. We managed to see 5 out of the 7 homes on the tour before we gave up because of all the rain. We loved the variety on this tour, which bridged from the spacious very English manor garden professionally designed and maintained….
to the tiny and intensely intimate in scale, overflowing with plants and hidden nooks and crannies
to the fantastically imagined Japanese garden, which at the time we saw it was under about an inch and a half of water —
and a bit more.
Meanwhile, In Forest Hill Park…
Some of you may know that I work closely with various organizations to do environmental work (removing invasive species, planting trees) in Forest Hill Park, in both the East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights ‘sides’ (in much of the park there really is no way to know when you’ve passed from one governmental entity to the other). She has followed the death of so many of the park’s great old oaks with great distress. Last year, working with Dominic Liberatore, one organization she works with test (East Cleveland Parks Association) inoculated one of the oaks that seemed to be in the direct path of possible oak wilt (a year later the tree is still standing and alive). This year working with Chad Clink (Bartlett) we treated 4 oaks – one of them a recognized Moses Cleveland tree (although an inventory of trees in that area revealed that quite a few of them also qualify) — for Two Lined Chestnut Borer. Two were chestnut oaks showing some crown die-back and retrenchment, and two were close- by white oaks. We shall see what we shall see. Here are a few pictures from that process, which involves drilling tiny holes at the base of the tree into the capillary system of the root flares, and then using pressure to inject small amounts of the same pesticide used on Emerald Ash Borer.
The bigger question is – does it make sense to try to save such aging trees? Do you have an opinion? Let us know….
Put on some comfortable walking shoes, grab your camera/phone, a GardenWalk guide (available at Dave’s supermarkets and online at https://www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/guide), and a water bottle. Gardeners in seven of Cleveland’s distinctive neighborhoods are inviting you to gawk, snoop and tarry in their yards and patios like an old friend. Marvel at gardens that may be breathtakingly colorful, wildly clever and or oddly quirky, but always unique and individual.
GardenWalk Cleveland is a totally free, self-guided tour of private gardens, community gardens, and home orchards in neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio. The event is entirely volunteer-fueled, from the tireless organizers to the hosting gardeners. An annual event since 2011, the neighborhoods chosen to be on tour vary each year. Note that this year the neighborhoods will be split between the two days of the GardenWalk!
This year’s venues spread from West to East, with West side neighborhoods Detroit Shoreway, West Park, and Old Brooklyn on display Saturday July 14th from 10am to 5pm.
The East side neighborhoods of Little Italy, Collinwood, Fairfax and Broadway Slavic Village will welcome you on Sunday July 15th, also from 10am-5pm.
Pick up a Guide before the GardenWalk begins at most area Dave’s Supermarkets, starting July 1st! The Guide will soon be live on the GardenWalk Cleveland web site at https://www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/.
Guides with maps and details will also be available in several garden site “refreshment stations” throughout the neighborhoods as well. Prior to setting out you can locate an information station by checking online on the GardenWalk web site. Each clickable neighborhood page from the “Guide” page will list the refreshment station addresses. The stations will be indicated in the printed Guide, as well as on the GardenWalk banner in front of the property. Refreshment stations were a new feature of GardenWalk Cleveland last year and are great spots to garner a guide, rest and refresh, pick up some tips about “don’t-miss” features and purchase raffle tickets.
The raffle prize this year is a wheelbarrow stuffed with garden related items valued at over $600. One ticket costs $5, 5 tickets cost $20. If you don’t need garden tools and a wheelbarrow you can leave a donation in the box to help pay for GardenWalk next year!
This is always a fun, eye-opening event whether you are a gardener, new to Cleveland, or just interested in knowing more about the neighbors and neighborhoods that make up this remarkable city!
Join the Spirit Corner neighborhood on Sunday, June 30 for a neighborly get together to celebrate this friendly, quirky, ‘spirited’ gathering space. The event takes place from 12 noon to 2 PM.
I recently saw this short piece by Bob Brown on Next Door Neighbors. It was charming, and spoke to what makes a place special, the space being, in this case, Spirit Corner.
Serendipity at Spirit Corner
It never ceases to amaze me how our little Spirit Corner green space is put to such unexpectedly wonderful uses! This morning as I walked Ori down the block, I saw a group of little children and parents at Spirit Corner. When we walked onto the site, I saw that they had a large silver cooking pot sitting on our tree-stump table and a copy of the book “Stone Soup.”
I saw the children collecting stones and sticks and dropping them into the pot. When I asked what they were doing, I was told that they were on a little outing to act out the story of Stone Soup.
Since I didn’t recognize anyone in the group, I asked one of the adults how they had chosen to do this at Spirit Corner. The lead person in the group said simply, “This is such a magical place. The children love coming here.”
Moments later another visitor arrived at Spirit Corner. It was a lone deer, who surveyed the activity on the site, apparently decided that all was well, and then proceeded to munch leaves on one of the trees, while the children continued to make their stone soup.
When we designed Spirit Corner, none of us expected it to become the site of a Stone Soup cook-off! Just as none of us expected a group of Tibetan monks to hold a ceremony here and consecrate the site (as happened last year). And certainly none of us expected Spirit Corner to become a Pokemon Go gym, which it is!
We named Spirit Corner after the spirits who were assumed to inhabit the house that sat here vacant for over 55 years. Maybe we should expand the name of the place to become “Serendipity Place at Spirit Corner”! What do you think?
The Origins of Spirit Corner
How did Spirit Corner come to be? A few years back (8? 9? 10?) Green Paradigm Partners (and Gardenopolis Cleveland Co-Editors) Tom Gibson and Elsa Johnson taught a class on permaculture (Tom) and design (Elsa), which was attended by Cleveland Heights resident Laura Marks, who was at that time living on upper Hampshire Road in the Coventry neighborhood. Instead of working with her own plot Laura chose to work with a plot across the street. This was a small corner lot that had had a house sit vacant on it for 55 years. A mythos had grown up around the structure. I was supposed to be haunted. It was a little spooky, and very, very sad. Finally came a release from its misery, and the house was torn down (in itself an event that is always a little sad, though it was a very tight cramped fit on the lot).
Laura wanted to see the space become a public green space. She got the neighborhood engaged in this project and we worked closely with Laura and the neighborhood to design a space that the neighborhood could call its own. It included two gathering ‘pods’ and a walk-through pathway that crossed the site diagonally. It was originally intended to follow permaculture concepts and include appropriate permaculture plantings, and also include as many native plants as possible.
Delightfully, the City of Cleveland Heights was willing to support the project, and supplied many of the trees, as well as ground bricks for the path, and some tree stumps for children to climb and play on. A friend who was deconstructing a tepee donated the long pole supports, which were used to create a sense of enclosure in which a picnic table now resides. Several benches were donated, and two more were constructed from raw materials. A man driving by saw the neighbors building a stone wall and stopped to help. The neighborhood took the space, made changes, donated plants, and made it their own.
Spirit Corner, as the following pictures show you, is not a groomed, polished public space. It is rough and ready; full of weeds as well as flowers; a place where imagination can find space to play. It is a place where this is not forbidden by the unwritten codes of ‘Behavior for Polished Public Spaces’.
It has not evolved exactly as intended: It has strayed from its permaculture intentions, and, to be completely honest, as a landscape architect, there is a part of me that is disappointed by Spirit Corner — that it is not that more polished public place. It will never win an award from the Society of Landscape Architects.
But perhaps that is a good thing. It is a place to hold a stone soup cook-off; that is irreplaceable.
Spirit Corner is one block east of Coventry Village on Hampshire Road. Parking is available in the city parking deck off Coventry.
The Biggest Little Farm is playing at the Cedar Lee Theatre through June 13. It tells the story of how one family converted a conventional lemon farm into a successful organic orchard with diverse crops and wildlife.
The filmmaker and his wife, John and Molly Chester, were interviewed on Fresh Air.
If you have the time, you should see this film! Showtimes here.
Lucky me. My new grandchild lives a half mile from the Botanical Garden in Brooklyn so naturally during a recent visit we went to see the cherry blossoms in full swing.
Coincidentally, and somewhat unfortunately, there was a massive Japanese festival going on, complete with drummers, dancers, food, ceramics, demonstrations and thousands of children and parents roaming the grounds.
Parts of the garden were closed off: the roses were behind bars.
Many tulips in sunnier locations, like beside this water feature, were gone by and the perennials were just emerging, too early for flowers.
Massively large trees, like this wingnut, were featured in several locations. Newer plantings along this meandering creek, were mostly in bloom with daffodils, early tulips and Fothergilla.
huge wingnut
An outcropping of huge boulders was cleverly surrounded by carefully managed conifers and flowering shrubs and was adjacent to a lovely display of early emerging flowers, like Pulsatilla.
The vegetable and fruit area was enviously pristine with stunning pruned shrubs, meticulously planted vegetables, many varieties of small fruit like blueberries, currants, raspberries, figs and some espalier.
A beech hedge sported a sitting bird in nest, surprisingly close to the hordes of visitors.
Wild flowers were carefully arranged in protected nooks around some tremendous very old trees, with paths wandering up and down, giving unique vantage points as you walked.
Turning the corner we came upon the children’s garden, not yet cultivated for the season except for bulbs and early perennials. The greenhouses were crowded as it began to rain, so we skipped to the tulips, and several garden rooms nearby with raised beds of daffodils, a Shakespeare garden and woven wooden enclosures.
At the end of our tour was the Japanese Garden, surrounded by a charming fence and entered through a gate which limits the number of pedestrians allowed in at a time.
The garden was replete with well managed trees, shrubs, and plantings, right off of Grand Army Plaza. Despite the distractions, this is a tour worth repeating during the seasons. Can hardly wait to see it—and my grandchild—again soon.
Avid gardeners are ordering seeds and planning new beds for the coming growing season. How about adding actual selling to those plans?
That’s a message from Noble Neighbors, a neighborhood organization based in Cleveland Heights, which is launching a Gardener’s Market to begin Saturday, July 20 and continue every Saturday through September 21. According to Brenda May, a Noble Neighbors leader, “We think the time is ripe for a venue strictly for home gardeners and community garden members who want to generate additional income and participate in the broader community.”
The market will be the region’s first market in which only backyard and community garden growers (no professional farmers) can sell extra fruits, vegetables and flowers. Initially, the market won’t be offering any kind of processed food.
Noble Neighbors tested the concept last summer with several “pilot” garden market Saturdays. The location of the market was (and will be) a small park belonging to the City of Cleveland Heights along the major thoroughfare of Noble Road at Roanoke Road (a block north of Monticello) and is the site of both significant foot and auto traffic. “We experienced strong interest from customers and potential customers,” says May. “We’re confident that a larger market with more offerings will be a success.”
Noble Gardeners’ Market organizers hope to attract a variety of gardeners from local communities beyond the immediate neighborhood. “We think the opportunity to offer home produce at no space-rental charge is unique to the region,” May says. “Our goal is both to allow gardeners to make money and to increase the feeling of neighborliness in the area.”
Sellers must bring their own table or ground cloth, be prepared to make change for their customers and provide their own weather protection.
Further information will be posted on the Noble Neighbors website www.nobleneighbors.com. Send inquiries to NobleNeighbors@gmail.com
Hummingbirds are a pollinator. There are a few plants that only they can pollinate, such as Cardinal Flower (photo from my yard above) and Royal Catchfly. We can save hummingbirds with more than sugar water. During the summer, hummingbirds nectar from my plants and rarely use the feeder. They are a woodland bird, so plant native trees for cover and places to raise young. Plant chemical-free, tubular shaped nectar plants for food. Here is a list what I’ve provided in my Ohio yard to save hummingbirds.
Adding native plants to your yard doesn’t need to be weedy. You can landscape them just like you would non-native plants. I was interviewed in the recently updated Ohio Animal Companion articles about going native and how to create a functioning wildlife habitat. Ask native plant vendors to help you with your selection so you can put the right plant in the right place. A link for the Ohio list is in the going native article, but for other state lists, click here.
We can save bees in our yards. They work hard for us by providing 1 out of every 3 bites of our food, so please don’t swat at them. Don’t confuse bees with wasps, hornets or yellow-jackets that sting to protect their nests. Carpenter bees fly beside me and buzz loudly, but they are harmless. If carpenter bees drill holes into your wood that cause problems, paint the wood with polyurethane in early spring right after the bees have emerged. Provide clean water in a shallow dish with rocks, plant the Cup Plant, which holds dew, or make mud or sand puddles. Buy plants from a reputable organic native plant dealer to ensure that the plants don’t contain pesticides that kill bees. Plant a variety of native plants that bloom at different times throughout the season. For a bee plant list, enter your zip code to see your Pollinator-Friendly Plant Guide.
Good news: National Wildlife Federation honors America’s Top Ten Cities for Wildlife. Cincinnati, Ohio is a new one on the list. Be inspired.
Tips for Your Yard
Organic Lawn Care: Apply Corn Gluten when the soil reaches 50 degrees (between 3/15 and 4/10 in central Ohio, when crocus blooms) as a pre-emergent broadleaf weed control
5 weeks after using Corn Gluten (if we’ve had enough rain), over-seed weedy or bare areas with a pesticide-chemical-free grass seed, like TLC Titan, available at most home and garden centers; keep seed damp until grass is 2″ high
Pull out weeds or spot-treat weeds sparingly with an organic product, only if necessary, such as Iron (a few brands are Whitney Farms Lawn Weed Killer Iron, Fiesta or Garden’s Alive Iron X)
Mow high to shade out weeds (3″-4″)
Bluebird houses: Transparent fishing line (monofilament) deters house sparrows from killing bluebirds and other cavity nesting birds in their bird houses, except that 20-lb is recommended instead of 6-lb weight
Birds love moving water, but it’s easy to trip or mow over the tiny hose for a dripper. Using a shovel, create a slit in the lawn about 3-5″ deep and 1″ wide by rocking the shovel back and forth. Push the tiny hose down and close the soil over it to make the soil flat and protect the hose for the season. The hose will be easier to remove when the ground starts to freeze than if you buried it
Plant native milkweed for Monarch butterflies
Leave plant materials in place throughout winter and into the nesting season to supply bird nesting materials naturally. Here are ideas for extra bird-nesting materials
When an invasive Garlic Mustard plant is in its second-year, the flowering stage, gently dig out the entire root of the plant. If you can ID the first-year rosette, gently pull it out. Important: Bag the flowering stage plant and put the bag in the trash (not in compost or yard waste) because the plant continues to go to seed even after removed from the ground
In spring, invasive bushes become green before most native plants, so they’re easy to see. Cut the invasive plant at or near ground level and cover with cardboard. If it is pesky, cover with black plastic
To keep an Invasive Plant away, put an alternative native plant (if a bush: a bush; if a flower: a flower) in its place
Cut flower stalks to 12-15″ and leave them standing until summer (late May to early June in the Midwest) after the small carpenter bees that used them for nests have emerged
Put out hummingbird feeders April 15 to Oct 15 in mid-Ohio to help Ruby-throated hummingbird migrants and summer residents. Watch this migration map for timing in other areas
Contact your Public Health Department to find out if your city does mosquito fogging and, if so, ask how to opt out. These chemicals kill beneficial insects, including bees and Monarch caterpillars
Help migratory birds by turning your outdoor lights off or down 11:30pm-5am from mid-March to mid-June to keep birds from being disoriented and having nighttime collisions
Apply organic tree fertilizer to the root zone to help trees make leaves
When you have your chimney cleaned in early spring, close the damper, uncap it and add a cover 12″ above chimney with openings on the sides so that a pair of Chimney Swifts can use it for their summer home and nest for babies. See tips here
If you find unattended baby or injured wildlife in your yard, here’s what to do from the Ohio Wildlife Center Hospital
Reg now for 4/28, Conversations on Conservation: Basic Bugs 101 with the Bug Chicks, Garden for Wildlife Exhibit, Fee for non-members, Cincinnati Nature Center, Milford
